New and Overtuned

[Scurvy Cur]

One thing that has been kicking around in the back of my mind lately is that I would probably actually enjoy some of the "more difficult content" (deep wells wyrm, galerock, bastille, etc.) if there was a reason to do them instead of a quick and easy maur x2 run.

I've been working with a group that's been slowly checking through the list of Arelith's hardest and longest dungeons, and it's been fun for the challenge, though our general consensus has been "clear it once to show we can, then never, ever go back for any reason". A lot of this is because, as hard as these dungeons are to beat, they don't offer a reward (aside from bragging rights) that you can't find in other epic content.

I wonder if sentiment would change if something were done to the loot obtainable in these dungeons, rather than a serious re-adjustment of difficulty. Things like a second tier of rune chest, that had a guarantee of a T2 material or higher (or a higher chance for a masterwork material), a guaranteed adamantine vein, a chest that drops a selection of mithril dust/beljuril/rogue stone/star sapphire (we already have encounters that drop mithril dust and rogue stones, for reference), book shelves with high-level scrolls and/or treasure map fragments, etc.

I realize this would require some updates to the module, but I would not be opposed (from the admittedly biased standpoint of someone who wouldn't have to do any of the work) to the idea of identifying those monstrously hard dungeons that you haven't got a prayer of soloing, and which a group which isn't both good and careful will probably still have a bad time with, and balancing them by increasing the reward for going there. Right now, there really isn't a reason to do these instead of several safer, easier, shorter dungeon, and I think that's a shame.

[Irongron]

One thing that has been kicking around in the back of my mind lately is that I would probably actually enjoy some of the "more difficult content" (deep wells wyrm, galerock, bastille, etc.) if there was a reason to do them instead of a quick and easy maur x2 run.

Note to self: increase difficulty of Maurs.

[Hunter548]

One thing that has been kicking around in the back of my mind lately is that I would probably actually enjoy some of the "more difficult content" (deep wells wyrm, galerock, bastille, etc.) if there was a reason to do them instead of a quick and easy maur x2 run.

I think as well part of the problem is the limited possibilities of what you can actually find as a reward for doing epic level dungeons. There's not much stratification beyond "can spawn adamantine" and "has a rune chest". It'd help a lot if regular chests had better odds of getting use something useful. A rod of weird/implosion/firestorm/whatever, or a Valiney's Lift, or Dust of Disappearance stops being something to get excited over before level 15. Finding one in Abazuur's hoard is a lot like finding zinc in it, to say nothing of finding them in the topmost strata of hard Arelith dungeons.

I don't know exactly what the solution to this problem is, since a lot of the solutions that immediately spring to mind run into the same problems artifacts had, but it'd help if you didn't get complete trash from hard dungeons.

[Subtext]

I would agree with that. The loot from epic level dungeons can be a little disheartening given that most items are of dubious usefulness even for low level chars with a notable few exceptions.

I'm not even too bothered by rings that are useless to me - vendor trash that takes little space is always welcome - but stuff from armor wardrobes is usually just too big or heavy to carry around.
I'm not expecting a ring of hiding in every other chest, far from it, but it would be nice to find consistently more useful stuff. The biggest letdown for me are weapon chests filled with ammo. Can't even sell them!

I'm generally always happy to find some extra cash or a few crafting materials. And of course vendor trash that isn't inconvenient.

I think having better loot would go a long way and would also allow to classify dungeons differently. Would I do an ultra hard dungeon if I am guaranteed something definitely useful? Absolutely.

That would also mean having more loot options available. Endgame gear is almost exclusively crafted except for three items from the top of my head (Blade of Elements, Shadow Choker, Ring of Hiding) while some crafted items require rare drops.
It would be great to have armor pieces or weapons available as loot that rival that crafted gear. A tiny bit better than crafted gear but not by a huge margin (idk...like a dead man's cross with 1d6 extra instead of 1d4) Not common...but out there.
These things could be handled like runes as in being guaranteed but on a longer cooldown.

I suppose that could be used to give more attractiveness to harder dungeons and allow for a more consistent effort/reward ratio.

[Irongron]

I wouldn't want to add more extra special unique rewards the hardest dungeons, as I feel it would further incentivise levelling. Writs are designed to balance reward discrepancies by offer more rewards in gold and XP for harder dungeons, and less otherwise.

A thorough report of which epic dungeons could do with a bump in reward, and those that are currently too high would be a help here, and I could fix that up in a moment.

Anything I can do will be limited though, as there will always be players who don't really have any interest in the content iteslf, only in taking whatver route will get them to level 30 most painlessly.

Others, of course, enjoy the challenge and RP associated with going new places. We can cater to both.

[Shadowy Reality]

A thorough report of which epic dungeons could do with a bump in reward, and those that are currently too high would be a help here, and I could fix that up in a moment.

If I remember correctly the Maurs in the Titant Ascent has one Grandiose ore node, one Runic chest and a couple of chests. I think this is fine.

The Cathedral in the Bastille has one Grandiose ore node and 3 normal chests and is much harder than the Maurs. It could use a runic chest, possibly a gem node and maybe a second Grandiose ore node. It still wouldn't make it super desirable, but it would be nice.

In the Deep Wells, the area with the dragonkin and Wyrm is hard and requires a lot of time to reach and has a Grandiose and a Runic chest at the end. I would probably add a gem node, and maybe a couple more normal chests, so it feels like an actual dragon's hoard.

This clear outlier to me is the Manor of Mourn. It used to be one of the hardest places in the server, but that was many years ago. The place is on the easier side these days, easier than all of the previous. It currently has a runic chest and 2 Grandiose ore veins at the end. I definitely think it should lose one grandiose vein.

[Xerah]

I would consider the Maurs to be a very well-balanced dungeon, all in. It certainly doesn't need to get harder. Use that as a baseline and scale the rewards accordingly.

[garrbear758]

I would consider the Maurs to be a very well-balanced dungeon, all in. It certainly doesn't need to get harder. Use that as a baseline and scale the rewards accordingly.

Definitely. Maurs is in a great place balance wise. Make things harder than it give better rewards, and easier give less. Super long epic dungeons like deep wells or to a lesser extent pandemonium could also do with either better or ideally unique awards to make it worth the effort. Doing hard endgame dungeons is fun, but it can feel like a waste of effort when you could just go kill abby, styx dragon, auril dragon, etc again for the same rewards. Deep wells is very fun, but there's just not currently a reason to go there more than the one time to experience it.

[magistrasa]

I just want to put in, regarding the idea of unique rewards - I think even if they're not "mechanically optimal" items, just the idea that there's some piece of loot that you can ONLY find in a certain location is very enticing. Imagine if at the end of some really difficult dungeon, you loot a chest and find some special item that does nothing but trigger some VFX for everyone around you to see. I'd run a dungeon as many times as I had to if it meant I could get an item that made some cool sound effect or flashy beam of light that I could repurpose and use during some special roleplay moment. It could be functionally worthless in every other respect, and I would still value that item higher than anything with a mechanical incentive.

[MRFTW]

Infinite water bottles are a good example of alternative, not game changing loot.

[msterswrdsmn]

When coming up with pve monsters, i've found its generally not best to shoot at addressing whatever the top meta build is. Aside from the fact this usually isn't going to represent the majority of the playerbase, it also usually addresses addresses the issue by trying to match/exceed builds in a numbers game, rather than creating something that addresses a specific weak point.

Basically, don't use pvp as a guideline for pve. PVP usually is one-on-one, fully buffed, and generally short lived. PVE is usually closer to a test of endurance, grinding players down over a longer period of time. USUALLY. Definitely changes up some times, but again, the meta pvp build might not be the best measuring stick for pve.

Sometimes a creative approach works too, and in a more memorable way than a simple numbers race. I remember on the Star Wars server, the meta was usually some sort of dual-wielding lightsaber Jedi build. Would absolutely shred non-jedi in PVP, just like the movies. For one quest, the dm's addressed this by spawning a ton of like, 4 hp/10 AC critters that were fairly slow, but had a really high AB and damage output. They died very, very quickly to ranged attacks, but god help you if you tried to melee them. Poor Jedi were forced to borrow backup blasters from my sniper to not get swarmed and eaten alive (permadeath server; if you died 3 times in a DM quest or died in a completely non-recoverable way, they'd kill your character for good)

To echo Scurvy, some of these epic dungeons are really, REALLY out of the way and the rewards don't really reflect the effort. The last time I went exploring with a party we spent something like 3 hours trying to find the rumored new dungeons beneath Guldorand. We never found the new dungeon, half the party had to log halfway through, and aside from the usual drops, I don't recall any standout loot or resources (mushrooms aside). This was with a group that spent most of time actively running when we weren't fighting, so we went pretty dang deep.

If it takes 3+ hours just to reach something with questionable rewards, its almost guarenteed not to be worth the effort trying to reach the place. The Guldorand caves also are a potential trap, as if you're going in blind, you'd probably be unaware you can't teleport or lense your way to safety without a special item.

I personally don't have a ton of free time anymore, so a 3+ hour trek just to reach the dungeon is a no go for players like me, most of the time.

The creatures we had to fight to get there were hard. They weren't ungodly difficult; I was able to fight the cultists later on solo on my mediocre build, but again. PVE is about grinding players down; by the time people were logging, there had been a pretty significant drain on resources (consumable healing items, wands, non-replenishing spells) and at the end we just went "screw it, this isn't worth it" and left. The "screw it" point hit me much sooner when soloing the cultists, which are pretty close to the surface; doable? Yes, but the risk and consumable burn-to-reward ratio was very much not worth it.

The trick to this does come down to "what kind of rewards are worth it without destroying the balance/economy of things"? See the Baronial-Age Forest of Despair and Darkspire circle grinding. Or even the Wharftown Boy grinding back when they dropped iron weapons.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

The deep wells would be helped out a lot if you could rest in them, and teleport out normally. They are so long that it basically means spellcasters can't participate because they're useless once they're out of spells. Or they get carried through by melee and stand back and do nothing.

[xf1313]

The deep wells would be helped out a lot if you could rest in them, and teleport out normally. They are so long that it basically means spellcasters can't participate because they're useless once they're out of spells. Or they get carried through by melee and stand back and do nothing.

The only recall method is to buy a recall rod, and I second you, if normal method works it may be better

The only caster that can strive there is warlock, no kidding

It is a place I actively avoid going...maybe as deep as the doomsayers but that is it

[AstralUniverse]

imo dungeons who take a large party to go through and/or are far away and require a lot of travel time to reach could simply have more gold dropping from the mobs. I'm thinking specifically flat coin because it doesnt scale with gold income related skills (appraise, search, etc) and would be easier to balance around all characters because these factors affect everyone across the board. Examples for dungeons which are very balanced in my opinion: Maurs, Manor of Mourn.

[Ork]

I'd be a happy camper is dungeons were slotted to take about 2 hours at maximum to complete with travel time calculated in. As it stands, some dungeons take way more than 2 hours to access and complete and it discourages me from ever partying with players to access them (since finding a party usually adds another 30 minutes - 1 hour).

I think that's why so many players prefer to solo dungeons. Time is at a premium and if there was a system to make finding a party faster, and clearing dungeons faster I think it wouldn't be such a barrier for the casual player like myself.

While yes, this would also enable our arelith lifers to clear more content, amass more wealth and resources, I don't think on a whole that is such a problem since they already do this with the system we have now.

[msterswrdsmn]

A couple ideas:

Exploration Shortcuts

Straight up Dark Souls this. For the harder to reach dungeons, make some sort of shortcut that players can get to that'll help cut down travel times. Ie: Before getting to the main dungeon, you have to go through the long trek to get to the portal/key for the early locked door/etc. Where would be a good place to put some of these said shortcuts?

Safe Zones

Make a few small areas in longer areas like the Deepwells that allow players to rest and regroup. The Siyabad desert has something similar to this (the temple and lost caravan areas), and -that- can turn into a slog if you get lost. This would allow spellcasters to continue participating, as well as having some sort of discernable sign that progress is being made to the players, rather than "yep, we just keep going until we find something. How far? who knows!"

[MRFTW]

The deep wells would be helped out a lot if you could rest in them, and teleport out normally. They are so long that it basically means spellcasters can't participate because they're useless once they're out of spells. Or they get carried through by melee and stand back and do nothing.

The only caster that can strive there is warlock, no kidding

You just need to prepare to not be able to rest, and use your spells economically. Any caster with a wand of silence can do it, as can any caster with spell resistance. If you don't have SR/silence wand, there are two (Maybe just one?) areas where casters are going to get their summons WoF'd, both of which are avoidable by taking longer routes. If you simply must traverse those areas, no enemies in them can see through invisibility.

Also, you can rest in the Deep Wells, you've just got to find where, and survive, the latter of which is easier said than done.

[Ork]

I dig those ideas mster particularly because I adore exploring. I spent all my playable hours in Skal Fell when it was released. I loved finding all secrets, climb spots and little aesthetic flourishes in the area. For Skal there's something like that with the ferry charter. Once you get to that area, you can travel back and further relatively freely and I absolutely love that mechanic. It encourages me to explore more freely knowing it won't be such a slog to get back.

[Good Character]

I wouldn't want to add more extra special unique rewards the hardest dungeons, as I feel it would further incentivise levelling. Writs are designed to balance reward discrepancies by offer more rewards in gold and XP for harder dungeons, and less otherwise.

What if we saw the introduction of 'cursed' (for a lack of a better word) items? Items that are situationally better than the best-in-slot, but they come with damning drawbacks.

Two existing ok examples of a 'cursed' item are the Knight Commander's Sabre and the Dragonbone Plate. For the sabre, in-exchange for a lower AB it offers the ability to pierce Premonition. For the armor, you get an abysmal charisma modifier.

Future examples that could be added in:
- A helm giving +5 AC but has 20-30% physical damage vulnerability.
- A weapon that offers 3d8 damage vs. Dragon, but has no inherent general damage bonus beyond its base type and has a -5 to Will saves.
- A ring that offers a strong buff (e.g. Premonition, Mind Blank, Spell Resistance), but triggers a surge - if possible, a guaranteed negative surge.

Some cursed items could have a lesser and greater version, so that they could be added to non-epic dungeons. Those dungeons could then be tweaked to be harder, and encourage people to group, socialize, and hunt down these items. It would offer a refreshing take and newfound meaning to what it means to be an adventurer.

Exploration Shortcuts

Straight up Dark Souls this. For the harder to reach dungeons, make some sort of shortcut that players can get to that'll help cut down travel times. Ie: Before getting to the main dungeon, you have to go through the long trek to get to the portal/key for the early locked door/etc. Where would be a good place to put some of these said shortcuts?

I do like this. Maybe something akin to the orb you obtain in the Slime Temple to access the difficult area connected to the portal?

[Twohand]

Infinite water bottles are a good example of alternative, not game changing loot.

The endless water bottle is part of the special sea treasure chests, it's a system that can drop a wealth of fun little trinkets and high tier rewards. It's always exciting to open one of those chests, you never know what it'll look like inside. It takes much more effort to get one and open it than it is to do an epic dungeon run, but I'd love to see more reward mechanics like it.

[Rei_Jin]

The "Map Pieces" which are tied to the Treasure Chests for sea content are a wonderful way of doing things for rewards, and I would love to see something similar done for land options, that doing epic dungeons might give you a piece of a map that leads to a hidden climb spot (as an example), where you climb up or down and find a buried chest that you then have to work out how to unlock, with different loot in it as compared to the sea Treasure Chests.

Sure, you're replicating a system, but it could add another motivator for people to go out and do dungeons again, just as the map pieces encourage folk to go sailing.

[Scurvy Cur]

I wouldn't want to add more extra special unique rewards the hardest dungeons, as I feel it would further incentivise levelling. Writs are designed to balance reward discrepancies by offer more rewards in gold and XP for harder dungeons, and less otherwise.

A thorough report of which epic dungeons could do with a bump in reward, and those that are currently too high would be a help here, and I could fix that up in a moment.

I'm happy to provide a detailed synopsis of which dungeons are currently under-tuned for the rewards they give and which are over-tuned, using Maur as a baseline. I actually completely concur with Garrbear and Xerah here, Maur is close to an "ideal" dungeon. It's not on a portal, but doesn't take too long to reach from one, the dungeon is long enough that it's not really a quick clear, but it's not a tedious slog either; the mob balance is good and varied, the challenge is enough to be fun, but basically any 2 decent builds can run it and any 3-4 epics should be fine here. The mobs are individually satisfying to kill, the bosses have a cool mechanic, and the rewards are solid: 2 grandiose veins, 4 loot chests, 1 rune chest.

I can probably turn something around by this weekend.

My thought re: the rewards:

I agree that adding brand new options, while cool, has implications that extend past a quick discussion of "making dungeons worthwhile", and veer into a more philosophical "what should Arelith's item landscape look like?", which is a topic that should be approached carefully.

This is why my suggestions are, and for now will remain, directed towards "the same thing we have, only more plentiful and/or reliable". Part of this is a concession to the rune chest anti-farming timer, which prevents players or groups of players from looting more than 1 rune chest in ~2.5-3 RL hours, which makes a dungeon with multiple rune chests packed close together (such as found in the giant Dolmen) sort of a nonstarter. In such a case one solution could be a chest that loads 2 runes, or a chest that has a higher chance of loading a really good rune, to balance the area against an area that can be cleared quickly in 10-15 minutes, and revisited 2.5-3 hours later for a second swing at the chest in the same time that it takes to crunch through a sprawling and challenging dungeon.

Part of it is a nod to the visceral frustration of clearing some of the longest/most challenging content like the deep wells, and getting a node of mithril, a sample of blueleaf extract, and an emerald node that doesn't spawn any emeralds, while John Q. Conduitman, loops RDI from entrance portal to exit portal ~10 times in the same window, entirely by himself, getting a respawning adamantine node every time (and probably 2 rune chest loads in that time).

Accordingly, I would still suggest things like "a guaranteed adamantine node" or "a rune chest that drops top tier materials with a higher frequency" or "mithril dust/a berjuril gem on the boss" or "a place to find treasure map fragments reliably", each of which I would consider a worthwhile, and indeed very exciting thing to find at the bottom of a dungeon that pushed a strong party of capable players to consistently reach for their best coordination and deepest game knowledge over the course of a 2-4 hour dungeon run. None of these represent the addition of a "new loot tier" or a "unique reward", simply a reliable way to make the payoff feel commensurate with the challenge and time investment by weighting the reward towards the top end of what is currently possible.

Barring this, it's probably safe to just sprinkle extra copies of some of the existing resources.

As a final note: for all of these dungeons "fast levelling" is not really part of the calculus. For the most part, these are places you go for rare materials, better gear, to seek adventure and test out your character build after you've hit 30. For those of us that keep characters for a while, most of the Arelith experience will happen after 30 (this was true for me even in the old days when RDI was our "endgame" and dropped nothing more special than a gag item t-shirt; we've come a long way since then). As such, for the most part, tinkering with the writs or the xp load

[Scurvy Cur]

A thorough report of which epic dungeons could do with a bump in reward, and those that are currently too high would be a help here, and I could fix that up in a moment.

If I remember correctly the Maurs in the Titant Ascent has one Grandiose ore node, one Runic chest and a couple of chests. I think this is fine.

Double post, but w/e.

Maur has a double grandiose node, not a single.

Otherwise, the comparison to the Cathedral is apt (though I think the Cathedral is intended as a halfway point for the Bastille, since you get a key to the main keep there). It has 1 grandiose node, 3-4 chests, and 1 spooky book fixture.

[MageTankTech]

I've been making creatures for years on Arelith, and frankly it is getting a lot more difficult as AB and AC on PCs has shot up, as we do seem to keep balancing upwards. Powerful summons, coupled with the associate tool means many characters just effortlessly stroll through content without a concern. Summoners are generally still calling creatures WAY more powerful than a human played fighter character of the same level, while druids are transforming into beings with stats above 50...

Every single time I introduce new PvE content I have to do so for the latest meta, and endless circle where I also have to revisit old monsters that have grown too easy.

I get that balancing can be hard when there are alot of big numbers and fancy things and I don't know this server or game well so my advice might not be amazing but I have often found that in most cases "simple is best".

It was stated earlier that a level 12 area had a boss with 9th circle spells. Pure mages don't have 9th circle spells at level 12 so why would enemies?

In PVP can a 5th circle summon compete with a 9th circle summon? Can they even touch a 9th circle summon? No, they would be obliterated.

So my simple advice is to base what the enemies can do on what the players of the suggested level can do. You want to put them on the high end of things? Sure, put them a spell circle ahead of a level 12 pure caster or put their AB/AC ahead of what a melee could get at that range.

Obviously this advice starts to lose relevance in later content when "meta" builds really start to stand out but at least with regards to early leveling content I would think to be a reasonable mindset

This is just the suggestion of someone who doesn't know much about the balance of this game/server so take it with a grain of salt.

[Ork]

If you're talking about the boss with storm of vengeance, c'mon man. Bosses have unique and special abilities to keep it competative. Don't really need the summoning strawman to prove your point since that doesn't happen with any boss.