The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...6360#post16360
Discussion is in this thread! But please remember to report any bugs through the in-game reporting system so we can track them.
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The update notes are here: https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...6360#post16360
Discussion is in this thread! But please remember to report any bugs through the in-game reporting system so we can track them.
UPDATE: We rolled out a fix for this problem this afternoon!
If you are having trouble with the terrain in Rahu - if a blue thing is popping up through the ground in some places as you move - don't panic! We are working on this right now. In the meantime, we have a work-around:
In Settings, under Graphics, at the very bottom of the list of regular settings is a toggle for "Show Advanced Options". Toggle "Enabled" on. This opens a long list of advanced settings that you can tweak. About halfway down the list is "Show Horizon Terrain". Toggle this setting on, and you will see a new toggle to Enable/Disable the horizon terrain. The default is "Enabled". Toggle that to "Disabled". You will no longer see distant horizon terrain - or the weird blue plane in Rahu.
We'll have a fix for this out as soon as we can. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Under the changes to staff, it lists Blocking Stance as having changes, however the ability that was changed in game was Deflective Spin (Same description listed in the patch notes, just different ability name)
Beautiful new map! Thanks for taking your time to do it right.
Fae realm has a low ceiling that restricts flight. Bug report already filed.
Not sure why power increases had to change given increased cost to future abilities. It was a benefit to getting bonus levels ect. Are other skills filling this void now?
So far am loving the new realm, especially not having to deal with the cold lol. Loved flying around with my bat taking some really cool screenshots, especially night time screen shots, even though you can not fly very high at all.
A group of us went down to GK to farm for favor items and power is such a crazy issue now. I guess once I unlocking higher levels of cheesemaking I can see what it is like then, But as far as now goes its really bad LOL.
Thanks for the patch! It seems like the team was working super hard on it. The new map seems really crazy and interesting so far. The mobs are kinda crazy in some places, (Those droaches in particular are pretty nasty) but I'm looking forward to poking at all the level 80 content.
One thing that I think might be unintentional though... It seems that bonus levels actually count towards the new crafting EXP penalty. I had level 60 cooking (Which was max) and 7 bonus levels, for a total of level 67 in cooking. Now that I raised my cap, it seems that every recipe I can make that's level 57 and below has the exp penalty on it. I assume this is because it's 10 levels lower than my total level. I would suggest changing this so bonus levels don't count towards this penalty, otherwise players are actually penalized for getting bonus levels because it'll be harder to gain EXP! Right now my pool of non-penalized recipes is very small because of how it works currently and because I don't have the new cooking recipes, so it's a lot harder for me to gain non-penalized EXP where as if I had no bonus levels, it'd be much easier.
Archery/hammer is pretty tough to manage power-wise now.
Are mobs supposed to be disappearing soon after killed (or even before killed?). You hit the hive, kill the elites, but then the elites disappear way too soon, way too often. If this isn't supposed to happen, it's a huge bug currently. Been reported.
Also just a warning for players. It seems that "BackFat"'s Mycology uncap training doesn't actually work. He'll gladly take your money and your jelly, but you won't actually uncap!
https://i.imgur.com/b8emiGV.png
Make sure you don't get scammed by this pig! I've heard from some other players that it also didn't work for them, so be careful! His other training options are seem fine though, I can confirm the Endurance and survival instinct ones work at least.
It is indeed unintended that bonus levels affect XP drop-off. Another bug: hoplology, phrenology, and similar recipes are not supposed to have XP drop-off at all; they just got marked incorrectly in data, and will be fixed in the next hotfix or update we do.
literally was saying when i logged in the other day for the first time in almost 2 years:
"power sure doesnt seem like an issue anymore. I could probably drop a basic attack for another main skill."
then after I did that:
"lets drop both. im modded to regain power when i use 2 abilities."
then after I did that I saw I still didnt have any issues. without using Mentalism.
"...yea this isnt gonna last much longer."
Just a reminder, while we appreciate seeing the feedback here, don't forget to report your feedback/bugs in game as well! Thanks everyone.
Did do some reports on this in game buuuuut....
Lethargy Puck does not have a curse message. The mechanism where he spawns adds is great, but the re-spawn trigger timer is a little low. Like a group walked over tombstones and aggroed it without realizing the adds were a thing.
The jelly system at first seems horrid. My piles of council makes me think of, 'water water everywhere but not an ounce to drink', and I know people with jellies and no council thinking similar things. Not sure what the balance is, but if I think paying ~4x jelly price for a nearly free skill might be a good option for those who are not great at earning council.
quick edit, with added idea: the cheap council, expensive jelly option would be best if it was just for combat/trade skill level increases, and the cost of jellies increased per skill unlock, regardless if you used it or not.
The hives are the best way to get jellies, I'm not sure if its good or bad that we're all bumping heads to get them. I think it was smart to not add a dungeon in yet because way less people would be testing the hives! Some of the elite mobs from the hive instantly despawn after they die. There is enough time for the nearest person to open the body and see loot, but not enough time for anyone to loot. I hope the hive's niche is, groups that can't quite do the dungeon that does not exist yet. It's a good option as long as it's not the only option.
Midge is a major jerk. I can't get his 2nd quest because I said hi with fairy wings on me and my favor is forever 99/100. I can't give him items to favor him up either.
When you add more NPCs to the area, I think more solo quest might be helpful. Some people I know who don't love grouping are saying they are having a hard time earning jellies.
A lot changed with shield! I think the changes look great. It'll probably be ~6 months before I actually test it.
Is there any gameplay value to the fairy chimes? My first impression was that it would be a bard bonus level. When I look at the skill in the skills and abilities window, it literally shows now bonus to anything at all and no stats increase of any kind.
Is there any value outside of the pure entertainment of playing them as far as gameplay goes?
My problem with the new zone, which is a product of it being new to an existing world, is that I get nothing in the way of xp for endurance, or any weapons skills until AFTER I can favor the npcs.
With the rarity in drop items, and the constant deaths, I am going to be completely bored with this zone before I can actually get my favor up to train.
This would not be an issue to newer players as they can come to the new zone, early, and start to work on favor before their xp meters stop.
The power drain is ridiculous. What it essentially means is, as a trained high level warrior I can shoot 3 arrows before I an winded, 4 wheezing and 5 I basically pass out from exertion (then of course, die). What happens is, I get attacked by a troll, hit hi with 3-4 shots, he evades 2 of them, I am out of power. Now while I scramble to regen he heals fully, and now there is no way I can kill him because my power bar is at the bottom.
Sounds like this world needs a major fitness program.
While I agree that everything feels a little, ‘brutal’ the right word right now?
But I think it’s by design
Yes, I agree this new area is tough, and I understand the ‘no benefit right now’ problem, but I liken it to the game when you arrive on the newbie island, there’s a bit of ‘earn your right of passage’ about things
There are things that need addressing, if you look at the wiki, perhaps skills that fall under ‘other skills’ should have the jelly requirement removed or relaxed.
All that said, the content is new, and I think it’d be expected that things feel rough until players start to build a surplus of ‘barter drops’
I’m loving the mix between solo and group content this zone offers, and the difference offered in player progress between the two modes feels about right
I do think some favor requirements are a bit rough though
Personally I love the power change. As a battery built bard/druid, now the power regen from the song of resurgence and healing sanctuary with the power mods give me greater group value. As well as mentalism and other battery potential classes have more value. Perhaps you might try to seek those out in your group dynamics.
I agree that the new zone is 'brutal', but if you prepare and adapt for it, then it becomes much easier.
(Please note: I use a max geared and level 70+ toon, so my experiences may not match yours)
There are 3 main things I have had to address:
Damage type
Use Fire (with a healing secondary skill) - I have used Fire /Druid, Fire /BC and Archery /Druid mostly so far.
e.g. Use Fire Arrow if you use Archery
With Fire /Druid, I have soloed up to 5 non-elite mobs at once and can easily kill single non-elite mobs
Without fire in my build (e.g. Archery without Fire Arrow), I usually die to a single troll
Note: A Priest /Mentalism (fire build) worked, but was marginal whilst UA /Psychology (with fire Headbutt mods) got me killed in most fights
Mana
By using top level food, snacks and flower buffs + mana regeneration spells, I have very few mana issues even when fighting multiple mobs at once
Flying:
Flight makes the zone so much easier as you get to pick when and where you fight
Note on elite mobs:
Currently these are too tough for me to solo and require a group - which is good as it indicates that the difficulty is about right.
Pretty much agree with much of the above, I've been off work this week so have spent a lot of time here.
At first I felt the new skills were over priced to be honest but I'm slowly picking off a few. Not been able to afford any actual combat skill upgrades yet, it just seems better to get the trade skills and combat skill abilities first.
Where like many I have bonus lvls in some cases even beyond lvl 80 you can in effect have almost all the combat skills abilities upgraded before you unlock the actual skill to raise it's lvls. By my understanding the actual Combat skillls provide very little extra especially if your already at 80 and can get in the new gear.
This feels a little weird but it helps greatly to get a foothold in the area.
At times whilst in raven in my travel build which is only pockets and generic on shirt and pants, I have had some real nice scraps including soloing 3 different mobs at once a few times. This build is Shield Ment which doesn't offer fire really so is not enough for the trolls (except honey ones) but the other stufff with rage management via mods is doable. Slow and no where near efficient but fun none the less. I like the mob diversity greatly.
As Poulter says above the fact there is group content out there is good, those areas offer greater reward but are way beyond me in any set up.
I've been lucky enough to run all the hives many times now, and there variety is great I think the fact there is a few that are far easier is helpful. Though with a solid group and decent planning there all pretty comfortable doing with only the odd casualties. Often those are via the travel between the hives and the arrival of a train of followers.
I was concerned at first also because of the hr cooldown and no visible timer. But even after a few days now the hive runs are slowing down and even 1 group being out on them is rarer let alone 2 trying to keep civil something that's frustrating for both groups no doubt.
Thankfully the little community also helps, we know each other so tend not to get too pissy with one another normally, banter excluded of course. Though if the community was larger where you could survive without caring about others I'm not sure it would be a great model to be honest.
I have to say I still think the passage ways of WN are hellish for a lvl 50 dungeon though. I can still run that route and get to portal just about. I suppose it's the mix of pierce and fire needed to get an upper hand that's troubling for me solo there.
Perhaps that long ago before the many changes there, the fact that you could solo the both floors with lvl 50 gear and abilities is what makes me feel that. Used to be a real challenge there solo, now it's not about ability it's just shear mob density I feel.
Overall I was not expecting any where near as much content as this update provided, well done.
I have mentioned before in a bug report and it may just be where I'm on for a much longer time currently. But when I start playing windowsplayer exe starts off at just over 2G but after 5hrs of playing this can climb to as much as 7G , at which point my 8G memory machine is pretty much done.
A simple restart of the game fixes this fine.
I'm curious if there has been any analysis done of the projected playtime requirements needed to achieve certain things in this game. I know it would be soft data, as there isn't really any way to estimate guildies hooking you up, or getting lucky with a valuable drop. I'm just wondering what was envisioned in terms of progress and content access vs. play time.
Archery's aimed shot fixes most evasion issues. Seriously, if for some reason you werent using this before, do it now. Similarly, a flower brings me to around pre patch power levels. Though pound to slag requiring 162ish power is rough.
The variety of hive mobs is interesting. The toughest hives have electric and fire droaches, so if you're running a fire build, you're near worthless on the toughest mobs. Physical damage appears to reign supreme for hives.
Without a speed set, I would be toast. It depends on how you decide to implement mounts (as in, if the CD is too high for hives), but I might have to become a fucking filthy druid, which would be unfortunate.
We are dangerously close to the unfair territory of getting one shot. As in, it's starting to feel like GK troopers again. We aren't there yet, but I doubt another 50-60 armor will change that when I upgrade.
I am 100% positive I will get downvoted to oblivion for saying so... but you might want to consider resetting all crating skills due to the changes with xp penalties on spamming low level recipes. Before I continue with that thought I want to counter propose that you offer bonus xp for higher level recipes AND allow first time xp to stack with xp bonuses. I don't actually think you should reset skills but I think you might want to reinvent the xp curve for tradeskills.
To make a long story short there was a real problem with making the lowest level recipe that you can spam that gives the most xp for the cost of the materials. When you combine this with xp bonuses to crafting you could do absurd things with an hour's worth of buffs - such as grinding tailoring from 0 to 40 the first time and 40 to 60 the second time. Spamming the same recipe with bonuses made xp cheap and in some cases nearly free by vendoring the spam (or you could make absurd profits if you had an alt or three with industry).
The end result was that you could hoard materials that you got for free or purchased dirt cheap and turned them directly into xp. Combining this with work orders made the gain of skills like tailoring/leatherworking/carpentry/etc by far the most absurd way to gain money in this game (if you are willing to level up industry on alts or even better have a large guild who is interested in splitting profits from crafting). Now before we get out the pitchforks you have to remember that trade skills are expensive and annoying to learn so the money printing aspect is balanced by limited work orders per month.
But it seems unfair to change spamming now on the low end without greatly increasing the mid to high end xp combines. Previously you could for very easily raise tailor/leather/smithing/etc without bothering to learn most of the 30-60 recipes until you were going to make some of those for work orders later.
It just wasn't worth the money to buy a new recipe for 100k for a one time xp combine bonus. But maybe those recipes should have been worth far more for each combine?
If the goal is to make people spend more time on trade craft you have done that with the spam xp nerf. They can still spam low level recipes with mats they get for near net cost and sell the resulting products to vendors they rarely use.
If the goal was to make people spend more money on leveling trade craft you could make mid-end tier recipes much more rewarding. What if for example recipes over 50 got a 50% crafting bonus for the second time you make that item? Combine this with a slight bump to mid tier crafting and suddenly crafting mid tier items becomes worth the increased price of materials. And this creates a speed bump effect where you have to have money to buy the recipe and the payout is being able to get a lot more xp for it.
Without a bit of balance you will just have people keep spamming because it is cheaper. Many of the mid/end tier recipes are not very spam friendly but most of the low tier recipes are. This to me also reflects that mid/end tier recipes should be worth more per combine.
Why bother farming rare mobs and trying for rare drops when I can just farm low level mats? There is no reason to craft 8 items at 1000 each if in the same time I can gather enough to make 1000 combines at 8 xp each. In theory they come out with the same result but there are a few things to consider.
1. Low level mats can often be bought off a vendor and the xp combine makes the initial farm price irrelevant
2. If option A had you farm mobs for an hour to make 8 combines then option B would leave you with 50 minutes of grind mobs for 6 combines after you bought everything off the vendor.
I think it's a change for the better, an alchemist that's lvl 50 and can only grind bones is frankly somewhat lame.
Using 3 alts to hand in work orders completed using another character seems to be currently allowed. Personally I wouldn't do it and doubt many would it feels to me the whole mechanic is being bypassed to gain extra profit. I assume if dev's felt it was an issue it would at sometime get addressed.
With the exception of combat skills I tend not to overly grind the skills, unless there is a recipe or something I want higher up or I'm trying to make a little coin.
So to be honest much of the above post seems somewhat moot to me.
It seems a little odd to spend hours making stuff I don't need now to reach a level cap, only to next week need something making and then get no exp for it.
Each to there own.
Personally, I welcome the change to crafting XP as it feels to me that whilst it was a valid strategy, crafting low level items repeatedly, didn't align with the 'spirit of the game'. This change forces crafters to be more inventive.
Admittedly, that is very much a personal opinion and everyone is entitled to her /his own position.
(I also feel the same way about the Staff spell 'Blocking Stance' that makes you immune to physical damage for 10 seconds.
It is 'legal' in game, but makes things very boring if you can 2 or 3 shot kill mobs in under 10 seconds)
Will Lycanthropy ever have the option to raise skill to 80 through Norala tokens?
Just a question I wanna ask everyone here, but how do you guys feel about the elite's damage in the new zone? I know a lot of people don't have their level 80 gear/food/etc yet, but I wanted to ask anyways. (I also don't know if the elites were intended for level 80 players or well geared 70 players)
I have personally found it very hard to sustain damage with my tank build dedicated to reducing damage. Usually it's very risky for me to face-tank anything for longer than a few seconds, because the risk of a crit can kill me even from half health and even if I'm reducing incoming damage by half. That's not to say that I feel like my tanking set isn't doing anything, because I notice that non-tanky characters tend to die LUDICROUSLY fast (Usually 2 or 3 attacks to the stronger elites) so at least my tank set gives me a moment to realize I'm dying.
Do you guys think the damage in the new zone is a bit too high? My tanking set is definitely still very useful but... I feel a lot more like a distraction rather than a real tank because damage is so high that I usually have to kite more than I actually face enemies since I can't take too many attacks unless if I cheat with an immunity skill like elemental ward. Not only that, but I have found it incredibly dangerous to stay close to enemies because their rage attacks are so strong that even if I can tank them, my party members caught in the AoEs take massive damage.
I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I'm not necessarily saying elite damage should be lowered as much as it would be nicer to have more mitigation available to players. One issue with some of the elites is that you can't really reduce their damage. Reducing the damage of fire mobs is pretty difficult but possible (My tank set is basically dedicated to it at this point), but the lightning mobs on the other hand are basically doing unmitigatable damage. Players still have the fire/lightning meditations but you can only pick one and it might just give you one extra hit before you die.
I think while gear will make a difference, another big part is simply awareness and organisation by the party as a single unit.
Not just individual efforts.
I consider this patch more an expansion style content more so than just a cap increase.
Think of past mmos where the initial ‘break through’ is tough, then as gear, level, consumables and all become more widespread and common, things will settle
I’d say stuff is tuned for lvls higher than 70.... not sure if it’s 80 though
People have been overgeared in lvl70 yellows so long now, FR arrives and it’s kind of a soft reset on things.
I have to admit I kind of like it.... I must be a little twisted :p
Has it been tried going with a stun heavy group? BC skins? Snares and ranged burns?
I think there’s options, tuning may well come into it too, but too early to know yet
The same way I feel about all Elite mob damage ( and it's actually bleeding into non-elites in some places) in all zones atm, It is extremely high for a tab target game, you can literally be killed faster then you can react, in a lot of cases even reacting instantly won't save you. ( obviously being a tank gives you some buffer buuut). Example that has literally happened vs a non-elite in fae realm: I get hit twice and see that I need to heal, click heal, heal goes on cooldown and gets activated, die before it actually heals me... so 3 hits from a non-elite in this case, that's about 4-5 seconds vs approximately 700 health and 800 armor ( and thickskin with 7 modifiers on top of that), which is much higher then the average person is going to have. Other random things have killed me in 2 hits, but it might as well be one hit because the same thing happens, I get chunked, hit heal, die before the heal actually takes effect. The elites are fully capable of 1 shotting me and so is general prask still.
No instant kills are acceptable at any level unless it's some special mechanic like a face of death simply because there is no way to actively dodge or block such mechanics, and to be honest those are way too prolific.
A level 45 troll+ level 45 worg can combo instantkill ( and even if it isn't actually "instant" that's pretty irrelevant since you can't do anything the entire time you are prone) just about anyone in level 70 gear.
The wolves in kur cave or the ratkins in rahu sewars can stun you once and chain that into a 8 second stun, so that might as well also be an instant kill since all you can do is watch yourself die.
The guys on rahu plateau will stack movement speed reduction on you to about 90% reduced in approximately 2 seconds if you accidentally aggro more then one and he chain aggroes more... this is essentially also an instant kill because you are just plain fucked, and you know it. ( Prask also has this ability btw and can still rage 100% you!)
Some random skeleton swordsman on the ground aggroes you as you fly 30m over his head in birdform, your power drains to zero in about 6 seconds and you sit there and die, because you cant run or fly away even though you never initiated a fight and this guy basically said "BIIIIIIRD!".. same basic situation. ( for added fun you are not allowed to transform out of bird form in-combat because...well I don't know, maybe they find it amusing! )
Multiple respawns happening at once.... you are dead, go directly to the afterlife of your choosing, do not pass go or collect $200.
Mobs being packed in like sardines so pulling one really = pulling 10...same thing, instant kill with a different graphic.
I love Citan, I love this community.. the new content and level caps don't have me very excited though ( though the zone is beautiful), because combat is still in a fairly fucked place atm, at least that's my opinion. I don't mind an excessive grind if the combat is good, but this grind really is EXCESSIVE and the combat ( in my opinion, you are welcome to have a different one!) just Is more frustrating then it is fun, by a wide margin. It has been getting more and more frustrating since you implemented the multi-respawn mechanic right after dark chapel came out.
Increasing mob damage in any way shape or form is the opposite direction to go, you wanted to extend fights so you lowered our damage but left the mobs exactly the same, knowing that we were already forced into pure damage builds because you can die so quickly if you give anything a chance to actually hit you a few times. Since then we have lamias mixed in with packs of deadly mobs, ae disables, ae stuns, ratkins that are as annoying with chain stuns as wolves already were, faster respawns, multiple mobs respawning at once, mobs critical hit capabilities, more mobs, stronger mobs, mobs that summon reinforcements.
I know some people won't like this but it's true regardless, you people speccing as healers are mostly wasting your time because no self-respecting tank is going to trust you to heal them in the 2 second time window in which they can die, all of them have set up's for self-sustain. Even if they do trust your competence when you add channeling times into the mix it's still pretty much a random dice roll to see if your heal lands before 1 more hit does. I say mostly, because it does still have some uses ( group resurrects are tits, so is unfetter and the bard version of both ), and if you enjoy it you aren't wasting your time either way. I mean this as another example of just how out of control incoming damage is.
Another possible solution to this btw could be in messing with player health and armor bars, can keep damage down but just extend survivability past 5 seconds. But by that I mean by a large margin, like at least double what we have currently.
We have always in this game as players, built around as much damage and cc in as short a timeframe as possible ( or as a tanky self-sustaining type for the trailblazers ) because getting hit has always been too penalizing compared to our tiny health bars, speaking of... I can survive just fine in fae realm with archery/battlechem, just crowd controlling stuff to death ( which is the same thing as building for pure raw damage from a solo standpoint, same basic concept: kill them before they can 3 shot you, in this case you're just delaying the 3 shot for long enough to kill them first.)
EDIT: Just wanted to add a P.S.
Grouping does not solve any of these issues since resurrects are limited due to timers ( and materials or special restrictions ) and any one party member is capable of being dead within 1-4 seconds in level appropriate content. That is just ludicrously fast for a game where you cannot hold up a shield and block it for as long as you need to ( presumably waiting for a 2 second channeled heal to actually fire and land), or roll out of the way. A 4 second death in level appropriate content would be bad even in an action combat game like rift, tera, dcuo, wildstar..etc etc etc... for a tab-target game it's just completely insane mechanically.
Just about ANY creature I fight in Fae realm, if I click First Aid 7 with about 1/4 or less of my health bar, I am insta-deathed. For me, this is a repeatable bug.
I have to completely agree with ErDrick. The entirety of combat seems to have been built / converged to killing a mob as fast as possible. Getting hit more than couple times (depending on particular mob) is likely fatal.
On personal note, Hammer skill, which has number of mods on actually inducing much higher rage, which is required for more dmg from other mods makes me very uneasy. The monster rage bars can be filled within 3 seconds. Usually not enough time for me to notice at all what the "percentage" of their rage they are at. Difficult to watch my health, click on my abilities, watch monster health, watch my character and pay attention to debuff as little icons with no time to read their description, and no time to watch actual monster's rage bar and armour bar. Surviving more than one rage attack is highly unlikely I can totally see myself clicking on the side bar first aid and it not activating in time. Happens all the time. The entire fight is just too fast.
I remember Citan mentioning a very long time ago somewhere in a comment, what his expectation and calculation on the length of fight were. Feel like it was somewhere in range on 40secs. Maybe someone can find it. Never timed my fights, but certainly does not feel like my fights last more than 10-20 secs on normal mob.
Elite damage feels very heavy at the moment, but it is too early to comment as still in level 70 gear. Electricity damage mobs are particularly nasty.
With a well-geared and organised group everything has been 'doable' and most elites farmable - though this does require a dedicated healer, supported by secondary AOE healer builds plus plenty of resses (due to frequently being 2 or 3 shot killed)
With less geared or organised groups, multiple /continuous wipes have been experienced and farming elites has not been viable
Farming elites, currently is dependent on organisation, preparation and using synergistic builds within the group plus excellent gear - which is a very good position for the game to be in at this point in the level 80 cycle.
Regarding Erdricks & others comments on damage - I recognise and in general, support them, but there are ways in the game to minimise them plus for example, should mini-bosses be soloable?
From memory, Citan's design approach for an 'average' geared player (c. 30 mods) was a 12 second fight with no more than 2 mobs soloable. Geared players can do much better than that.
Since DC, we have been 'forced' (rewarded) for max-gearing, crowd-control (especially stun or rage reduction) builds that can 2 or 3 shot kill mobs in less than 10 seconds.
From what I have experienced in FR, this trend will continue. Whether this is good or bad for the game is Citan's concern - I'll continue to adapt, survive and overcome.
FR zone design thoughts:
As you head south the FR the mobs get harder. I think there should be more stuff at the very north of the zone, so that players have more to kill before they move onto trolls. Heck and push all the trolls south!
The day-night spawn cycle makes good use of space for diverse mobs.
I think the zone having hard mobs is appropriate. This is the first good-climate outdoor zone in ages. The risk of the zone not having awful weather should be awful mobs. I think if/when more outdoor 80 zones come, the mobs shouldn’t be as rough as in the FR.
The day-night spawn cycle makes good use of space for diverse mobs
Elite mob damage is really high, but I think I'm okay with it. I am managing it with a group, but that group has a pig more so than not. Some of those pig group mitigation buffs are sweet. I like the idea of ranged attacks being high, so that the tank has an option to lower damage by closing some distance vs running away. The range of the really devastating electric attacks and the lack of walls for line-of-sighting to get into melee range makes life hard. Freebie request of mine: I think the fae armor could probably have some mitigation vs cold/electric added. I don't think that would be an absolute game-changer but more the merrier. There is also a lot of death and I think being given diamonds with some jellies would be nice. It’ll kind of push new players to realize they gotta rez.
Solo mobs are tricky. Bear + an add instantly becomes very deadly. I really think you can double the solo bears rage bar because players do play AOE setups and safe pulling spots aren’t obvious. The troll knock down is bad, but the silly trick is just not getting touched. I think more melee skills could use more CC mods just tacked onto existing mods. Like, sword and knife receiving some ‘% knock down resistance’ mod added to something else would help. Staff and unarmed technically already have options, and shield was recently buffed to the big leagues. As far as other skill+abilities, the psych skill sooth should make the mobs CC abilities miss more, because I don’t know of anyone who uses that trashy skill on their bar!
More Skills:
I think it would be interesting if “Field Prophylactic” stacked and was expanded a bit resistance wise. Maybe as a whole different ability. The idea of an entire group buffing a dedicated tank with an hour long buff sounds interesting.
The AH pet level increasing with max level is a nice QoL. Maybe allow for a hang out to level the non-max pets off line (not bond level tho)? Because a pet that was at 68 totally misses the free 10 levels the AH player gets as he grinds to 80. Not totally needed tho! This thought came up after realizing I’m beyond 75 and want a new bee.
Reported this one, the blinding wasp has a small bug. Posting partly because AH people should be aware and I find it hard to explain. Every AH skill has two 2-second basic attacks. This wasp has 1 and its melee only. I think you forgot the ranged attack. The wasp has a debuff to ranged abilities via sic ‘em however it’s a melee ability. If its intended, there is no point to the pet. Why on earth would I pick a melee bee with a melee debuff that effects ranged attacks? It does have a ranged burst attack I guess. I’m only using him to bond it up in hopes that these are all mistakes. I have checked all the other bees/wasp clever trick/sick em attacks via the json parser: every single attack is ranged except the blinding wasps debuff to range.
MOLLUSC SLIME:
I get it, animals lack hands and need to live a harder life. But animals like to tailor! I mean have you seen their hats? Can’t Backfat give a non-stat slime sucking helmet for animals to wear to suck slime out of snails? I’d be okay with it spilling 20% of the time. I understand the argument that if you want to do tailoring and are an animal you just need to buy the slime from players and be done with it. That argument does not work with the games population. Whats going to happen is people are going to simply drop animal form for a month+ and finish tailoring themselves and return to animal-life afterwards if at all. Or I’m sure they’ll level an alt who can live in FR, and just log in hourly and milk. That’s actually less of a time commitment than buying it from players.
And lastly – I’m eager for mounts! The zone feels huge and I feel like a slow poke crawling through it. So much walking…
At least when you came off the learner island you were still earning xp etc.
I get nothing out of the Fae Realm. I can't earn xp on maxxed skills, the mobs don't drop loot that will generate enough cash in the my lifetime and everything kills me.
I find myself standing there wondering what to do, and most people I talk to are just going back to GK.
Eventually we can generate the cash needed to up some of those skills. We aren't all like Greenberg, Wemedge, etc with 20M+ in the bank.
It was a nice try to require a new item (royal jelly) to stop people from just buying all the skills right off, but that lasted about a day and people were selling 20 royal jelly for 50K each. I've got 4 so far.
Anyone who started in the last year likely had less than 500K when this patch came out, and a dozen skills needeing to be trained.
I understand, that in the normal course of the game, this all would not be an issue, it was the
drop in a whole new world for the rich people' part that is nasty.
I like the new update, the zone and new enemies both look cool and I think the day/night cycle affecting the foragables, mobs that spawn and the lighting is a really interesting idea.
The combat is a lot more challenging than previous zones, even accounting for not using lvl 80 gear as I currently have all my abilities unlocked with max-enchanted yellow lvl 70 gear and I'm finding it harder than I found the gazluk caves at lvl 60 using much worse quality gear. This is partly due to the aggro range of the mobs and partly due to their damage/hp, and the fact that the fae realm mobs have much nastier rage attacks (stuns and bear damage) as well as a mix of ranged and melee attacks of all different types, whereas amaluk valley cave for example was all physical melee which was fairly easy to counter. However I think this a good thing as honestly I found the content in gazluk to be a bit trivial once you unlocked all your abilities and got actual good crafted gear.
The power change is really rough on hammer, I understand why it was changed because power was basically never an issue for any skillset other than fire magic, archery or hammer but hammer already had power problems which have now just been made twofold. I essentially can't use the skill anymore without minimum running double cheese food against even trash mobs and against elites in groups I have to use dig deep pretty much every single fight even with bouquets + digestif + double cheese. If it's the intention that hammer is now completely unusable to noobs or anyone who just doesn't want to spend a lot of money on food then that intention has been filled. Just as a sidenote, my other main build ice/bc I can still use effectively while running no food whatsoever so that hasn't been affected at all.
The royal jellies are easy to farm if you have a good group that is able to do the honeycombs but they seem quite difficult to get if you can't manage to do them. I would imagine this would be balanced out by people selling their extra, but I imagine also that if you aren't good enough to group for them you also wouldn't have the money to buy them. I also find it a bit irritating that you can't gift to midge before reaching friends. Maybe it's just because I already did a lot of barters before the change was implemented which gave you favour for doing them but I'm already at the point where for the most part I don't even need the jelly anymore but I want the storage from higher favour levels, which I can't get to until I've done more barters I don't need or want.
I also can not for the life of me find any of the new leatherworking/tailoring/jewelry crafting recipes. They don't seem to drop in the new zone which I already found strange but even from farming faces of death and the rakkies in rahu for a couple hours I still haven't managed to find a single one, which leads me to believe the drop table of recipes from each mob is just way too large or I'm somehow looking in the wrong place and these lvl 80+ recipes drop in lower level zones? Which if it is the case doesn't make much sense to me.
The elites overall are also much more challenging than gk for example, and I expect I will still find this to be true even when I've finished rerolling my lvl 80 max-enchanted gear. Again due to aggro range but they also have ridiculous damage. This isn't necessarily a terrible thing as I actually find it more enjoyable than gk was at lvl 70 because of how easy it was, but as ErDrick and others have mentioned it does mean the 'meta' or in this case perhaps the only effective tactic available is just to burst dps down each elite while stunning/slowing/rooting it in order to not die while mezzing the others. Using this, it is certainly possible to do the honeycombs and in fact I've been in a few groups where I would even describe it as relatively straightforward, despite the fact that we didn't have all of our abilities at that point nor lvl 80 gear. I will say though the reason for this is just like Yaffy said, there just isn't much damage mitigation for the types that the mobs use; fire and electricity from the fire droaches, shocking droaches and phoenixes especially. The reason that tanking gk was (very) effective was because they were almost all physical damage mobs which has a lot of ways to mitigate it. Extra skin with mods alone mitigates something like 80 of all physical damage but crushing, and cow, unarmed and shield all have lots of mitigation for it. Electricty and fire on the other hand only have the meditations and the electricity mitigation dancing buff plus some minor pots and elemental ward from shield. The pots are not near enough to actually achieve anything, you can't reliably get the dancing buff and you can only have 1 meditation buff at a time, which also while it helps tremendulously, is not enough on its own. That leaves you mostly just with elemental ward, which while good, is essentially the exact same thing as the "cc and burst dps the mob down before it leaves cc or you die" meta except it's "elemental ward and burst dps the mob down before elemental ward runs out or you die"
Overall I think it's a great update with a lot of very nice things to do. I actually enjoy the non-combat parts of the game more than the combat so I'm glad to be able to level skills such as flower arrangement and cheesemaking again, as well as the new skill jewelry crafting.
It's not just about whether it's doable or not, it's just that it doesn't feel like I'm playing the game the way it should be. I am perfectly capable of doing the hives even with a fairly rag-tag team, and usually the only deaths are when someone messes up and/or gets insta-killed by a rage AoE. If I have a good group I can do all the hives with 0 deaths and I can contribute a lot whether my group is super geared or not.
That's why I want to specify what I mean. I know I'm helping a lot with my tanking set, so I heavily disagree with the idea that the meta is "100% DPS builds only". I also don't believe the hives are "Impossible", as much as the way to handle efficiently doesn't feel like proper gameplay.
The reason why I bring up the mob damage is that it makes me play in a way that I don't think is intended or terribly fun (At least to do repeatedly). Currently the best strategy for me to do hives is run in, use an immunity skill (Ex. Elemental ward) so I don't die, taunt the enemies, and then run away. Then while the mobs are busy chasing me, my team can attack them safely. This doesn't feel intentional because I'm just running around in circles rather than fighting. I'm not tanking by mitigating their damage or sustaining myself, I'm tanking by minimizing the monster's ability to hit me at all.
I WANT to stay near the enemies and fight them, but I can't. First because the mobs do too much sustained damage so I can't handle the damage for long even with a ton of resist. Secondly, if I stay near the enemies, they start doing rage attacks, which can potentially be so strong that they destroy my team mates because they aren't running tank builds. This means that even if I have a lot of healing support from another player, I'll probably get them killed if I stay near them so I can get healed. Because of that for the safety of both myself and my team mates, it's better to just run away so the enemies can't fight at all.
I also want to add that while the difficulty does encourage some form of organization and planning which is good, I believe you're over stating it. Usually the only organization needed is to tell people to not stand near the hive when it activates so they don't end up surrounded and pulling everything on themselves. If everyone is to the side when the mobs spawn, I can taunt the mobs and run in circles, which doesn't need any sort of planning from the rest of my team aside from "Focus and kill as fast as possible".
Basically what I'm complaining about aren't the difficulty of the hives as much as it is the design of the enemies in them and perhaps the design behind player survivability in general. I don't believe the devs intended this silly run around and kite strategy, but I'm forced into it because of how much damage the enemies do. I don't feel like I'm playing the game properly and while I this "Tanking" is very effective, it isn't how I want to be playing. I'm heavily reliant on skills that simply make me immune to damage like Elemental ward rather than a lot of my build, which makes me feel like I wasted a lot of time trying to get a good gear set if an unmodded ability outweighs a lot of it.
Another thing I believe it does is that it pigeon holes a lot of players into specific items. For example, I believe right now the best in slot items for tank characters are actually a mishmash of lower level equipment. A level 60 hat, a level 50 chest plate, a level 30 pair of gloves and a level 50 shield are better for reducing damage than any level 80 equipment currently simply because they have fire resistance on them. That's not to say it isn't interesting that lower level items can still be useful, but there's basically no contest between an item that cuts down damage by 100+ per hit versus something that only gives you 30-100 more armor which will vanish as soon as you get hit once, at least for tanking (Since higher level mods are less important for tanks). If players were forced to fight enemies face to face without kiting, then I believe what it would mean is that non-tank players will be forced into building exactly like a tank just to survive the AoE attacks (Just with damage mods rather than taunt mods), which would limit the equipment they can use heavily. Every DPS would be forced to equip nimble boots and tank gear just to tank AoEs, or play ranged and run away whenever the enemy is going to get full rage to try and dodge it (Which is good interactivity for ranged players, but it means melee players are screwed.)
I believe it's an issue with how elite monster damage scales vs mitigation options for players, as well as the design behind "Tanking" in general. I've brought up issues regarding it in the past, but I believe this is probably the worst it has ever been, due to the damage typng in the Fey realm, the strength of AoE attacks and how crits scale the enemy's damage. It's catching up to the fact that the game has very few viable options for reducing damage, as the new content also doesn't offer many options to lower damage for players.
I wanted to bring this up because I think it's an issue that will get worse if it isn't' addressed before higher level content comes out, and I want to hear what other people think about it. I don't believe it should just be dismissed as "It's ok because we want difficulty but it's still doable", I believe it's important because it makes the game less enjoyable and pigeonholes players into very specific builds and items and it will become a bigger problem later on. I know a lot of players don't play tank so perhaps all my "Tank talk" is going over people's heads, but I hope some people can understand what I mean and why I think all of this is an issue.
I sympathise with the scenario you put forth, I’m also a more casual player.
I agree things would be rough on someone. With a 500k balance at patch launch
BUT..... (this isn’t an attack, just stating fact), I’d average 2-3 hours a day, I realise I will not progress as fast as others, I accept this. So, much like my journey to lvl 70, I shift the goals to small increments
Sell your. Skins, even if you intend to leatherwork, you won’t be crafting that gear for a bit at your balance and pace, and you’ll turn over stocks of skins very fast in the current climate
Given time, you’ll likely end up in the position where your earning jelly faster then coin, without coin, the jelly looses its value, so sell some
Foraging, skinning should be primary crafts to prioritise..... all the usual tricks used after leaving the island come back into play.... you see what I mean I’m sure
If you like, I’d be happy to help out with a few farm cycles I do, and again, I do so casually and while not flush with coin, I’m doing well now on the jelly front, so much so that coin, not jelly is my problem (new work order board Citan? :D)
Anyway, if you need a hand, feel free to lookup Warhaz online (gmt +10 Australian Eastern)
There are ways forward, it will be slower, but casuals can make it work