The Apprentice quest (giant rats)

[Kaervas]

I don't think "selling organics" "how much" "100g each" is much of a conversation seed. Nobody needs that kind of crutch to get involved with the community. A new player who has the will or the want to mingle with the community will do it regardless of the presence/absence of organics, and those that don't want to or are socially stunted won't start just because they have an easy cash cow farmable to sell.
I'm still thinking about how to make the latter party mingle, but organics definitely isn't it. All organics does is add an invisible yoke around new player's necks once they realize the value of the things and make them feel like they should be optimizing their first 21 days by grinding rats.


As for the part where a lot of organics used to make bios coming from young players, all this needs is a slight reordering of the taming BOD rewards.
Remove the leather as a potential reward, and fill in the odds of getting leather with more chance to get organics. I think more people (me included) would do the higher BODs this way, since the soul-destroying chance of getting a mere 700-800 ethereal leather after doing a 6x20 BOD is gone (other rewards you can get are 5500-6000 organics / bio book / 120 PS / 130 pet PS).

[Karma]

I dont do bods as I think they are worse than any rat grind so ill not comment on them. There is absolutly nothing wrong with the young grinding rats. Its simply an option for them why remove it? A driven young player can easly pay for thier house and a few powerscrolls through the farm. My first days on the shard I lived down there collecting organics paid for my tameing ps and my first maxx cu. Id much rather have the organics there for them to farm than a bunch of beggers in brit. Lets be honest to get anywhere in the game your gona be doing some kinda grind. The easiest path is finding the grind you enjoy most.
Look at the mage quest it is a far worse grind than the 21 day rat race.

[Harabakc]

So you're saying the only option to farming rats for organics is begging in brit?

[Karma]

Nope im saying haveing the option to farm them should be left. Other options could be added sure but no reason to remove that one.

[Kaervas]

Sorry in advance, this is going to be a long post.


Those organics from the rat room took me to a maxed cu sidhe, five maxed nobles, a furnished three story house, a decent quality LRC suit for skilling purposes, and a decent chunk play money off to the side (not necessarily in that order). In one week.
At the start I took polar bears down there to occupy the room and speed the kill rate, and then moved up to frenzied ostards, then a cu and 2 ostards, then a cu and 2 nobles, then all five nobles, and still I kept going because hell, if I was alone in the room I could grind organics faster than I could if I was working on taming 6x20 BODs and lucking out on 6000 organics every hand-in, thanks to the RNG factor of obtaining/trading for the correct deeds.
I'd be utterly mad to call the rat grind fun, but I still did it because of the high and constant demand for organics which meant I could reliably reap gold from the rats while standing around practicing my peacemaking or veterinary or anything else which was possible down there.
The quest takes place in a small enclosed room which most of the time your pets and the rats won't roam out of, and mobs that don't attack you but will attack your pets, causing the pets to attack back and kill the rats easily. Combine this with [claimall, some vendors being all of 30 seconds away, the bank on the first room of level 2 to drop off your gold, the token trashbag for trash that the vendors won't buy, and the fact that organics are weightless...
It's not an option - it's practically a must. As boring as it is, the only reason any eligible player would not be there is if someone else was already there, and the efficiency started to plummet.
Now that I have the nobles I don't need to be there 24/7 anymore, since making raw gold is faster (though this is assuming there are organics to buy, which isn't always the case). I'm thankfully free of those chains. But before you have the means to kill the tough stuff, it's practically a necessity to be there bashing rats if you want a solid headstart.

The Mage's Inquisition quest on the other hand is different, it's practically as endgame as you can get here, and it has you at least going to six different peerless dungeons throughout the process. That *should* be difficult and time consuming - since once you've done it (six times, to boot) you've practically done the hardest thing there is to do here, and also gotten some ridiculously powerful gear for your time investment. This is far far different from merely obtaining a nest egg on a server you are new to. I don't know how you can even make this comparison.

The rat grind is not difficult. It's not challenging. It's just money on a plate served to you in rat shaped packages.
Let me emphasize the flaws:
The rats don't attack you.
They have very little health.
They always drop organics.
They automatically attack pets so you don't even have to command your pets to kill them.
With basic knowledge of Razor you can configure things so that all you have to do is sit there and twiddle your thumbs. Watch your screen, chat around in [c, respond when GMs check to see if you're AFK - everything else is automated and money just rolls in.
A newbie should not be making THAT much money. There is such a thing as a power progression, and potential income is part of said progression as well. If a new player can make that much money that easily the entire flow of the game is disrupted and the value of anything difficult to obtain is lessened by the fact that the player could think to themselves: "Hey, I could've earned this artifact in less than an hour of killing rats."

To illustrate things more clearly, let me show two possible routes for obtaining five maxed out noble steeds:
The experienced tamer-adventurer
Cap your taming+lore and very likely your barding and self-defense skills too -> find the elusive spawn point -> tame noble steeds until you have a male and a female (or two of the same gender + a pet gender change deed) of max level 30, this saves a lot of breeding time -> train them to maximum and get their stats as high as possible -> breed them over the course of weeks -> train the offspring and breed them again -> at any training stage, you may use treated ointments if necessary to fortify any low stats so that future offspring are as strong as possible, this may or may not be needed depending how many breeds/generations you have remaining -> repeat until you reach the caps in all stats except the unnecessary mana/intelligence -> do this until you have five such steeds
The rat killer
Kill lots of rats over the course of a few days -> buy 5 noble steeds

Of course, any player with the means to make money can do the same thing as the rat killer, but let me stress yet again - you don't need ANY skill or gear to kill rats at a semi-decent rate, and with an hour whacking at the trainers and some donation-room gear, you will slaughter the rats and keep the spawn controlled entirely even if you don't bring in five pets.
Any other "options" added in would be inferior in terms of effort:reward, the only way this could possibly get easier is if newbies started out with thirty million gold and ten +120 skillballs instead of 30k and one +60 skillball.

I'm not saying that the rat quest absolutely definitely has to go, but it should clearly be toned down at least to the point where it will be quickly outgrown and players will go out and play the game.
Give the means to obtain a steady reliable flow of organics to the financially established, near-fully-trained players who are reaching content which requires a bio-engineered clone to progress. Just make sure it's something reasonably challenging and not a trivial macro-able task.




Edit:
I'd also like to apologize for being so heavily opinionated when I've only been here for two weeks.
I'm not trying to pick a fight with anyone, it's not my intent to be argumentative at all, I'm just saying things as I see them.
By now I think I've said everything I need to say on this subject so I'll put a cork in it

[Karma]

Well killing rats is a choice there are plenty of people on the shard that have done just fine and have never farmed the rats. Its a nice option to be had for sure dont see why people care to try and have it removed and ruin it for the next youngs to come through. As for the mage quest you cant realy speak about it as you have never done it. Not to be rude or mean but you havent got to camp grizzled for 50 kills to not get a drop, or any of the few others that have realy crummy drop rates. Camping hour spawners for rare drops isnt as fun as killen rats after a few hours as at least the rats spawn steady. Your right you dont have to do the mage quest but, you dont have to do it any more than you have to farm the rats. OSI dosnt have the quest and is full of "rich" people. Some only feal they have to do it to have a jump start and get going and thats ok its thier game so to speak let them play it. Asking for something to be added is one thing but asking for something to be removed because you didnt like doing it is another. Its a sandbox game if you dont like it simply move on its realy simple.

[Chyna]

Well killing rats is a choice there are plenty of people on the shard that have done just fine and have never farmed the rats. Its a nice option to be had for sure dont see why people care to try and have it removed and ruin it for the next youngs to come through. As for the mage quest you cant realy speak about it as you have never done it. Not to be rude or mean but you havent got to camp grizzled for 50 kills to not get a drop, or any of the few others that have realy crummy drop rates. Camping hour spawners for rare drops isnt as fun as killen rats after a few hours as at least the rats spawn steady. Your right you dont have to do the mage quest but, you dont have to do it any more than you have to farm the rats. OSI dosnt have the quest and is full of "rich" people. Some only feal they have to do it to have a jump start and get going and thats ok its thier game so to speak let them play it. Asking for something to be added is one thing but asking for something to be removed because you didnt like doing it is another. Its a sandbox game if you dont like it simply move on its realy simple.

Speaking as one of those people that had a choice and didn't farm rats ( i still could for another 2 weeks if i wanted to!).. I would be one of them, of course i also had this angel in white assist me in my first suit of armour and my bow so the need for farming rats for organics was left to not needing to do. ~winks at Karma and whispers "thanks" again~

I do have to agree with him (and NOT because he gave me my first suit and bow ), to remove something from the game which assists the young in making their first few thousand gold is not that great an idea. Again i will repeat, i did not farm rats, so do not have all these great things.. no nobles, no house (i have a blank empty plot), and trained all my skills on my own the old fashioned way. However, had i decided to want all these things that i can live without, rats at my "young" age would be one very acceptable way to do it, why remove it ? we start out with the basics and work up to par with the rest of the server, perhaps it is the competition that the "young" are giving the older players because they can make quick cash to buy those 120s as well as you can the reason you want it removed?

[Kaervas]

I did say I'd stop, but I can't help it.

As for the mage quest you cant realy speak about it as you have never done it. Not to be rude or mean but you havent got to camp grizzled for 50 kills to not get a drop, or any of the few others that have realy crummy drop rates. Camping hour spawners for rare drops isnt as fun as killen rats after a few hours as at least the rats spawn steady.Your right you dont have to do the mage quest but, you dont have to do it any more than you have to farm the rats.

You are right, I haven't done it, but I'm about to start it some time in the coming week, and I've been here for all of two weeks so far. Does that sound right to you? I'm about to start on the end game quest, two weeks in, on an MMO.
I beg to differ that camping hour spawners for rare drops isn't as fun as killing the same rats endlessly. I cannot see what is fun at all about doing something which is no challenge whatsoever and just gives pure profit. Furthermore, a mob that doesn't respawn instantly gives you time to go and do something else in the mean time, even if it's just keeping the game on alt-tab and browsing the web while waiting for sabrix to respawn.
The low drop rate/long spawn times/ for the Mage's Inquisition armor pieces is (almost certainly) an artificial means of extending the length of the current ultimate quest here, and making sure that not everyone is running around with a full set, and the power of the rewards is what makes it worth the vast effort and time spent. Standard endgame tactics to prevent the majority of the player base standing around thinking "well that's that, what now?", and gives the developers time to put out some new stuff before absolutely everyone has run out of current content to do. Artificial bloat/lengthening/time delays put on the current "final quest(s)" in a game are the staple of practically every MMO out there, commercial or not.
Also, I never said that "you dont have to do the mage quest". Not that it really matters for the purposes of my reasoning. Just throwing it out there.

OSI dosnt have the quest and is full of "rich" people. Some only feal they have to do it to have a jump start and get going and thats ok its thier game so to speak let them play it. Asking for something to be added is one thing but asking for something to be removed because you didnt like doing it is another.

OSI UO has been going on for something like 12 years now, and I'm pretty sure the rich people didn't become as rich as they are within 2 weeks of starting out.
I'm typing and you're not reading what I'm typing. Nowhere did I say that the rats should be removed purely because I didn't like it - I clearly gave reasons as to why it wasn't a good idea to place the opportunity to generate so much money in the hands of a new player who doesn't even need to be pushing buttons or moving the mouse 90% of the time.
If you want to think about it a different way, think of it as if I'm not pushing for the rats dropping organics to be removed, just have them put onto slightly more difficult creatures that can actually fight back against the player, or, limit how much the rats can be farmed by any one player per time period. Either way works just as well.

I do have to agree with him (and NOT because he gave me my first suit and bow ), to remove something from the game which assists the young in making their first few thousand gold is not that great an idea.

Try first few million instead. That's why I'm saying the quest reward needs to be improved, but the actual drops of organics lowered. Basically the youngs will still be able to make a hefty chunk of cash by doing the quest every time it's cooled down, and overall spend less time there, and also prevent the room being crowded at any given time when new player #98090 decides to pop by, since you're in and out of the room in 5 minutes each.
Giving young players an easy way for spending money for growth is just fine, and needed, before they have found any decent gear or trained any skills up. It's when the amount of spending money gained can be broken by constant camping of an effortless mob where things go loopy.
Please don't say "it's an option" or "you have a choice whether you want to farm rats or not", let me yet again stress, the rats don't attack, are very weak, and spawn quickly. There is no way that such a task is worth so much reward. Even if it's intended for youngs to make that much, at least make it on some reasonably challenging task for a poorly equipped player. At least shove the moneymaker onto level 2 of the newbie dungeon, where mobs can at least retaliate against your attacks. Add a puzzle or three, or a fight requiring some semblance of tactics. Something so that money isn't being given to you on a silver platter. Headless Hideout would be perfect for this, by the way. Varied creatures, dungeon floor traps, a lot more space to work with than just one room, and even some mini-boss-esque exotic creatures littered around to break up the monotony.
I've seen people killing the rats who only walk around the room despite being mounted, spend 30 seconds per corpse click-dragging the gold and organics out manually and not even claiming the empty body at the end, even double clicking themselves and dismounting and getting their newbie mount killed on a regular basis. That's just silly.

perhaps it is the competition that the "young" are giving the older players because they can make quick cash to buy those 120s as well as you can the reason you want it removed?

Why would I care about that?I'm a young player myself for another week, and even if I was an established player with tons of scrolls/gear/pets to sell, I'd be more pleased than the young player since they are the easiest source of cheap, effortless organic material, and the money just loops back to me when they use the money I paid for organics to buy my wares to power themselves up.
Without the rats, it would be important for non-young players to receive a reliable way of getting organics themselves. I don't really see any issue with placing organic material on balron-level creatures (though not balrons specifically, since those have combat skill Essences and high gold drops as their farming-point).
The overall effect would be that it takes somewhat longer for a new player to get a nest egg and grow in power, but actually have to hone their skills to get there, and the older players would have an additional, reliable option for getting their organics where direct input of time and focus would yield a steady supply of the things. Can't see how this would be bad.


I don't know. I think I'm speaking completely logically here, but if we don't see eye to eye it would be easiest to drop the topic entirely and save the both of us a lot of breath, in the end only one person has the power to decide what happens to the non-aggro rats dropping organics and that isn't us.

[Karma]

Well your right I didnt read most of what you wrote as i feal your just plain wrong. What you write is long rambling and you also right about stuff you do not know. Getting to the mage quest wasnt hard it didnt take me long either but we prolly play more than most to be honest. I farmed enouph rats to buy a 110 tame power scroll and a cu then never went back as it bored me. After geting my cu I was grinding on dragons and drakes working vet and music skills while i was on running razor to gm skills while i wasnt on. After a couple days i was farming balors and i had pretty much everything you have and i only killed the rats for a day or so. Metalurgist was banned after a couple weeks joinging the shard and he did nothing but mine and craft and after a week on the shard he purchased an 8 million dollor bio from me and never killed a rat. Most people wont make more than afew hundred thousand to get started and that isnt spit not even a drop in the bucket in uo money.
As far as the mage quest you cant tell me what it feals like one you havent done it and two you cant tell someone how it feals to them. Sorry but after you fight and get the fights down they arnt verry hard and then the chalange is in waiting and not the fight. Your right you can tab and brouse the web, watch movies, I can run two uo clients with out any problem so i started another shard so i could play there while i was waiting here. It is a grind and for most itl be a longer grind than the rat race. This isnt ment to be a bash on the mage quest realy by any means you do something enouph and itl be the same ol grind after awhile no matter what it is.

[Karma]

After reading my last post I think Im not explaining myself well enouph. What you have amassed in your two weeks here may seem like alot but it isnt spit. Sorry not being mean or trying to be mean cause I also feal the same about what I have for the most part. Have you been to an auction yet? You could sell everything you own and when the gm custom deco comes you may not be able to aford one thing. You have a good start but thats all you have is a start. With that dungeon being limeted to 21 days all anyone will get is a start. I think thats what it was ment for to give the new people to the shard a start. How big of a start you get is related to how long you can stand to do the girnd. If thats the way you choose to get started. And no matter what you say it is a choice, you do not have to go there to make it in the game by any means. As far as the mage quest being end game well it is uo and there is no end game. Youl find people with full sets of mage armor hunting in alot of the same areas you are with your nobles. There are some that have been here for a long time have billions in acumilated rares/pets deco/ ect. Youl see some of those same billionares farmimng the same balors for gold you can 2 weeks into the game. They are doing so at a greater speed but at the end of the day its the same grind.

[Chyna]

okay so i am not gonna quote cause that was a whole lot of stuff to weed through for the important parts, what i will say is this.. i have been on the server now 10 days.. i CHOSE .. NOT.. to farm rats.. and do things the fun yet slow way.. and have not much to call my own, but what i do have i earned ... now there are those that CHOOSE to farm rats.. as you did.. and have all this stuff that really is just nice icing and not really needed... you say "don't say its a choice or yada yada"... well guess what.. it IS a choice.. you CHOSE to do it.. i CHOSE not to... you have all these goodies.. i have what i have because i EARNED it... is either way right or wrong? no! it is the choice of the player wether they want to camp boring little rodents for hours or if they wanna go out and do things the hard way .. why take away a youngings choice? you admit to doing it yourself... why would you now say "take it away" or "change it"? and yea i said couple thousand.. why? because i didn't camp them, i made a couple thousand from organics from the quest.

i won't go on about this any more as i have said my part as a young player on the reverse side of the token. I have no issue with some new player deciding to spend hours beating on a defenseless little rodent to get everything in the game, so leave them the choice to waste time or have fun and feel wonderful about their accomplishments when they finally EARN what they have.

[Kaervas]

Well your right I didnt read most of what you wrote as i feal your just plain wrong.

Pretty much invalidates your posts.
You're dancing around and arguing at me, not the point I'm trying to make.
So the money from the organics may be small time in the big picture. I've heard of such expensive things sold on auction as a custom house in the middle of the ocean, with a pier addon, worth a combined total of 32 million or so. That, while impressive, has nothing to do with the matter at hand.
The issue with the organics money is the difficulty vs the speed vs the amount, and the fact you can start on it with reasonable effect the very minute you log in, and after an hour in the training room or taming forest practically anyone can do it, and fast. Maybe that's the intent of the room, I don't know, but I do know that access to that kind of money (yes, even though it's supposedly negligible overall) that early on with basically zero effort except some time to burn is just a little bit silly.
Like I said before, the only thing standing between a new player and a constant stream of easy money which can be made 90% hands-free, is whether another player is already in the room/whether another player joins in and takes a cut of the spawn.
The way I see it is, if the devs wanted to give the opportunity for a comfy nest egg to new players, they could at least have scaled it to the level of challenge involved, not the level of patience only capped by a 21 day hard cap.
I'll use Headless Hideout again as an example, but placing 1 organic per mob at a 30% chance on the Headless/Mongbats, a guaranteed 5 on the Corpsers and Gazer Larvae, 30% chance of 2-4 on the various undead in the crypt level, and a guaranteed 100 on absurd (for a new player) mobs like the Rotting Corpse (no loot if you use Abigo Malus) and Dragon would be more than perfect. You wouldn't hear a single complaint out of me in such a case, and the option is still there to sit there and grind organics endlessly if you wished, it just takes more than 2 brain cells to do so. You can even throw in such things as losing a few organics each time you step on a trap, or awarding more for solving the puzzles inside. Do you begin to see the difference between this and killing weak rats that don't fight back in a walled room roughly a screen in size?

Anyways this is getting nowhere, I'm not going to stick around to read another few paragraphs of you just stating I'm wrong and yet again not addressing the actual point I'm trying to make.

[fingers]

Well for a guy that bought 5 nobles, a nice big house and good gear, you seem to have farmed alot that "silly" quest. I like new players to have a good start. Not to mention that the availability of organics is way lower than the demand. I don't even want to think of how hard it would be to build a bio engeneered pet if we didn't have thoses new players farming the rats.

Also, I beleive that the shard wins by offering a high degree of diversity in the activities players can participate to.

As for the mage inquisitors quest that you feel ready to attack after two weeks, please keep us informed of how it is going for you.

[Harabakc]

I did say I'd stop, but I can't help it....

This is what you get when you understand concepts like risk vs reward and time investment vs reward. He gets it.

Karma he isn't talking about the Mage's Inquisition. He's talking about the reward of something that has zero challenge. I'd much rather see the source of organics be on something the people who actually use them will be killing. As opposed to letting newbies do the leg work and letting this be their source of gold.

Quite frankly if the idea is to help new players get a start(which should be obvious), I'd *much* rather see skills set higher at base and remove the need for days of macroing a bunch of easy skills to do anything significant. If you're going to just give them a bunch of free gold you're not removing the tedium of getting started. Are you just trying to attract players, or retain players?

If you're not going to read his posts then you might as well just stop posting.

[Karma]

I stated plainly I felt he was wrong about the rat grind so reading his hole post would be pointles. The ecomey isnt broke from the new players grinding organics. It is easy way for new people to get a jump start, i see absolulty no valid reason to have it removed. Y ea its easy so what? It can only be done for 21 days no real harm is gona come form it.