100 Runs of Slavers to create One Slaver Gem?

[AnEvenNewerNoob]

No, that's not a "bright side". It's probably my biggest complaint to the devs.

Let me give an example.

There was a time when +6 stat items were the best and fairly common...

Then they released +7 rare named gear. Cool, something for the powergamers to shoot for. Casual players like me were happy with +6... It's just +1

A year later, +8 rare gear might appear, and +7 becomes a little more common (plus it's been a year, so even a casual like me has picked up one or two +7 items)... My alts could still be using +6 gear in a world where +8 gear exists, and still do just fine.

Then, suddenly, they release +11 gear... Why? Why not just go to +9? And then 6 months later, they release +14 gear along with +7 insight gear... What is going on? Why are they doing it that way? The old slow progression worked for years, and now they've gone crazy.

I don't think the large jumps in power are good for the game, and they don't make a lot of design sense to me...

Preaching to the choir.

I'm still mad that when I came back to DDO a +6 stat item wasn't top tier!

[AnEvenNewerNoob]

Come on DEVS. you can do ALOT better then that Grinder... It does not matter how awesome and cool the quests is.. Everything gets a bad taste when your forced to eat the same thing every day..! ( yes even bacon Belive me.)

SHUT YOUR MOUTH.

Nobody would ever get tired of eating bacon.

[Krell]

On a side note I'd like to see ransack removed. I don't like getting a week "time out" if I want to keep running the same content. I'd even buy a global ransack reset if it was cheap.

[HungarianRhapsody]

i can't speak for the team's intention, but my guess is that crafting out a whole set of these things being a task that requires many hours and runs is the purpose. i've certainly played many MMOs where the "endgame" stuff is just doing dailies and whatnot for mats to make slight upgrades to gear. there's people that want it as quickly as possible, and to that end zerg things as quickly and often as possible. others (i'm in this group) approach it more casually and one day discover "hey i can craft this thing!"

That's fine for end game content. It's terrible for "leveling" content, though. Would it make sense to make someone run 100 times to get a Visor of the Flesh Render Guards from the Tangleroot chain? That would be ridiculous. Because Tangleroot is something that you run once or twice before you level past it and run higher level quests. Running end game content over and over again can be reasonable, but Turbine somehow forgets that end game content doesn't stay "end game". How long ago was the original Against the Demon Queen the "end game"? That was long before Epic content even existed with its shard/scroll/seal mechanic and the drop rates for the ADQ raid are *STILL* the same as they were back then. If you want a Torc, you have to run it dozens of times to have a reasonable (not guaranteed) chance of getting the item. Does anyone run the Titan's Forge raid anymore? Ever?

If grind is going to be built in to the game, it needs to be on the "end game" content only and that grind should be reduced or eliminated once the "end game" content is not "end game" anymore.

[LongshotBro]

That's fine for end game content. It's terrible for "leveling" content, though. Would it make sense to make someone run 100 times to get a Visor of the Flesh Render Guards from the Tangleroot chain? That would be ridiculous. Because Tangleroot is something that you run once or twice before you level past it and run higher level quests. Running end game content over and over again can be reasonable, but Turbine somehow forgets that end game content doesn't stay "end game". How long ago was the original Against the Demon Queen the "end game"? That was long before Epic content even existed with its shard/scroll/seal mechanic and the drop rates for the ADQ raid are *STILL* the same as they were back then. If you want a Torc, you have to run it dozens of times to have a reasonable (not guaranteed) chance of getting the item. Does anyone run the Titan's Forge raid anymore? Ever?

If grind is going to be built in to the game, it needs to be on the "end game" content only and that grind should be reduced or eliminated once the "end game" content is not "end game" anymore.

I see what you're saying, but the TR mechanic is also a form of the endgame in DDO. So, each turn of the wheel you get some mats and closer to completing the item. Eventually, you've got it. I'm not advocating grinding out the heroic item during a single life.

[Cantor]

That's fine for end game content. It's terrible for "leveling" content, though. Would it make sense to make someone run 100 times to get a Visor of the Flesh Render Guards from the Tangleroot chain? That would be ridiculous. Because Tangleroot is something that you run once or twice before you level past it and run higher level quests. Running end game content over and over again can be reasonable, but Turbine somehow forgets that end game content doesn't stay "end game". How long ago was the original Against the Demon Queen the "end game"? That was long before Epic content even existed with its shard/scroll/seal mechanic and the drop rates for the ADQ raid are *STILL* the same as they were back then. If you want a Torc, you have to run it dozens of times to have a reasonable (not guaranteed) chance of getting the item. Does anyone run the Titan's Forge raid anymore? Ever?

If grind is going to be built in to the game, it needs to be on the "end game" content only and that grind should be reduced or eliminated once the "end game" content is not "end game" anymore.

This grind is for end game, heroic is much less grindy. In one run through on heroic elite I almost got enough for an upgrade gem. (one of the 25/25/25/25 type.) Heroic is going to be like 7 runs of the chain to make a complete fully upgrade item on average (depending on end reward trades and getting the right things, not just getting a load of one thing sometimes).

[Baktiotha]

This grind is for end game, heroic is much less grindy. In one run through on heroic elite I almost got enough for an upgrade gem. (one of the 25/25/25/25 type.) Heroic is going to be like 7 runs of the chain to make a complete fully upgrade item on average (depending on end reward trades and getting the right things, not just getting a load of one thing sometimes).

IMO the heroic gear is not worth crafting. Heroic lives are not difficult at all and there are enough long-time players that they can carry even very new players through existing heroic content. To me that signals heroic lives as being just the necessary first step before getting to the real game.

Heroic crafting is only useful if it produces "beginner epic" gear -- something to fill the gap from L20 to L24 (or something in that range). That is about the point where other epic gear starts to become available and holds the character from L25 to L28 (more or less). Then comes the "legendary" gear that is L28+.

If farming Slavers for mats it should be for materials that will generate that legendary gear. IMO the heroic gear is nice but a distraction and becomes obsolete too fast simply because the character levels beyond the heroic gear's useful life too rapidly.

I would change the system to drop only epic style materials in 0-1 in heroic normal, 1-2 in heroic hard, 1-3 in heroic elite, 2-3 in epic/legendary normal, 3-5 in epic/legendary hard and 5-7 in epic/legendary elite. I would get rid of epic/legendary casual altogether as I think that is an oxymoron -- it is epic (or legendary) but its casual.

By controlling the drop rates you avoid substituting heroic runs for epic/legendary runs. Heroics might have only a 20-30% chance to drop materials while epic/legendary would have 100% drop rates (as an example).

[Blastyswa]

I am kind of confused here. while your playtime math and all that is impressive, why do you want to make the gear (which probably is the best you can grind for right now) a low hanging fruit for 'people who are looking for a decent set for alts or new players'? It is not supposed to be alt-gear. and not every alt needs it.

The issue is that currently, every other item in the game is alt-gear. I personally have about 6 ToEE sets, a decent amount of LGS items, several DoJ/MoD items, and many items from LHoX/LTS across 15 characters. A lot of this was acquired within the first few months of release; compared to that, if I put in 5-6 hours on slavers (About how much I spent on the other updates) per week, I won't be able to complete more than 1-2 items before the next update.

Personally, I don't think power jumps like new gear should be designed around players with 1 character and lots of playtime; releasing more TR possibilities (A 5th sphere that includes warlock/artificer, more iconics, racial TR, etc.) is the better design path for those players that want to maximize the power of a single player. Designing such powerful items to be attainable only by putting in 250-300 hours (That's about the time for a 5-piece set according to my previous calculations) puts a huge power gap between the strength of that single character of players with lots of playtime and characters with less playtime put into them.

[Bozone]

As a casual player, I don't bother checking out the new items/crafting in updates any more (way too many separate "crafting" systems/ingredients/collectibles in this game IMO). They're basically meaningless to me because I generally will never get there.

For instance, if the time estimates above are close to accurate, it will take me a year or two of playing to get these items you're talking about (whatever they are) on my main if I concentrated on these quests during that time. But I don't like playing the same quest for a year or two so I just ignore the items. I put all my ingredients and collectibles in the shared bank crafting storage. Then if i pull an upgradeable item I'll see what it is on the wiki when I get a chance and maybe check if I have the ingredients to make an upgrade.

The last time I really tried to plan out getting specific gear was TOD rings, etc. prior to MOTU. Lucky for me you don't really need all the nice weapons and equipment, but it does remove an element of the game.

[HungarianRhapsody]

They can't make new content so tough that only the top 0.1% can barely finish it.

I don't know why you think that's true. It's entirely reasonable for 1% of the content to be dedicated to the top 1% of the game. Having just 2 quests that are absurdly hard to the point that only 1% of the player base can barely complete it on Epic/Legendary/Whatever Elite would be great. It gives the best players something to play in and it gives everyone else something to strive for.

What's wrong with having 1% of the game targeted at the top 1% of the player base?

[HungarianRhapsody]

This grind is for end game, heroic is much less grindy. In one run through on heroic elite I almost got enough for an upgrade gem. (one of the 25/25/25/25 type.) Heroic is going to be like 7 runs of the chain to make a complete fully upgrade item on average (depending on end reward trades and getting the right things, not just getting a load of one thing sometimes).

The big grind is for the end game. For now. This quest chain won't be end game for long and it's still going to be just as grindy after it stops being end game.

And why on earth would someone run the entire chain 7ish times just to make ML8 gear that they'll abandon by level 14 at the latest? Even 7 runs though the chain is silly for gear that you're going to abandon after less than a solid evening's worth of playing.

I ran the chain because A) it's new and B) it's old and C) I want that trinket.

[Thrudh]

I don't know why you think that's true. It's entirely reasonable for 1% of the content to be dedicated to the top 1% of the game. Having just 2 quests that are absurdly hard to the point that only 1% of the player base can barely complete it on Epic/Legendary/Whatever Elite would be great. It gives the best players something to play in and it gives everyone else something to strive for.

What's wrong with having 1% of the game targeted at the top 1% of the player base?

You're right... I was thinking of making elite in general so tough that it challenges people with triple completionist past-lives and all the best gear.

I agree that they can (and probably should) make 2-3 new quests where elite is 10x harder than other elite quests (Can they do that? Can they hand-craft a quest where normal and hard are slightly tougher than like-level normal and hard, but where elite is 10x harder than like-level elite?)

[RobbinB]

I avoid all grinds. So yeah dropped loot is my thang

There are so many depressing grinds in DDO it's getting a bit stale that they never have a single new idea whenever they churn out another pack. It's the same old formula. Long adventure, some basic naff named items, to make them worthwhile you have to run the adventure 150 times - per toon. It seems to be the exact same thing every time.

I don't even pay attention to these packs anymore because you just know exactly what to expect now before you have even read the release notes.

I prefer Everquest 2 of old - you just had a chance for an uber item to drop, each run. It didnt feel like a grind because you always got that "todays the day!" feeling doing an adventure. Instead of "ok, 50 runs down only another 100 to do" before my +2 leather armour of binky's behind found in an Otyugh's Arse "It looks like this item could be very special if only you had the wombat rectum ointment to clean it with" - 7000 shards of dropped wombat rectum required. Or 200 astral shards...

There should always be some sort of ultra-rare drop possible in any content that isn't really tied in to the main crafting/farming/loot of that content. I think this is the major opportunity that DDO has passed on to the detriment of the game. It could be something as simple as a very rare unbound unique augment. Your guildies ask you if you can help in Quest X and you would be like "well, I don't plan on running that 100s of times so no point in the crafted stuff and I already have the one named loot item I wanted from that quest....oh wait, maybe the super unique augment will drop....ok, count me in."

[Saekee]

The big grind is for the end game. For now. This quest chain won't be end game for long and it's still going to be just as grindy after it stops being end game.

And why on earth would someone run the entire chain 7ish times just to make ML8 gear that they'll abandon by level 14 at the latest? Even 7 runs though the chain is silly for gear that you're going to abandon after less than a solid evening's worth of playing.

I ran the chain because A) it's new and B) it's old and C) I want that trinket.

heroics have become ridiculously easy for TR'd characters...but that trinket...shiny...

[RobbinB]

A lot of this was acquired within the first few months of release; compared to that, if I put in 5-6 hours on slavers (About how much I spent on the other updates) per week, I won't be able to complete more than 1-2 items before the next update.

Why should you have to have all the loot/crafted stuff from this content completed prior to the next update? Oh right, because Turbine has no idea how to control loot-flation. Loot released with new content should be, on average, only marginally better than what came before. It should however be uniquely useful, perhaps due to the spots where certain affixes are placed or the combination of those affixes, or by virtue of having a new affix that doesn't previously exist (or is extremely useful/necessary for fighting the boss of the particular content).

For example, what is the rationale for slavers crafting having +17 attributes? This is crazy. If lgs has +15 only available on a weapon, than +15 on a non-weapon slot of your choosing is more than powerful enough. Going to +17 is just invalidating content. I currently have lot of toons wearing the Elite Necro stuff which has +11 stats (and that was way overpowered when it was released). Even +13 would be a step up. How the heck did we get to +17 so fast?

And how come virtually no named loot in DDO is "consumable". The great thing about a rare drop of a consumable item is you can make it overpowered (intentionally or accidentally) - because it gets consumed so is never "ok, I got my item, sayonara to this content forever".

[Chai]

If I wasn't able to run LE I would quit the game - as simple as that.

If I had to run LN I would quit and delete the game immediately - wouldn't even think twice about it. So if you are a casual player running LN you must run 200 times to make an item lol. Those folks just play a few hours a week. There is no reason for them to even step in the new content.

If someone wasn't able to run LE, they wouldn't need top end loot and therefore will not be worried about attaining it as soon as possible.

Real casual players (not ForumDDO® casual players but actual real casual players), do not play to grind for top end loot at all.

The reason for them to step into the new content is to play through it, same as they do with all other content, new or old.

[Chai]

You're right... I was thinking of making elite in general so tough that it challenges people with triple completionist past-lives and all the best gear.

I agree that they can (and probably should) make 2-3 new quests where elite is 10x harder than other elite quests (Can they do that? Can they hand-craft a quest where normal and hard are slightly tougher than like-level normal and hard, but where elite is 10x harder than like-level elite?)

It would get lobbied and filibustered back down to regular difficulty levels shortly thereafter, with the rubber stamp of "good idea but poor implementation" tacked on for good measure.

[slarden]

If someone wasn't able to run LE, they wouldn't need top end loot and therefore will not be worried about attaining it as soon as possible.

Real casual players (not ForumDDO® casual players but actual real casual players), do not play to grind for top end loot at all.

The reason for them to step into the new content is to play through it, same as they do with all other content, new or old.

I know all about casual players because I consider myself casual, just with a higher play time than most.

DDO does not work like that- every person has their own goals and objectives. At least for the people I know making progress is important.

[Gonzo120]

In my experience in running the full chain once on LE super zerg style (6 players, 3 warlocks for trash a furyshotter for bosses and 2 other players) the drop rate is still verylow, and on LE, where it is the highest, its still going to take months or years to get all the items you need. At about 1 hour for a full run through (It was actually about 1 hour 10 minutes, but it was my own first attempt at it on the live server, and I'm pretty sure it'd be possible to shave off 10 minutes) I got 10-40 of each ingredient, which would be 10-40 runs, or 10-40 hours, not counting the end reward pickup. Counting the end reward pickup, for a single item type, it'd be more like 7-14 runs, or 7-14 hours. Obviously you also can't just go in and run 40 runs thanks to ransack.

That's 7-14 (Going with the nicer number, and 10.5 on average) hours per gem. With 5 gems per item, that's 52.5 hours per item on average, assuming you're specifically taking the ingredient you need for your bonus. I'm also overlooking the different ingredient costs and drop rates a little right now to come up with a relatively accurate number quickly instead of spending 12 hours making an absolutely accurate number. at 52.5 hours per item, it'll take 262.5 hours to make a single Slaver's set; playing 8 hours a day on saturdays/sundays (Which is a little much for people with any responsibilities/plans) and 3 hours a weekday of just slavers (Also kind of high, that basically means coming home from work/school/whatever else, logging into DDO and playing slavers twice, eating, playing slavers again once, doing any interest outside of DDO for 30 minutes to an hour, and then going to sleep), not DDO in general but just specifically slavers, it'd take 8-9 weeks to get that single set, or about 2 months.

That's the time investment for making a single set for a single character of slavers. Any errors in crafting, or if you change your mind on what to craft, will result in an extension of that time. This also assumes that your ingredients per run are fairly evenly distributed (Mat types all being equal in drop chance) and that every end reward you take extra ingredients of the particular type you need at the moment. For someone who's playing 4 hours a day on sundays, or only 8 hours total weekends, or 2 hours a day on weekdays, it can easily take 3 months to craft a single set, which is the entire time until the next update, where a certain new special item in one particular spot could require crafting a new slavers item, or invalidate the set entirely.

For players with multiple characters, this issue is even worse; I personally have 15 characters I actively play. Assuming I'm able to play as much as the above numbers, which I typically am not able to, it would take about 2 years and 8 months to get 5 piece sets on all my characters. For anyone with even less playtime, or more characters, making items for all of them becomes even more unrealistic. The drop rates feel similar to ToEE, but a big issue with Slaver's is there isn't any major shortcuts; ToEE part 1, where most of the grind happens, it's completely possible to have sub 20 minute runs after you become familiar with the quest, even as low as 10 minute runs if players split up and work together a little. Slavers is much more linear than ToEE, requiring players to clear a vast majority of the quest as mandatory, which really limits shortcut opportunities.

I personally think that the time required to craft items should be reduced by 80-90%. If this content is intended to be the sole attention holder for players with one character and an above average playtime until u33, then it is made perfectly; however, I personally don't particularly enjoy spending 31 hours a week for 3 months doing 1 hour runs through the same content at maximum zerg speed, and I think it's safe to assume that sentiment is shared by quite a few players. Either increasing drop rates by 9-10x (Inflation to make time/ingredient gain more reasonable), reducing ingredient costs to 10-20% of current cost (Still getting 10-40 ingredients per run, but making a gem every 1-2 runs instead of every 7-14), or making all types of ingredients drop in a single chest (all 6 ingredients drop per chest, reduces randomness).

It's great to have content with high longevity, but personally I don't think that's what this content is; I expect, without drop rate changes, these quests will be ran hard for 2 months by players with one character to get a 5 piece set and then never ran again. Players with more alts or less time, or both, will play the chain incredibly infrequently because it's a long chain, the ingredient drop rates are very low, and honestly it's just a lot of the same stuff; a few things like bees and the cheese room were obviously thrown in there to mix things up, but after the first run those aren't interesting anymore and the rest of the quests are just running, killing packs of mobs, and pulling levers. My first run on live I was having conversations in guild chat and real life while playing: talk about low intensity.

High longevity can be achieved much better by making a quest people constantly want to return to; with this chain offering little outside of massive grind items and some nice named items (xp is low, time is high, mob density is high) it's just not that exciting of a quest to replay. I'd personally rank this among quests like sorrowdusk quests, which are ran infrequently because of the time to get to and run them and the repetitive feel of them despite some very nice clicky items coming from both quests, ToEE, which is a grindfest for players making throwers and some TWF builds and not many others, and threnal, which despite having a few decent end reward items is rarely ran in part because of relatively low xp/time and a high time investment. Trying to make this quest more like Haunted Halls, still ran for the iconic loot that still hasn't become outdated (Unique ring effect, unique and solid necklace, unique saves boosting tower shield, stat boosting orb, spell absorption trinket), The Pit (Still ran for xp and the end optional, because xp/time is balanced better than slavers and the club has it's own benefits), or Study in Sable (Unique mechanics that make it a common fun quest to run to break up the monotony of EN x2's and LE ingredient zerg's).

Here's a fix.....make all items UNBOUND.....run for what you need and trade off what extras you have. Everybody wins. Develope new content that which purpose is to entertain rather than seem like labors.

[SirValentine]

I completed a run of the Slavers, and received Legendary Shackles, Legendary Five Rings, and Legendary Chains.

I did all the optionals and chests, and received 4 Legendary Broken Shackles. It takes 400 of them to make one Slaver Gem, and each of these items can hold five gems.

Do I have to run this quest 1500 times to complete my items?

What did I miss?

I've done the full run-through of the chain 6 times now, on Elite. For my chain end reward, I've been consistently taking 20 of whichever of the more-common ingredients I have the least of. The rarer ingredients seem to be dropping at about 1/5 the rate, but are needed for crafting at only 1/7 the rate, so they are not likely to be the limiting factor.

After 6 runs, I have 257, of the needed 700 for a complete item, of my lowest ingredient (and close to the same of the 2nd lowest). So I'm looking at maybe 17-18 full runs on Elite. (End chests that drop ingredients will ransack, even though small ingredient chests don't.) That's to make one item. At, say, an hour and a half per run...25-30ish play-hours.

I only managed 6 runs because I was on vacation this week. Once I'm back at work, it'll likely be 2 per week at most (on the weekend), so much slower progress. I'll try to keep that up, until I get 1 item crafted I most want, and that may be it for me, I think. At one point, I was contemplating using the set bonus, but that seems years away at best; I've deleted that from my plans, since by the time I got it, there will have been multiple new updates of better gear.