LDoN points

[Shaman Arriana]

Inc lengthy rebuttal...

Don't get me wrong, the crawls that I have been on have been fun.

This alone should justify LDoN. If it doesn't, you should perhaps re-evaluate why you play this game.

if I fail on a dungeon, which I have failed 5 so far, I am getting experience and no points.

You had fun and got experience. Oh the horror!!!

So, I then have to go and do more adventures, meaning more time spent in the dungeons and not getting goals met and other content seen.

Gaining levels is not a goal? If you want to go see other content, do it. Nobody holds a gun to your head and forces you into LDoN.

Any normal player would want to experience some of the other zones in EQ, do his epic quest, do some raids, buy some items with type 3 slots, etc., and would probably fail a few adventures. So he'd end up with far fewer LDoN points.

The essential flaw with this line of thought is that if you are gaining XP outside of LDoN, then when you are doing adventures, you'll be higher level and get more points. The spells that you complain so vociferously about are totally and completely useless outside of LDoN (and not much better inside), so if you aren't spending time on adventures, then not having these spells is not exactly a crushing blow to your time in the game.

Sil - 245 pp in a 45 min adventure? I don't think I've ever pulled in that much even staying in the dungeon the full 2 hours.

Assuming you are speaking of a 60+ adventure, the only time I've gotten less than 200pp on a split was from a Miragul adventure, where most of the critters were animals and had nothing. So far my top was a Takish where the split was 385pp each. Make sure your ML's aren't ripping you off.

And for those who bring up item drops - I can honestly say that I haven't seen a single one since the first day

Mini-nameds don't spawn every time, but you can usually count on 1-2 in each adventure zone. Bring a tracker or buy some stalking probes to send out and search for them. Don't rely on the maps to show you where they are, the spawn on them is highly randomized.

The spells should have been vendored,as without them 1/2 of the objects in LDoN can't be touched.

This relies on the VERY VERY VERY flawed idea that chests in LDoN are valuable.

Want to get around having to save up points for the level 14 trap removal spells? Easy...DO NOT BUY THEM AT ALL. They are worthless. So are the level 34 ones. Chests do nothing but cause adventures to fail. They certainly have no loot worth caring about. Spend 17pp for the component to a trap removal spell which will probably fail anyway, on (if I'm very lucky) 10pp worth of loot? No thanks.

Boots of Flowing Slime. FT III ...required level of 51

A huge help to those poor level 30s whose cause you are championing, to be sure.

That is what people are there for. Not to go from level to level. They want the points.

I would suggest your motivation for being in LDoN is faulty. Play to beat the adventures, but don't obsess over how many points you earn. Since it isn't all that many to begin with, it shouldn't matter too much whether you get them or not.

But having to complete 60 adventures before you can even think about those boxes,

Don't think about the boxes even then. They aren't worth it. Leaving aside the reasons listed above, the 3 different kinds of traps ensure that even if you have your spells, you won't be able to open all of them. At 65, these chests are distinctly unpleasant when the trap goes off (which it does, 90% of the time). 400 hp/tick DoTs, 700 DD with 4 slot debuff, 900 DD, Max drunk...the instruction during adventures in my group is that nobody is ever to touch those things.

Lastly, adventure points are not all that you get out of adventures.

1) They are a lot more fun than XP grinding.

2) Money.

3) XP.

4) Wearable item drops.

5) Tradeskill drops.

6) Adventure points.

That's a heady collection of stuff.

The points awarded might stand for some tweaking, but any point is a valuable one, either through buying power or theme faction to buy something later on.

[Cantatus]

Level 20s often get zero points per successful adventure, I kid you not... but let's assume I always get at least one point.

This is supposed to be fixed next patch.

[Eumerin]

Originally posted by Shaman Arriana
You had fun and got experience. Oh the horror!!!

Building a successful character depends on a lot more than experience. You can have a high level warrior, but if you're still using your newbie sword and weapon, you're not going to do very well. The problem with LDoN is that the points rewards aren't enough to get lower level characters gear that's even REMOTELY close to the levels they're at. By the time you can afford a level 20 helmet, you're already level 30.

Originally posted by Shaman Arriana
Gaining levels is not a goal? If you want to go see other content, do it. Nobody holds a gun to your head and forces you into LDoN.

Indeed no one is forcing anyone to go on LDoN adventures. But the new expansion wasn't billed as the tier 1 PoP for lower levels (i.e. experience but little or no equipment worth worrying about).

Originally posted by Shaman Arriana
The essential flaw with this line of thought is that if you are gaining XP outside of LDoN, then when you are doing adventures, you'll be higher level and get more points. The spells that you complain so vociferously about are totally and completely useless outside of LDoN (and not much better inside), so if you aren't spending time on adventures, then not having these spells is not exactly a crushing blow to your time in the game.

The real flaw with that argument is that the gear that people might ostensibly want to use while they're leveling up is priced too high for anyone to reasonably be able to afford it from points earned in LDoN dungeons, unless they die about a dozen times each level and succeed in every last quest they undertake. And even that might be overly optimistic. If your character isn't already twinked, then you shouldn't be in LDoN, period. You should be out acquiring gear, and you can't do that in LDoN.

Originally posted by Shaman Arriana
Assuming you are speaking of a 60+ adventure, the only time I've gotten less than 200pp on a split was from a Miragul adventure, where most of the critters were animals and had nothing. So far my top was a Takish where the split was 385pp each. Make sure your ML's aren't ripping you off.

My trips have been high 50s. The take has consistently been from around 130 to 200. This is consistant enough that either every last ML is cheating the party, or my take is wildly different from yours, with a very small difference in levels.

Originally posted by Shaman Arriana
Mini-nameds don't spawn every time, but you can usually count on 1-2 in each adventure zone. Bring a tracker or buy some stalking probes to send out and search for them. Don't rely on the maps to show you where they are, the spawn on them is highly randomized.

Trackers often simply aren't available. Bards simply aren't to be found anywhere, healers are worth their weight in gold (one group I was in was so hard up for a healer that we had a shaman as the main healer, despite the fact that he was protesting the entire time), and for whatever reason, I don't think I've grouped with a ranger at all. And even when I've gone with alts that have their own eye spells (my wizard and my mage), I've had zero luck running the mini-bosses down. There's also the problem with group members that are only in it for the points, and the moment the goal is reached hit the gate button. LDoN is being billed for the "casual, time constrained player", and a lot of players seem to be giving themselves not quite enough time to finish the job (given the number that start complaining about how much longer they can stay on-line invariably about five minutes before we reach our goal).

Originally posted by Shaman Arriana
This relies on the VERY VERY VERY flawed idea that chests in LDoN are valuable.

Want to get around having to save up points for the level 14 trap removal spells? Easy...DO NOT BUY THEM AT ALL. They are worthless. So are the level 34 ones. Chests do nothing but cause adventures to fail. They certainly have no loot worth caring about. Spend 17pp for the component to a trap removal spell which will probably fail anyway, on (if I'm very lucky) 10pp worth of loot? No thanks.

The trap spells merely make a convenient point of demonstration. There are also other spells, for similar levels of casters, that are just as difficult to purchase. The spells, which have levels directly on them, are just the easiest point of comparison. I could probably compare the armor sets in the various themes with what's realistic for a player, but then you get into the messy business of trying to figure out the value of everything. Its much easier to point to the labeled level of a spell and say, "This is for level X!" And there are an awful lot of trap spells for every last pure caster that work quite well this way.

Originally posted by Shaman Arriana
I would suggest your motivation for being in LDoN is faulty. Play to beat the adventures, but don't obsess over how many points you earn. Since it isn't all that many to begin with, it shouldn't matter too much whether you get them or not.

In which case, it suddenly makes an awful lot of sense to be back in PoP. I'm certainly not losing much money up there, and I might even get a spell, which would (perish the thought) be USEFUL!!! That's more than I can say for the LDoN drops, since I'm not getting any.

Originally posted by Shaman Arriana
Lastly, adventure points are not all that you get out of adventures.

1) They are a lot more fun than XP grinding.

2) Money.

3) XP.

4) Wearable item drops.

5) Tradeskill drops.

6) Adventure points.

That's a heady collection of stuff.

The points awarded might stand for some tweaking, but any point is a valuable one, either through buying power or theme faction to buy something later on.

The problem is that out of all of the choices you listed, all I'm really doing is grinding exp - just in a different format. More money can be made elsewhere, at lower levels to boot. Its been so long since I've seen an item drop despite looking for the things that something is seriously out of whack (I haven't even seen an augment lately). No comment on the tradeskill stuff since my smithing isn't quite high enough. And by your own admission its not worth worrying about the number of adventure points you gain.

I sincerely WANT this to be a good expansion. And it does have potential. But its hamstrung critically in the item distribution area, and I think this is a serious problem at anything under level 65.

[Shaman Arriana]

In which case, it suddenly makes an awful lot of sense to be back in PoP.

The thing is, PoP is mind numbingly boring. I was bored with grinding XP in PoP on day 1 of release. LDoN is fun.

Personally, if I were leveling up now and not already 65, I wouldn't care about any of the new spells. None of them are can't-live-without. Plus, lower level ones just get replaced as a matter of course just like any other spell. Difference is that normal spells are both more useful, and easier to obtain. I'd rather save my early points and buy something that never needs replacing, than be worried about something which will be obsolete in a week anyway.

[borblefoot furtoe]

Um the fact is with the exception of a handful of camps around EQ anywhere else you hunt if you have good loot , exp is poor. If exp is good loot is poor.

LDON offers decent experience, Decent loot (20 and 6 here on average I see 2 augs an adventure) for decent risk. And a barrel full of fun. That fun is worth more than any amount of exp or loot combined to me. When I am in An LDON dugeon I am so busy playing and having fun that I don't even look at my exp bar


Borblefoot Furtoe

[Hilbur]

well balanced

Hmm actually in regards to the find and disarm trap spells the highest lvl ones are good all the way upto 65th so if you cannot get you best one until lvl 44 there really is not that big a problem. You could buy the lower lvl ones instead which have a much much much cheaper gem cost for disarming. Actually I would be willling to bet this is what was intended. People are a bit too used to getting the best possible at the earliest lvl is all. And the complaints about leveling so fast you are outstripping your adventure points is simply hilarous. First time I have ever heard someone say they are getting TOO MUCH xp!

[caena]

Items are definitely dropping. Yesterday, we got 6 or 7 augments over the course of 3 adventures, and a book with nice stats and Burning Affliction 3 (our druid was verrrrry happy).

Regarding mid-levels getting themselves equipped:

Every forager in our guild is saving his forages for my husband, who smiths. All temper drops go to him too. In return, he's making armor for alts and low-level mains. He's made a complete suit of the Miragul plate for one SK alt. Going to make a complete suit of Takish plate for a cleric alt. Saving a Takish chain BP for a shaman. A combo of gothic and calcified chain for a rogue.

There is some NICE midlevel gear that is makeable with LDoN drops/forages. Why not gather up a stack of whatever temper makes the armor you want and cut a deal with someone who's working up smithing? A stack of skillup attempts for a piece or three, something along those lines.

Admittedly, this idea only works for plate and chain classes.

Caena Trimalchionis
58 enchanter
Divine Comedies on Karana

[Angelsyn]

The real flaw with that argument is that the gear that people might ostensibly want to use while they're leveling up is priced too high for anyone to reasonably be able to afford it from points earned in LDoN dungeons, unless they die about a dozen times each level and succeed in every last quest they undertake. And even that might be overly optimistic. If your character isn't already twinked, then you shouldn't be in LDoN, period. You should be out acquiring gear, and you can't do that in LDoN.

I think this is a very good point.

Even if she weren't twinked, my Level 20 Warrioress wouldn't be able to get half of the pieces of armour suited for her level before she'd leveled up to getting the next set.

As for gaining xp... I don't want my Paladin going above level 52. (and please don't bring up the Epic, or Kunark Dragons or any of that stuff... just take it as a given that I don't want to go above level 52 ) The Rec. Level 58 Plate stats [/i]still[i] haven't been posted anywhere... but it's still what I'm targetting for.

Three adventures, two of them failures, have netted me almost 1 AA point's worth of xp.
At that rate, I'd be ~level 63 before I'd have enough points to buy a few pieces of the level 58 stuff!

[KyrosKrane]

I posted this originally at Paladins of Norrath, but it applies directly to the discussion here.

Right now, at level 58, I can group with mostly level 65 players, and get around 50 points per adventure, or group with folks about my level and get around 20 points. Which do you think I'd prefer? In which adventure do you think I would be more useful? And yet, the reward is disproportional for the benefits I bring to each party.

Frankly, I don't understand why the point gaps are so large. I would personally have tied the points directly to a player's level -- you'd get something like (your level - 15) points per success, and 1/3 of that (rounded up) for a late sucess (completed in the final 30 minutes after the fail message).

This provides perfect scaling and predictability for the players. I'd no longer seek to group with level 65 players exclusively; my reward is fixed. I don't have the incentive to "step up" to the next tier hoping for a free ride; instead, I could get a much easier adventure where I could contribute meaningfully -- and still expect the same reward.

This also basically eliminates any problems about people at level 20 getting zip for their efforts.

Thoughts?

[Silound]

Traska: That is not broken, that is the indended point of the adenture. They are not feeding it to you on a platter, they want you to go out and work for it. *But* as you work for it, your rewards also increase. To me at least, that's a very good system.

Example: My cleric gets 4 points per adventure at 39, but he can also get 2-3 yellows of xp for his level as well, hereby increasing his level after a few adventures and increasing the points he gets per adventure. That's good incentive to also level, and the xp isn't too bad, trust me.

[Tinile]

don't forget that every win, regardless of level, will help the adventurer's stone augment grow.

[Traska]

Traska: That is not broken, that is the indended point of the adenture. They are not feeding it to you on a platter, they want you to go out and work for it. *But* as you work for it, your rewards also increase. To me at least, that's a very good system.

Example: My cleric gets 4 points per adventure at 39, but he can also get 2-3 yellows of xp for his level as well, hereby increasing his level after a few adventures and increasing the points he gets per adventure. That's good incentive to also level, and the xp isn't too bad, trust me.

To further use your example... let's say you just started doing adventures now. Let's say you'll average 5 points over the course of these proceedings. Let's also assume you'll get an average of 2 yellows.

Those 34th level trap spells are 60 points each. That means to get all three (180 points) it would take you (180 / 5) 36 adventures to obtain them all. Averaging 2 yellows per, you'd be 46 before you got them. For three spells.

And this seems right to you?

I'm not asking for a silver platter. I'm asking to be allowed to obtain my spells. A 20th level character trying to obtain all three 14th level spells would need to do a *minumum* of 75 adventures to get all three. Admittedly, he would be leveling during this time, so he'd outgrow the need for the 14th level ones before he even managed to gather the points for a single one.

Then he'd have to work on 24th level ones... most likely dinging 34 before he even got one of those.

I'm sorry, that is *way* out of whack.

[Silound]

^agree.

The main issue here is the people. Not all of you, but some of the people. Many of you probably dont even remember what it was like in old wolrd EQ. YOu have come into a game where everything is fed to you, and what isn't, you whine about not getting. I can't tell you how many people complain about not getting groups in PoP, and then turn down xp groups in Seb "because the xp isnt good enough." You forget that some of us actually ground our way through levels in places like Seb, KC, and DL. Many of you never went on a dungeon crawl until LDoN came out. You grew up in places like PC and Lake of Ill Omen. I'm willing to bet 50% of the people who play EQ have never been to the bottom of Splitpaw or Runnyeye. Bah with you people, accept a challenge for once!

/rant off

Sil

[KyrosKrane]

Careful, Sil, that cuts both ways. Just because things were bad in the old days doesn't mean they should stay that way, or that we should go back to them.

Do we really want to go back to the days of silks and metal sheets not stacking? Or when incorrect combines ate everything in the container? Or when you could combine stacks of items and get only one product - if you succeed, that is? On the non-tradeskill front, do we want to re-institute exp penalties based on class? Remove the PoP books and make everyone run?

It's obvious that the game has changed a lot since it was first introduced. I'll grant that it was much harder in the old days, and that many things were not as fast or as easy as they are today. However, the fact remains that by and large, the game is better for those changes. It's simpler, more accessible, and less of a time sink into the boring, mundane parts.

This brings us back to the issue of LDoN adventure point rewards. Even in the old days, I doubt it would have been considered reasonable to exp-grind or cash-farm for a whopping TWELVE levels to afford three spells that are already outdated by the time you get them.

In my mind, the adventure points system is brilliant in conception but poor in execution. The idea that you if you put in enough time, you can still get elemental-quality gear independent of your level or your guild affiliation or your flags, is a superb one that brings back a lot of hope into this game for casual gamers like me. However, the amount of time required for even one piece is, frankly, outrageous. The same applies to spells.

I currently earn maybe 20 points when adventuring with people of my level (58 paladin). The cheapest of the new spells that I can use as a paladin is 410 points (ignoring the 12- and 36-point curse removal spells, for which I already have the old Remove Curse). This means I need to adventure for some 21 successful adventures in ONE theme before I can get it. At the going rate of 2 yellows per adventure, I just gained 44 yellows, or almost nine levels. Whee, I'm level 67! Granted, points increase as you level, but let's assume I'm doing AA instead (which I am). I earn close to one AA per adventure. This means I earned 15 to 20 AA just while getting this one spell.

This one spell is level 55.

Is it reasonable to grind from 58-65 just to earn one spell that you could have cast at 55? Or to grind enough AA to get your first AND second AA titles, just for one spell? I'm sorry, but that's just not right.

Edit: Whoops, messed up on my spells -- I missed a couple during my scan.

[Traska]

Sil,

It's not a challenge. Adventuring for multiple levels just to get one spell isn't a challenge, it's tedium. Boats weren't a challenge either. Nor was the lack of Soulbinders.

I started the game when Kunark was released. When the boats were slow and cumbersome ... when getting a bind meant asking your guild (or friends) or annoying total strangers ... when if you had something to sell you hung out in GFay with the hundred other people who had a hot item ... when checking a recipe meant logging completely out of game to check the website, because you couldn't flip over, and there was no EQTrader's channel, and you didn't want your sewing kit to eat your last non-stackable High Quality Cat Pelt just in case that didn't make the quiver, because if it did you'd *never* max out tailoring, which maxed out at 115.

Don't get me wrong, I *love* LDoN. Best expansion yet. I love the experience, the loot's good... I'm sure the spells are nice, but I'll probably never see them. That's my sole problem... they went through all the trouble of making these neat new spells, and I naturally would like to have them someday. To be perfectly honest, they could have just left out the 14 and 24 spells, and just given us 34, because as I posted earlier, by the time you earn the points for 14 you're 24, and by the time you earn the points for 24 you're 34.

Don't you think it's odd, also, that you can't get the trap spells in one single 65 adventure? I mean, it's 30 levels behind you by that point, it's a little silly that you'd need to do more than one adventure for them.

But as I said, I do love this expansion. Hope they do more like them.