zsospeck666
08-19-2021, 10:53 PM
So finally had a couple days off and got out to explore the new area. Have a look around, sniff the flowers, slaughter the local wildlife, ya know, the usual.
So I got out there, found the quest entrances, found most of the rare spawns, found the explorer points, ran the saga, and generally had a good time.
Most of the quests were fairly straight forward, only a couple having twists mechanic wise. Using the barrels against Thousand Teeth for instance, or altering your
approach to determine where the majority of the opposition spawns on the boat.
Having been given a rogue hireling as part of the big pack, I was kind of expecting to be neck deep in trap parts halfway through, but was pleasantly surprised to
find the spread and placement of trapped areas fairly modest. With the heroic version being level 3, it seems prudent to not have too many deadly pitfalls.
The chain had a fun, old school feel story line wise but a few of the quests felt overlong. The final quest in particular seemed to suffer from an excess of real estate.
A lot of the quest length seemed to be backtracking through empty halls.
The wilderness area... while I know it's not supposed to be the meat of the pack, it was just meh. My biggest problem here is the slayer interaction. The groupings
of mobs are set to passive with an incredibly low detection range. So they can't be interacted with until you're nearly at melee range and most won't activate even
if hit with ranged weapons or spells outside of that range if targeted manually via mouse look cursor. I would get 0 damage numbers next to the PBS indicator and
still no activation. Same thing with AOE spells, 0 damage and no activation. It's about like the bears were when KotB came out, except it is virtually every mob in
the area. This lack of interaction was further compounded by the lack of scaling for party. Pack size stayed in the 2-4 range both solo, and with a group of 4 others.
It made what was supposed to be some casual boredom relieving slaughter a near maddeningly tedious slog. It needs an adjustment. Please.
The cosmetics that came with the larger packs are super tasty, and having the matching mounts included instead of as a raid drop like the Fey mounts was nice.
Also having an NPC to give them out instead of auto-spawning them onto every character was a good move. No more having to hold onto a copy, or make a
trash toon to spawn a replacement if I want to change up my look. Good call there.
Last thing I'll mention is the Spark of Logic. I really hoped this would be an item to expand artifacts instead of weapons, but alas, it was not. With this addition
you'll need another 60k SXP to add a tenth slot for a total 210,000 SXP. So if you want to fully upgrade that shiny new Lizardfolk Jewel that you just got you'll
need a spark of memory(rare drop or raid thread purchase), a spark of dream(raid drop), a spark of logic(cash bundle or rare saga reward) and then, assuming you
use only level 29 items, the highest generally available, 725 named items to feed. I don't think I'm alone in believing that the scale for these upgrades needs some
adjustment. Especially if this new model of legendary quests dropping heroic level loot and needing to be upgraded is going to be a thing.
So I got out there, found the quest entrances, found most of the rare spawns, found the explorer points, ran the saga, and generally had a good time.
Most of the quests were fairly straight forward, only a couple having twists mechanic wise. Using the barrels against Thousand Teeth for instance, or altering your
approach to determine where the majority of the opposition spawns on the boat.
Having been given a rogue hireling as part of the big pack, I was kind of expecting to be neck deep in trap parts halfway through, but was pleasantly surprised to
find the spread and placement of trapped areas fairly modest. With the heroic version being level 3, it seems prudent to not have too many deadly pitfalls.
The chain had a fun, old school feel story line wise but a few of the quests felt overlong. The final quest in particular seemed to suffer from an excess of real estate.
A lot of the quest length seemed to be backtracking through empty halls.
The wilderness area... while I know it's not supposed to be the meat of the pack, it was just meh. My biggest problem here is the slayer interaction. The groupings
of mobs are set to passive with an incredibly low detection range. So they can't be interacted with until you're nearly at melee range and most won't activate even
if hit with ranged weapons or spells outside of that range if targeted manually via mouse look cursor. I would get 0 damage numbers next to the PBS indicator and
still no activation. Same thing with AOE spells, 0 damage and no activation. It's about like the bears were when KotB came out, except it is virtually every mob in
the area. This lack of interaction was further compounded by the lack of scaling for party. Pack size stayed in the 2-4 range both solo, and with a group of 4 others.
It made what was supposed to be some casual boredom relieving slaughter a near maddeningly tedious slog. It needs an adjustment. Please.
The cosmetics that came with the larger packs are super tasty, and having the matching mounts included instead of as a raid drop like the Fey mounts was nice.
Also having an NPC to give them out instead of auto-spawning them onto every character was a good move. No more having to hold onto a copy, or make a
trash toon to spawn a replacement if I want to change up my look. Good call there.
Last thing I'll mention is the Spark of Logic. I really hoped this would be an item to expand artifacts instead of weapons, but alas, it was not. With this addition
you'll need another 60k SXP to add a tenth slot for a total 210,000 SXP. So if you want to fully upgrade that shiny new Lizardfolk Jewel that you just got you'll
need a spark of memory(rare drop or raid thread purchase), a spark of dream(raid drop), a spark of logic(cash bundle or rare saga reward) and then, assuming you
use only level 29 items, the highest generally available, 725 named items to feed. I don't think I'm alone in believing that the scale for these upgrades needs some
adjustment. Especially if this new model of legendary quests dropping heroic level loot and needing to be upgraded is going to be a thing.