ok so we took 3 groups into shard of hate last night, what we know conclusivly, one of the callers on the 2nd ring event( further from portal to the east) his corpse drops under the world, thus breaking the zone, we ganked the heart from another group that encountered the bug, and moved past that issue. we got no final boss in the temple area within the wall of flames, couldnt get anything to work with the clicky braziers in the temple area. zone is good, a bit too easy comparable to obelisk of blight mob wise if not even a shake easier than that, loot is good so far, the war monger has some shared loot with trash mobs it seems dropped the same sash of fright the trash drop. the teleporter in the well, is kinda hit and miss if it tele's you or not, sometimes takes a few passes up and down the well to get it. no mobs see invis, thought that was a bit strange shield of rainbow hues, round shield priest only, super! the graveyard seems to be missing something, we cleared the frogs, clicked the headstones, cleared the lost souls, nothin, we all did get warts though =( but all in all nothing happening in the GY thats what i got so far that i can remember
I'd like to add, the lack of see invis mobs was brilliant for me. I actually felt like a scout again. I don't expect to see it stay that way, but just wanted to add that it was a huge amount of fun for me as a scout. When a map is introduced tracking will be even better also. Cause tracking without a map and having to rely on the yellow glowing line that rarely shows up and directions that don't always list is kind of a pain. Oh and the flame wall was brilliant. Quick question, Why does a dragon named Dracoliche not look lich(ish) and have lil babies running around with him? I expected a skeletal or at least undead looking thing with that name and the babies really seemed out of place. Maybe he could have a title like, Dracoliche, The Well Preserved or Dracholiche, The Skin Care Model with Children or Dracoliche, I'm a Necro but I live in Cali or Dracoliche, It's just a Nickname or Dracoliche, My kids will kill then exhume yours, ect... Yeah I'm poking fun here, but you have to admit a lich with kids is pretty amusing. Course maybe they weren't kids /shrug I can't remember thier exact name though, I'll check tonight. Brega.
Thanks for all the feedback. Keep it up! Overall expect the zone to get harder once again. The lack of see invis creatures will change. Something will go into the graveyard.
in addition after tonights run, dracholiche difficulty is right on the mark, he was hard, cusp of death kinda fight, but we won, props there ( decently raid geared group) youv got a few eyeballs that are unkillable, outside the zone limiters, cant pet pull em or anything, 2 near the GY for sure, heart of fear ring event still dropping bodies in the ground ( not expecting this fixed yet as its only day 2) the scareling bog area seems to be missing something , named, event, a salad bar with 2 things of olives, hard to say, the swale of viscera(where the hell did that name come from lol, but its great) also seems a bit shy on activities, the 3 or so empy towers in various places we debated long and hard if they were the designated afk rooms or if they didnt yet have a purpose, im voting purpose not yet available =) other things, i have to add a great great job with bringing back the eq1 nastalgia without being a C&P it looks great, got the right mobs, some old loot, zerker ring, AoN dawnfear ( wasnt it dawnfire in eq1?) looking great, anything specific ya need beat to death for bugs a few times let us know, i went through and did some charm testing with my coercer to make sure the unrest thing didnt get repeated, seems good in that respect dont forget to remind someone that we need our beta invites ! =) /serious look
Eyes of Thule: too easy for a farmer though the loot probably would get repetitive and they'd tire of it. They drop a chest each time - the route to them is fairly safe even if you do add see invis (unless its the pita winged imp model at zone) and you can kill them, zone out with no lockout - zone back in and repeat til you ran out of space in your bags. And although everyone has me pegged as the bloodthirsty templar (totally unfounded I may add ) I have a soft spot for animals and making me lead that poor, poor, unsuspecting foal to slaughter was not fun! Can't you change it to some ugly crawly? One of those slobbering wargs would work fine!) I haven't attuned it yet but the sweat-soaked headband (in the dressing room) is showing no graphic. Maybe its just the dressing room graphic? btw: the graphic on the arms is wonderful - looking forward to seeing the rest of the set. And my apologies: I HAD to blab in the open forum about the AoN - it is such a coveted item in EQ1 (quite possibly the most coveted ingame) I had to share the news.
ok on the east ring event, it happened again last night, the 3rd corpse poofed and we were unable to complete the ring. I believe Saedie couldn't produce it solo was because there wasn't an instance locked to her? Only way I think to duplicate it perfectly is to find a dev willing to come with a full grp and see what is happening, its always the 3rd killed at the east ring event which keeps us from placing the last corpse and getting the piece to the 'puzzle'. Perhaps the groups going in, need to try for the east event first rather than race off to get named and see if that makes a difference? Do the east ring event before you get the 1 day 11 hr timer.
We had trouble keeping the corpses from getting stuck, so now the lizards will respawn a few min after they die if you haven't sacrificed their corpse. We'll take a look at the eyes of Thule, they shouldn't be dropping chests every time.
because i GOTTA say this, lyndro your a sick sick mother fucker, MORE COW BELL! its wrong man, so wrong !, but its awsome, lol and shock and awe, dude ! the more cowbell didnt even click at first
Ok retraction time... Dracoliche is indeed undead looking, my settings were too low to notice it. S/he seems to have a skinned look. Brega.
I haven't yet had a chance to run though the zone, hopefully this weekend Alat-Seldi will have a chance to go in and try it out more than just killing trash mobs with a half group (which we did when it went to test). We killed about 30 mobs, none of the named, with 4 characters. We didn't use invis or stealth (though we had it available), but overall, I was surprised at the simplicity of the entrance mobs. I remember Fear in EQ1 and the zone-in was hard. Really hard. Breaking into the zone was a huge accomplishment. I don't think this gave the same excitement, as "fear should have". If that makes since. The zone in SHOULD be hard. The zone SHOULD be hard. It SHOULD be a butt kicker. If it's not, I will be heartedly disappointed. It should be, IMHO, as hard--or harder--than Nizara. (Which I know isn't a popular opinion with some) [Keep in mind the rest of my post comes from this POV.] A major part of the value of fear is its nostalgia factor. Therefore, if you don't make "Shard of Fear" 'like' "Plane of Fear" you really blow the promise of this zone. For reference Unrest eq2 feels a lot like Unrest EQ1. That said, I have been reading a bit about people's comments on the "see invis" / "stealth" debate. I have a suggestion. Instead of making all the mobs see invis (which I can see might be bad), or instead of making it so the zone can be stealthed through (which is also not a good thing--I'm aware that isn't a popular opinion) maybe there is another option. The major problem, as I see it, of allowing a group to stealth freely though the zone is groups will just stealth back to the named mobs and kill them, instead of clearing the zone. There are a few ways to work around this, instead of the "stealth nurf" issue people are upset about. First, make it so some Named mobs have other "trash" mobs tied to them. At some point in the fight, the leader will "call for help" from his minions, who will rush to his side. This could be a specific type of mob in the zone (I.e., all the winged imps must be dead), or a range effect (all mobs within X distance will aid the boss). Second, add this into the final encounters of the shard levels. If you are fighting the big-baddie of the instance level you had better have everything else in the zone dead (assuming no respawn?) or else you'll have a huge pile of creatures to deal with as you kill their master. Adding features such as this still allows stealth classes to move around the zone free to scout ahead, without allowing raids to "skip to the end fights". In EQ1, stealth was definitely a part of Fear tactics, so I don't think removing this feature is a great idea. However, requiring players to kill trash mobs is also important. Also in eq1 the planer armor dropped off trash, so people killed it...maybe set armor pieces from stuff? Or even "trash" drops that give kudos to old eq1 armor drops that can be worn for appearance sake only using the appearance tab. Just some thoughts.
There is an instance in Steamfont that works that way for the named boss - it'll call EVERYONE in the instance not dead to help it if a fight starts. So the mechanics are there to do that kind of tie-in. I can also hear the howling of the playerbase from the future timeline if Fear were made that way - it's that loud! Having something relic-like drop from the trash mobs is the only way I see to mitigate that, as the cat's out of the bag and meowing about the way Fear currently is. I personally don't mind it a hard zone, as it will become an easy one soon enough.
As for the difficulty level. Keep in mind that the testing so far has been done with characters that are mostly (totally?) *raid* equipped. A group zone should never require anyone to have any sort of raid equipment. Solo equipment to solo, group to group, raid to raid. Devs have sort of forgotten that over time, mostly due to raiders complaining about how easy a group zone is. Last night sort of gave Sunrayn a whole new perspective on the way EQ2 is turning out when at lvl 70 with 100 AAs in a mix of EoF and KoS legendary got his *** handed to him by the entrance mobs in Unrest. A level 70 temp couldnt keep him standing.
Sunrayn wrote: I have a little different opinion on this, big surprise I know. But by my way of thinking, I kind of like having something to do outside of raids. Should I have to take off my gear when entering a heroic instance or zone? Nizara is still pretty popular because it is so hard. I see nothing wrong with having a few group zones that are exceptionally hard and may require really good skill or equipment or both. Just because someone raids shouldn't mean they are locked out of everything else. It's nice to have a challenge. /shrug Personally I hope we get at least one group zone that is so flipping hard that I'll get my teeth kicked in all the way through it till I am 80 and fully fabled. A lot like Nizara was for quite awhile. Heck I still am not sure how well I'll do when entering that zone. And I love every minute of it. Brega
well i have to chime in here, i agree with you in part sunrayn, group gear for group zones, raid gear for raid zones, BUT at the same time i think if all zones are the same difficulty, if ya can do one ya can do em all, ya hit a certain bar of gear skill or know how and bam ya can clear all the instances in the game! i think they should ramp the difficulty of heroic zones, up to a raid gear point, not nescisarily REQUIREING raid gear, but teeth shattering hard without it, because in todays eq2, more people raid, casually at least, than dont at all. zones like nizara and unrest are great because of how hard they are, nizara is damn near an x2 zone for 6 people, and thats what makes it good, ya go in KNOWING your dead meat walking when ya get in the door at least a few times. if all zones were the difficulty of something mid range, like OOB, how boring would unrest and nizara be at that difficulty, sure you could do em easier, and more often, but whats the fun in that? and if it was all the same difficulty, the raid geared( truly geared out, not like UT we are mid geared at best) would be doing everything you could do with 2 people? i wanna see shard shattering the teeth of the best of the best in horrible sadistic ways, i wanna be so frustrated by the time we get done that i have to go smoke half a pack of smokes and punch a kitten. thats what i wanna see from shard. but i see what yer saying sun, nobody should be required to raid. i think linking the types of mobs in the zone to there associated named is not only Fing stupid, but illogical, it would remove any and all flow from the zone since the mob types are not centralized around there named in tribes, they are scattered all over the zone for alot of the mob types, like the spiders, triggered adds wouldnt be bad ill wait till lyndro ramps it up a few bones before i suggest any changes of that type, its simply not possible to say now when its not ready.
Brega wrote: I actually agree with brega. Big surprise i know. The A-S group went into Unrest with the typical 5 and Kella our first time (without boxes), and other then Kella we were only in partical EoF Legendary, and mostly Treasured KOS from Claymore. We were able to complete it, slowly. It can be done with a full group, without fabled gear, when you have a full group (we had to leave boxes behind) and move very very slowly. We had two healers, and neither were worried about anything other then healing. We did Unrest prior to doing any Alliance raiding. Ry was wearing nearly the entire suit of KoS Treasured quit reward stuff from Claymore (he had the EoF Gloves from Kaladim). And also remember, while the UT folks are raid equipted, they aren't "fully" EOF raid equipted. (AFAIK) Yes, much of their gear makes much of our gear look weak, however much of "Live Raiders" gear makes much of their gear look weak. There has to be zones that are challanging for a single group here on test, or else it will be trivial to "all star" group off of test. Our single group here on test of A-S folks really enjoy doing dungon crawls, and just because we raid also doesn't mean there shouldn't be a zone or two of higher challange group dungon crawls we can do. In the end, dungon crawls are what ry and I really play the game for, and it would be a shame to no longer be "able" to get enjoyment from them.
nat_lyte wrote: As i said in the post, I haven't been entirely through the shard, so I don't know exactly the layout of mobs. If Imps are randomly scattered through the zone, than it might be a bad example and not work as well to use that suggestion (but if there are mobs that are in a general location of the zone some named mobs could require them be killed), but adding the range limit assisting (all mobs within x distance come to help) could work too. (if you agree or not) This wasn't a suggestion to make the zone harder overall, but deal with some of the gripeing about stealthing to nameds and cherry picking them off. (sorry if you think my idea if "Fing stupid" and "illogical", i still feel something like this might help )
First thing I would like to say is..This conversation could only happen on the tester board. We can all disagree and still show up for raids hehe. A group zone should be a challenge for those in 'group' gear..By group gear I mean gear that isnt gotten in any sort of 12 to 24 person raid. A group zone should be nearly impossible to do with 'solo' gear and pretty much a snooze fest for those fully raid equipped. If a group zone is a challenge for raid equipped people, it will be impossible for any group that has group equipment.
Sunrayn wrote: I guess i'm just confused. We did every zone in EOF (unrest included) without a single piece of raid gear. However, we did have to go and finish higher end EoF and KoS legendary. We had killed every mob (multipule times ) in SoS (including the deep stuff a lot), we had the entire Infiltrating the Sanctum quest line finished and some really good weapons from it, and also all of Claymore (plate armor) from SoS and past. We had already completed our class hats. We had killed all the mobs in Kaladim, and finished our Stormhammers giving decent dps to the tank. 3 of us already had 100 AAs. All of this prior to going on a single raid, and all of it before trying to go into Unrest. Before we tried Valdoons. Prior to Mistmoore Castle. Once we conquered Kaladim, we moved to OOB. Once that became second nature we started single grouping the unicorn on our way in. Then we moved to harder zones. It's about progression, and none of the one group zones in the game currently require raid gear. And yes, there are things i agree with Lucky, Brega, and UT about..and things i disagree with them about. There are things i agree with the people we raid with, and things i disagree with them (and you) on. However, none of it effects raiding or groups, or friendships..because we can all easily agree to disagree on things, and discuss without becoming overly offended because not everyone sees things the same way. There should be "starting" gear group T7 zones, and progress up to zones where you have to have done the ones before it to be successful. It shouldn't all be the same difficulty, where would the fun (and the point) be in that?
I wish instance zones would just adjust to the group that enters. If you go in 90% fabled (whether it's equipped or just sitting in your bags because you think you can trick the zone by entering in cloth and then changing to plate) and 90% of your spells are Master I, congratulations, you get a harder run than if you go in with legendary than if you go in with treasured. Equally challenging for any group, regardless of the level of gear and makes it near impossible to trivialize a zone. That way, you've got some flexibility for this kind of difference in playstyle, and when someone links a piece of gear at the end of a fight you're congratulating the players and not their equipment.
Aela@Test wrote: It is really quite simple. Fear is being tested by people wearing raid equipment and those folk are saying 'it is too easy' so, the difficulty will be increased. More than likely it will also be increased again once it goes live and raiders even better equipped than testers complain it is too easy. Nizara is touted as being 'the toughest group zone in EQ' Who are the folks claiming that? Mostly, I have heard that from people that were (at the time) equipped in full KoS raid fabled.
