Sagas!

[KookieKobold]

As you have possibly already seen on Lamannia so far, we’re introducing what we call the Saga system.

Sagas are a way to get rewarded a bit extra for running a series of quests on various difficulty levels. When running these quests, you will receive a number of “points” towards your reward based on what difficulty you run quests on. The benefits earned are going to be Experience, Renown, or a Skill tome, based on the total “points value” of the quests you have run. The higher the points total, the better your reward would be. We’re very interested in hearing what you all think about the specific reward amounts.

That being said, we’ve built two Sagas for now (with the possibility of more for the future!) which both have a very specific theme to them. The NPCs to talk to about Sagas in-game are located in Eveningstar and are named Lady Azana Winter and Belvadere Huntsilver.

Here are the Sagas:

Menace of the Underdark
Impossible Demands
The Unquiet Graves
The Lost Thread
Battle for Eveningstar
Don't Drink the Water
In the Belly of the Beast
House of Rusted Blades
House of Broken Chains
House of Death Undone
The Portal Opens
Trial by Fury
The Deal and The Demon
Reclaiming the Rift

Honor of the Huntsilvers
completion requires epic difficulties
The Druid's Curse
Detour
Rest Stop
Stuck in the Swamp
A Stay at the Inn
End of the Road
Friends in Low Places
A Lesson in Deception
The Thrill of the Hunt
Army of Shadow
Through a Mirror Darkly
The Tracker’s Trap
The Giant’s Run
Waking the Beast
A Break in the Ice
What Goes Up


Feel free to use this thread to post about Sagas and to give us your feedback.

[oradafu]

Blah! No Abbot or GH/Truthful One sagas?! I was expecting at least those two would be included in the initial release of the Sagas. I also was expecting a Quori saga since new Eberron content is being abandoned. Blah!

[Atremus]

How about a Harbor Saga, Market Place Saga and a Saga for each house?

[caissede12]

That being said, we’ve built two Sagas for now (with the possibility of more for the future!)

Well... not sure if I should feel sad/good about it. "possibility of more for the future" has in you might consider adding Saga for lower lvl content... whit low chance of it happening and if it does, will be in a couple of years?

If not, its kinda lame that the saga are for high lvl only (over lvl 24). When you announced it, it sounded like an other xp bonus (or items) to help us lvl (applicablee to all lvls) would also increase the chance people run all the content... well, if the reward is worth it. As of now, I doubt I will run it before a long time (probably after U20 and EDTR happen) and even than, Im not so sure.

But good work

PS:

How about a Harbor Saga, Market Place Saga and a Saga for each house?

This is a GREAT idea...

[SqueakofDoom]

Hello!

I just wanted to let you know that there is also a survey available this weekend (I'll collect them early on Monday morning) regarding the Sagas, and we would appreciate it if you would fill it out!

Thank you,
Squeak

EDIT: The Sagas survey has now wrapped up. Thank you!

[Teh_Troll]

LOVE this idea. Absolutely LOVE it.

That said .. . MOAR!

Great idea, keep at it.

[Leclaire1]

This is a nice idea, and like with the Monster Manual its a way to get more from playing large quest arcs. While I'm sure there are kinks to work out in the rewards system, it seems like a nice addition and gives incentive to run whole chains, esp. with Huntsilver saga (everyone will do menace anyway to flag for raid). That being said, with others here I really think you need to add this feature to Eberron content. I realize that doing two to start to perfect the concept is wise, but hopefully by update 20 we can see the following Eberron sagas in particular implemented:

1) The Gianthold Saga (Tempest's Spine, Heroic Gianthold, Reaver's Reach, Epic Gianthold)
2) The Shavarath Saga (Chronoscope, Vale of Twilight, VoD Raid, Devils of Shavarath)
3) The Quori Saga (Path of Inspiration, Dreaming Dark, possibly Restless Isles also)
4) The Attack on Stormreach Saga (Lordsmarch Chain, Attack on Stormreach pask)

There may be others as well, but these quests seem to be true sagas in the world already, and from a commercial perspective, it probably awards those who buy several packs or go VIP, which I would think Turbine would want. Just hoping we see more of this sort of thing coming.

[soloist12]

Whether it works or not will completely depend on the reward.

Here's how it works from what I saw:

You get 1 point per casual/normal quest
2 per hard
3 per elite

You can use your vip status to skip one quest and count it as an elite completion (3 points)
You can do the same thing with 5 astral shards
You can do the above 2 bypasses only once per saga

For example, the True Elite completion for the underdark saga requires 39 points. Elite requires atleast 32, Hard 22 and normal just completions. So to aquire the hard reward, you could do 9 quests on hard and 4 on normal and still nail the reward - I like the flexibility since not all quests are similar difficulty.

I see the bypasses being used definitely (belly of the beast), and like the option.

For so many quests to be completed for your reward, it will have to be worth it, or people will skip this feature. What I would hate to see for the true elite completion is a mere +3 skill tome (I see going through an equivalent tp point amount in resources to pull it off, if not more).

[PurpleFooz]

For so many quests to be completed for your reward, it will have to be worth it, or people will skip this feature. What I would hate to see for the true elite completion is a mere +3 skill tome (I see going through an equivalent tp point amount in resources to pull it off, if not more).

Yep. We are fishing for feedback on whether the current Saga reward settings are worth it.

[Teh_Troll]

Yep. We are fishing for feedback on whether the current Saga reward settings are worth it.

You make my Chain-Reward EE loot for running stuff on EE and it'll be worth it!

[soloist12]

Yep. We are fishing for feedback on whether the current Saga reward settings are worth it.

Is there a way to quickly have a completion thrown our way to see? That's a ton of quests to test through!

Most of us know the quests from the underdark saga and what they're about on the various difficulties, but who wants to test the reward and run 11-13 quests? :/

[soloist12]

To get credit for a saga quest, you do not in fact have to turn the quest in to the original quest giver, which means a red window might even be possible.

[HatsuharuZ]

Question: Does completing a Saga give you a single reward, a do you get to choose from a list of rewards, with the list of choices growing larger if you do all of the quests on higher difficulties?

[soloist12]

Question: Does completing a Saga give you a single reward, a do you get to choose from a list of rewards, with the list of choices growing larger if you do all of the quests on higher difficulties?

Don't think the reward list grows, it's based on what you qualify for. There are point cutoffs for normal/hard/elite/true elite rewards, and if you fall in a certain range, that's your reward.

I wish I could see them, I don't really have time to run 13 quests

[Drwaz99]

You make my Chain-Reward EE loot for running stuff on EE and it'll be worth it!

Now this is a real good idea...as long as it's single random item of loot from the chain. A whole list would be a bit much. (Well, if it was a one-time btcoa item I'd be ok with that)

[Henky]

Sagas are a way to get rewarded a bit extra for running a series of quests on various difficulty levels. When running these quests, you will receive a number of “points” towards your reward based on what difficulty you run quests on. The benefits earned are going to be Experience, Renown, or a Skill tome, based on the total “points value” of the quests you have run. The higher the points total, the better your reward would be. We’re very interested in hearing what you all think about the specific reward amounts.

If its based on points... why not Heroics Commendations as rewards too? It would be nice if we can get heroic comms outside of the raids, and Sagas seems a nice placeholder.

One saga has 13 quests and the other 16. So maybe only on Elite and True Elite completions you can get heroic comms, i would like to see 1 on elite, and 2 on True Elite.

[-Zephyr-]

Honor of the Huntsilvers
completion requires epic difficulties
The Druid's Curse
Detour
Rest Stop
Stuck in the Swamp
A Stay at the Inn
End of the Road
Friends in Low Places
A Lesson in Deception
The Thrill of the Hunt
Army of Shadow
Through a Mirror Darkly
The Tracker’s Trap
The Giant’s Run
Waking the Beast
A Break in the Ice
What Goes Up

Why ?
Seriously.

Why is "The druid's curse" in there ?
The other saga is 3 full packs (the ones included with MotU), which have a common storyline.
This saga is 3 full packs (2 of which are in shadowfell), which have a common storyline (fighting the Netherese) plus that one that is part of a 4th pack, doesn't have any storyline in common, has to be flagged for by running other quests not in the saga ; and more importantly, is one of the least quest run since MotU because it isn't fun, at all.

This saga would be much better without that quest. It would keep the idea that sagas have a common storyline.
If you want to give players an incentive to run those barely-ever-run quests (the whole druid's deep pack), please find something else than just randomly adding their capstone quest to a saga that has nothing to do with them.

[-Zephyr-]

Another post to talk about a bug I just encountered :
When completing the "Honor of the Huntsilvers" saga, I decided to use the option to upgrade my reward (from normal to hard).
I had the rewards list open, no problems. But I did not take the reward, I closed it instead. Talking to the guy again, he had forgotten I had upgraded my reward and was offering me to upgrade (normal to hard) again.

After testing, it did take my shards each time I did that. I paid a total of about 100 AS before finally trying the non-upgrading option. When taking that one, he correctly gives me the reward list as soon as I talk to him and doesn't offer me the choice to upgrade my reward.

Oh, and comparing the two rewards list : upgrading isn't quite worth it.
Normal rewards :
64k XP
1 +3 skill tome
5k renown

Hard rewards :
65k XP
2 +3 skill tome
7.5k renown

And here I was hoping True Elite would give somewhere between 250k and 500k XP... Nope, probably like 70k.
Giving good XP on True Elite saga rewards would be a way to replace ED XP farm... Run the quests on EE with you main destiny (that's fun !) and then get the XP reward on an other destiny you're not interested in (that's rewarding !).


EDIT : Looking back at it, it seems the "upgrade your reward" button for this saga may be simply broken. Clicking it bestowed the reward from the wrong Saga, which have lower rewards I have been told. So the values above would be for normal "Honor of the Huntsilvers", but hard "Menace of the Underdark".
That would also explain why the guy wants me to spend Astral Shards every single time. He checks if I have completed the Saga on a higher diff in my journal, but nope, so offers me the option again. But when I click it, it bestows the wrong one again.
Checking the other Saga bestower, she does not give me my "Hard" rewards, and still waits for me to complete the quests. I'll try to complete see what she says (if she says anything or directly gives me Hard rewards as I've "upgraded" to get those already)

Here's a screenshot.
You can clearly see the "Honor of the Huntsilvers" quest giver bestowing me the "Epic Hard Menace of the Underdark reward".

I did bug report it, but I hadn't thought about it enough when I did, so my bug report may not be as clear as this post.

EDIT 2 : So, I just completed the MotU Saga, and was given the reward seen in the above screenshot without seeing my score. So I'm not 100% sure the bug explained above is that the "Pay to get better reward" option on the "Honor of the Huntsilvers" simply gives a reward for the wrong Saga. Probably a copy/paste error from the MotU Saga itself.

[PurpleFooz]

Another post to talk about a bug I just encountered :
When completing the "Honor of the Huntsilvers" saga, I decided to use the option to upgrade my reward (from normal to hard).
I had the rewards list open, no problems. But I did not take the reward, I closed it instead. Talking to the guy again, he had forgotten I had upgraded my reward and was offering me to upgrade (normal to hard) again.

After testing, it did take my shards each time I did that. I paid a total of about 100 AS before finally trying the non-upgrading option. When taking that one, he correctly gives me the reward list as soon as I talk to him and doesn't offer me the choice to upgrade my reward.

Oh, and comparing the two rewards list : upgrading isn't quite worth it.
Normal rewards :
64k XP
1 +3 skill tome
5k renown

Hard rewards :
65k XP
2 +3 skill tome
7.5k renown

And here I was hoping True Elite would give somewhere between 250k and 500k XP... Nope, probably like 70k.
Giving good XP on True Elite saga rewards would be a way to replace ED XP farm... Run the quests on EE with you main destiny (that's fun !) and then get the XP reward on an other destiny you're not interested in (that's rewarding !).


EDIT : Looking back at it, it seems the "upgrade your reward" button for this saga may be simply broken. Clicking it bestowed the reward from the wrong Saga, which have lower rewards I have been told. So the values above would be for normal "Honor of the Huntsilvers", but hard "Menace of the Underdark".
That would also explain why the guy wants me to spend Astral Shards every single time. He checks if I have completed the Saga on a higher diff in my journal, but nope, so offers me the option again. But when I click it, it bestows the wrong one again.
Checking the other Saga bestower, she does not give me my "Hard" rewards, and still waits for me to complete the quests. I'll try to complete see what she says (if she says anything or directly gives me Hard rewards as I've "upgraded" to get those already)

Here's a screenshot.
You can clearly see the "Honor of the Huntsilvers" quest giver bestowing me the "Epic Hard Menace of the Underdark reward".

I did bug report it, but I hadn't thought about it enough when I did, so my bug report may not be as clear as this post.

EDIT 2 : So, I just completed the MotU Saga, and was given the reward seen in the above screenshot without seeing my score. So I'm not 100% sure the bug explained above is that the "Pay to get better reward" option on the "Honor of the Huntsilvers" simply gives a reward for the wrong Saga. Probably a copy/paste error from the MotU Saga itself.

Good catch on the bug, thanks. It does indeed look like we got the setting wrong there. We're fixing it.

[Shaatan]

This sounds like a completly awesome idea to keep the ED XP grinding more interesting. Unfortunetaly, current XP reward is absolutely not appropriate to the amount of time you need to complete those quests. To make this system worth running for players you might want to make the XP reward be on par with what you can get from farming Impossible Demands or Rusted Blades for as long as it takes to run all those quests.
I understand that its rather hard to estimate how long it can take for a normal group to run all those quests tho, but no1 said adjusting is going to be easy.