Minor Epic ADQ1 suggestion

[sirgog]

ADQ1 is the hardest of all the epics, by a long way, according to pretty much everyone I've asked. My runs have all required enormous amounts of resources, mainly due to there being only one shrine and i being so late in the quest. I may be wrong, but I believe the Devs intended it to be the hardest too.

For this reason, I suggest that ADQ1 award two epic dungeon tokens instead of one.

[Junts]

It'd have to give 3 or 4 before I bothered. :P

[Cyr]

Hold on it is? IDK, I rate them RAID, ATDQ1, CHAINS, WIZKING, OOB from easiest to hardest. Wizking and chains can be flipped if you give up time for resources. ATDQ1 has super easy end fights which you will only wipe on if you try. Offering on the other hand is a pain unless you have a good arcane (which is not required only very helpful in the others, even the raid only needs a competent arcane). If any of them should have an extra token it should be wiz king since it is the longest of the bunch.

Edit: ATDQ might seem very hard if read the message wrong and keep redoing fights. Also, in there weighted works wonders versus almost everything in there. Make sure everyone who does not cast spells has their holy/pure good bow and cold iron arrows...no excuse for not being prepared. One more thing which makes the quest very nice to do is the fact that 3/4 of it's chests are fairly easy to get to so even if you manage to fail you are not out empty handed.

[Angelus_dead]

One more thing which makes the quest very nice to do is the fact that 3/4 of it's chests are fairly easy to get to so even if you manage to fail you are not out empty handed.

Actually that's completely backwards.

You can get those 3 chests without even attempting to complete the quest at all, or even fighting a single monster. But completing the quest locks you out of getting them, so they actually count as reasons to NOT run the quest.

[BlackSteel]

I found it to be pretty easy, just long. I did my first purchase of a rest shrine from the store; but this was probably not needed at all (as my group had all ready cleared all the 'nastey' sides) Had I known both dq fights were going to be such cake, I wouldnt have bothered.

If you can take care of bat/scorp/monkey, then the other 3 are pretty easy. (octo/snake/wolf). I think my next run, will probably have a fast (but not rushed) attempt to clear those nastey ones while everyone still has all their boosts/buffs. And save the actual puzzle rooms and three easy ones for when the party is running on fumes.

[sirgog]

Hold on it is? IDK, I rate them RAID, ATDQ1, CHAINS, WIZKING, OOB from easiest to hardest. Wizking and chains can be flipped if you give up time for resources. ATDQ1 has super easy end fights which you will only wipe on if you try. Offering on the other hand is a pain unless you have a good arcane (which is not required only very helpful in the others, even the raid only needs a competent arcane). If any of them should have an extra token it should be wiz king since it is the longest of the bunch.

Edit: ATDQ might seem very hard if read the message wrong and keep redoing fights. Also, in there weighted works wonders versus almost everything in there. Make sure everyone who does not cast spells has their holy/pure good bow and cold iron arrows...no excuse for not being prepared. One more thing which makes the quest very nice to do is the fact that 3/4 of it's chests are fairly easy to get to so even if you manage to fail you are not out empty handed.

My order is Wizking easiest, then OOB, then ADQ2, then ADQ1. I've only run Chains once and it was a total cluster****, but I won't pretend I know it well enough to rate it.

OOB is the easiest, however, if you have a bard. Fascinate is incredible there - and dare I say it, a virtuoso may actually be the optimal build (although other bards work fine too)

[BlackSteel]

wiz king gets my vote as easiest (altho doing all 3 towers is just long)
chains isnt hard, or that resource intensive, but its a good hour
oob is the quickest and actually the most difficult, but if you survive past the first door its pretty much a home run
dq1 is definetly the most resource intensive, whether you make that scrolls or potions depends on the group. But really didnt feel threatened at any time; altho my group did take it really slow.

[Shade]

Yea the origina design of the quest.. 1 shrine sort of worked, as you could keep moving fast thru it and keep mana use down.

But given the huge amount of monsters added and high hitpoints and ton of red named added (well 1, but he appears 6 times).. It does warrant another shrine. My sorc with 3000 sp + 3 vile blasphemy + bauble + spell ring , being very conservative.. Tends to run out by the 3rd sword.

Should give you one soon as you complete the third sword, whatever it may be.
Or as a reward for completing the optional undead area (tho its odd to reward a mistake since you can get a gaurenteed correct order given the guids available)

That said I don't find it challenging at all. Just long and resource intensive. Even in a very powerful group with incredible DPS it still took 50 minuits and 200+ scrolls. Nothing too crazy, no pots, but still annoying, as the same group can do all the other quests with very very minimal scroll use, sub 50 in all.

The only real challenging part of the quest is the mephits.. Focused heat + fire mephit breath = 400 dmg. Ouch. But that's entirely avoidable given good use of CC (web, fire mephits fly thru, and only the dusts ones do focused heeat, so they seperate nicely) Monkey arcanes can be annoying with there iresistable dance, but aren't a real big threat given there low damage output and low DCs on there nukes.

End fights a joke. Queen moves slow and doesn't hit for much at all.

Imo for difficulty (actual challenge involved, not cost or resource) :
Hardest to easiest:
Offering of Blood
Wizard King
Chains (most encounters easier then DQ1, but the air elementals and traps add another layer of challenge)
DQ1

[Junts]

You really think OOB is that difficult? Its a 40 minute resource-free loot run with 2 smart casters.


It may also have the single worst shard droprate of any quest, too. I've done 8 in the last 3 days and seen 4 shards .. total .. among 6 people each time (48 total chest openings).

[Shade]

You really think OOB is that difficult? Its a 40 minute resource-free loot run with 2 smart casters.


It may also have the single worst shard droprate of any quest, too. I've done 8 in the last 3 days and seen 4 shards .. total .. among 6 people each time (48 total chest openings).

After running all the epic stuff allot, none of it is very difficult to me. Lamannia epic was difficult.. This watered down version we got, meh.

But yea i'd still rank it as number 1.

Scorpions curses doing 60-100 dmg per tic every 2 seconds makes for some hvy dmg. Add in the constant dispells the named guys love to use.. Respawns.. Yep, its the hardest one of the lot.

I don't really factor in resource use into difficulty. Yea it generally needs less then the others as its much shorter, but that doesn't mean its easier. It's 20-40min of non-stop fighting with little room for mistakes and no room for breaks aside from the 2nd shrine.

Far as smart casters go.. I find they can render all the quests rather trivial with strong use of CC, but that doesn't detract from the challenge either, as without the casters doing that, or with ones who don't have the DCs to pull it off.. It can get bad.

Re: Shard drops? sounds like some lucky numbers to me. I have 40 some epic tokens, 10 raid ones and can't really recall ever having a shard drop for myself. Got the odd one from other people giving me them at least.

[Junts]

After running all the epic stuff allot, none of it is very difficult to me. Lamannia epic was difficult.. This watered down version we got, meh.

But yea i'd still rank it as number 1.

Scorpions curses doing 60-100 dmg per tic every 2 seconds makes for some hvy dmg. Add in the constant dispells the named guys love to use.. Respawns.. Yep, its the hardest one of the lot.

I don't really factor in resource use into difficulty. Yea it generally needs less then the others as its much shorter, but that doesn't mean its easier. It's 20-40min of non-stop fighting with little room for mistakes and no room for breaks aside from the 2nd shrine.

Far as smart casters go.. I find they can render all the quests rather trivial with strong use of CC, but that doesn't detract from the challenge either, as without the casters doing that, or with ones who don't have the DCs to pull it off.. It can get bad.

Cursed sting of vulkoor can be removed with a rem curse potion. None of the dispels or, for that matter, the mob melee is a serious threat if you use your casters properly. There are plenty of places you can put your caster to pull mob aggro and the mobs are only capable of ranging them, letting you safely knock down dungeon alerts with (hopefully crit, or it takes too long) firewalls + melee attacking the mob (as long as the caster has aggro, the mob will be too busy ranging/casting at them to attack the melee) and you can get through all of it with a couple dozen heal scrolls. You get a good 130 kills for your trouble, which makes it a nice scroll run.

Chains and ADQ1 are the hardest because they feature the same mob damage output and the lack of easy ways to nullify the most dangerous mobs (the arcane skeletons are the most dangerous mobs in raiyum, and scrolls of halt undead work for anyone to stop them for 30 seconds). You have to go through and dance/cc your way through chains.

ADQ1 is more tedium than anything else; you pull everything to the scorpion pit and kill it from there.

Sounds like limitation to the heal Axer while he kills it strategy :P