Dreadmage Journeyman Misplaced?

[Dean]

Dreadmages in Kohlingen? This is just getting tedious and driving me off the surface.

[Hunter548]

Leveling at mid to late teens on the surface is the worst thing in the world currently. You need a boat to access most of the better dungeons,

All the boat dungeons are actually really bad now, with the exception of Blackfin (And the spawns there are a huge pain if they spawn in the right ratio). I nonironically would prefer to grind FoD for 5 exp a head rather than deal with Dread Mages/Talassian Mages.

[Miaou]

All the boat dungeons are actually really bad now, with the exception of Blackfin (And the spawns there are a huge pain if they spawn in the right ratio). I nonironically would prefer to grind FoD for 5 exp a head rather than deal with Dread Mages/Talassian Mages.

Yes, I am aware. The few times I was able to grab a trip with someone who had access with a boat, our only option was Kohl. Now, we circle grind Blackfin because it's the only place we can go to. And the boss is still a chance luck of defeating due to it spamming five SoVs, WoF, and drowning you. But you can't just fight it, got to play whack a mole with four fixtures first.

Talassians are a bane. Wilting spam is the worst thing in the world. I pretty much slowly walk through orclands after buying a summon IX scroll and pray their dumb druids don't dispel it- Oh well, they did. Guess I'll just walk around the Crags and dream of finally reaching epics.

[Exultate]

I
@Cortex: Hard to reach epic level dungeon. (Early, even.) So, not really meant for soloing. Greater Spell Breach and dismissal/banishment, I feel, are common staples in every full arcane caster's kit by the time they hit epics, not counting specialty mages that don't have access for some reason. Open up with banish/dismissal, throw a greater spell breach, and then knockdown spam the mage.

You will run out of spells in 1-2 packs of these mobs doing that, since you'll need either greater breach or mord's to knock off all the spells they sequence on to themselves.

Suggesting that the devs don't know what the monster is capable of because of the inability to plan for epic level spell combat is a little needlessly insulting, I feel, especially since unless those mobs all have ungodly SR I could probably solo that spawn group as Astarial and several more of the same group without even changing my spell slots.

Addressing a more overall trend- Can we please stop with the threads asking for epic challenges to be less (epicly) challenging?

You can make an epic level dungeon extremely interesting and challenging without giving the mobs sequenced DR/Biteback that triggers the second they see the PCs. With Weave Masters gone, you don't have infinite breaches to deal with these stupid, badly-designed mobs, so you're left to either have your party mage spam breaches at 5-6 of them until they're out of spells, or you're left to waste charges on expensive wands to punch through.

Given the fact that mobs now drop barely enough gold to cover the cost of healing kits, this makes the value proposition of burning wands to clear PvE content even less appealing than it was before, and it should come as no surprise that areas that are infected with these mobs end up being completely neglected in favor of other, better-designed ones. For a boss monster, a charge or two off a wand is an acceptable sacrifice. For every single mage mob in an enormous area, the marginal cost of 600 gold in healing supplies or 300 gold in UMD is not worth the marginal benefit of 20 experience.

[JediMindTrix]

This sounds anti-grind script tier silly

[Aelryn Bloodmoon]

My last contribution to this thread until I go testing for myself is to respond to the sentiment of why I'm so persistent in my objection to the nature of this thread.

It goes something like this. At level 18+, your character is a major power to be reckoned with in the world, and so is anything with a CR capable of providing adequate challenge to them. Many 18th level characters or CR18 mobs could wipe out entire battalions of your "average soldier" in mere seconds.

When you start discussing things of such epic scope, the imagination part of my brain goes into all sorts of happy, hyperactive overdrive, painting vivid pictures of epic clashes that the pixels on my monitor do barely any justice to. And the harder it is, the better it is.

Now, try to imagine this happy place that stimulates my creative processes shattering into a million pieces as people ask to make these instances less challenging OOC, rather than getting together and rocking the Snuggle a Bugbear out of it because, yeah, it's hard, but we're BAMFs like that and we can anyway.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment. *shrug*

[Cortex]

dude try to imagine having 9th circle spamming mages in a lvl 15 zone

this kills my will to play surface because dungeons are becoming progressively worse and my will to play UD because i cant go anywhere because every dungeon is stock full

dread mages are not CR18 worthy, theyre mobs meant for late epics, regardless if theyre initiate, journeymen or masters. whoever is adding them has no idea about what theyre capable of, they cant have, its like someone or something is actively sabotaging the dungeons

[Sab1]

My last contribution to this thread until I go testing for myself is to respond to the sentiment of why I'm so persistent in my objection to the nature of this thread.

It goes something like this. At level 18+, your character is a major power to be reckoned with in the world, and so is anything with a CR capable of providing adequate challenge to them. Many 18th level characters or CR18 mobs could wipe out entire battalions of your "average soldier" in mere seconds.

When you start discussing things of such epic scope, the imagination part of my brain goes into all sorts of happy, hyperactive overdrive, painting vivid pictures of epic clashes that the pixels on my monitor do barely any justice to. And the harder it is, the better it is.

Now, try to imagine this happy place that stimulates my creative processes shattering into a million pieces as people ask to make these instances less challenging OOC, rather than getting together and rocking the Snuggle a Bugbear out of it because, yeah, it's hard, but we're BAMFs like that and we can anyway.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment. *shrug*

AMEN

No way to make everyone happy. Of course the super powerful build is going to have easy time, rp builds will struggle. Some things like mages and their spells will be more difficult for some and not a challenge for others. But the orclands and baator also showed, if you make a place semi easy, give good loot, and good xp it becomes farm city. So how do the devs make a place challenging for a super powerful epic and not destroy a squishy rp build? You can't.

[Cortex]

Why should all dungeons be super difficult for what is meant to be a roleplay server? Being too difficult is more of a problem than being too easy, you can at least gimp yourself if you want a challenge. This punishes everyone, casuals, hardcore players, and the in between.

UD dungeons are full of expfugees from surface, I stopped grinding for a bit on my UDer because everywhere I went there were surfacers. Began to play on my surfacer and dread mages begin to breed like rabbits, aaaaaa.

[Shadowy Reality]

While I agree that dungeon diversity is severely lacking in the Surface, I don't necessarily believe that NPCs such as these Mages are the worse thing ever.

They are usually bosses (or mini-bosses) along the dungeon and they break the pace, which is good. You don't have to run at them and hit them, you can actually wait (and it isn't that long) for their Damage Shields to drop.

Not everything should be extremely efficient, click and forget. There should be NPCs that take some time, tactics and even resources to kill.

[Cortex]

Bosses in epic dungeons.

Bosses.

Epic Dungeons.

They're spawning in teens-early epics, as common mobs, surely you can see a problem?

[Shadowy Reality]

It must be a localized thing because I have not seen any out of place ever. By the screenshot I'm assuming Kohlighen or Pirate Cove, neither of which are early teen dungeons.

If they are really common, then yes, it's an issue. But one here and there isn't all that awful to spice dungeons that everyone seems to be constantly running.

[gilescorey]

It must be a localized thing because I have not seen any out of place ever. By the screenshot I'm assuming Kohlighen or Pirate Cove, neither of which are early teen dungeons.

That's not what he said. "Teens-early epics," as in roughly fifteen to sixteen, up toward early epics, like 21 or 22.

[Cortex]

kohlingen is a mid-late teen/early epic dungeon

pirate cove is a late teen/early epic dungeon

reports of masters mages spawning at kohlingen, multiple spawns within pirate cove of mages each that will aggro as soon as you can see them and start with sequencers that give them shadow shield/premonition/sheath or elemental shield, then get meteor swarms and bbods out, pirate cove and kohlingen are now mage guilds cus they do it better than anywhere else

They're not spicy they're radioactive.

[Hunter548]

If they are really common, then yes, it's an issue. But one here and there isn't all that awful to spice dungeons that everyone seems to be constantly running.

A) You're misunderstanding why everyone's running these dungeons.
B) A mob that requires 300+ HP and multiple breach wand charges to kill without obscene difficulty in a level 15 area isn't spicing it up, it's an absurd artificial difficulty spike.

[yellowcateyes]

Both Kohlingen and the Pirate Coves are dungeons you can tackle in late teens into early epics. Dread mages are bosses in late epic dungeons.

Dread Mages are badly-designed mobs with a spellbook better suited to a PC than an NPC. Half the time, the AI doesn't know to sit still and not cast a new spell while its BBoD is on the field. The other half of the time, it's spamming Mord's - which can be ineffective or crippling depending on your build. The difficulty of the encounter depends on lag and buggy AI behavior, and not on player skill or planning.

It is a problem to 'spice' dungeons everyone seems to be constantly running, if it's because the other available dungeons are neglected relics with balance issues.

People aren't running Kohlingen frequently because they dislike variety and want to undergo the soul-crushing experience of grinding the same dungeon a dozen times. It's because there's a dearth of other options beyond going into the Underdark.

[One Two Three Five]

People aren't running Kohlingen frequently because they dislike variety and want to undergo the soul-crushing experience of grinding the same dungeon a dozen times. It's because there's a dearth of other options beyond going into the Underdark.

The fix isn't to dump a whole thing of cayenne pepper in it, it's to make a new dish. Going by the spice metaphor, I guess.

The mage AI in general could use a look. Sure, they run 'PC' style spellbooks, but the thing is that the mages can just spam their entire spellbook/sequencer all at once to wipe parties of people half the level of the mage, but at level for the rest of the content. PCs can't, without being useless for the rest of the dungeon or spamming spirits to rest every fight. Neither of which is fun for players, or that good for immersion, really.

[Rooshy41]

My last contribution to this thread until I go testing for myself is to respond to the sentiment of why I'm so persistent in my objection to the nature of this thread.

It goes something like this. At level 18+, your character is a major power to be reckoned with in the world, and so is anything with a CR capable of providing adequate challenge to them. Many 18th level characters or CR18 mobs could wipe out entire battalions of your "average soldier" in mere seconds.

When you start discussing things of such epic scope, the imagination part of my brain goes into all sorts of happy, hyperactive overdrive, painting vivid pictures of epic clashes that the pixels on my monitor do barely any justice to. And the harder it is, the better it is.

Now, try to imagine this happy place that stimulates my creative processes shattering into a million pieces as people ask to make these instances less challenging OOC, rather than getting together and rocking the Snuggle a Bugbear out of it because, yeah, it's hard, but we're BAMFs like that and we can anyway.

I dunno. Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment. *shrug*

So... This discussion is about balance, not whether or not hard things should be hard. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I'm a fellow masochist when it comes to gaming. But imagine the farthest extreme to EPIC fights: You walk into a room and you drop dead. You don't know why. You walk into the room, and you get to make 3 steps before you drop dead again. You still don't know why. 134 attempts later, you find out that it's actually a god who is smiting you as soon as you take a breathe in the room. 276 attempts later, You finally kill it and it feels AWESOME.

Was it epic?
Yes
Would most people give up before they realized it was epic?
Yes
Was it balanced?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE

I don't think people are going for Dark Souls levels of masochism in a game like this, and Dark Souls is a fair and balanced game.

[Seven Sons of Sin]

Just out of curiousity, can we get a side-by-side comparison of the cost/reward of the "late teen/early epic" dungeons on the Surface?

I get confused on account what actually constitutes this category, and if I've just been doing something wrong because I'm wholly unfamiliar with the area/zones being discussed in this thread.

[Mango Reinhardt]

Wow...so yeah, went to Kohl... the second we hit the transition, two Dread Mage Masters plus a couple usual mobs. Managed to defeat them (barely), turn a corner, two more of them... all told we ended up going through a ridiculous amount of resources to finish the dungeon with an appropriate level party, after having fought something like 6-7 of these crazy powerful magi.

Will not be bothering with boat trips any time soon.

[Daedin]

I'm starting to think this is not an accident, nor a dungeon nerf, nor a "surface hatred" thing.

Kind of looks like the set up for an event of sorts.

Which I'm sure will also get a lot of people up in arms with pitchforks and torches.

[Rwby]

Wow...so yeah, went to Kohl... the second we hit the transition, two Dread Mage Masters plus a couple usual mobs. Managed to defeat them (barely), turn a corner, two more of them... all told we ended up going through a ridiculous amount of resources to finish the dungeon with an appropriate level party, after having fought something like 6-7 of these crazy powerful magi.

Will not be bothering with boat trips any time soon.

But you did beat the whole dungeon, and survive?

[Hunter548]

I'm starting to think this is not an accident, nor a dungeon nerf, nor a "surface hatred" thing.

Kind of looks like the set up for an event of sorts.

Which I'm sure will also get a lot of people up in arms with pitchforks and torches.

An event, with no DM feedback, no changed placables in the module, and no indication to players?

[Tarkus the dog]

I know just the right man to fix this mage problem.

[My decency]

I know just the right man to fix this mage problem.

But...