At long last, I completed the Storm King's Thunder campaign, the last of the "old" campaigns that were still lingering as incomplete on my main's campaign screen. Even though I already had partial completion when I started on my project to finally finish it up, it still took me three months of near daily play (admittedly not involving maximum effort, but still) to complete all the boons. Seriously, three months! The grind is real.
What's interesting was that the Voninblood, whose number requirements looked the most intimidating initially, didn't turn out to be that much of an issue. As Joseph Skyrim noted in a comment on my original post about the campaign grind, the Ostorian Relics you can collect on all four of the campaign maps and which can be traded for Voninblood largely make that particular currency a non-issue as they can be farmed easily and indefinitely. I just didn't realise this right away, which wasn't helped by me not even having a trowel (required to collect them) for a lot of my early play sessions. Also, duoing with my pet tank initially meant that each of us only got half as many relics as a solo player would have collected.
I soon found that everything seemed to hinge on Secrets of Ostoria, the currency associated with completing the main daily mission (which in turn required you to do one regular daily quest in each of the first three zones). I eventually realised that I could actually collect all the various dailies to save them up for later, they just wouldn't show up if I didn't also have the main daily in my log. I then settled into a routine of doing a whole batch of dailies in each zone on different days of the week while also saving up the completed missions to hand in one at a time each day for the overarching daily quest. If that sounds a bit convoluted that's because it was.
Sea of Moving Ice was a different matter as there was a limited amount of saving up you could do in that zone, and eventually I had to focus more attention on it as I just needed Runic Fragments (that map's unique campaign currency) to complete the last two boons. The main two lessons I took away from that were that the fishing daily couldn't be "saved up" as it auto-completes as soon as you've gathered the required amount of fish, and that "Recasting Alarm" could be abandoned and re-picked until it gave you the super easy circuit just next to the base.
All said and done, I do have to give credit where credit is due though: The zones themselves were enjoyable, with nice visuals and music, and I still enjoyed questing in them again. I just wish the campaign didn't require you to do it for quite that long.
Showing posts with label dailies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dailies. Show all posts
02/07/2018
17/03/2018
Iteration
One thing I've found fascinating over time is watching the way Cryptic iterates on its modules. If you look at the first three "expansions" for example, you can clearly see them refining the daily area concept with each release - Icewind Dale remains one of my favourite maps to play around on to this day.
However, every time they tried something very different, it didn't go down too well. I mean, I liked Tyranny of Dragons and the idea of a campaign that you can do while levelling (even if the associated level scaling was screwy), but based on them never repeating the experiment, I suspect it wasn't too well received. Elemental Evil with its level cap increase was a disaster for all kinds of reasons, and Underdark deciding to completely decouple the game's grind from its story... let's just say I probably wasn't the only one who noped right out of that one after playing through the whole story in a single evening.
Lately we've returned to a more traditional "daily area" model, however with the exception of Chult's "six times weekly" patrol missions, there's been a general move away from traditional daily quests coupled with a strong push towards forcing players to log in and play every single day by making it impossible to pick up several days worth of dailies just to "binge complete" them all at once on the weekend. This is a shame because that's exactly how I like to play through the old areas. It's no coincidence that I have yet to complete any campaign after Elemental Evil on any of my alts.
However, every time they tried something very different, it didn't go down too well. I mean, I liked Tyranny of Dragons and the idea of a campaign that you can do while levelling (even if the associated level scaling was screwy), but based on them never repeating the experiment, I suspect it wasn't too well received. Elemental Evil with its level cap increase was a disaster for all kinds of reasons, and Underdark deciding to completely decouple the game's grind from its story... let's just say I probably wasn't the only one who noped right out of that one after playing through the whole story in a single evening.
Lately we've returned to a more traditional "daily area" model, however with the exception of Chult's "six times weekly" patrol missions, there's been a general move away from traditional daily quests coupled with a strong push towards forcing players to log in and play every single day by making it impossible to pick up several days worth of dailies just to "binge complete" them all at once on the weekend. This is a shame because that's exactly how I like to play through the old areas. It's no coincidence that I have yet to complete any campaign after Elemental Evil on any of my alts.
07/03/2017
River District
Like most of Neverwinter's campaigns, the River District can be summed up as "more of the same, but a bit different". Here's what I like and don't like about it so far:
Like:
+ The environment. While one could argue that a slightly twisted cityscape doesn't make for the most exciting adventuring zone, I like being back in the game's eponymous capital.
+ Zone size. Sea of Moving Ice taught me that bigger isn't necessarily better, especially when a single round of dailies takes ages simply because you spend ten minutes travelling to where you need to be. I like how the River District feels much more compact.
+ Variety of activities. Instead of being asked to do x number of daily quests every day, you're only given a single quest that basically asks you to "do stuff" and you can pick your own activity mix to complete it. This allows you to change things up at any time.
+ Better treasure maps. The treasure maps from Sea of Moving Ice have made a return here, but since the environment contains a lot more notable points of interest, you actually stand a reasonable chance of finding the treasure even without a guide.
Dislike:
- Mob density. This might be a side effect of the small zone size, but mob packs are plentiful and hard to avoid. Additionally they seem to be tuned to hit in such a way that a purple quality mount isn't enough to not get knocked off anymore, so I'm getting dismounted pretty much any time I aggro anything at all.
Overall, the good seems to outweigh the bad so far.
Like:
+ The environment. While one could argue that a slightly twisted cityscape doesn't make for the most exciting adventuring zone, I like being back in the game's eponymous capital.
+ Zone size. Sea of Moving Ice taught me that bigger isn't necessarily better, especially when a single round of dailies takes ages simply because you spend ten minutes travelling to where you need to be. I like how the River District feels much more compact.
+ Variety of activities. Instead of being asked to do x number of daily quests every day, you're only given a single quest that basically asks you to "do stuff" and you can pick your own activity mix to complete it. This allows you to change things up at any time.
+ Better treasure maps. The treasure maps from Sea of Moving Ice have made a return here, but since the environment contains a lot more notable points of interest, you actually stand a reasonable chance of finding the treasure even without a guide.
Dislike:
- Mob density. This might be a side effect of the small zone size, but mob packs are plentiful and hard to avoid. Additionally they seem to be tuned to hit in such a way that a purple quality mount isn't enough to not get knocked off anymore, so I'm getting dismounted pretty much any time I aggro anything at all.
Overall, the good seems to outweigh the bad so far.
27/10/2016
Grind Shander
My initial positive reaction to the Storm King's Thunder adventure zones has been tempered by harsh reality. Now that I've unlocked all three of them I can confidently say that they are very beautiful and that their story is enjoyable, but the dailies and associated boons are the grindiest that I've seen in a long time.
At first I thought it was just the big numbers... e.g. in Dread Ring I can get one Thayan Cipher per day, of which I need one per day to advance the campaign, which I have to repeat thirty-one times. That's very straightforward. However, when I look at a campaign where unlocking all boons requires more than 55,000 Voninblood, it's natural that this seems overwhelming, even if the dailies earn me several hundred a day. However, even if you do dailies for 500 Voninblood a day, that still leaves you with a full hundred days of grinding unless you manage to consistently supplement your currency income through relics and heroic encounters.
Also, we discovered that while doing them in a group, some of the dailies have the annoying habit of giving people different objectives even if they are in the same group and pick up the quest at the same time (e.g. one person gets "kill mobs west of the camp" and one gets "kill mobs east of the camp"), which is just annoying and makes things take even longer.
My enthusiasm is already waning.
At first I thought it was just the big numbers... e.g. in Dread Ring I can get one Thayan Cipher per day, of which I need one per day to advance the campaign, which I have to repeat thirty-one times. That's very straightforward. However, when I look at a campaign where unlocking all boons requires more than 55,000 Voninblood, it's natural that this seems overwhelming, even if the dailies earn me several hundred a day. However, even if you do dailies for 500 Voninblood a day, that still leaves you with a full hundred days of grinding unless you manage to consistently supplement your currency income through relics and heroic encounters.
Also, we discovered that while doing them in a group, some of the dailies have the annoying habit of giving people different objectives even if they are in the same group and pick up the quest at the same time (e.g. one person gets "kill mobs west of the camp" and one gets "kill mobs east of the camp"), which is just annoying and makes things take even longer.
My enthusiasm is already waning.
07/10/2015
Vigilant
I've spent a fair amount of time hating on Elemental Evil's vigilance tasks here, but I have to confess that lately I've actually been doing them again, and even without my pet tank. My control wizard is level 69, has completed the first three zones, and just got started on Spinward Rise. Basically, there are three factors that have made me change my mind, or at least made this way of levelling more bearable to me:
1) Stronghold quests: I like that during your sixties, you get two daily quests from your guild stronghold, one to complete four vigilance tasks and one to kill fifty mobs on the way. This adds some pacing, as four a day feels much more manageable than looking at the total number of quests required to get to the end and watching them reset every hour. Also, the extra quests for doing the same thing make each round of four tasks feel more rewarding.
2) Nerfs: After admitting that they messed up, Cryptic actually went through with nerfing level 60+ mobs, as well as cutting the requirement to progress at each vigilance quest hub in half. Eight missions per hub means that you never have to stay anywhere for long and that you have less time to get sick of an area.
3) Ruthless efficiency: Using past experience, I only pick the easy quests now. (For my wizard in particular this means, anything that requires me to AoE packs of relatively weak mobs is good, while tough single mobs are a bit of a pain.) If a bad bunch is up, I'll just log off and try again later. It makes the difference between a fun half hour romp and spending lots of time dying and running back to where I got defeated.
1) Stronghold quests: I like that during your sixties, you get two daily quests from your guild stronghold, one to complete four vigilance tasks and one to kill fifty mobs on the way. This adds some pacing, as four a day feels much more manageable than looking at the total number of quests required to get to the end and watching them reset every hour. Also, the extra quests for doing the same thing make each round of four tasks feel more rewarding.
2) Nerfs: After admitting that they messed up, Cryptic actually went through with nerfing level 60+ mobs, as well as cutting the requirement to progress at each vigilance quest hub in half. Eight missions per hub means that you never have to stay anywhere for long and that you have less time to get sick of an area.
3) Ruthless efficiency: Using past experience, I only pick the easy quests now. (For my wizard in particular this means, anything that requires me to AoE packs of relatively weak mobs is good, while tough single mobs are a bit of a pain.) If a bad bunch is up, I'll just log off and try again later. It makes the difference between a fun half hour romp and spending lots of time dying and running back to where I got defeated.
05/09/2015
Stronghold Life
Even though my mini-guild's stronghold still only has one building, we've grown strangely attached to it. It may be decrepit and low level, but it's ours. The heroic encounters are easy compared to the stuff in Icewind Dale and even many of the larger ones can actually be completed by a group consisting of as few as two or three people. They are fun and sometimes even quite rewarding.
It's also given us a new goal to work towards, erecting that second building (the farm). On weekends we group up and run dailies en masse to fill the guild coffer. Surprisingly it has turned out that it's not the unique stronghold currency that's holding us back (though it does take time to accumulate enough of it) but rather the amount of different campaign currencies that you have to pay in. We just don't run that many dailies, and more importantly, on some characters we actually still need the currency to advance the campaign itself and can't really donate it to the guild instead.
It's also given us a new goal to work towards, erecting that second building (the farm). On weekends we group up and run dailies en masse to fill the guild coffer. Surprisingly it has turned out that it's not the unique stronghold currency that's holding us back (though it does take time to accumulate enough of it) but rather the amount of different campaign currencies that you have to pay in. We just don't run that many dailies, and more importantly, on some characters we actually still need the currency to advance the campaign itself and can't really donate it to the guild instead.
16/08/2015
Immersion
In the Well of Dragons there is an area called the cult prison camp. There are two dailies that require you to go to this area, one to kill hostile NPCs and one to free prisoners. However as far as I can tell, these are never given on the same day.
On a day like today, where the only available daily quest is to kill enemies in the camp, this means that one arrives to the bizarre sight of the area being pretty much devoid of cultists, while sad prisoners are standing around all over the place, still shackled and with their heads bowed, looking lost. Nobody's got a quest to save them!
A guildie and I started running around and releasing them anyway. (You do not have to be on the associated quest to be able to do this.) My pet tank yelled at us for wasting time when we should have helped him hunt down the few remaining cultists instead.
On a day like today, where the only available daily quest is to kill enemies in the camp, this means that one arrives to the bizarre sight of the area being pretty much devoid of cultists, while sad prisoners are standing around all over the place, still shackled and with their heads bowed, looking lost. Nobody's got a quest to save them!
A guildie and I started running around and releasing them anyway. (You do not have to be on the associated quest to be able to do this.) My pet tank yelled at us for wasting time when we should have helped him hunt down the few remaining cultists instead.
17/07/2015
Well of Dragons
Since my pet tank and I finally managed to unlock the Well of Dragons dailies, we've been doing them whenever we can, in order to work on our campaign progression. I haven't been impressed.
Up until Tyranny of Dragons, I felt that every new campaign was an improvement or at least a fresh new take on the way the game does dailies. But the Well of Dragons... meh.
Scenery-wise it feels like a rehashed Dread Ring with dragons instead of zombies, coloured brown instead of grey. The dailies can take freaking forever if you happen to get a bad set, about three or four times as long as a round of Dread Ring, and the heroic encounters don't seem to draw much interest.
I wonder though how much of this is the fault of Elemental Evil's level scaling and increase in difficulty. After all, I used to love Icewind Dale, but since the level increase questing there has been pretty damn tedious as well.
Up until Tyranny of Dragons, I felt that every new campaign was an improvement or at least a fresh new take on the way the game does dailies. But the Well of Dragons... meh.
Scenery-wise it feels like a rehashed Dread Ring with dragons instead of zombies, coloured brown instead of grey. The dailies can take freaking forever if you happen to get a bad set, about three or four times as long as a round of Dread Ring, and the heroic encounters don't seem to draw much interest.
I wonder though how much of this is the fault of Elemental Evil's level scaling and increase in difficulty. After all, I used to love Icewind Dale, but since the level increase questing there has been pretty damn tedious as well.
28/06/2015
Sacrificial Victims
... is the name of a lair quest in the Well of Dragons which you have to complete in order to unlock the dailies in that zone. It's also been a huge road block for my pet tank and me, which is pretty scary considering that this is supposed to be simple solo progression.
The first time we attempted it we were still in our sixties and hadn't realised yet just how inadequate Cryptic's level scaling is. We wiped repeatedly on the trash and the boss was blatantly impossible as any hit would one-shot either of us.
We came back once we'd hit level seventy. The trash became more manageable, but the boss still felt impossible. My pet tank couldn't dodge every single attack by both the boss himself and his two drake adds, yet getting hit would kill him. And whenever the boss summoned his first set of additional adds, they would all aggro on me and I'd die in the blink of an eye. We had to give up - again.
Today we came back yet again, after having acquired some considerably better gear via the updated rewards from the Sharandar and Dread Ring campaigns. This time we finally got him down. During the first add summon things still got a little hairy since his drakes weren't dead yet, but we made it.
We were very excited to have finally unlocked the dailies and immediately picked up our three for the day. It took us a full hour to complete them.
The first time we attempted it we were still in our sixties and hadn't realised yet just how inadequate Cryptic's level scaling is. We wiped repeatedly on the trash and the boss was blatantly impossible as any hit would one-shot either of us.
We came back once we'd hit level seventy. The trash became more manageable, but the boss still felt impossible. My pet tank couldn't dodge every single attack by both the boss himself and his two drake adds, yet getting hit would kill him. And whenever the boss summoned his first set of additional adds, they would all aggro on me and I'd die in the blink of an eye. We had to give up - again.
Today we came back yet again, after having acquired some considerably better gear via the updated rewards from the Sharandar and Dread Ring campaigns. This time we finally got him down. During the first add summon things still got a little hairy since his drakes weren't dead yet, but we made it.
We were very excited to have finally unlocked the dailies and immediately picked up our three for the day. It took us a full hour to complete them.
19/04/2015
Regressive Repeatable Quests
All the previous modules followed more or less the same pattern when it came to adding new content: a set of new dailies that progressively unlocked access to more content. You may not like dailies, but it was well done for what it was.
The new Elemental Evil content however, aside from the intro quests, makes me wonder how anyone could have ever thought that this was a good idea.
There are several new zones, and in each zone there are multiple quest hubs. At each quest hub, you get one regular quest which tells you to complete 16 hourly "tasks" before you're allowed to progress. There are only ever 9 tasks available at a time and they reset at the start of the hour, so you have to spend at least one hour at each hub to complete the required amount of quests, usually more.
The really annoying thing however is that you can never pick up more than four of these tasks at a time, and they all require you go to the same area. They are all of the "kill ten rats" variety (more or less), so you spend all your time running back and forth, killing the same mobs over and over again because the associated quests are only drip-fed to you: first you kill lizardmen because they are inside the mine you have to go to, then you kill lizardmen because they hang out near the sea hags you have to kill, and finally you kill lizardmen because you actually have a quest to kill lizardmen.
It took my pet tank and me over four hours to complete just the first map, during which we killed about a thousand mobs (there was also a helpful "kill any hundred mobs" repeatable quest that helped us keep track). I can't recall the last time I did anything that ridiculously and artificially grindy in an MMO, and I'm not even sure I want to continue to the next zone - which is more of the same.
The new Elemental Evil content however, aside from the intro quests, makes me wonder how anyone could have ever thought that this was a good idea.
There are several new zones, and in each zone there are multiple quest hubs. At each quest hub, you get one regular quest which tells you to complete 16 hourly "tasks" before you're allowed to progress. There are only ever 9 tasks available at a time and they reset at the start of the hour, so you have to spend at least one hour at each hub to complete the required amount of quests, usually more.
The really annoying thing however is that you can never pick up more than four of these tasks at a time, and they all require you go to the same area. They are all of the "kill ten rats" variety (more or less), so you spend all your time running back and forth, killing the same mobs over and over again because the associated quests are only drip-fed to you: first you kill lizardmen because they are inside the mine you have to go to, then you kill lizardmen because they hang out near the sea hags you have to kill, and finally you kill lizardmen because you actually have a quest to kill lizardmen.
It took my pet tank and me over four hours to complete just the first map, during which we killed about a thousand mobs (there was also a helpful "kill any hundred mobs" repeatable quest that helped us keep track). I can't recall the last time I did anything that ridiculously and artificially grindy in an MMO, and I'm not even sure I want to continue to the next zone - which is more of the same.
12/07/2014
Sharandar vs. Dread Ring
The Dread Ring is the second of Neverwinter's daily areas for max level characters and was released as part of the second module, Shadowmantle.
It's immediately apparent that Cryptic has learned at least two lessons compared to Sharandar:
1) Making repetitive content too linear is not fun.
Sharandar consists of three sub-zones that you unlock over time. You have to do the first one a couple of times to unlock the second one, do the second one for a while to unlock the third one and so on. While you don't get exactly the same quests every day, it's still kind of annoying to, say, be stuck in the area with the witches if you find them really annoying.
In the Dread Ring on the other hand, the whole map is open to you right from the start, but you get a different mix of quests every day. This keeps the zone fresh even if you run it every day, without destroying the necessary sense of progression.
Also, in Sharandar you have to do three regular dailies to unlock the associated lair quest every day, which is a somewhat annoying and adds a feeling of having to run back and forth unnecessarily. In the Dread Ring you can go straight for the day's lair while ignoring everything else if you want.
2) It helps to spread rewards out sensibly to make the grind more palatable.
One problem we experienced with Sharandar was that the rewards came in reasonably quickly at the start, but then there is a huge stretch at the end where nothing happens except that you grind the same content over and over to get to the top reward, which is quite substantial.
The Dread Ring feels better balanced in that regard - the important rewards aren't spaced out too badly, and while it also has the option to keep grinding for an extra reward at the end, it feels a lot more optional and you can work towards it in a more casual manner - or not at all - without feeling like you're missing out on something important.
It's immediately apparent that Cryptic has learned at least two lessons compared to Sharandar:
1) Making repetitive content too linear is not fun.
Sharandar consists of three sub-zones that you unlock over time. You have to do the first one a couple of times to unlock the second one, do the second one for a while to unlock the third one and so on. While you don't get exactly the same quests every day, it's still kind of annoying to, say, be stuck in the area with the witches if you find them really annoying.
In the Dread Ring on the other hand, the whole map is open to you right from the start, but you get a different mix of quests every day. This keeps the zone fresh even if you run it every day, without destroying the necessary sense of progression.
Also, in Sharandar you have to do three regular dailies to unlock the associated lair quest every day, which is a somewhat annoying and adds a feeling of having to run back and forth unnecessarily. In the Dread Ring you can go straight for the day's lair while ignoring everything else if you want.
2) It helps to spread rewards out sensibly to make the grind more palatable.
One problem we experienced with Sharandar was that the rewards came in reasonably quickly at the start, but then there is a huge stretch at the end where nothing happens except that you grind the same content over and over to get to the top reward, which is quite substantial.
The Dread Ring feels better balanced in that regard - the important rewards aren't spaced out too badly, and while it also has the option to keep grinding for an extra reward at the end, it feels a lot more optional and you can work towards it in a more casual manner - or not at all - without feeling like you're missing out on something important.
04/07/2014
Eye for an Eye
There is a daily quest in Sharandar to collect six cyclops eyes. This has inspired the following conversation between me and my pet tank:
Him: "This cyclops dropped two eyes!"
Me: "Well, why shouldn't it?"
Him: "Because if it had two eyes, it wouldn't be a cyclops."
Apparently most of them have a spare in their back pocket or something.
Him: "This cyclops dropped two eyes!"
Me: "Well, why shouldn't it?"
Him: "Because if it had two eyes, it wouldn't be a cyclops."
Apparently most of them have a spare in their back pocket or something.
28/06/2014
Sharandar
Ever since hitting the level cap, my pet tank and I have been busy doing dailies. There are several daily areas, with the first one being Sharandar, which was released as part of the Fury of the Feywild module last year.
It has some similarities to Star Trek Online's New Romulus daily area, both in theme (dispossessed people asking for help securing their new home) and execution (do dailies, collect various currencies, unlock rewards in stages by using a special UI). It's not without its issues, but it still feels like an improvement compared to STO, where I often found myself blocked by how much of a sheer (in-game) money sink it was to increase my reputation. You shouldn't have to do dailies to fund your other dailies. Of course it also helps that the combat in Neverwinter is more engaging than the ground combat in STO.
We've also dipped our toes into the campaign areas that were released later, and it's obvious that Cryptic has already learned how to make the experience smoother and even more enjoyable.
It has some similarities to Star Trek Online's New Romulus daily area, both in theme (dispossessed people asking for help securing their new home) and execution (do dailies, collect various currencies, unlock rewards in stages by using a special UI). It's not without its issues, but it still feels like an improvement compared to STO, where I often found myself blocked by how much of a sheer (in-game) money sink it was to increase my reputation. You shouldn't have to do dailies to fund your other dailies. Of course it also helps that the combat in Neverwinter is more engaging than the ground combat in STO.
We've also dipped our toes into the campaign areas that were released later, and it's obvious that Cryptic has already learned how to make the experience smoother and even more enjoyable.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)