Feldon 
Are you spending much time in Kael Drakkel? Drunder? Elements of War? That’s ok, neither are most other people.
EQ2 has a storied history of challenging dungeons. Players who have been around since the Fallen Dynasty fondly recall Nizara for its breathtaking challenge. Echoes of Faydwer delivered the instant classic Estate of Unrest. Kunark followed up with the mid-summer release of Veksar 2 and Runnyeye 2 (both forerunners of so-called Hard Mode zones). The Shadow Odyssey had a pair of zingers — Ruins of Guk and the Palace of Ferzhul. However no EverQuest II expansion has played host to as many difficult dungeons at one time as the Destiny of Velious.
Let the Interrogation Begin
Try to join a Kael Drakkel, Drunder, or Elements of War group these days and it may seem more like a job interview than the beginning of an adventure. The first disqualifier has traditionally been your Critical Mitigation. In past expansions, a lack of Crit Mit was something that could be worked around with exceptional healing. Not so with Velious. Being a few points short equals certain death.
Next on the list is Critical Chance. Zone into Kael Drakkel contested, or some of the other harder dungeons, and the first thing you’ll notice on your character is an incurable detrimental that reduces your effective Critical Chance by 70%, 100%, or more. I suppose it was inevitable that as players have been given the tools to avoid the critical bonuses of enemies, one day enemies would gain similar defenses. Drunder in particular reduces the effectiveness of each player’s Critical Chance by a full 170%. What does this mean? Players wishing to succeed in Drunder need a whopping 270% Critical Chance just to approach a 100% chance of hitting, healing, or taunting critically.
The introduction of a really tough dungeon, especially in a mid-expansion content update, has always been charming rather than alarming, presenting something for raiders to sink their teeth into. It’s also been a way to breathe new life into an expansion which has already been cleared by many group and raid players. Indeed Velious also has such a dungeon– Temple of Rallos Zek HM. Only raid-geared need apply to this nail-bitingly tough zone.
To date, most players remain concentrated in the eight easiest Velious zones. That’s the three Tower of Frozen Shadow zones, the Velketor’s Labyrinth trio (Pools, Ascent, and Spires), Crystal Caverns, and the new scaling Palace of Sabaron.
With Velious, fully ONE THIRD of the group instances remain largely out of the reach of the average group player.
The Middle Ground
We couldn’t help but post this amusing image of Grouping and Raiding DoV at-a-glance by Neskonlith. Remember folks, frogloks with pompadours are proud members of the Hair club for Kerrans!
Two years ago, a progression of heroic dungeons from easy to almost impossible would have been largely applauded by the player community. It makes sense when you’re on a 12-month expansion release cycle with lightweight Game Updates in the intervening months. However with Velious dropping new dungeons and raids almost every quarter, and with how busy players will be this November though February fiddling with Beastlords, the Freeport revamp, and player-made Design Your Own Dungeons, it just seems unnecessary to hamstring groups of players with progression roadblocks and steep gear checks on an entire category of dungeons.
Sure a few exceptional players in good gear are stomping through Drunder and remain incredulous at why everyone else can’t. But it has hardly gone unnoticed just how many Velious instances remain unpopulated, despite a half-dozen nerfs. In fact this week’s EQ2Talk podcast covers the subject: “How Heroic is too Heroic?”.
Design Your Own Dungeon Backlash?
With today’s Update Notes, the last of the original Velious instanced dungeons (all but Kael Drakkel contested, the three Drunder instances, and the new Elements of War), have now dropped their Critical Mitigation requirements.
However any hope that this will open the floodgates on Drunder will quickly evaporate once players get inside and realize that the gear checks and challenge haven’t changed at all. Ry’Gorr is the minimum gear for these zones, and Tower of Frozen Shadow x2 raid jewelry certainly won’t hurt. You’re going to need 250% Crit Chance or more. And you’re going to need 2 talented healers.
There is nothing wrong with challenging content, but with looming content-rich updates planned for February and May, Velious is getting top-heavy. Temple of Rallos Zek HM, Elements of War HM, the three three Drunder zones, not to mention a ton of Challenge raid mobs that haven’t even been killed four months after they were released suggests that the curve is still too steep. Even SmokeJumper admitted that raid content might be coming out too fast — although he sadly misinterpreted the concerns of players who tried to explain that the main demotivators to raid progress were:
- constant Re-itemization
- razor-thin differences between EM (easy) and HM (challenge) raid gear
- roadblocks in mob behavior, AoEs, and downright buggy raid scripts
Even with shiny new Mythical weapons awaiting players at the end of the Sullon, Vallon, and Tallon HM raid zones, the Raiding community seems to have greeted these artificially difficult zones with a collective “Meh”.
Jumping the Shard
When Velious launched, there was but one way to earn Primal Velium Shards, the currency needed to buy heroic Thurgadin or Ry’Gorr armor.
Game Update 61 slashed the cost of Ry’Gorr shard armor, as well as introducing Solo Shard Quests (Iceshard Keep: Agent Provocateur) available to anyone with +10,000 Thurgadin faction. These have made it easier to outfit a character in the “benchmark” Ry’Gorr heroic gear. Although Drunder armor and its baffling ore breakdown mechanic presents a tier just above Ry’Gorr armor, its per-piece cost is so absurd that most people are using Ry’Gorr gear as a stepping stone into x2 or x4 raiding, bypassing Drunder entirely.
If the 3-5 Primal Velium Shards you get from each Velious dungeon (1 for the daily quest, 1 from the dungeon’s boss, 1 from the shard chest, and 2 if it’s the daily double zone), aren’t enough, you may not be aware that there is also a Dominance quest offered on a weekly rotation. Players who complete the three dungeons implicated receive a tidy bonus of 14 more shards. A single Dominance run should reward 25 shards (if one of the zones is the Daily Double).
Dominance of the Tower of Frozen Shadow
- Tower of Frozen Shadow: Shadowed Corridors
- Tower of Frozen Shadow:Umbral Halls
- Tower of Frozen Shadow:Haunt of Syl’Tor
Dominance of Velketor’s Labyrinth
- Hold of Rime: Forgotten Pools
- Hold of Rime: The Ascent
- Hold of Rime: The Fortress Spire
- Kael Drakkel: Iceshard Keep
- Kael Drakkel: Throne of Storms
- Kael Drakkel: Temple of Rallos Zek [non-challenge]
Velious heroic armor has a fairly clear progression (despite constant, annoying nips and tucks here and there). Most players run the Othmir quest line at 86, then camp out at the Ring War Public Quest (as well as subjecting themselves to a few XP debt-racking Storm Gorge runs for their head and legs items). Next, the Goahmari and Ry’Gorr Orcs get our undivided attention as they’re the ones holding coveted Flying Mounts, the Best Adornments, and the aforementioned benchmark set of heroic armor. Game Update 61 fleshed out the Thrael’Gorr story with more faction boosts and a few sundry gear upgrades, as well as giving us a bit more to do for the Goahmari.
With a full set of Ry’Gorr armor, most classes are seeing about 120% Critical Mitigation.
The Dungeon Finder Effect
Some have speculated that the dropping of Critical Mitigation from more Velious zones is a preamble to the upcoming Dungeon Finder feature. We already know that the Dungeon Finder will include the Critical Mitigation requirements of any group dungeon to exclude players who don’t qualify. However the choice to remove these benchmarks from more Velious dungeons is far more likely to create ill-prepared groups destined for an unpleasant evening.
No one, in any game, should ever have a 100% chance of critting. Where’s the RNG in that? BOOOORRRIINNNGG.
Well drunder was for the very hard core raiders, and they cant even clear it. I think soe missed the mark and them some, and what can I say about itemizaiton, with it continued nerfs instead of buffs to get you into these instances.
You are either part of the 1% of hard core raiders who run drunder or you just dont go.
Destiny of Velious is the Gates of Discord of EverQuest 2.
Wonder how long SOE will take to realize that the biggest issue of this all is their itemazation and their scripting of the zones, since the start of DoV.
At least in previous expansions, raiders as well as more casual players always had their eyes on a certain item with a proc which would benefit them.
Now except for one or two pieces from Drundar heroic and possibly the new myth weapons that might drop in the raid instances there is just nothing really to look forward to anymore.
Too much focus on Station Cash items that need to be rolled out weekly but not enough attention is given to the actualy mechanics and gameplay.
Its always better to make super hard and nerf easier than make too easy and be stuck with disappointed people who can no longer get in.
Many players, like myself, have returned to Eq from Wow because in order to please the majority they had to make the content trivial. Hopefully the Eq dev know from their years of experience that having grumbling people is fine if those folks still have a goal to reach and by trying to please everybody you end up pleasing no one.
yes Destiny of Velious has seen the most nerfed items and gear ever . it is my most disliked expansion ever also .i could do Drunder but 250 % crit chance or more is insane . if all EQ2 cares about is hard core raiders who make up about 40% or less of the player base on the game then it’s headed down a deserted road lacking new player adds . SF was a great expansion i implore soe to return to it’s blueprint . but add for all raid zones and instances a hard mode tough enough to please the hard core raiders also. many players wont to enjoy the game and the joy of a good loot drop . but like me not play any game so hard it’s like a job you’ve gotta spend your life on to get anything decent .
I would disagree in one point with the progression, the initial challenge raid zones are harder than the easy mode drunder raid zones, I would just switch their possitions. Our own guild has killed all but Vallon in Easy Mode Drunder and are just a bit past mid way in the normal Hard Mode zones (done Kraytoc’s, all but Tormax and mid way in Foundations). And for what I see in the progression of other guilds, this is the usual way to go.
Its the lack of mathematical savvy on the part of programers that is the issue here. Simply doing an arithmetic sum of the crit-chance minus the crit-mitigation is the problem.
Using multiplicative formulae can result in more interesting results with some low chance of criting at even low levels of crit chance and less then 100% chance of critting with even 100% more crit chance than crit mit.
One possible formulae gives a 97% crit probability with 220% crit chance and 60% crit mit while also giving a 2% crit probability with 10% crit chance and 240% crit mit.
Necromancer> DoV in EQ2 is nothing like Gates of Discord in EQ1. In Gates of Discord, the wholle raid experience was initially geared for 70th level toons while the level cap was still 65th, rendering the raiding [bugged though it was] painfully difficult for all guilds. As the article states, the best geared toons are rolling through Drunder, and the recent removal of Crit-Mit requirements in the lower tiers & devaluing of armour should allow more players to see it.
I wasn’t referring to the raiding content. I was referring to the overland content in GoD that everyone had access to, since the concept of instances did not
Quite exist at that time. GoD overland zones were exceeding hard, and the casual fanbase of EQ at that time died off at that time. The same is occuring with DoV.
Um chris are you even over 100 % crit chance …… and the zones aren’t hard tbh, i go through them almost everyday to get the ore and gear if i need it.