Shadowspike Arrow

[Fufinski]

When I was doing this for the tradeskill quest I was assuming or maybe hoping that they had added in a new hard to get arrow that had some value to the ranger community. I was aware that it would not work with endless quiver and that is how they could put a useful arrow in game. The trouble is that the yield on the combine is only one arrow.

To make that arrow, not only do you have to have finished the quest which is a none trivial matter but certainly manageable by most given time. You also have to get a drop from a level 81-83 mob for each arrow. Those mobs are inside the crypt which means you have to clear other similar level mobs just to get at them. The best spot is probably the southern entrance. You pull a ghoul at the entrance, then several roaming blobs, then a double pull of a zombie and a skeleton unless you have a splitting class. This will then give you access to 2 a slithering shades, one of which is static and the other is a roamer. So that's about 9 high level mobs per every 2 arrows you can make. You will also need a group to accomplish this as you will not clear all those mobs before respawn. So at best you are looking at 2 arrows every 20 minutes as long as you have no fails with a 400 triv combine. To make a stack of 100 you are looking at over 16 hours of solid clearing. You will then use those 100 arrows in about 2 minutes or within the duration of a Trueshot Discipline.

I had actually made 10 arrows, so I had a very small sample to play with, but using Vae'Aender a 51 damage bow I fired off 7 arrows for {1564, 552, 1564, 298, 2176, 2408, 1446} outside disc. With a normal 14 damage arrow I am hitting for about 1600 max while meleeing I am doing 1500 1hs and 1443 1hb except I swing my weapons far faster then I fire a bow. I also nuke for almost 3K damage as well.

The point I am trying to display is that if the purpose of the arrow is to be a big bang one shot every now and then, it fails badly as I am doing better damage over the same period with just normal melee or nuke. If it was supposed to be a rare option for using with TS, then you need about 80+ arrows per TS session and that is prohibitive to farm. If these arrows are to be used at all outside of the quest, they either need the yield to be raised to 50 or 100 which I realise has implications for the quest and delivering two. If the yield is left the same and this is supposed to be a big hitter then the damage probably has to be increased to 100-200 because of the nature of archery. If you fire a single arrow you are just as capable of hitting for 100 as 2500 and you may even just miss.

I know many rangers were working on this quest and I now expect many of those who are not innate tradeskillers to give up the effort.

[gggrant]

One of the entrances to the crypt has a roamer that on occasion will roam almost to the entrance (this may be the entrance you are talking about). This roamer can be gotten single. I estimate you might be able to kill this thing maybe once every 35 to 40 minutes.

Now the only reason to do it this way is if you are soloing. Considering that nasty spin stun these things have, soloing them can be a problem. The best way to farm these things is in a group. A group could expect to average one Swirling Shadow Essence every 10 minutes.

A ranger can fire a lot of arrows in the two minutes that trueshot is running. Depending on the delay of the bow, we are talking in the neighborhood of one arrow fired every four seconds to one fired in just under two seconds. That essentially works out to 30 to 70 arrows. So a ranger who wished to use these things for trueshot only, would need to solo the shades for somewhere between 17 hours to 46 hours for each trueshot session, OR have some very, very, very good friends that would be willing to spend between five and eleven hours helping to farm for that two minutes of trueshot. Rangers will not be using this arrow.

A non-ranger archer won't go though any where near the number of arrows that a ranger does, primarily because they almost never use a bow for DPS. They usually use arrows for tagging, to set rampage or pulling which really only takes one arrow. The thing about these uses is that damage doesn't mean anything, so a very cheap, easy to obtain, 1 Damage Flight Arrow will serve the purpose just as well. Non-rangers will not be using this arrow.

Considering the rate you can farm Swirling Shadow Essence, a return of 50 on each combine might (MIGHT, mind you, not will) make the arrow useful for very limited (as in once every other week) trueshot use.

Farming the Swirling Shadow Essence aside, I find a one other thing about the Shadowspike Arrow disappointing. Both the arrowhead and the arrow are NO TRADE. Even if I can sit down and make the arrowheads at 1000 a run I cannot sell them. Even if I could find a method of farming Swirling Shadow Essence in mass quantities, I cannot sell the arrows. Non-archers will never make one of these arrows once they have completed the quest.

The only conclusion I can come to, is that these arrows were never meant to be used, nor were they ever meant to give a fletcher an even moderate source of income.

Which brings up the question. Once this step of the quest is done, is there any reason to hold on to the arrowhead mold? (And for that matter, is there any reason to hold on to the JC mold received from Eron in the first task given?) As a tradeskiller my bankspace is somewhat limited.

[Fufinski]

I actually took a solid group back as we needed an XP spot and I could use the Valor faction. Clearing from the south entrance, I was able to pull 3 slithers in the 20 min respawn. This involved clearing a total of 18-19 mobs in the spawn window. Best case scenario there may be a fourth I can find to add to the spawn window, but this needs a very solid group to be pulling and killing about 1 mob per minute constantly.

After entering form the south entrance, there is a static in the cubby hole on the left after you take the first right. There is then a roamer which roams up to this point from below. There is another static in the cubby on the right past the elvin child.

[Ngreth Thergn]

I am aware that arrows have almost no affect on archery damage.

In the end I left it in because I still needed it as part of the quest itself.

If it had actually worked as something more significant I would have been more generous with the numbers on the result of the combine (not just 1 per) but since in the end, the arrow had little effect, I did not worry about it.

It still has enough effect though that I do not want to leave it usable by EQ for now. That may change, but for now it is stay expendable.

[Fufinski]

I fully understand the being expendable as otherwise it would be a significant jump in arrow power, and while archery probably needs that it is a design decision that has to be made at a more core level of itemization. The thing is that rangers being rangers would actually make the effort to make an expendable arrow even if the return was less then stellar as long as the process was vaguely viable. I spent about 50 minutes yesterday getting another 6 drops, and I don't see anyone being able to farm them much faster then that.

If the yield was 50, that would be enough for use with maybe 2 TS disciplines which may actually make it worth using the disc at some point with a bow. Currently rangers on the whole only actually use their archery disc to focus a nuke which is a bit of a strange state of affairs especially as yet again we got an archery disc this expansion which will only be used with nukes.

If the yield was viable, we would probably see people go farm once a week and then chose the few situations when they would blow their arrows. This would be a good beginning for the concept of the expendable arrow. In the event that the yield really could not be increased then maybe drop the damage down to something like 20-25 and then make it none expendable. It would mean most rangers would do the quest just for the small increase as there has not been a new arrow since DoN I think.

Overall the arrow has some potential for life outside the quest if it has some changes. Perhaps it is something that could be run past Merloc to see if it really has any itemization issues if there was a better yield. You would certainly make rangers happy if you could give them something new and useful.

[drhoads]

Aye that would be a solution make the yeild 5 or so . someone could farm enough to make it fun and useble in specific Very important situations like attempts at an Expansion Boss but still to hard to get to really impact the overall dps dynamics between the classes

[gggrant]

I am aware that arrows have almost no affect on archery damage.

In the end I left it in because I still needed it as part of the quest itself.

If it had actually worked as something more significant I would have been more generous with the numbers on the result of the combine (not just 1 per) but since in the end, the arrow had little effect, I did not worry about it.

It still has enough effect though that I do not want to leave it usable by EQ for now. That may change, but for now it is stay expendable.

Oh no. This arrow or anything like it could not be anything but expendable. There is no doubt of that. It is just that it cannot be made in quantities large enough for it to have any use other than a place in my arrow collection.

[Ngreth Thergn]

yeah. I do see this. I just want to have a larger conversation about it before I make changes.

I do not want to change this, and then have the team to make a core change that then makes these suddenly do 2000 DPS and have them be too common and have to change it back.

I would rather look and see about the core changes, see what the effect will be, and then decide on increasing the yield and/or drops.

I am happier with right now it being only useful for the quest, and possibly later being useful for burst DPS.

[Fufinski]

That's great Ngreth, all we ask is you have that conversation and find out if there are any issues around implementing these in larger numbers. I think you will probably find that there is no intention in the near or mid term to do anything about archery. The best bow in SoF with the best arrow pre SoF will be doing maybe 40 % of the damage of melee in SoF. With this they may end up doing 50-60% of the melee damage.

Archery damage is based off the combined damage of the arrow + bow, and then the DPS takes into account the delay. The only mechanics to significantly increase archery would be if there was a huge increase in bow damage + arrow damage or they implemented a meaningful min damage on bows probably by adding in a meaningful damage bonus or they would have to rewrite the whole archery code. I do not expect either the rewrite or the min damage to be on the cards and there is no huge bow upgrade in SoF.

I will happily leave this in your more then capable hands knowing you will get to the bottom of it when you can.

[theRiov]

alternatly, you could allow for significant procs on the arrows (with massivly increased proc chance) to compensate. (similar to what is done with throwing)

That solves both problems: Archery agro & bow damage output. (Devs dont want archery damage to be agro free, which is what prevents them from scaling up archery damage) You could even lose the expendible tag in that case.

Even if you do increase the yield on them, the site would become a highly contested farm spot. A single camp for an expendible item that has real increase in damage potential for one of the most populous classes in the game, is going to be ugly at best. I would have thought you'd at least go with more universal drops like the wurine or drachnid blood.

[Ngreth Thergn]

My first idea for this arrow was procs.

They don't work :/

So either way, I think a code change may be necessary to really make these arrows worthwhile. I will be looking into it.

[dreddid]

i think upping the yeild would make it worthwile just make it like all the other arrows 10-20 arrows per essence would mean roughly 3 stacks every 20 minutes at current drop rates but since they are no drop it will be hard for them to become over powering.

[Aoerick]

arrows

Or hey.. don't change the yield, but make them Tradeable, I have 10 perfectly good worthless of these arrows on my bard. I'd pass them around if I could.

Oh... and where are the instrument mods for cultural augs?