Some Thoughts on the DoN Smithing Quest

[thestormes]

As the game progresses, things change. Hot items cool, as new stuff is introduced. The DoN armor was awesome for its time, but I have replaced all my pieces on my 2 mains with either GoD or TSS pieces, all of which are better and single groupable. Alot of my DoN augs have also been replaced with augs from TSS/GoD/DoD/PoR. When DoN was released, the stuff on the merchants, as well as the player made armor, was incredible. So, you had a lot of people farming the missions for exp and crystals. I have seen my market fall quite a bit for the GM armor and augs that I used to sell like hotcakes, since most other folks are upgrading past them. I sure hope I can at least get my money back on the 15 or so stacks of drake scales I have rotting in the bank atm.

That's funny because I'm replacing GoD/TSS armor with DoN armor, which I made , augmented with bazu and last blood augs.

[Unapuma]

Any suggestion for glossy kirin mane needed for Vah Shir GM quest? I can easily solo normal stillmoon for the required kills but the mane isn't found in none instanced zones that I can solo.

[Astroshak]

Form a group and go do an instance!

(yeah, its tough I know)

[trufli]

Hi
Does anyone know the names of the missions that drop the fractured drake claws that I need for the halfling GM quest.
Need to collect drops from stillmoon creatures for the credit.
Cheers Trufli

[Ishwar]

What is the big deal?

Yes they are group quest, that now require that you can get some people to help complete the quest. this is no different than epic 1.0, or DoN progression. You have to get some people who are willing to help you. This is a mutiplayer game, I think it is good there are things yuo actually need help to accomplish.

From my experience a 3 man level group farming components, in the right missinons can probably get this done in 15 or 20 hours of questing. Yes its a long quest, but nothing over the top. And you do get exp, and possibly DoN crustals in the process.

What I really see is someone asking for DoN GM quests to be more solo friendly, and personally I would hate to see that happen.

[Qaladar Bragollach]

What is the big deal?

Yes they are group quest, that now require that you can get some people to help complete the quest. this is no different than epic 1.0, or DoN progression.

The big deal is that none of those things you listed are tradeskills. Tradeskilling has never REQUIRED grouping in the past. Easier in many cases but not REQUIRED. Many tradeskillers don't like that.

Many tradeskillers ESPECIALLY don't like being REQUIRED to drag their friends/groupmates into old and/or obsolete content. Even when DoN was current it was pulling teeth to drag people into ascent missions. It only get's worse over time.

FINALLY, many high level people COULD solo this content, but the instanced zone requirements mean you have to have 3 people in the group even if you don't need them.

[Xulan]

I know it would not be as flavorful, but having all quests in the same zone or same difficulty would be better than splitting races over multiple zone difficulties. Even when DoN came out, it was not an enjoyable task to get 2 other people to come do Lavaspinner's missions with me for the DE GM Symbol task because the xp and the crystal rewards were so poor considered to other, higher difficulty missions. I gave free armor and symbol combines for that, which is no different than having to pay to get a group together (yuck). If I had to do that task again at this point, I'd really have to just slowly solo through them over time with 2 afk people in the guild hall or something which really is not a joyful prospect.

I would have much prefered that all GM tasks be at the thundercrest or nest level of difficulty since people were and still are willing to do those to some extent for xp and crystals. In short, I would like to see better task longevity in the future if this is repeated in a future expansion, which is quite possible learning from DoN.

[Ishwar]

I would totally agree that there is no need for the 3 person requirement for DoN missions. But once you get rid of that, I think the quests are fine.

The non-instanced versions are significantly lower level than instanced, which means that moveing drops there would make quests too easy.

[Zopharr]

What is the big deal?

Yes they are group quest, that now require that you can get some people to help complete the quest. this is no different than epic 1.0, or DoN progression. You have to get some people who are willing to help you. This is a mutiplayer game, I think it is good there are things yuo actually need help to accomplish.

From my experience a 3 man level group farming components, in the right missinons can probably get this done in 15 or 20 hours of questing. Yes its a long quest, but nothing over the top. And you do get exp, and possibly DoN crustals in the process.

What I really see is someone asking for DoN GM quests to be more solo friendly, and personally I would hate to see that happen.

Actually this is quite a bit different from epic 1.0, 1.5, etc. There, you need to get assistance for one or more fights - relatively quick, discrete events, taking perhaps an hour (if that) to assemble and kill the required mob. Here you need to get folks willing to spend 15-20 hours grinding away in old content. I would prefer not to inflict the pain of tmy radeskilling on others, even if I can find enough others to do the deed.

[Your 15-20 hour estimate also doesn't include the time spent factioning required to get the instances either, particularly for evil races in a 'good' DoN guild.]

If you read my original note, you will also see that my concern is not so much the farming time for the actual drops, but the overhead required for instances. If one plays in six hour chunks, this isn't significant. If one plays in one-hour chunks, the 'time overhead' in getting the instances, etc. is a significantly greater proportion of playing time. Or I guess players should just bag EQ and go to WoW if they can only play 10-15 hours most weeks?

Dropping the requirement for instances now would impact the difficulty for trolls and others requiring Lavaspinner's Lair drops. Stillmoon and Thundercrest seem already to be 65+, so would not affect the difficulty for drops required from those zones. I don't have a proposed soultion for that.

Please note, however, that I was not asking for changes in the DoN GM armor quest. I've already completed it for one character, and can make all the DoN augs I need. Rather, I was giving feedback for Ngreth to consider in the future:

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.

Zopharr/Garshok