Upcoming Cultural Changes

[Elyssanda]

Can somone post a link to the thread he is mentioning? I have a hard times with the EQ forums sometimes getting it to recognize my log in but never seem to have problems with direct links.

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/po...opic_id=109985

[Uuggerr]

I just read through all of Ngreth's posts on eqplayers and ran across this one that I did not see posted here.

If it was posted, sorry for the dup

I spoke with the Lead Coder today.

He currently estimates that the code change I am waiting for will be in mid July. So... that means that these changes will NOT be in the next patch either.

Now in another "It is odd how things happen" moment...

Because of the expansion of cultural to level 80 because of the Secrets of Faydwer expansion, I had to make new quests. Since I was going to redesign how these new quests worked, I went ahead and made new quests for the 20,40,60 and 70 symbols while I was at it. So it may be that unlike what I have said before the new quests will be in BEFORE the other changes to cultural.

This does not effect the cultural drop changes because all those changes still use the same symbol patterns, so there is nothing to worry about there.

You will also note I said "new." New means that it will not change the quests you may currently have. You WILL be able to finish the quests you currently have. It is just that the NPC's will no longer give the old quests, but instead will give the new quests.

Upon evaluation, the new quests are a bit more difficult at 20 and 40 than they were before because they REQUIRE you to kill NPC's that are closer in level to the target. While before, the level 20 quests had you killing NPC's in the 6-22 or so range, the new quest is NPC's in the 16-22 range... Also the NPC's are not quite as common, but despite that, I did make sure that the NPC's were available so that with average luck, the quest could be finished in a reasonable time frame. So say you need to kill 20, there is likely to be 20 up, and if not, there is likely to be 20 within 20 minutes.

The level 60 should be about the same difficulty as before.

The level 70 will be easier, AND will not require you to go into instances to get the kills (actually you will not be able to do them in instances, only in open zones), and will require many less kills... BUT you may have a harder time finding the NPC's to kill. It is based on on average it taking about 90 minutes to get the kills needed, NOT including travel time.

Additionally overall there are MANY less quests. We did this so it will be easier to find people to work with as you are more likely to find someone that needs to do the same quest. There will be no problems with "collecting" items and having to share it between multiple people because the "collect" part is a virtual collection. You will make "impressions" of interesting patterns on the NPC in an impression book. Since there is no physical item to have to share between folks, the "drops" will not hold you up when you have multiple people. We hope that this will encourage people to work together on these quests, making them overall easier to do, even if some of the basics of it may be a bit more difficult individually. The less quests will mean a bit more travel time for some folks, but the Plane of Knowledge makes travel easy, and it should be a reasonable trip for all of the quests, even if it is not right next to your home town.

Peace

[JonzeGirl]

Wonderful news. Especially the part about the level 70 quests

~Clio

[Unapuma]

As I understand, it'd result in 75 required, 80 recommended gears. Just like the level 60 quest is 65 req, 70 rec.

[Ngreth Thergn]

here are a few more:

Saroc_Luclin wrote:

Dev-Ngreth wrote:

Additionally overall there are MANY less quests. We did this so it will be easier to find people to work with as you are more likely to find someone that needs to do the same quest. There will be no problems with "collecting" items and having to share it between multiple people because the "collect" part is a virtual collection. You will make "impressions" of interesting patterns on the NPC in an impression book. Since there is no physical item to have to share between folks, the "drops" will not hold you up when you have multiple people. We hope that this will encourage people to work together on these quests, making them overall easier to do, even if some of the basics of it may be a bit more difficult individually. The less quests will mean a bit more travel time for some folks, but the Plane of Knowledge makes travel easy, and it should be a reasonable trip for all of the quests, even if it is not right next to your home town.

If I'm reading this right, does this mean you can finally have virtual items for quest updates, like EQII has? (As in something like the quest does a random every time an appropriate mob is killed and if you win the random, you 'discover' the item and get the quest update without needing to actually loot something?)

Or does it work differently somehow?

That is basically it in a nutshell, and it is a HACK. The task system is not made to do it.
It is different from EQ2 in that something in EQ2 makes the roll, then EVERYONE in the group gets the virtual update.
This will make the random roll, on an individual basis. When the kill is made, the task system checks for each person individually, makes the roll individually, and gives the player the individual update. I would have had to do some other nasty messy horrible scripting to get it to SHARE within a group... since this is NOT a shared task, but an individual quest. So it is much less scripting for it to be done individually than it would be to make it "group update."
And as it is, I like it this way. The premise is to gain "inspiration" from the patterns you see while killing the NPC's. Each person will be inspired differently, and may or may not see inspiration in the same thing as someone else did.
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Nolrog wrote:

Dev-Ngreth wrote:

Additionally overall there are MANY less quests. We did this so it will be easier to find people to work with as you are more likely to find someone that needs to do the same quest. There will be no problems with "collecting" items and having to share it between multiple people because the "collect" part is a virtual collection. You will make "impressions" of interesting patterns on the NPC in an impression book. Since there is no physical item to have to share between folks, the "drops" will not hold you up when you have multiple people. We hope that this will encourage people to work together on these quests, making them overall easier to do, even if some of the basics of it may be a bit more difficult individually. The less quests will mean a bit more travel time for some folks, but the Plane of Knowledge makes travel easy, and it should be a reasonable trip for all of the quests, even if it is not right next to your home town.

Am I the only one that got a kick out of virtual collection? As opposed to what Ngreth? Running around your house and actually fiding real drake claws (or whatever the items are) under the couch?
Do you think it will be more difficult to get people into the static zones for the collections? In the past, you could always entice some friends into a Creator or something to help you get your drops, because they would get the crystals and faction token at the end.

One of my slight worries about this was that possibility of not having the "point" carrot. If it really becomes a problem, I *MAY* have a way around it, but I don't like it, so for now I am going to leave it as it. The quest for that tier is only in Thundercrest and the Nest, so it may not fit the popular missions anyway. Additionally, the quest enforces two different zones, making it a bit less "mission" happy in the first place. I took out the "go back to the artisan" step in the middle, but made the two "steps" in separate zones instead.
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Ayhar wrote:

Saroc_Luclin wrote:

Dev-Ngreth wrote:

Additionally overall there are MANY less quests. We did this so it will be easier to find people to work with as you are more likely to find someone that needs to do the same quest. There will be no problems with "collecting" items and having to share it between multiple people because the "collect" part is a virtual collection. You will make "impressions" of interesting patterns on the NPC in an impression book. Since there is no physical item to have to share between folks, the "drops" will not hold you up when you have multiple people. We hope that this will encourage people to work together on these quests, making them overall easier to do, even if some of the basics of it may be a bit more difficult individually. The less quests will mean a bit more travel time for some folks, but the Plane of Knowledge makes travel easy, and it should be a reasonable trip for all of the quests, even if it is not right next to your home town.

If I'm reading this right, does this mean you can finally have virtual items for quest updates, like EQII has? (As in something like the quest does a random every time an appropriate mob is killed and if you win the random, you 'discover' the item and get the quest update without needing to actually loot something?)

Or does it work differently somehow?

I read this as:

• The different races will no longer have all their own quest. Maybe one quest for all races or one each for good, evil and neutral races (defined by in which section of PoK the races' portal is).
• The loot step of a task means the item has to be looted by someone in the group and that counts for all in the group that need the item.

Thank you very much for the update. Looks like I will be finally able to accomplish the task for (what used to be) GM symbols.

1. Sorta Close enough. I will not be giving out the exacts of which races are grouped together, but that is the basics... that there are race groups.
2. Nope. There is never an actual item from the corpse. Instead you have a magic book, and when you see a pattern that "inspires"you will "imprint" that pattern on the book to show to the artisan later. This "imprinting" is done automatically when you make a kill, as long as you have the book on you
of course "inspires" means, you made the random roll... but "inspires" has more of an in-character fell than "you made the random roll!
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VazAet wrote:

Dev-Ngreth wrote:

The level 70 will be easier, AND will not require you to go into instances to get the kills (actually you will not be able to do them in instances, only in open zones), and will require many less kills... BUT you may have a harder time finding the NPC's to kill. It is based on on average it taking about 90 minutes to get the kills needed, NOT including travel time.

That is some great news. I've been stuck on my 70 symbol quest for the longest time because people hate to go to Stillmoon instances just so I can collect fur (when it should drop in non-instanced). I might actually dump this quest and wait for the new one to be implemented. 120/120 kills and only 15 lousy furs collected = blah!

90 minutes? Dang. While 2-boxing, I've been working on the 70 symbol quest for at least 10 hours off and on.

Do note: The 90 minutes is "average" and for each "step". So you could have great luck, or horrible luck. I can tell you that I have yet to see 20 of the target NPC's up when i was testing the zone, so it will take some killing of "placeholders" and such to get all of the targets in 90 minutes. It is based on players killing an NPC every 2 minutes. So your mileage will vary. A good coordinated group can probably kill quite a bit faster, while some soloers will not keep that pace.
I use placeholders loosely, as it is just base-pop Each "pop" can be multiple NPC's and only one of them is the target.

[Xenephex]

The new symbol quests are available on test. I was going to work on the GM one anyway, so I will take a shot at completing it.

Edit: I did the lowest level one, the 'blessed' quest. I liked the setup. All the quests are 'kill 20 of this in this zone and get five impressions' and 'kill 10 of these in that zone and get 2 impressions' and then return the completed impression book. Impression updates happen automatically. If the mob you killed has an impression, then you get a message on the kill that says, "You find a pattern that speaks to you of your culture and make and impression of it." and then get a second task update message.

The two zones for each quest tend to be close together. The one I did was Runnyeye and EK. The 'revered' level is LOIO and DL. The only exception was the 'Sacred' level, which is Dragon Necropolis and Sanctus Seru for some reason.

I like it.

[Ngreth Thergn]

The new symbol quests are available on test. I was going to work on the GM one anyway, so I will take a shot at completing it.

Edit: I did the lowest level one, the 'blessed' quest. I liked the setup. All the quests are 'kill 20 of this in this zone and get five impressions' and 'kill 10 of these in that zone and get 2 impressions' and then return the completed impression book. Impression updates happen automatically. If the mob you killed has an impression, then you get a message on the kill that says, "You find a pattern that speaks to you of your culture and make and impression of it." and then get a second task update message.

The two zones for each quest tend to be close together. The one I did was Runnyeye and EK. The 'revered' level is LOIO and DL. The only exception was the 'Sacred' level, which is Dragon Necropolis and Sanctus Seru for some reason.

I like it.

It was a mater of finding appropriate NPC's AND I took quick cursory survey of the existing quests and looked at the general expansion they were in, so decided to do a Velius/Luclin one for that one.

On a side note. To get the timing right on the 80 I had to increase the kill count to 40/20.

[KyrosKrane]

Sanctus Seru is a little worrying, though, just due to faction issues. I know Luclin faction isn't as huge nowadays as it was before, but I still value not being KOS when given a choice.

[Cidienna]

Yep, it's on Test. I'm going to try the Barbarian quests. If I can keep from hitting the LD Bug. Zoning Roulette...the newest version of /gems!

[Ngreth Thergn]

I worried about it a bit. There will be some faction damage, but in the end I decided it was worth it to have the proper targets.

The target is "Lector of the Heart" are they a big deal faction?

[Zinjin Azhura]

I worried about it a bit. There will be some faction damage, but in the end I decided it was worth it to have the proper targets.

The target is "Lector of the Heart" are they a big deal faction?

Sanctus Seru has multiple factions, some opposing one another. It's possible to walk in, do business and quests in Seru, walk in the wrong building and wham! you're dead from a faction you never knew existed.

I'm finding A Lictor of the Heart at Allakhazam's as being on two factions:

Heart of Seru, which has 4 quests to gain positive faction,
and Seru, which has 3 quests to gain positive faction.
Both factions have lengthy lists of NPCs and mobs to kill to gain faction.

I'm also finding 4 opposing factions:
Eye of Seru
Shoulders of Seru
Nathyn Illuminious
and Concillium Universus, a pro-Katta Castellum faction. Posts at Allakhazam's actually recommend killing A Lictor of the Heart often as a standard method to improve Katta faction.

I suspect that the Cultural quest faction hit from the Lictor will not become a big deal, and can be fixed with time by those who care enough to be in the good books of the Lictor's kin.

[KyrosKrane]

Hmm. I did a little more digging on the factions. Assuming that you want to keep all your Seru factions friendly, the best way to fix the Lictor's faction hits would be to hunt thought horrors and recuso in Mons Letalis. The flip side of the coin is that the recuso and horrors are on a one-way faction: You can lower your Recuso faction, but you cannot raise it. Given that the Lictor is listed on Alla's as level 60, I'd assume that the other mobs around him are similar level, so the quest is probably aimed at level 60-65 players. The Horrors and recuso are way below that and should be easy kills.

That leads to two conclusions: 1) Fixing the faction is possible. 2) It will cost you another faction that cannot be repaired.

Of course, there is another alternative. Sanctus Seru is one horribly complicated city, with at least NINE distinct and opposing factions I can think of, plus another half dozen related or opposed one around Luclin. So, it might be possible to repair the faction by killing something else in Sanctus Seru, then killing something elsewhere to repair that faction. I'm not going to research into that level of detail, though.

[Zinjin Azhura]

Hmm. I did a little more digging on the factions. Assuming that you want to keep all your Seru factions friendly, the best way to fix the Lictor's faction hits would be to hunt thought horrors and recuso in Mons Letalis. The flip side of the coin is that the recuso and horrors are on a one-way faction: You can lower your Recuso faction, but you cannot raise it. Given that the Lictor is listed on Alla's as level 60, I'd assume that the other mobs around him are similar level, so the quest is probably aimed at level 60-65 players. The Horrors and recuso are way below that and should be easy kills.

That leads to two conclusions: 1) Fixing the faction is possible. 2) It will cost you another faction that cannot be repaired.

Of course, there is another alternative. Sanctus Seru is one horribly complicated city, with at least NINE distinct and opposing factions I can think of, plus another half dozen related or opposed one around Luclin. So, it might be possible to repair the faction by killing something else in Sanctus Seru, then killing something elsewhere to repair that faction. I'm not going to research into that level of detail, though.

That last, that you could damage another Sanctus Seru faction and then fix that one elsewhere, was what I thought I was seeing in the faction lists (I have no practical experience in fixing my Seru factions).

The other thing I thought I was seeing was that walking in the door, with clean faction and not having killed in Luclin, you are still not going to be able to be friendly with all Seru factions simultaneously, someone is going to hate your guts somewhere.

So what I would do, if I were examining the factions minutely, is check to see what Seru quests or merchants or door guards were important to me, and see which factions those NPCs and mobs are on in order to puzzle out if the Lictor's factions are even a concern.

[Ngreth Thergn]

I'm finding A Lictor of the Heart at Allakhazam's as being on two factions:


I suspect that the Cultural quest faction hit from the Lictor will not become a big deal, and can be fixed with time by those who care enough to be in the good books of the Lictor's kin.

That is the proper name! Thanks

In the end you are likely to have to kill many on the same faction as the Lictor in order to get the Lictor's. But I figured with the flip flop faction nature of that zone, people that really cared could figure it out

I can CONSIDER giving a faction hit reversal on completion of the quest (not that that makes much sense... but... meh... if it becomes a huge deal, it is something.)

[Shadrok]

Katta Castellum vs. Sanctus Seru

The many factions of Sanctus Seru oppose those of Katta Castellum. If anyone is still pursuing the Luclin content, they have to ruin their Seru faction to complete the Katta quests.

Shadrok, my Iksar SK killed many Seru guards to even gain admittance to Katta. (The Katta guards did not like him). Off and on I try to complete the Runed Earring of Veracity, which involves killing many Lictors of the Heart. Thus I surely won't mind a bonus off those mobs.

As someone interested in factioning (Shadrok is well-liked in Felwith, Kelethin, Kaladim, Qeynos, Rivervale, and Freeport), I hate to see any quest tied to ruining faction in a city. However, it is already very difficult to be liked in both Katta Castellum and Sanctus Seru.

Bottom line: Most people who would ever visit Sanctus Seru otherwise, probably already have completed their level 70 symbol quest. Don't fret it.