Mid Level Content

T

Thraka

Dalayan Beginner
Starting this thread in hopes of others feedback towards content/availability to players.

I am apart of a guild that makes up 90% of the levels 39-42 playerbase at our peak/grouping/raiding hours.

We usually have around two groups of players per night/average.

My guild (Fury) Has successfully taken out these Adepts:

Goretusk
Sandjaw
The Haunted Treant
Maggot-Infested Corpse
Tarx

My concern is we're trying to progress through the game using the adepts as progressive stepping stones, but since we've hit the level 42 Engage (Sludgebreath) We hit a massive roadblock. I've only ever heard of Sludgebreath being killed once with a raid force of 5 groups (30 players) that wiped 6 times before they successfully downed him.

My raid force, on our Peak hours 2:00-3:00 AM EST (EVERYONE that was on at the time that wasn't anonymouse between the levels 39-42 which ended up being a total of 11 people) Wiped on Sludgebreath Several-times we have the strat down flat, theres no more possible tweaking we could do to improve what we've been doing. The best possible outcome we could possibly get him was to a mere 40% with 10 People.

Snowskin (43 Engage) is by far harder, the difficulty of these encounters are scaling which makes sense to a degree. But they're scaling so much that they aren't even worth attempting unless you have a decent raid force of at least 13-14 people which in most cases is a miracle to have.

Not to mention its near impossible to intrigue people with staying at the engage level to progess as a guild. A couple of reasons as to why adepts maybe turning players heads away is because of the risk vs reward concept. IE Tarx (A level 36 Engage) drops http://www.angrygamer.net/sodwiki/index.php?title=Runeshatter which is all fine and dandy for that level, but once you hit 40, the spear is all but bank/destroy button fudar VIA Warpmetal Weapons.

We have been on a Level Cap of 42 for about a week give or take a couple days, in attempt to take out Sludgebreath and Snowskin. We are on the verge of saying fuck adepts and grinding to 65 in attempt to acually progress.

I know the real problem is population (obviously), its given that the true side of the coin is the server doesn't have the levels in #'s (majority of the time) to even consider attempting such an encounter.

A couple suggestions I have to intrigue people to not purely grind to 65 would be to:

- Be a little more lenient on the engage level (Making it a wider range)

- Add Mid level raid zones

Discuss (This is not a rant, its a generalization id like to look at in attempt to improve gameplay for the mid level range)
 
the problem isn't really number of adepts though hassan, it's the fact that once you hit 40 the adepts start to require massive numbers.. numbers which just don't happen all that often unless you are a guild, and most guilds don't have 3-4 groups of exactly X level for the adept
 
We also did Sludgebreath with 21, first try with no deaths.

9 of them were not the maximum level of 42.

I don't remember the fight too much, but we did it with a pick-up group as well once with 23 (8 of which were Steel), first try and no deaths again.

Was he changed?

I think the adepts are tuned fairly well; for every adept except Sludgebreath and Traekoth, Steel managed to 1-group them most of the time. This is BEFORE the new Adepts went in though, so we have never tried the new ones since we are beyond their levels now.

It's definitely hard to stay at certain levels to farm adepts, but Steel did it for Traekoth, and just did AAs in the time being. I don't think it's viable to farm adepts below 51, because you are asking guild members to stop progress entirely and that's a blow to morale and motivation. The adepts after 51, members can just AA in-between adepts which is still valuable progression so it isn't as bad of a wait.

About more mid-level content, I think we've seen more mid-level content than EQ Live :) More mid-level content is on the way as well with lower level Treasure Maps, which will be perfect for your situation, and would have been awesome for Steel when we were levelling a month ago.
 
Your problem is that you're treating the adepts as farming stepping stones, which they're not. They're intended for spur of the moment pick up raids, not guild progression.[/i]
 
I agree with what you are saying Wiz, I just wanted to mention one thing. While its not your intention by any means, I have been level 42 for 4 days now. Playing for a minimum of 6 hours each day there have not been anywhere close to enough people in the low 40's to even get a madd large enough to take on an adept at that level. Just finding a group midlevel is quite difficult. Then again I may just be on at the wrong times, so will shut up now.
 
Wiz said:
Your problem is that you're treating the adepts as farming stepping stones, which they're not. They're intended for spur of the moment pick up raids, not guild progression.[/i]
Click to expand...

Adept farming being a goal or not has nothing to do with the pure fact that our population can't anticipate the encounter other than the average once in a blue moon aspect.

I'm not specifically talking about guild progression either, I'm talking about progression in general, everyone is skipping the content of adepts because well... theres nearly no point in doing/attempting them. Spur of the moment pick up raids? Once again, its not possible because well... Sludgebreath for example requires more than the average levels 38-42 to do. I realize there is the occasional easy Adept such as Tarx (We've one grouped him with the clerics meleeing during engage) that can be easily done.
 
You need three groups or so for the 40ish adepts. The idea that you can only get together three groups once every magical night is simply not true. You want the adepts reduced so your current group can do it without outside help, plain and simple.

Furthermore, adepts are killed A LOT, so "everyone is skipping adept" isn't true either.
 
Wiz said:
You need three groups or so for the 40ish adepts. The idea that you can only get together three groups once every magical night is simply not true. You want the adepts reduced so your current group can do it without outside help, plain and simple.

Furthermore, adepts are killed A LOT, so "everyone is skipping adept" isn't true either.
Click to expand...

Yes, adepts are killed a lot, but Sludgebreath/Snowskin are not (Yes I realize Snowskin is a new adept) I haven't had a chance to take a shot at Icefeather because hes been ranger kited since hes been revamped.

http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7365

Not sure if you caught that post or not, but ya believe it or not I want reasonable encounters. If this was all about me and my "current group" I would of ranger kited Icefeather myself. Just to give you a little guild drama Toland was in our guild Fury, he kited Icefeather (When I wasn't on) the first time knowing he didn't summon. Two Days later Icefeather was up again, I specifically told him not to bow kite him so we could take him out the way hes suppose to go out. Low and behold he didn't listen and we had to remove him from the guild.

I'm not sure why you think you have me figured out. Although everynight since our guilds first attempt at doing Sludgebreath and Snowskin alone (Wiped a total of 3 times on Snowskin and like 8 times on Sludgebreath) we've been advertising outside help VIA Tells /ooc every night for a week until tonight where we finally gave up and decided to push on. Theres usually not enough 38-42 people on at 2:00 EST to make 3 groups on average. not to mention barly anyones even willing to do them. Yes I realize completely that its my guilds fault for having that timeframe.

To generalize we gave up on praying for people to log on and decided to push on past level 42.

My comments were in-regards to help the population enjoy your content you set out for them.

Not sure if you got my hint on Tarx being easy, but I think he should be upgraded.
 
You heard it here first, folks. Serve yourself and screw the rest :p
 
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