Epic Spies in the House Suggestion

[Gildane]

Greetings,

Everytime i suggest to my guild that we run eSpies, i am answered with a chorus of groans and oh-noes. We routinely run other epics easily, often completing with no deaths. Twice I have talked them into running eSpies and, although we completed, we have yet to do so with single-digit deaths or in a timely manner. Then we pop the epic-chest and we get....token fragments? Wait a minute, when i clicked into the quest it told me WARNING EXTREME CHALLENGE DUNGEON. Heck, we 2-man party crashers in half an hour for a full token.

That being said, here is my suggestion.....

1) Leave the difficulty of this quest at its current level, it is refreshing to have a challenging quest after the snooze fest of running through the other epics in this pack.

2) Up the rewards from the epic chest, make people want to do this over eBoB and eBL. Could be something like guaranteed seal for everyone or giving two epic tokens.

This is a fun and challenging quest but the reward is not worth the effort compared to the others in this pack.

Thank you for your time,

-G

[Viisari]

Yeah the quest should give atleast a full token, maybe two. The current difficulty is pretty nice.

As it is now, I only ever run it if I'm bored and want to do something challenging, never for loot.

[Shade]

Yea it's brutal. More so now then ever with the increases to spell damage.

At a minimum to make it even begin to be worth it i'd add:
2 dungeon tokens (thats what epic DA gives, and there similar length/challenge)
2 extra loot chests at the end. No need for seal chances because really the items in this pack aren't too difficult to get anyways... (Currently the epic chests replaces the one crappy chest youd otherwise get - which just 110% plain should NEVER happen for any epics. Epic chests should ALWAYS be in addition to normal chests, and even more on elite/epic are often approriate)
So something else interesting in them could be good:
Like DA perhaps - some special semi random stufF:
Perhaps a good amount of the new crafting supplies?
high chance at:
Astral diamond
Purified ebberon shard (or even the non purified versions)
un-usually large stack of greater essences - say 50.
or maybe even pre-set craftable weaponry with special metal types. Ones already tuned to increased potentiall - say craftable +10 would be cool.

Seals chance inthe epic chest itself shouldnt be 100%.. But i wouldnt mind it being up'd to something pretty high like 20%. Being you can run 4-5+ bargains of blood in the time you can run 1 of these, and its drop rate is around 5-10%.

[taurolyon]

/signed

This is one of those quests that if it was worth the rewards, it would be done more than once. I did enjoy getting a shot to rogue it last night and the trap spots in there are challenging with the randomization (of which I highly approve!), but the lag and platforming (air jets) it where it tends to get ya.

1. Increase rewards (full token, maybe 2)
2. Maybe increase scroll drop rate on particular monsters that are further inside this quest - say the animated armor or water elementals that are towards the end?
3. Increase seal drop rates in epic chest (??)

[Gildane]

Shade makes some interesting suggestions here. Virtually his whole list of end-chest items are the kind of things that would want to make players do eSpies for a reason other than the challenge.

[EatSmart]

/signed

Love the challenge, wish it wasnt just token frags at the end

[Tinco]

I found eSpies to be dull in the first place as an arcane caster. It's long, the almost magic immune undead result in boring beatdowns (along with halt undead spam), same goes for the animated armors (i wished I was force specced). Everything else is just hold'n'spank or drain'n'fod. Our FvS kited the armors for a few minutes through BB's because they were a pain to bring down with melees. We got skunked at the endchest, along with 33 fragments - a joke.

The whole sentinel series has a serious bottleneck - and that's the shards. If anything shards should be included in the eSpies endchest with a reasonable droprate. Or make the chest drop shards and seals. And at least one full token because the way it is now it's not worth the hassle.

[Milfeulle]

/SIGNED.

Done it once, never touched it again.

It's like when you're sick in a hot summer and can't smell anything, and you just bought a tub of green tea flavor labled ice cream, yum yum time right?

But no, you failed your spot check for size 1 font "produced in China" on the bottom, you also failed your search check, so in fact, it's filled with concentrated iced wasabi sauce.

Now, after buffed with resist cold, protect from element and haste, you take out your lovely size 10 spoon, dig a big pile of that green stuff, put the spoon in your mouth, close your mouth, and slide the spoon out...

(wasabi sauce hits you for 9879 acid damage after 120 were blocked)

*DING*

[oradafu]

Yea it's brutal. More so now then ever with the increases to spell damage.

At a minimum to make it even begin to be worth it i'd add:
2 dungeon tokens (thats what epic DA gives, and there similar length/challenge)
2 extra loot chests at the end. No need for seal chances because really the items in this pack aren't too difficult to get anyways... (Currently the epic chests replaces the one crappy chest youd otherwise get - which just 110% plain should NEVER happen for any epics. Epic chests should ALWAYS be in addition to normal chests, and even more on elite/epic are often approriate)
So something else interesting in them could be good:
Like DA perhaps - some special semi random stufF:
Perhaps a good amount of the new crafting supplies?
high chance at:
Astral diamond
Purified ebberon shard (or even the non purified versions)
un-usually large stack of greater essences - say 50.
or maybe even pre-set craftable weaponry with special metal types. Ones already tuned to increased potentiall - say craftable +10 would be cool.

Seals chance inthe epic chest itself shouldnt be 100%.. But i wouldnt mind it being up'd to something pretty high like 20%. Being you can run 4-5+ bargains of blood in the time you can run 1 of these, and its drop rate is around 5-10%.

I have to agree with these suggestions.
It should have a full epic token...maybe even two.
It should have extra chests. The idea of lots of crafting essences seems like a good idea. Actually, I like the idea of it having a higher than usual chance of dropping DDOStore items (like Devil Assault)...and to keep the crafting theme, maybe crafting XP and booster pots.

[Gildane]

Loving the suggestions so far, keep em coming guys. Maybe we can get a dev to comment on whether or not they are already ahead of us looking at this quest.

[Hollowgolem]

The thing that hasn't been mentioned except in passing by the OP is that this is labeled an "Extreme Challenge" dungeon. Extreme Challenge + Epic should make for a better reward. At least on-par with something like Devil Assault. Maybe loot tables with higher-than-regular chance at Disruption/Greater Undead Bane, higher chance of Astrals, maybe some different short-duration augment crystals (For instance, Yellows that give Greater spell foci, Superior False Life, etc. but have limited durations like the Reds that drop in eDA).

[Crazyfruit]

2) Up the rewards from the epic chest

/signed, definitely needs a lil something.

It's silly that there isn't even a full token in there.

Seems to be a higher drop rate for seals than the others from my experience, but not enough of one to be worth it unless you're also doing bargain & loch that day.

I'd also love to see one epic-only jet before the pipe you have to jump to (in the first "big" room, before the wheel) removed. Most of the time people end up sitting around for 20 minutes waiting for the last person to make it up because of it. Boring, frustrating & not fun.

[voodoogroves]

So something else interesting in them could be good:
Like DA perhaps - some special semi random stufF:
Perhaps a good amount of the new crafting supplies?
high chance at:
Astral diamond
Purified ebberon shard (or even the non purified versions)
un-usually large stack of greater essences - say 50.
or maybe even pre-set craftable weaponry with special metal types. Ones already tuned to increased potentiall - say craftable +10 would be cool.

These are nice.


Keep the risk. Improve the reward.

[Rian]

This thread is full of sense.

A lot of quests seem to have a certain connection

Higher difficulty : Lower Loot
as
Lower difficulty : Higher Loot
That simply does not make sense.

/signed

[robinfu]

Yea it's brutal. More so now then ever with the increases to spell damage.

At a minimum to make it even begin to be worth it i'd add:
2 dungeon tokens (thats what epic DA gives, and there similar length/challenge)
2 extra loot chests at the end. No need for seal chances because really the items in this pack aren't too difficult to get anyways... (Currently the epic chests replaces the one crappy chest youd otherwise get - which just 110% plain should NEVER happen for any epics. Epic chests should ALWAYS be in addition to normal chests, and even more on elite/epic are often approriate)
So something else interesting in them could be good:
Like DA perhaps - some special semi random stufF:
Perhaps a good amount of the new crafting supplies?
high chance at:
Astral diamond
Purified ebberon shard (or even the non purified versions)
un-usually large stack of greater essences - say 50.
or maybe even pre-set craftable weaponry with special metal types. Ones already tuned to increased potentiall - say craftable +10 would be cool.

Seals chance inthe epic chest itself shouldnt be 100%.. But i wouldnt mind it being up'd to something pretty high like 20%. Being you can run 4-5+ bargains of blood in the time you can run 1 of these, and its drop rate is around 5-10%.

Totally signed on everything said!

[Catnapper]

/agreed - it's soo hard - it's like harder than chasing a mouse while tap dancing and balancing jello on your head and singing "Man of Constant Sorrow." Better loot and that other stuff would be awesome! Better rewards for the difficulty.

[sirgog]

At the risk of inflating the egos of the people involved in this run (which do not include me), I think a screenshot may be in order:

http://i397.photobucket.com/albums/p...nShot00082.jpg