Mage inquisition items

[fingers]

Hail! I am sure that what I am about to write is not going to make me win a popularity contest, but, ho well!. Being a long time player on uoex, not much on the shard gives me a good challenge, except maybe the mage inquisition quest. So everytime i feel like hunting and letting go my killer instinct, I like to go in hard dungeons, like Bedlam, Prism of light, Paroxysmus and Labyrith. Of course, that being my first hunting activity, I have completed the quest enough times to have several full suits. One would say that I do it for lucrative reasons, but the quests taking several days-weeks, I can assure you that I do it for the challenge as I know other activities more lucrative; and the demand for gem of completion is very low atm.

The problem that I enconter more and more is in Sanctuary, Bedlam Crypts and sometimes in Blighted Grove. Yesterday, i went really quick to see if Skrat was available to kill. When I arrived, a player was waiting there. I went to other occupations and I came back 5 hours later. The same player was there. I asked him if he was having a hard time getting the magic rocks from Skrat. Then he became pretty defensive: "I have a hard time like everyone", "even us players who are not good have the right to sell gems", "Don't talk to me", etc. Since then I have talked to several other players at that same spot and all were going for the rocks and didn't want to have anything to do at all with the quest.

What I realise, is that kind of camping never occurs in paroxysmus, labyrinth or prism of light. The problem in Sanctuary and in Bedlam crypts is that you can litterally place your character in front of your objective (Skrat, malachai...) and go afk. The place is way to easy and the spawn time being one hour, it gives a chance to the unskilled player to monopolise spots that are already bottlenecks.

There are two ways to make it less frustrating for the players who actually want to do the quest.

First one would be to render Sanctuary and Bedlam Crypts at par with the other dungeons, meaning the presence of one hit wonder monsters such as minautores, toxic giants, crystal giants, and all kinds of little snakes and things that prevent you from rehiding once revealed. That is my favorite solution and its probably easy to implement.

The second solution would be to make spawner times on Skrat and Malachai drasticly faster, wich would result in less demand for the part (jade amulet and magic rocks), and therefore make it usless to camp.

Lets discuss;-)

[Gumbi]

you should make this into a poll. i like the idea of making it harder, but at the same time those are the only peerless dungeons some people can do and most of the other dungeons on this shard dont even compare to the peerless so it would create a large gap of difficulty. Those dungeons are good for easing into the peerless quest. What we need is some new things to do for the older players. cant wait for fel ice (hoping it something cool like the peerless), been waiting for it for almost 6 months now

[Undertaker]

dude, thats exactly right on, you know what i do for fun, an im not even joking, is i goto the lab an solo kill those minotaurs walking around, as if im in a field of flowers, thats what it litterally comes down to "having a challange"/"fun" everything else is easy, i just collect pieces an stock pile them on my castle floor, an ignore the rude players that camp the "easy" ones, as you stated... everything is soloable except the one hit wonders, an you know how boring that gets man?

remember when we did grizzle in the beginning, it was like "omg this thing is almost impossible" loosing count of how many times we died, now its like i stand in one spot yawning an im killing it, not so much on the yawning, cuz he does get me down if i dont pay attention lol

but as far as the Flooding on scrat, etc. not so sure staff will run with that, but i do like if they had "toxic ratman" or somethin, similar to the toxic eles, or even those archer rats doin like 200 damage per arrow... that would be a blast actully, and if something like that does get implemented, maybe they might consider on taking some of those spawners outta the sanctuary, kind of unnessesary to have like 300 cheap spawns that barely do damage lagging your screen, which is how they actully kill you...

anywho, this will be another Project for them

[Lyandrin]

I agree with much of what polar has said in this post and ill try and make mine as short as possible, the problem with the mage quest as I see it is that they have created a quite lucrative business.

There are quite a few of us able to solo every part of it that also enjoy the immense challenge it poses, but there are also the players just doing it for gold, aswell as a third party which are those newer players not quite ready for the challenge at hand.


The problem I see is the players doing it for gold only. They make it harder for the new players due to the camp spawning the few mobs a new player can practically handle. and they also make it harder for us that wants to just finish it for the challenge aswell as another part of an armor.

What I would propose is to make the gems and items alike nonsellable in some way Because if you do that there is only one reason to do the quest mobs, and that is to get those pieces yourself.

For those that do this for monetary gain there is always the possibility to guide newer players in the different dungeons and take out a fee for your help and guidance. Thus people can still make money out of the quest but alot of the camping will subside. For everything except melisande ofc, since she drops those squirrels

[NewPlayer241]

I think making it harder would be about the worst thing that can be done to the quest. The way I look at it is there are 70 some pieces you need to collect for the quest this in itself makes it a ordeal to undertake. Having a creature that spawns once an hour with a 10% chance to drop a piece as you said creates a bottleneck, and if they weren't able to camp it when visible they would just camp it with hiding on like I had to do with grizzled.

The real way to deal with this issue is to boost the supply, by making the imp spawn much more often or by making it drop the stones much more often then suddently with the increased supply and the same demand as there was people would have less reason to camp it since the items value would go down. It is still only 1 out of 70 items, so it doesn't trivalize the quest in any sense if the bottleneck items are made a bit easier to get, all it means is the quest would be primarly exploring the peerless dungeons rather then camping the same spawn for hours on end.

[fingers]

Well my experience is that in dungeon much harder (prism, paroxysmus), the monsters that could rcreate a bottle neck because of slow spawning and low drop rates (ortov, ice wyrm) are not a problem at all. As for making the items none tradable, I beleive only locked chest cant be traded atm, so i dont know how much programming would be necessary to make this possible. Also, even if items can not be traded in a window, nothing prevents you to grab a check from a player, then leaving the object on the ground.

[Highroller]

I say make the guy that drops the Jade Amulet and the imp that drops the stones spawn a lot more often. Then randomize which boss drops the imprisoned pets. Ie maybe the Parox Chief drops the squirrel one day vice Lady Mel. Randomize the loot a bit too. The chief drops a lot of gold and occasionly 10 elven notes but outside of that and the Acid Proof Rope he seems to give junk. Same for Ice Wyrm. He hardly ever gives anything good other than spike and some gold. If All the imprisoned pets were more randomized and to a greater extent the loot there would tend to be less camping. Instead of a waiting line to kill Lady Mel people would have more incentive to go more places.

[Lyandrin]

I say make the guy that drops the Jade Amulet and the imp that drops the stones spawn a lot more often. Then randomize which boss drops the imprisoned pets. Ie maybe the Parox Chief drops the squirrel one day vice Lady Mel. Randomize the loot a bit too. The chief drops a lot of gold and occasionly 10 elven notes but outside of that and the Acid Proof Rope he seems to give junk. Same for Ice Wyrm. He hardly ever gives anything good other than spike and some gold. If All the imprisoned pets were more randomized and to a greater extent the loot there would tend to be less camping. Instead of a waiting line to kill Lady Mel people would have more incentive to go more places.

Sound ideas mate, although i would say that the best pets ingame should also drop from the hardest monsters ingame, not a peerless you chug 5 pets on, turn on your healing macro and drink some coffee for 3 mins

And I agree the droplist on the peerless bosses should be updated a bit, shimmering and proxy are way harder than the others, yet they 98% of the time drops crappier stuff than both melisande and travesty for gods sake.

[Highroller]

I wasn't advocating having easy or risk free peerless drop imprisoned pets. But I mean each peerless has at least one monster that is a real battle. Lady Mel, Parox Chief, Ice Wyrm, Neptoir, Grizzle, Slaarion for example. (my apologies for any I misspelled) On the other hand Slaarion and Chief and Ice Wyrm would be close enough to impossible without imprisoned pets so trying to go to them to get imprisoned pets would be a little harsh. But I still think the loot on the harder peerless monsters should be more randomized. Maybe a pretty rare chance to get the imprisoned pets from the other 5. Lady Mel already drops squirrels. But all the special armor sets and parrot deeds and all the other stuff you only seem to get where the imprisoned drop could definately be spread around more. Maybe make ear rings and necklaces be peerless loot in addition to rings and bracelets also. Maybe a little better chance of getting a killer weapon. I have YET to get a weapon better than crafted from peerless loot. I get a few armor pieces with very good lrc but have yet to loot armor with better resists than crafted. I mean its bad enough the champ bosses give bad loot items on this shard, at least let the peerless bosses have a decent chance of dropping something you want a little more often.