100 Runs of Slavers to create One Slaver Gem?

[In_Like_Flynn]

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?

[Vorthian]

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?

Which difficulty did you run?

[guardiankaiser]

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?

They mentioned they were looking into changing the drop rates (when it was on preview) I had heard someone mentioning it would take 100 runs to pull together a set, I guess they looked in to the drop rates

[Nyata]

LN seems to drop precisely 1 per lock box.

on LE rates were between 6 and 12... at least that I saw.

Also: as end reward you can select 5 or 20 of the materials, think 5 is the more rare ones. And that is not dependent on difficulty run.

edit: so on elite 10 runs will probably give you 3 different upgrades with 3 different materials.

[Blastyswa]

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?

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).

[moo_cow]

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 did all the opts on just Legendary Hard and I received at least 20 different ingredients. Just in the first quest.

[Enoach]

Hmmm, seems they are either...

1. Creating a system where the effort is not knocked out in a single session
2. Created a system that encourages players to have multiple characters to run through it so as to avoid the ransack

As a note, most players I know that have multiple characters never strike out to get them all everything. Most will work on different systems and leverage their other characters to help speed up the process such as barriers like Ransack.

I like the fact that these are in the end reward system as well. That is a good option. Means more choice between crafting, renown, comms/seeds, or an item in the list that might work out better for you or to sell.

I've run over 100 ToDs and still never got the ring I'm looking for. Running this 100+ times with a guarantee that I will get what I'm after seems like a minor issue.

[Amorais]

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...

[NaturalHazard]

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...

Blinky Bill shards?

[slarden]

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.

[Thrudh]

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.

You really don't understand why casual players play this game, do you? (Hint: It's not to grind out items)

[slarden]

You really don't understand why casual players play this game, do you? (Hint: It's not to grind out items)

I understand more about it than you realize, I started the game with real life friends that are very casual. I think everyone likes the feeling of making progress like the old heroic normal shroud for example. You don't get that with slave lord crafting unless you run on elite.

[Enderoc]

The only reason to make end game items anyway is to make grinding through epic levels easier for Alts and new lives. Other than that you just reincarnate with shiny items in the bank you can't really use until real late in the game.

Random and crafted gear now is good enough now to carry both new players and veterans alike to their points of destination. You really don't need to get those legendary items right here right now. Just whittle away at it as you just enjoy. If you have a completionist, create an alt and play that and just end your daily, weekly whatever session with your trophy character doing his/her particular grind for whatever you are trying for.

And when you are sick of that reincarnate that completionist into a build made solely for zerging for favor through heroics...so you can use the TP to build your Alts up and start using them to take their place grinding. One for favor, the other for gear.

[PermaBanned]

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?

The difficulty options above Normal? Nice to see they're listening to the "please don't make fast Normal rinse & repeates the most rewarding" group this time around IMO.

I understand more about it than you realize, I started the game with real life friends that are very casual. I think everyone likes the feeling of making progress like the old heroic normal shroud for example. You don't get that with slave lord crafting unless you run on elite.

With Heroic Normal Shroud progress was also slow & time consuming, especially as there were no RTBs and especially especially if one didnt have a stable of farming alts - it wasn't exactly "casual friendly" by my recollection as a newish player back then.

As for currently, Elite is the difficulty the squeaky wheels want everything to happen on, and the Devs designs have clearly been catering to that end.

[krimsonrane]

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.

yea. that is pretty sad but par for the course for today's turbine team. Think about it. They are selling ottos boxes for what a brand new 50+ hour game costs. Everything is a never ending grind and by the time you get what you wanted its no longer viable. I just crafted my second leg shroud item and already another pack has better gear with another grind of months. I guarantee the next update or the one after that will have plus 20 stat items making everything else obsolete. Seriously... when +17 stats and +22 skill items are becoming nothing more than twink gear for leveling your taking this power creep thing way to far and people are starting to feel manipulated like rats in a maze.

I like strategy. I like planning ahead. I like completing my plans and I don't mind working hard or playing hard to bring my plans into fruition. But lawd... you keep moving the durn goal post before we get a chance to make a 1st down.

[BigErkyKid]

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. ....
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).

This is IMHO a very good analysis.

So, day 1, and the quests have already been "zerged" in the highest difficulty setting. So far for challenging content.

They are holding our attention almost exclusively with massive grinds. A casual player will step in, play a couple times, then realize that: i) doing an item means repeating the quest ad nauseam, ii) once the 1 item they might want drops there isn't really anything in it for them. A casual player might treat this as a kind of RPG, but in that sense the game is delivering very little.

Content like this also strongly favors getting an easy button build. Play it on a warlock, then play it on say an assassin, the "efficiency" with which it is completed on a warlock is just so much higher.

I question the viability of a model a la ToEE, with a massive ingredient grind. I think it would be way better if the content was slowly beaten. Imagine a dungeon with levels or parts. On release, people can only get up to 10% and loot a couple quests. As wr figure out strategies, we get to 20-30% and so on. Making so that >50% requires a super group and strategy, so that completion is never "guaranteed". Would also be interesting to pepper it with extreme challenge optionals that you can attempt along the way. These are reasons to step in and try different things at different points. Running it 200 times in an easy button build for whatever ingredients is getting old, it is simply very boring.

And also, given the time to make an item, can we get an statement on future power creep? Is this going to be stable for a while or will it soon be outdated like what we had with DoJ? Turbine has to understand that people won't bother making items to then have them invalidated in a couple of updates.


Overall not impressed. I wonder what the game's development model is. What kind of end game will DDO be offering in the next year or so?

[Elfishski]

Overall not impressed. I wonder what the game's development model is. What kind of end game will DDO be offering in the next year or so?

+20 items in U33
+25 items in U34
expansion: now with +40 items!

All with no new or interesting tricks for monsters, all feeding multiplicatively into making the power players/builds exponentially more powerful than 2nd tier options.

I wasn't here for it, but it seems level 20 cap was far more sensible, with capped max stats for a long time, that were then supplemented by items with interesting and unique effects to try and fit together, keeping a wide variety of raids still relevant at the same time. Now it's just bigger numbers on every update, with all previous updates deemed by devs to be irrelevant.

[Artrish]

... 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......

I can't remember what pack I lost interest in aiming to grind for something in, was a very long time ago. I had been burnt a few times, grinding non stop for a similar 2-3 months as described then the gear being outdated within 2 weeks of getting it. I remember feeling annoyed by it and disheartened to ever follow new content.

I find ddo most fun to just never aim to get anything in particular. Just having a vague idea of what I would like to do with some if I ever got them, then just wander of on adventures and adapting as I got lucky now and then. The thrill of planning and achieving the plan is non existant due to how often I find I need to change build strategies and design choices though the questing overall is still pleasant.

[kaipan]

I think it would be way better if the content was slowly beaten. Imagine a dungeon with levels or parts. On release, people can only get up to 10% and loot a couple quests. As wr figure out strategies, we get to 20-30% and so on. Making so that >50% requires a super group and strategy, so that completion is never "guaranteed". Would also be interesting to pepper it with extreme challenge optionals that you can attempt along the way. These are reasons to step in and try different things at different points. Running it 200 times in an easy button build for whatever ingredients is getting old, it is simply very boring.

That would be so awesome. Truly awesome.
And it seems it would be so easy to do, but somehow you can't have it for no visible reason at all

[LongshotBro]

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!"

it took me quite a while to make a TOEE weapon, and i had a lot of fun over that time doing the quest here and there to get the shrooms. typically i don't grind quests but that one i did slightly more often than i normally would because i really wanted that weapon. Slavers i'll probably approach much the same way. sometimes i'll take it slow and relaxing, get all the optionals, etc. others i'll run through it more directly.

i definitely don't want to see new content come out and players completely own it and all the items in entirety within a day, a few days or even a week.