Update Discussion: September 10, 2020

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Originally Posted by Silkt

I also agree this case isn't so bad but I don't like the design decision, the other hiccup is players trying to lock up the market, only 2 player vendors have the item, which used tab value is 10 councils, one has listed for 1500 councils, the other with most stock has them listed for 4500.

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I have a couple more thoughts on the issue. The more i think about it, the more i actually kind of like this design (may be an unpopular opinion):
1. The price gouging can only last so long. The quest is gated behind just 3 of the quest item, and you only need to unlock it once. The item has no other real uses other than a once a year (winter holiday) quest. Now that people are aware of the increased value, they'll pick them up when they find them instead of tossing them. Supply will go up since ppl are picking them up, demand will go down as ppl finish the quest (new players will need to finish the quest too, but new players will come in at a slower rate than vets finishing the quest). The price gouging will mostly affect long time players who have the cash to throw around and can't be bothered to do a little farming.

2. Just because a skill is aquire-able at low combat level, doesn't mean to learn it then. Someone just hitting hogan's keep isn't going to have enough fat to really make use of candle making anyways. Plus many of the recipes are in more difficult areas that won't be accessible until the areas that drop the <quest item> are accessible too.

3. Ultimately i think it just adds a greater feeling of non-linearity and complexity to the game. It can be fun to have something to unlock and not knowing when or even if you will find the item to unlock it, rather than simply stumbling across it in the normal course of leveling an hour after you learn you need it. Not if it unlocks something vital to progress, but here it unlocks something auxiliary.

Anyways, just my rambling thoughts. I can see your side to the argument as well, but maybe you will consider an alternative point of view, even if you don't entirely agree.

I think the lower frame rate issue isn’t consistent. I’ve had some issues with lower than average frame rate, but this isn’t always the case. I wrote it off as tons of people behind walls that I can’t see and the detailed combat log being tracked again. But I have heard of people having super low FPS.

Recently my group has noticed the ensigns around the captain’s area (outside the locked doors ) don’t always shout. I am not sure what that’s about. I also am not sure what alarmist means yet. I assumed it meant double the shout range or something, but now I’m starting to think it calls over a friend? Anyway, I’ll try and get the ensign’s shout bug reported, as I might have time between their stuns :P

After spending maybe a dozen hours in the new dungeon with a good group, I decided to try to solo. Really, really hard. Of course, aberrations and bears/minotaurs are somewhat straightforward, but it seems like most mobs have a 3-4 second stun which REALLY puts a damper on making solo progress. More importantly, it 100% takes the fun out of soloing and won't be fun even at 100. Seriously, what kind of sadist makes elites with power drain?

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Originally Posted by Citan

- RE: debuffing monsters' vulnerability: the way it works now is just a limitation of the implementation and will eventually be a true multiplicative. In other words, if you make a monster take 20% more Fire damage, and they normally take 0% fire damage, 0%+20%=0%. Doesn't work that way yet (in all cases), but it will.

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Thank for this, that seems more reasonable. I'm not sure if that's how it actually works as I don't believe a fire immune mob was taking damage from fire damage with calefaction (why I deleted it originally), but I know for a fact that fire/ice (with an ice magic debuff on calefaction) does a ton of damage to Dalvos despite being immune to fire and ice.

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Originally Posted by Deldaron

Another topic I wanted to address is the continued creep of dailies and I am torn on the matter.

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I'm torn on this as well. With a good group, you can make 100k+ in an hour with the new daily. I came out with 120-130k after the hardest Aurest daily. This is enough money to fund 80 unlocks in a reasonable timeframe and something like it was necessary. Previously, "crafting first" type people had the only legitimate way to make large sums (work orders). At the same time, as someone with a lot of capital, I'm kind of fearing the inevitable inflation. This is a lot of guaranteed money (npc/quest vs waiting to sell/get undercut at a shop) for people, hopefully it goes back into the economy (shops) as well as unlocks.

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Originally Posted by alleryn

I have a couple more thoughts on the issue. The more i think about it, the more i actually kind of like this design (may be an unpopular opinion):
1. The price gouging can only last so long. The quest is gated behind just 3 of the quest item, and you only need to unlock it once. The item has no other real uses other than a once a year (winter holiday) quest. Now that people are aware of the increased value, they'll pick them up when they find them instead of tossing them. Supply will go up since ppl are picking them up, demand will go down as ppl finish the quest (new players will need to finish the quest too, but new players will come in at a slower rate than vets finishing the quest). The price gouging will mostly affect long time players who have the cash to throw around and can't be bothered to do a little farming.

2. Just because a skill is aquire-able at low combat level, doesn't mean to learn it then. Someone just hitting hogan's keep isn't going to have enough fat to really make use of candle making anyways. Plus many of the recipes are in more difficult areas that won't be accessible until the areas that drop the <quest item> are accessible too.

3. Ultimately i think it just adds a greater feeling of non-linearity and complexity to the game. It can be fun to have something to unlock and not knowing when or even if you will find the item to unlock it, rather than simply stumbling across it in the normal course of leveling an hour after you learn you need it. Not if it unlocks something vital to progress, but here it unlocks something auxiliary.

Anyways, just my rambling thoughts. I can see your side to the argument as well, but maybe you will consider an alternative point of view, even if you don't entirely agree.

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Sorry but I think you misunderstood, my opinion on the poor design is not about the craft skill, it is about gating a level intended solo dungeon, which should be a gearing up place before progressing similar to the war caches, behind an item that doesn't drop until 3 zones further in progression.

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Originally Posted by Citan

- RE: debuffing monsters' vulnerability: the way it works now is just a limitation of the implementation and will eventually be a true multiplicative. In other words, if you make a monster take 20% more Fire damage, and they normally take 0% fire damage, 0%+20%=0%. Doesn't work that way yet (in all cases), but it will.

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I actually really like how it works this way right now. It makes these debuffing skills more situational in their use but still very helpful. Debuffing an enemy's vulnerability by 15% isn't very useful on a target that's neutral to the damage type, but being able to lower an enemy's high resistances with it makes it a useful situational skill. It also allows you to damage immune targets, but I believe that's good design because you're still doing way less damage (Doing 15% damage on an enemy that should have been immune is not going to out DPS using a proper damage type).
For example, when I was playing with friends through Wintercourt Nexus, we had to coordinate our attacks to put debuffs on portals before attacking them for damage. This was way more fun than being forced to leave the dungeon, awkwardly changing our builds to include a specific damage type, and then come back just to kill one enemy type, but if one of us did bring one of those damage types we would have killed them instantly rather than needing to plan out our attacks just to hit them for 10-30 damage at a time.

I get that part of the design might be to force the players to use certain damage types to encourage parties to bring a variety of damage types, but I think the current design is more fun in that you are still heavily rewarded for using the 'right' damage type because you'll do significantly more damage, but with the right abilities/mods you can still do something. Both require planning/preparation, but the former is more rewarding. You COULD try to defeat a damage immune enemy with debuffs, but either you need to be significantly stronger since your damage is much lower, or you need to coordinate with your team to stack debuffs and attacks properly.

One big exception to this though is Calefaction's cold vulnerability debuff, since it's way too strong. At level 80 it increases vulnerability by 90%, which pretty much removes any immunity/resistance. It sort of feels like every end game ice mage should be running fire just for that, since there's a lot of cold immune/resistance monsters and the ability basically lets you ignore resistances as if they aren't there while giving you a ton of damage. There isn't really planning there since with one move you can instantly turn any mob weak/ almost neutral to cold, and there's no greater reward for using the "correct" damage type since you will basically do the same damage with just one Calefaction. I think each skill line should probably be limited to something like 25% vulnerability debuffs maximum to one damage type (with mods) so that way while you can still hurt immune enemies, you're doing 1/4th the damage which still heavily encourages using a better damage type.

So, I've gotten the chance to do some candle making and I've mostly just been collecting fat in preparation for when the poetry jam buffs come around, but I think I've noticed a few things that I want to bring up and have a few questions about.

As Deldaron mentioned it seems like the exp table becomes much harsher after 50, honestly the first 40 levels seem very easy and don't require much fat at all, I was able to make do with only 18 filthy fat before I had completely moved onto the next tier and I wasn't even using every possible exp buff available. I haven't completely done the lumpy fat yet but it seems similar from looking at the wiki, then the typical fat after that takes much more to reach the next tier. This is all fine so far, except that perhaps the first tier is actually even too easy, but then once you get to the 60s and 70s, it seems as if the skill REALLY slows down. This is a combination of factors, not only do you need more fat, each mob takes you longer to kill and they're in more dangerous zones so you face more deaths and can't pull as many at once. This would be ok on it's own and honestly, if you stretch the amount of grind required over a month or 2 it's not even that bad. However, the key issue I see is that the xp table gets incredibly harsh combined with very few mobs seeming to actually give the highest tier of fat. I still wouldn't mind doing the grind personally, but I wanted to ask, is it intended to be this difficult? I personally predict it would take me about 25 hours of grinding just to get the smooth fat, even if I used every exp buff in the game, and that's after already doing about 10 hours of typical fat farming to reduce the amount of smooth I would need. I don't want to do the grind if this isn't intended and is going to be changed.

So, about the availability of smooth fat, the dinosaurs in the fae realm don't seem to give any organs at all, which seems like a bug but not sure. I was also told by another player in game that they farmed the fae realm bears and panthers for 3 hours and didn't receive a single fat drop. I farmed them myself for about 20 minutes and didn't receive any either. This isn't really conclusive evidence, so I suppose another question would be: do the fae realm mobs actually drop smooth fat?

I'm also a bit confused on what determines the tier of fat dropped by the mob. I initially thought it was just based on level, but I noticed that the bears in animal nexus drop lumpy fat, and the panthers in the same dungeon, which I think are the same level, drop filthy fat. I also noticed that kur wolves drop filthy fat, yet lower level sheep and deer in kur both drop lumpy. Again, the lvl 70 gazluk bears (and possibly cows?) drop smooth but the lvl 80 tun-uraks drop typical. There doesn't really seem to be a pattern between mobs that drop cheap meat or non-cheap meat and although there's a general trend in higher tier fat at higher levels, it's not 100% true. Perhaps it's based on the mob anatomy type to an extent, ruminants and bears seem to give higher quality fat at a lower level than canines, felines and arthropods.

[MENTION=3904]Yaffy[/MENTION] - that's an interesting take. I admit I haven't really considered leaving it as-is, because it makes it impossible for me to do specialty encounters -- "you MUST do this" type thing. I don't want to do that all the time, but with a boss like (the ghostly one) in this update, I don't really want him to be affected by, say, blood loss. But eh, maybe it's fine. Magic is magical.

[MENTION=4346]Celerity[/MENTION] - fat drops are based on the monster's level and their anatomy type. Herbivorous animals (such as Ungulates) have the best of all of the resources: skins, meat, organs. Carnivores have the worst. And omnivores are somewhere in between. But that said, it does look like the specialty monsters in the Fae Realm (which amounts to nearly all the monsters in the Fae Realm) are missing parts of their butchering profile. Will take a look at that now.

@all - we'll do an update tomorrow evening to fix a few small bugs, and one big bug that's broken several framerate optimizations. Will be making some tweaks to bosses as well.

Thanks for the reply Citan, it's nice to receive confirmation on things and know I'm not just going insane or facing a streak of bad luck.

Thanks for the change to the entry requirements of the Hogan's keep dungeon.

Wintertide content suggestion:

With the new dungeon, I would like to suggest the addition of more fairy lights. I saw this amazing fairy light in the dungeon, and I knew I needed a full size version for my Fae.

Perhaps one of the control panels could teach Fairies the recipe, or even provide a list for Fae to choose their fairy light from.

Regardless, This over-sized fairy light would be a great addition as a follower to my shopping days in Serbule.

Spoiler:

https://i.imgur.com/7xeHmGs.png