Main problem with Isle of Dread

[Trillea]

For a long time, players have been saying "Give us lower level quests without undead" - and Dread delivered. Players have also been saying "Give us fairly straight-forward quests without a lot of backtracking and aren't too convoluted" - and once again Dread delivered. So why is it I never see a low-level group for IoD? I will tell you - it's because of the gawdawful runs from quest to quest out there. Ravenloft is even bigger, but you know what? It has a teleporter that send you to the quest! And so you see that run ALL THE TIME. Devs, I thought you learned your lesson as both Ravenloft and Sharn Syndicate have the quest entrances either in the same place, close to each other, quest teleportation, or some combination therein. What went wrong here?

The explorer area is very thematic but you know what? It's not very fun to run through time and again when going from quest to quest. As an explorer area in and of itself it is pretty nice. It has a good variety of enemies, from little dinky ones to the big T rex. But noone - and I mean noone - likes running through gigantic explorer zones when they have a 50% XP pot running. So it gets skipped life after life. Please do yourselves and the players a favor and provide quest teleporters like in Ravenloft. Thank you for coming to my TED (The Evils of Dread) talk.

[Dandonk]

You're most likely right, since I also rarely see LFMs in heroics.

But for me, personally, I don't find it that bad, and my TR group runs it every life now.

[rabidfox]

I pug it every TR since Dread was added. But it has the same issue SM, Fey, Sharn all had when released... lots of people who don't own it yet because they're waiting for it to be available for DDO points. I haven't met anyone who won't run it because you have run out to the quests , but have had several people drop from party when I moved onto doing Dread because they didn't have access to it.

[Yamani]

It's probably xp/min + difficulty of content that is factored more then the wilderness. All new content has this same issue of over abundance of mobs in them. That makes them take longer vs say 3 barrel cove where mob packs are 1/2 the size and hp of mobs is significantly lower at similar level, and similar/more xp. Heck the intro quest to dread has some of the worst water elementals in game especially for their level in heroics.

[Trillea]

It's probably xp/min + difficulty of content that is factored more then the wilderness. All new content has this same issue of over abundance of mobs in them. That makes them take longer vs say 3 barrel cove where mob packs are 1/2 the size and hp of mobs is significantly lower at similar level, and similar/more xp. Heck the intro quest to dread has some of the worst water elementals in game especially for their level in heroics.

I have to disagree here. The quests (except spiders and flies) are not very bad for monster density. Yes the ettercaps hit hard but other than that it's about average for a lv 7 quest chain. And since we can crit them, it only makes sense that they can hit harder than the hordes of undead.

[Vellrad]

1. There is already plenty of quests of lvl7.
2. Some people are waiting for expansion for TP rather than cash only.

[Villefere]

The Ravenloft teleports are ridiculous. They made the entire explorer area completely useless. Feywild has no teleports and is popular.

[Dendrix]

it's because of the gawdawful runs from quest to quest out there.

Click your invis item, click your horse. It's like a minute from teleport in point to quest, and same for most quest to quest runs.
Only the last one takes longer to run to

[ahpook]

The Ravenloft teleports are ridiculous. They made the entire explorer area completely useless. Feywild has no teleports and is popular.

There is no causality in the presence of teleporters.

If the Barovian wilderness is useless its not because of teleporters but because there is nothing sufficiently interesting or rewarding. Random encounter locations make it impossible to do the rares for chests (and if you do find one, the chests only have junk). Finding the scrolls is too finicky with the random spawn points so those are too tedious to complete. Many people run the Amber Temple path for slayers and they only do that because there is a teleporter to the start point.

Conversely the Feywild has predictable explorers and rare spawns so you can be rewarded for your effort should you want to run the explorer. And chests have a chance at named loot so they are rewarding and doubly so in Legendary when you might get a feytwisted chest.

Forcing people to run the explorer by omitting teleporters doesn't make the explorer "useful". Making an explorer that is rewarding is what makes it frequented by Adventurers. As you can see by this thread, if the area is not rewarding outside of the forced march, then people just invis run/ride and ignore the explorer anyway. How the heck is that not the definition of useless?

[mikarddo]

3bc + Delaras + a few more pretty much already takes you to the juicy level 9 quests for xp, so level 7 is a fairly dead level. Atleast for those running xp pots.

I dont think it has much to do with the wilderness, more that the xp isnt competitive with other sources around the same level. If the xp was amazing the quests would be run no matter the wilderness.

Feywild and Saltmarch in heroics suffer from the same issue, just not good enough xp.

It doesnt matter for me though as I just run and enjoy those areas in legendary levels.

[Trillea]

3bc + Delaras + a few more pretty much already takes you to the juicy level 9 quests for xp, so level 7 is a fairly dead level.

If there were teleporters in Dread I would run that over 3BC all day. Not a fan of 3BC.

[Edvarg]

I pug it every TR since Dread was added. But it has the same issue SM, Fey, Sharn all had when released... lots of people who don't own it yet because they're waiting for it to be available for DDO points. I haven't met anyone who won't run it because you have run out to the quests , but have had several people drop from party when I moved onto doing Dread because they didn't have access to it.

I can partially answer that… Daybreak’s purchase system is so buggered that despite using multiple computers, multiple credit cards, and I’ve lost count on how many tickets have been submitted all to no avail. I simply cannot purchase any expansion pack via their online store since Daybreak took over. Believe me I wanted those bloody unicorn and dino mounts and all the goodies that come with the packs. I’d love to be able to instantly teleport to the areas instead of running through the harbour. Sadly after hours of troubleshooting I’ve resigned myself to purchasing the expansions via points which is the only system that still works.. heck I can’t even renew my VIP.

Bring back the ability to buy them online via codes instead of ingame purchases as that system worked a bleep of a lot better than this one ever has!

[mikarddo]

If there were teleporters in Dread I would run that over 3BC all day. Not a fan of 3BC.

That is obviously fair and there is no accounting for taste. I like the xp in 3bc far too much to skip that though. Getting 8-10k xp / min is pretty **** nice for low level heroics. I run 3bc from 5 to 7-8 though so it would not directly compete with Dread.

[kmoustakas]

For a long time, players have been saying "Give us lower level quests without undead" - and Dread delivered. Players have also been saying "Give us fairly straight-forward quests without a lot of backtracking and aren't too convoluted" - and once again Dread delivered. So why is it I never see a low-level group for IoD? I will tell you - it's because of the gawdawful runs from quest to quest out there. Ravenloft is even bigger, but you know what? It has a teleporter that send you to the quest! And so you see that run ALL THE TIME. Devs, I thought you learned your lesson as both Ravenloft and Sharn Syndicate have the quest entrances either in the same place, close to each other, quest teleportation, or some combination therein. What went wrong here?

The explorer area is very thematic but you know what? It's not very fun to run through time and again when going from quest to quest. As an explorer area in and of itself it is pretty nice. It has a good variety of enemies, from little dinky ones to the big T rex. But noone - and I mean noone - likes running through gigantic explorer zones when they have a 50% XP pot running. So it gets skipped life after life. Please do yourselves and the players a favor and provide quest teleporters like in Ravenloft. Thank you for coming to my TED (The Evils of Dread) talk.

I haven't had a problem with this ever since horses personally. Of course, everyone's experience is different.

[Arkat]

I pug it every TR since Dread was added. But it has the same issue SM, Fey, Sharn all had when released... lots of people who don't own it yet because they're waiting for it to be available for DDO points. I haven't met anyone who won't run it because you have run out to the quests , but have had several people drop from party when I moved onto doing Dread because they didn't have access to it.

Yes. They could easily put expansions in the DDO Store right away for DDO Points. They would just have to start at a LOT of points. As time passes, they could be priced at fewer and fewer points.

[Phoenicis]

For a long time, players have been saying "Give us lower level quests without undead" - and Dread delivered. Players have also been saying "Give us fairly straight-forward quests without a lot of backtracking and aren't too convoluted" - and once again Dread delivered. So why is it I never see a low-level group for IoD? I will tell you - it's because of the gawdawful runs from quest to quest out there. Ravenloft is even bigger, but you know what? It has a teleporter that send you to the quest! And so you see that run ALL THE TIME. Devs, I thought you learned your lesson as both Ravenloft and Sharn Syndicate have the quest entrances either in the same place, close to each other, quest teleportation, or some combination therein. What went wrong here?

The explorer area is very thematic but you know what? It's not very fun to run through time and again when going from quest to quest. As an explorer area in and of itself it is pretty nice. It has a good variety of enemies, from little dinky ones to the big T rex. But noone - and I mean noone - likes running through gigantic explorer zones when they have a 50% XP pot running. So it gets skipped life after life. Please do yourselves and the players a favor and provide quest teleporters like in Ravenloft. Thank you for coming to my TED (The Evils of Dread) talk.

1) The run from quest to quest is not bad. Barovia is worse, as are a couple of the runs in sands.

2) Once you complete the quests, there are teleporters to take you to them.

3) the only way I can see the run to the quest being 'gawdaweful' is if you pick up one quest, run to it, recall, pick up the next. And sir, that is on you.

[Phoenicis]

If there were teleporters in Dread I would run that over 3BC all day. Not a fan of 3BC.

There are. Set up exactly the same as TBC.

[Scrag]

The Ravenloft teleports are ridiculous. They made the entire explorer area completely useless. Feywild has no teleports and is popular.

I just got done doing feywild. I hated the long trips in the second half of the quest chain, and didn't know until two nights ago that exiting the hunt got you close to things like the hag quest.

I had just finished IoD and didnt like the crazy walkout to the temple at the top of the map. The way points I found didnt make it conducive to get around.

[Igrovin]

I can see how the long walks is pretty annoying and tiresome. I did the stuff without a horse, chasing after a higher level player who was pulling me through things

One of my personal issues with it is that a number of the dinosaurs are untouchable until you ****ed them off enough. So trying to do stuff like assassinations from hiding is utterly impossible.

[Scrag]

I like the xp in 3bc far too much to skip that though. Getting 8-10k xp / min is pretty **** nice for low level heroics. I run 3bc from 5 to 7-8 though so it would not directly compete with Dread.

Ok, so I just read the fine print. How are you getting that much exp? I burnt out dread and feywild with my two chars and when I tr i will want some new action.

Is there is some sort of trick to rake that in?