Update 23 Story Preview (w/ Vol Concept Art!)

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Originally Posted by Thrudh

No, those were awesome, because you had to use your brain....

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How so? The number one mechanic that came out of the MotU update was "kill everything twice". It could have been a good mechanic, if using your brain was a viable option. Instead, the devs went out of their way to make sure the mechanic could not be bypassed by smart play in many instances. There are places where a priestess has two slaves readily available for sacrifice, but even (smartly) freeing them beforehand does not prevent her from sacrificing them. In others, there are multiple necromancers raising each other so that you cannot (smartly) kill the necromancer first to prevent him from zombifying everything. CitW is easily the worst offender. There is no way around killing everything twice. From what I understand, it's the mistresses bringing everything back as ghosts in that one. So you either kill stuff just for them to bring it back or beat on the priestess until she sacrifices it and you have to kill her twice - except now with DR :rolleyes:

I'm all for mechanics that reward smart play. The MotU mechanics most assuredly did not. Instead, they frustratingly seemed to reward smart play, but it was a ruse.

Spellwards and rednamed trash are still by far my biggest pet peeves that are still being used.

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Originally Posted by B0ltdrag0n

Spellwards and rednamed trash are still by far my biggest pet peeves that are still being used.

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I wouldn't care so much about spellwards except

spell ward is blocked.

Getting this message when trying to disable the spell ward from almost every angle. They are currently broken before U21 this was not a problem and they could be disabled without this bug.


Still I agree even if they were working properly they are not very interesting lazy traps that are just dropped wherever in a quest.

Some of the traps in Haunted Halls are spot on but, then again spell wards.

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Originally Posted by madmaxhunter

And PLEASE, let each kill be a kill! I have always hated the northeast side of The Orchard because of the alive is a slayer, undead isn't bug (or wai).

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Agreed....Whole Heartedly.

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Originally Posted by UurlockYgmeov

Do this as good / better than U22 and players will drop DDO for Dummies and come play again! :D

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U22 was terrible

Do this better than U22 please.

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Originally Posted by californiapiper

Still :-( we do not have a return of The Black Abbot, we didn't get his phylactery so he can come back, hoping we will see him again soon, hands down my favorite boss in the game, and even in epic levels he's no ones b*tch

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Unless I dreamt it, I think I heard a dev say that the Black Abbot would play some role in this new raid. So keep yer chin up. You may still get your wish.

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Originally Posted by Merlin-ator

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Also, are Abbot and the Sigil going to be touched? I almost never see an Abbot LFM, and even when I do, I can't join because of that ******** flagging mechanic. Could you remove the full Sigil requirement and change it to something like a Tapestry/Shield turn-in?

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I've been playing for 5 years now and have never ran the Abbot raid. Not because I didn't want to, I really do, but because it is so hard to flag for and there are rarely lfm's up for it. It would be really nice to run this raid before the update so that I can experience it but out of 16 toons that I play with only 1 is flagged and he's in epic levels now so I really doubt there will be an lfm within his level range if there is an lfm at all.

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Originally Posted by Ebondevil

Shame this is content I will probably never see since I have still not managed to flag for the Abbot raid after multiple lives of running the quests and hitting up the Rares in the Explorer.

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Just to say it: Flagging for the Epic raid will be much more straightforward than the heroic flagging, and heroic flagging is not necessary to run the epic content.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

Just to say it: Flagging for the Epic raid will be much more straightforward than the heroic flagging, and heroic flagging is not necessary to run the epic content.

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That's good to hear, I haven't been able to get flagged for abbot in, oh, the last 5-6 lives or so. Such a waste of a good raid, since no one wants to bother flagging - why make me run 30 quests to just maybe, possibly flag if the gods of the random number generator is nice enough to me - about 1 run of each and I'm out of exp range anyway.

Too bad something can't be done about the horrible flagging mechanism in the original raid - in 20+ lives over various characters, I've been flagged twice, and played the thing only 2-3 times as well.

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Originally Posted by eris2323

That's good to hear, I haven't been able to get flagged for abbot in, oh, the last 5-6 lives or so. Such a waste of a good raid, since no one wants to bother flagging - why make me run 30 quests to just maybe, possibly flag if the gods of the random number generator is nice enough to me - about 1 run of each and I'm out of exp range anyway.

Too bad something can't be done about the horrible flagging mechanism in the original raid - in 20+ lives over various characters, I've been flagged twice, and played the thing only 2-3 times as well.

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I do think we had a mention from Sev about maybe being open to change the heroic flagging mechanism along with making the pack epic, but not sure. Anyway, I think there would be a huge amount of players happy about it and very few that would dislike such a change, so if you can manage that YES PLEASE Turbine.

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Originally Posted by Cordovan

Just to say it: Flagging for the Epic raid will be much more straightforward than the heroic flagging, and heroic flagging is not necessary to run the epic content.

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Here's an idea: why don't you guys make flagging for the heroic raid less of a pita while you're at it? Increase drop rates or include pieces in quest giver rewards. Should take like five minutes of a dev's time. Don't release a shiny new epic version with this ugliness still hampering playability of the heroic side.

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Originally Posted by parowan

Here's an idea: why don't you guys make flagging for the heroic raid less of a pita while you're at it? Increase drop rates or include pieces in quest giver rewards. Should take like five minutes of a dev's time. Don't release a shiny new epic version with this ugliness still hampering playability of the heroic side.

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I suggest a mix of the Gianthold and Twilight forge flagging systems: To flag you must compete all of the quests AND have a complete sigle in your inventory (that is not expended). Even if this were somehow to reset upon HTR, it would defiantly increase the will of the people to run the raid.

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Originally Posted by Oxarhamar

I wouldn't care so much about spellwards except

spell ward is blocked.

Getting this message when trying to disable the spell ward from almost every angle. They are currently broken before U21 this was not a problem and they could be disabled without this bug.


Still I agree even if they were working properly they are not very interesting lazy traps that are just dropped wherever in a quest.

Some of the traps in Haunted Halls are spot on but, then again spell wards.

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Try disabling them from far away and get closer each time it gives a message. Spellwards have a long distance to disarm due to their no box nature.

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Originally Posted by Seikojin

Try disabling them from far away and get closer each time it gives a message. Spellwards have a long distance to disarm due to their no box nature.

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I thought i saw something about increasing the range at which they could be spotted recently. I guess somehow that affected how they are disabled. But yes, try disabling them from the first point you can spot them, it works pretty well, even if it looks like you are too far away.

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Originally Posted by Nascoe

I do think we had a mention from Sev about maybe being open to change the heroic flagging mechanism along with making the pack epic, but not sure. Anyway, I think there would be a huge amount of players happy about it and very few that would dislike such a change, so if you can manage that YES PLEASE Turbine.

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Just change the chest drops to guaranteed two pieces per player so that all 8 pieces can be obtained by running the four quests just once. That way there are no code changes needed, and it works exactly like Vale flagging -something no one has ever even whimpered about to my knowledge.

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Originally Posted by Sebastrd

How so? The number one mechanic that came out of the MotU update was "kill everything twice". It could have been a good mechanic, if using your brain was a viable option. Instead, the devs went out of their way to make sure the mechanic could not be bypassed by smart play in many instances. There are places where a priestess has two slaves readily available for sacrifice, but even (smartly) freeing them beforehand does not prevent her from sacrificing them. In others, there are multiple necromancers raising each other so that you cannot (smartly) kill the necromancer first to prevent him from zombifying everything. CitW is easily the worst offender. There is no way around killing everything twice. From what I understand, it's the mistresses bringing everything back as ghosts in that one. So you either kill stuff just for them to bring it back or beat on the priestess until she sacrifices it and you have to kill her twice - except now with DR :rolleyes:

I'm all for mechanics that reward smart play. The MotU mechanics most assuredly did not. Instead, they frustratingly seemed to reward smart play, but it was a ruse.

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Use "unskilled attempt" when freeing those slaves :)

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Originally Posted by Oxarhamar

I wouldn't care so much about spellwards except

spell ward is blocked.

Getting this message when trying to disable the spell ward from almost every angle. They are currently broken before U21 this was not a problem and they could be disabled without this bug.


Still I agree even if they were working properly they are not very interesting lazy traps that are just dropped wherever in a quest.

Some of the traps in Haunted Halls are spot on but, then again spell wards.

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When you get the blocked message, you are too close. backup and then disable.

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Originally Posted by Seikojin

Try disabling them from far away and get closer each time it gives a message. Spellwards have a long distance to disarm due to their no box nature.

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Oh it's not that at all.

I've been trapping in Epics since U20 they use to work half the time now they are broken.

Can try disabling from the front, the left, the right, up close, far away... Blocked blocked blocked until you find one spot that works that for no reason should while the others don't as the ground is level and the range is the same just a different side.

I am not sure which update broke them but, even the old work around of jumping and starting to disable mid air no longer works.

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Originally Posted by JOTMON

When you get the blocked message, you are too close. backup and then disable.

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I'll give it another go but I generally attempt to disable them starting at the farthest possible distance to do so to stay out of their range.

Then it's a mix of closer farther left right.

I find a lot of them are easier to disable by running past them then turning around and disabling the far side.

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Originally Posted by FestusHood

I thought i saw something about increasing the range at which they could be spotted recently. I guess somehow that affected how they are disabled. But yes, try disabling them from the first point you can spot them, it works pretty well, even if it looks like you are too far away.

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This is when they went wonky and I have trouble targeting and getting to disable from that range.