I was wondering if any thought had been given to adding an alternative method of factioning in Athica. Newport is nice in that it has the ring series of quests which gives some pretty nice rewards and a lot of faction, making the whole factioning process a bit less burdensome. It's not just pure farming in BB/nbl/paw/EC.
I understand that quality quests take quite a bit of work, and for all I know you already have something in the pipeline, but I just thought I'd ask: any chance of getting a more interesting means of gaining faction in Athica than farming Kaladim/eld's?
Edit: I may have jumped the gun on this one, so let me explain where I'm coming from based on my experience in the zone and what I've heard about the faction rate. People are then welcome to point out on which points, if any, I'm incorrect, and maybe I can reevaluate.
1. My understanding from talking to a few friends who have gotten the gate neck is that it takes somewhere around 3 stacks of Eld's medallions to get to ally. I don't have firsthand experience to say whether that's accurate or not, and I don't know what kind of exchange rate there is between Dwarven Essences and the Eld's medallions.
2. My impression from hunting there is that only the elf mobs (and probably the named vampires, but idk for sure) drop amulets, meaning the skellies, gargoyles, etc. do not. That means that inside the mansion, probably 25-30% of the mobs don't drop them.
3. Last night a group of us went and spent maybe 2 hours there, clearing the zone once and clearing half the castle a second time before leaving. I believe we got 7 amulets, although it might have been 6 or 8.
Out of the 6 characters there, 5 of them needed the Athica neck, although I passed on looting them with Hasrett, so only 4 were taking the amulets. Let's say that that's an average of 4 per hour in a strong group. If you only have one person looting, that's a stack every 5 hours, roughly, or 15 hours of clearing Eld's. If, on the other hand, you're spreading it out, that's potentially 90 hours of clearing to get 3 stacks each on 6 characters. That's goofy.
Mitigating factors: I'm assuming that if you just cleared the elves from the zonein to the graveyard repeatedly, you'd get a much higher drop rate, since it's all elves and they die quickly.
Counterpoint: You'd also get crappy experience and next to no drops. A decent group at 60+ would also clear them with probably at least 15 minutes to spare before respawns. A group with a good tank and some DPS would probably clear them in 6-8 minutes (30 or 45 min respawn, iirc).
Possible solution using the status quo: just duo the entrance area. You'd probably do pretty well time-wise just clearing the elves, and would have the higher drop rate of amulets. On the down side, it's once again crappy exp and loot, and duoing can get kinda dull =)
Please feel free to critique this. Given these observations and impressions, I'll suggest a couple of possible changes, though:
1) Some sort of faction-giving quest, a la newport rings, as mentioned above.
2) Give faction drops to the tougher mobs in the zone, namely the gargoyles and the skeletons, either with or without a higher faction reward that scales with the difficulty of the mobs. This would allow stronger/higher level groups to hunt in the more worthwhile areas of the zone exp- and loot-wise, and still get halfway decent faction. This could presumably be balanced with the medallion drop rate in the entrance area where it's all elves.
3) ... I had another idea, but it completely slipped my mind between writing the edit and getting some work done =/ If I remember, I'll add it in later.
I understand that quality quests take quite a bit of work, and for all I know you already have something in the pipeline, but I just thought I'd ask: any chance of getting a more interesting means of gaining faction in Athica than farming Kaladim/eld's?
Edit: I may have jumped the gun on this one, so let me explain where I'm coming from based on my experience in the zone and what I've heard about the faction rate. People are then welcome to point out on which points, if any, I'm incorrect, and maybe I can reevaluate.
1. My understanding from talking to a few friends who have gotten the gate neck is that it takes somewhere around 3 stacks of Eld's medallions to get to ally. I don't have firsthand experience to say whether that's accurate or not, and I don't know what kind of exchange rate there is between Dwarven Essences and the Eld's medallions.
2. My impression from hunting there is that only the elf mobs (and probably the named vampires, but idk for sure) drop amulets, meaning the skellies, gargoyles, etc. do not. That means that inside the mansion, probably 25-30% of the mobs don't drop them.
3. Last night a group of us went and spent maybe 2 hours there, clearing the zone once and clearing half the castle a second time before leaving. I believe we got 7 amulets, although it might have been 6 or 8.
Out of the 6 characters there, 5 of them needed the Athica neck, although I passed on looting them with Hasrett, so only 4 were taking the amulets. Let's say that that's an average of 4 per hour in a strong group. If you only have one person looting, that's a stack every 5 hours, roughly, or 15 hours of clearing Eld's. If, on the other hand, you're spreading it out, that's potentially 90 hours of clearing to get 3 stacks each on 6 characters. That's goofy.
Mitigating factors: I'm assuming that if you just cleared the elves from the zonein to the graveyard repeatedly, you'd get a much higher drop rate, since it's all elves and they die quickly.
Counterpoint: You'd also get crappy experience and next to no drops. A decent group at 60+ would also clear them with probably at least 15 minutes to spare before respawns. A group with a good tank and some DPS would probably clear them in 6-8 minutes (30 or 45 min respawn, iirc).
Possible solution using the status quo: just duo the entrance area. You'd probably do pretty well time-wise just clearing the elves, and would have the higher drop rate of amulets. On the down side, it's once again crappy exp and loot, and duoing can get kinda dull =)
Please feel free to critique this. Given these observations and impressions, I'll suggest a couple of possible changes, though:
1) Some sort of faction-giving quest, a la newport rings, as mentioned above.
2) Give faction drops to the tougher mobs in the zone, namely the gargoyles and the skeletons, either with or without a higher faction reward that scales with the difficulty of the mobs. This would allow stronger/higher level groups to hunt in the more worthwhile areas of the zone exp- and loot-wise, and still get halfway decent faction. This could presumably be balanced with the medallion drop rate in the entrance area where it's all elves.
3) ... I had another idea, but it completely slipped my mind between writing the edit and getting some work done =/ If I remember, I'll add it in later.
