Treasure Hunting Issues

B

bitterend

Dalayan Beginner
Alright.. I am only a newbie to Shards of Dalaya. I am not an expert on treasure hunting, and I have only done a handful of maps. But I have noticed some glaring issues with this otherwise incredible system.

My intention is merely to open these issues up for discussion, and people wih more experience in these issues can share their opinions and compare notes with what I've seen so far, whether they agree with me or think I am completely incorrect.

Unfortunately - Being only level 29, I cannot speak for any maps above the 20-29 range. I have discussed maps with several 65 players though and for the most part they have agreed with my griefs, prompting me to take this next step and post in this forum.

So feel free to raise any issue i haven't touched, and feel free to validate or dismiss any of my griefs based on your own personal experience with maps. My hope is we can get a consensus as to whether maps are fine they way they are, or they may need to be altered for balance a bit in some way.

**Issue 1: Location of some chests for level 20-29 maps. **

For the most part, maps seem to be in more or less safe locations. I have had no problem with
most of the maps I've done. But two examples stand out. The first is some locations in Everfrost are not only congested with orcs ( not to much of an issue unless your in the low 20s, then they will aggro on sight ) but they have a high chance of an Ice Giant walking right over them.

My group had literally just pulled up the chest and were fighitng off the monsters when exactly that happened. An Ice Giant walked up and killed everyone outright. It got worse - we binded a screen or two away. After killing us all, the Giant inexplicably walked right up to our bind point - things got really messy then. After a race against the clock to get back buffed and ready to go, we were in the middle of fighting the same mobs when once again another Ice Giant walked right up on us. Luckilly, a high level was nearby hunting Ice Giants at the time and he intercepted it. Had he not been there, it would have wiped us again.

The second spot doesnt seem to be nearly as dangerous.. Its the Hill Giant mountain in south Obsidian Shard Mountains. From the dig spot you can see 3+ Giants walking around the mountain in random directions. We had a few scares but it seems like they never quite pathed near our map spot. But i do believe they had the potential to. Someone else could have been not nearly as lucky.

**Issue 2:Huge Range on Digging Attempts.**

Today my group went through 20 monster spawns, taking over an hour, counting time spent rebuffing from scratch, as well as 6 failed digging attempts (bedrock, water, etc) and we unanimously ( and dissapointedly ) decided to just give up. The reward vs time spent just wasn't worth it.

After polling players many had similar situations happen and one reported 42 digging attempts before seeing a chest pop.

On the other extreme, i've several times had a chest pop on the second or third attempt.

It is, in my humble opinion, far too wide of a range when you consider that on higher chests you could have 12 different individuals hoping for a shot at a piece of loot.

Right now, you have a chance of getting free loot, essentially, and you have a chance of having an unbearbly stressful experience that could take an hour or much longer with no guarantee of you receiving any loot whatsoever.

I pose a question here: How many players and/or Coders think that if we tightened the range it would make treasure hunting more enjoyable overall?

I think we should cut off the chances of getting fast free loot to balance out cutting off the odds of running a marathon for a chance at loot.

So instead of a range of 2-42 (or higher), maybe make it 6-12, 6-18, 8-14, etc etc



I know I have only touched on two issues - I am sure there are more. Please discuss this in a mature manner.

I am aware that many people may disagree with my grief here - and i respect your opinions equally as much as i respect the opinion of someone who agrees with me. So feel free to share, but let's not make a childish flame war out of this.

Thanks for your consideration.
 
Number of digs till chest pop is determined by how quickly you down each wave and start the next.

Other then quests, treasure maps are the only "guaranteed" loot. Named mobs are random. You also get 2 drops from a tmap vs 1 (generally) from a named. The rewards from a tmap are generally much greater then an experience zone, so long as you can use the gear being dropped.

The person that had 42 waves before chest spawn was most likely soloing/duoing their map.

That said, it would be nice to have a max number of waves before the chest spawns. 20 waves seems appropriate (max tolerance of a map before giving up.)

On location:
Frankly, at the 20-29 level, there aren't going to be worthwhile zones to place tmaps in. Most zones will have a high-level wandering mobs OR is an experience zone that has mobs that will wipe you OR your tmap mobs would wipe the lower level toons. I don't believe there can be much done on that front. The rewards at the lower level tmaps could use a boost to compensate for severe location problems. Maybe dropping 1 item from the next tier tmap + the normal 2 from that tier. At the low levels, it is MUCH easier to just grind your levels at the appropriate dungeons and gain 5-10 levels at each stop, picking up random named gear but for the most part not worrying about gear till the mid 50s. No need to port anywhere (and at the low levels, no porter and VERY limited ports makes it hard to get to the location to begin with).

And god-forbid you get a darkwoods tmap.
 
Arcen said:
Number of digs till chest pop is determined by how quickly you down each wave and start the next.

Other then quests, treasure maps are the only "guaranteed" loot. Named mobs are random. You also get 2 drops from a tmap vs 1 (generally) from a named. The rewards from a tmap are generally much greater then an experience zone, so long as you can use the gear being dropped.

The person that had 42 waves before chest spawn was most likely soloing/duoing their map.

That said, it would be nice to have a max number of waves before the chest spawns. 20 waves seems appropriate (max tolerance of a map before giving up.)

On location:
Frankly, at the 20-29 level, there aren't going to be worthwhile zones to place tmaps in. Most zones will have a high-level wandering mobs OR is an experience zone that has mobs that will wipe you OR your tmap mobs would wipe the lower level toons. I don't believe there can be much done on that front. The rewards at the lower level tmaps could use a boost to compensate for severe location problems. Maybe dropping 1 item from the next tier tmap + the normal 2 from that tier. At the low levels, it is MUCH easier to just grind your levels at the appropriate dungeons and gain 5-10 levels at each stop, picking up random named gear but for the most part not worrying about gear till the mid 50s. No need to port anywhere (and at the low levels, no porter and VERY limited ports makes it hard to get to the location to begin with).

And god-forbid you get a darkwoods tmap.
Click to expand...

There are several threads opened about the lenght matter, and the people that did 45 waves were in a group, and dug fast. It appears something is broken about simple Tmaps, but devs don't really have the time to look into it.
 
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hm

Arcen said:
On location:
Frankly, at the 20-29 level, there aren't going to be worthwhile zones to place tmaps in. Most zones will have a high-level wandering mobs OR is an experience zone that has mobs that will wipe you OR your tmap mobs would wipe the lower level toons. I don't believe there can be much done on that front. The rewards at the lower level tmaps could use a boost to compensate for severe location problems. Maybe dropping 1 item from the next tier tmap + the normal 2 from that tier. At the low levels, it is MUCH easier to just grind your levels at the appropriate dungeons and gain 5-10 levels at each stop, picking up random named gear but for the most part not worrying about gear till the mid 50s. No need to port anywhere (and at the low levels, no porter and VERY limited ports makes it hard to get to the location to begin with).
And god-forbid you get a darkwoods tmap.
Click to expand...

That makes perfect sense - I can see the issues with balancing level 20-29 map location now. I hadn't considered those variables.

I also agree that, unfortunately, at the moment it is not worthwhile at all for lowbies to worry about maps ( same with most adepts.) Leveling up is quicker and makes you more formidable sooner than map loot. One thing though, I will say that we have had 3 drops of the Cloak of Remedial Energy, it is a Healing Increment II Back-Slot Item - I highly reccomend ANY low level healers to do 20-29 maps til you get this piece - it's a huge upgrade and worth any stress over map difficulty.
 
does it really ? just grind ur way past those levels imo... maps at low lv isnt worth it at all.. dont think that extra 6% heal is gonna make or break ur exp session... rather than spending hrs getting crap loot and xp on simple maps, u can gain more xp/levels which will open up better heals /zones that can drop better items..
 
Yeah, really maps start giving you loot that will last a while in the 40-49 tier... but I wouldn't HOLD at any map tier to get that loot (with the exception of the dwarf ring at 50-59 maybe). At lower levels as a healer your next spell will be a bigger heal upgrade than waiting to get a HI2 item.

Also from what I've experienced...simple map waves are ridonkulous... way too long, but that's old news.
 
Ill toss my 2 coppers in here as well, I first started on this server and went on a few "simple" maps... I had one (yes one) simple map in oasis (sand dune area) took us 612 digs for the chest to pop. We started at 8am and finished the map somewhere around 5pm that day...

I thought damn there must be some hell of a treasure in this chest, but I was wrong 2 pieces of junk that no one in the group needed.

Later that day someone said wanna do a "VE" map, I thought if a simple map take 9 hours to do, how long is the "harder" map going to take, he said they are done by 5 dig attemps...

So I went on his map and sure enough around the 3rd dig attempt the chest popped.

I thought hmm maybe just bad luck with the simple map, so I did another simple map and around the 4th hour of digging I said screw this.

It would be nice if:

simple tmaps 20-29 pop after 3 waves
30-39 4 waves
40-49 5 waves
 
TMaps are fine. Spending nine hours on a map must be a record. Love to see logs on this.

OP, nice write up but TMaps are fine.

Jimkoz said:
We started at 8am and finished the map somewhere around 5pm that day...

So I went on his map and sure enough around the 3rd dig attempt the chest popped.

I thought hmm maybe just bad luck with the simple map, so I did another simple map and around the 4th hour of digging I said screw this.
Click to expand...
 
Icotopl said:
TMaps are fine. Spending nine hours on a map must be a record. Love to see logs on this.

OP, nice write up but TMaps are fine.
Click to expand...

No, simple T-Maps are not fine. I do not even see how you could have read this thread (or the others like it) or done many simple T-Maps and conclude they are fine. Is it lonely in denial land?
 
Pretty sure simple maps are meant to be attempted with 6-18 people, the more the better. If you're trying with only 1 group, you should get some more warm bodies.
 
I really hope no more then 6 are needed for simple maps provided the 6 are in the middle of the tier range or above for the specific map. Needing more then that at levels <65 is pretty silly for any number of reasons.
 
Animand said:
Pretty sure simple maps are meant to be attempted with 6-18 people, the more the better. If you're trying with only 1 group, you should get some more warm bodies.
Click to expand...

Even if this were the case, many people have attempted it with 12-15 people and still had marathon maps (myself included), they are pretty broken but probably not high on the priority list. Would be nice to have a wave cap on them, something like 5 on the lower ones and maybe 7-9 on the 50s ones (which is still a lot) because people can be loading up on AAs in the 50s and the loot is slightly better than earlier ones.
 
well I did some more maps. this time in the 30-39 range. and - not surprisingly - I've had the same results.

2 maps popped on the second attempt. one took upwards of an hour, and another took about 2 hours.

These were all 4 done with the same group, using the same digger. We killed, rested, and dug at the same rate for all 4 maps, but it still seems to be either free loot or super long ordeal. No inbetween for us.

I've decided to keep doing maps and am considering making dig by dig logs with timestamps. Just for records sake ( Whether it accomplishes any changes or not is no concern - my desire is merely to present facts and see what happens )
 
I've honestly had the same experience with random tiered simple maps, and imo this is kinda rediculous. However, there are a metric shit ton of things dev's are doing right now, and since so few people actually do these, I doubt it would be a priority to change anything about maps - although I do endorse your suggestion from teh first post - as it would make maps still take awhile, but there would always be an end in sight.
 
Because I'm feeling nice, I committed the following changes:
- Simple map treasure chance will now decay at 1/3rd the rate it did before (meaning you will build up more chance with each wave)
- Chance of treasure will now be a bit less random, you'll start with a very low chance around the third wave and it will grow quickly with each wave, instead of a low chance and growing slowly
- Impact of bedrock has been reduced

With these changes, unless you're taking ridiculous amounts of time you should get the treasure in a max of 8 digs.

Should go in whenever next patch happens.
 
woot

Wiz That sounds absolutely wonderful :)

Thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to read this post! I know it
got a bit long winded. I'm sure all of SoD is grateful to have admins who
care about their players.

And thanks also to everyone who provided feedback of any sort!
 
...FOR HES A JOLLY GOOD FELLOW!

Seriously though, this has given me new motivation to do more simple maps while leveling! (and hopefuly I won't be the only one with this new incentive!)
 
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