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I’m currently working through the DoN Grandmaster Smithing quest for the second time. (For my dwarf, now that I’ve gotten my ogre through.)
If there thought is being given to doing a similar quest with the next major smithing expansion, I have one request: Don’t use instanced zones for the quest to make the items.
A secondary request: just have a kill requirement, and gank the looting items requirement or reduce it.
Some background: long-time tradeskiller (maxed fine plate on my dwarf before metal sheets stacked) returning to EQ after a 2-1/2 year hiatus overseas with a short break in the middle. Two smith characters, among the first 250 smiths on the server. Coming back to EQ, I’m getting back into smithing thing, slowly working towards 300. My play-time is pretty limited compared to before, about 10-15 hours a week. It’s mostly broken up into 1-2 hour sessions here and there, with limited opportunities to do long grind sessions.
I did the Master smithing quests for both my smiths a year and a half ago when I was back stateside for a couple of months. It took a bit 2-boxing, but it wasn’t too bad.
The Grandmaster Smith quest, however, has been incredibly frustrating - first as one has to be in an instanced version of the zone for anything to count, and second for the loot requirement.
- Simply getting the faction to get a DoN instance for the GM quest was a pain. (This was a major complaint of mine about DoN overall; perhaps exacerbated by the fact that during my brief time back stateside last year I didn't have time to get enough faction for my dwarf to get missions.)
- DoN now is dead, dead, dead. After TSS came I’ve seen very little advertising for ‘Creator’ groups. I’ve been able to make two ‘Creator’ groups in the last four weeks, but the rest of the time hunting drakes for my ogre - and now my dwarf - I have had to grab a third character to start an instance and camp the zone-in.
- Getting to and from instances is a significant time drain, especially if playing in 1 to 2-hour chunks. For the Master’s quests - not requiring instanced zones - I could camp my characters at a safe spot in-zone. My time from logging on to whacking Thought Horrors was 2-3 minutes; if I had 30 minutes I could make some significant headway on the quest.
After a few bad experiences with invis dropping while zoning back into Broodlands from Thundercrest, now I gate my characters out. It takes 15 minutes to start an instance and get my guys back to the zone. If I was able to do 4-5 hour grind sessions, this wouldn’t matter much. When sessions last 1 1/2 hours on a ‘good’ day, the time lost running to and from instances adds up.
- The instances severely limit hunting in the zone. For the Masters-level smithing I was able to hunt the appropriate mobs wherever I wanted to in the zone.
In instances, however, many areas are blocked off and I end up killing lots of mobs that don’t count to try to get to more drakes. It’s rather irksome to see three drakes hanging out behind doors I can’t open.
If I was able to get a group to finish the Creator mission for crystals so I got some payoff for killing as many of the ‘wrong’ monsters as the ‘right’ monsters for the quest, it wouldn’t be too bad; but see above.
- Getting fractured drake claws was a major pain as well. I killed over 160 drakes to get the 80 required fractured drake claws for my ogre to complete the quest. There were several sessions where as many razor-sharp claws dropped as fractured claws.
The RNG is frustrating enough for tradeskills without having to play ‘drop roulette.’ Let’s do just ‘kill x mobs’ or ‘loot y drop’ - not both.
Bottom Line: Using instanced zones for the DoN Grandmaster smithing quest results in a significant increase in the time required to complete the quest compared to allowing non-instanced zones - particularly as new expansions are issued and fewer and fewer people are grouping in DoN. This wouldn’t have been such an issue a year and a half or two years ago, when scads of folks were doing DoN and finding groups was easy. As more new expansions are issued, however, the play time required to complete the quest using instanced zones increases dramatically. Hopefully future quests will not require instanced zones.
* * * *
One aspect of DoN smithing that I really **like** is that smithing drops are available in non-flagged content (ifactioning notwithstanding).
When the blue diamond cultural came out years ago, I enjoyed how my friends and I (non-raiders all) could hunt in places that BDs could drop. Lower drop rate than the higher end zones for sure, but we could get the materials. Same with Tae Ew armor – we could farm blood, etc. When Planes came out, it was rather frustrating that as non-flagged, non-raiders, we could not access the zones where a lot of the raw materials dropped; same with GoD.
While the DoN GM smithing quest has been frustrating due to the instances, at least I can farm the drops, even with a group of three just camped out near the zone-in with no expectation of actually completing the mission. That is a **vast** improvement over PoP, etc.
While the quest is a major pain, I really like how materials were implemented for the GM armor – non-raiders have a shot at them as well. Hopefully the next set of smithing recipes will keep this aspect of DoN smithing and won’t require drops from flags or raids.
Zopharr/Garshok
If there thought is being given to doing a similar quest with the next major smithing expansion, I have one request: Don’t use instanced zones for the quest to make the items.
A secondary request: just have a kill requirement, and gank the looting items requirement or reduce it.
Some background: long-time tradeskiller (maxed fine plate on my dwarf before metal sheets stacked) returning to EQ after a 2-1/2 year hiatus overseas with a short break in the middle. Two smith characters, among the first 250 smiths on the server. Coming back to EQ, I’m getting back into smithing thing, slowly working towards 300. My play-time is pretty limited compared to before, about 10-15 hours a week. It’s mostly broken up into 1-2 hour sessions here and there, with limited opportunities to do long grind sessions.
I did the Master smithing quests for both my smiths a year and a half ago when I was back stateside for a couple of months. It took a bit 2-boxing, but it wasn’t too bad.
The Grandmaster Smith quest, however, has been incredibly frustrating - first as one has to be in an instanced version of the zone for anything to count, and second for the loot requirement.
- Simply getting the faction to get a DoN instance for the GM quest was a pain. (This was a major complaint of mine about DoN overall; perhaps exacerbated by the fact that during my brief time back stateside last year I didn't have time to get enough faction for my dwarf to get missions.)
- DoN now is dead, dead, dead. After TSS came I’ve seen very little advertising for ‘Creator’ groups. I’ve been able to make two ‘Creator’ groups in the last four weeks, but the rest of the time hunting drakes for my ogre - and now my dwarf - I have had to grab a third character to start an instance and camp the zone-in.
- Getting to and from instances is a significant time drain, especially if playing in 1 to 2-hour chunks. For the Master’s quests - not requiring instanced zones - I could camp my characters at a safe spot in-zone. My time from logging on to whacking Thought Horrors was 2-3 minutes; if I had 30 minutes I could make some significant headway on the quest.
After a few bad experiences with invis dropping while zoning back into Broodlands from Thundercrest, now I gate my characters out. It takes 15 minutes to start an instance and get my guys back to the zone. If I was able to do 4-5 hour grind sessions, this wouldn’t matter much. When sessions last 1 1/2 hours on a ‘good’ day, the time lost running to and from instances adds up.
- The instances severely limit hunting in the zone. For the Masters-level smithing I was able to hunt the appropriate mobs wherever I wanted to in the zone.
In instances, however, many areas are blocked off and I end up killing lots of mobs that don’t count to try to get to more drakes. It’s rather irksome to see three drakes hanging out behind doors I can’t open.
If I was able to get a group to finish the Creator mission for crystals so I got some payoff for killing as many of the ‘wrong’ monsters as the ‘right’ monsters for the quest, it wouldn’t be too bad; but see above.
- Getting fractured drake claws was a major pain as well. I killed over 160 drakes to get the 80 required fractured drake claws for my ogre to complete the quest. There were several sessions where as many razor-sharp claws dropped as fractured claws.
The RNG is frustrating enough for tradeskills without having to play ‘drop roulette.’ Let’s do just ‘kill x mobs’ or ‘loot y drop’ - not both.
Bottom Line: Using instanced zones for the DoN Grandmaster smithing quest results in a significant increase in the time required to complete the quest compared to allowing non-instanced zones - particularly as new expansions are issued and fewer and fewer people are grouping in DoN. This wouldn’t have been such an issue a year and a half or two years ago, when scads of folks were doing DoN and finding groups was easy. As more new expansions are issued, however, the play time required to complete the quest using instanced zones increases dramatically. Hopefully future quests will not require instanced zones.
* * * *
One aspect of DoN smithing that I really **like** is that smithing drops are available in non-flagged content (ifactioning notwithstanding).
When the blue diamond cultural came out years ago, I enjoyed how my friends and I (non-raiders all) could hunt in places that BDs could drop. Lower drop rate than the higher end zones for sure, but we could get the materials. Same with Tae Ew armor – we could farm blood, etc. When Planes came out, it was rather frustrating that as non-flagged, non-raiders, we could not access the zones where a lot of the raw materials dropped; same with GoD.
While the DoN GM smithing quest has been frustrating due to the instances, at least I can farm the drops, even with a group of three just camped out near the zone-in with no expectation of actually completing the mission. That is a **vast** improvement over PoP, etc.
While the quest is a major pain, I really like how materials were implemented for the GM armor – non-raiders have a shot at them as well. Hopefully the next set of smithing recipes will keep this aspect of DoN smithing and won’t require drops from flags or raids.
Zopharr/Garshok
Ngreth Thergn
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