Feldon It seems that a LOT of people have been raising a stink and filing /bugs and /petitions about how easy it is to get void shards in certain TSO dungeons. I will admit that the current situation is exploitable in a couple of different ways.
The first exploit that people discovered was the sharing of cleared instances so that other members who had not initially been present during the group could come into the zone and get harvest/clickable updates and get their Void Shard.
The first attempts by SoE to close these exploits was to close the Lava Wall in Deep Forge under certain conditions (i.e. turning in the void shard quest). However there were complaints that this locked people out of coming back and getting that named if they wanted. Recently, some of us noticed that the Automated Hammers (required to kill Doomsmith with lower DPS groups) despawn under similar conditions. I had suspicions but there seemed to be no good reason for this behavior. Now I have my answer:
Starting with the Frostfell patch, all the Deep Forge missions require a kill.
The Cold Heat mission I can deal with. It requires killing an automated hammer in addition to collecting the idols. This seems to have the desired effect of making it difficult to share an instance.
However the mission Liquid Hot Mag-ma now requires killing the named Overseer.
If you are a frequent reader, you know that Deep Forge has been my “Example A” of easier TSO instances that allow even casual groups of 4-6 players to work towards getting void shards.
It is obvious that the named mobs in Deep Forge — Doomsmith, Overseer, and Firelord Kaern — have been tuned up in difficulty the release of The Shadow Odyssey. With the recent tuning up of Deep Forge’s difficulty, I have been encouraging people to merely skip the nameds and work towards their void shards. I have recently found myself in groups who were not able to kill Overseer who were previously able to kill him with no problem.
I have not checked out the other missions, but if they put named kills on more missions then they’ll certainly be slowing down the flow of shards for at least one group of people: Casual Groupers. I’m sure well-informed players will be able to dodge the bullet and find more devious or coordinated methods to rack up the void shards. However the main people who will feel “screwed” are casual players.
I can tell you if you are in a low DPS group, Evernight Abbey is a one hell of a lot of clearing work for 1 shard if all you can get now is the Void Shard. Remember this zone was flagged “easy” by developers.
P.S. According to the recent SoE Developer chat, the 3 TSO instances which take place in The Void will soon reward Void Shards as well. I wonder what circumstances will be required to get them.
nameds in df has only more hp but they stays same for me. if grp of retarded players dont understand to simple & easy script then why they should be able gain a shard? because they are skilled for clicking a clicky thing? maybe soe should pop npc and after u hail him u gain shard right?
If you want Shards for free, there is still an easy Method that works with 8 Zones: Befallen 1+2, Miragul 1+2, Najena 1+2 and Mistmore 1+2:
Get your mission and a twink to mentor down. Mentor and enter the instance. Unmentor and kill all the green or even gray mobs. You will still get your shards.
I Even left out the hard zones as they have scripted encounter that you can only beat with good teamwork. If only gear is your problem, there are even 3 more instances that you can do with this Trick.
If you do not have a Twink call in the channels for a low 70 char. Most will be happy to join to escape the solo treadmill.
Greater void shard armor and infused jewelry are on par with the most advanced legendary and big part of fabled gear from RoK and TSO instances, I do not see why a “casual” player should have easy access to the same or better gear as players who spent majority of their free time in game. As of today, doing 2 easy instances like Scion Deep Forge (and it is still really easy) will yield you 4-6 shards which is enough to get a guaranteed piece of common void shard gear, this is not a bad result at all for 2-3 hours of work, plus whatever you get in regular loot.
I really do not understand why a mission should be guaranteed to be easy, where is the fun and challenge then? I guess (and hope) that most people play the game not to get virtual loot, but to have fun achieving certain in-game goals and cooperating with the other players. Otherwise there is WoW around and tons of browser games fitted to 8-years old kids.
There really are several different issues at work here and I do not believe it is as simple as you are making it.
Some classes cannot do their job without the right gear. I’m talking tanks, DPS, etc.
Some classes it is more about knowing your class and having upgraded spells. Healing, DPS, etc. They can skate by with worse gear and work their way up.
Some people did all the Kunark group instances (except RE2 and Veksar which were primarily for raid-geared folk) and as you probably know, a lot of the Kunark legendary sets were CRAP. Specifically one mage set for all 6 classes, not enough legendary stuff for all healer types, etc.
If I group with someone who has upgraded their spells, and worked at the game, but has sub-par gear, then I don’t mind if they get upgraded quickly to the void shard T1 gear as then they are really able to do their job. If I woke up tomorrow and everyone in my guild had T1 void shard armor, I would not mind one bit. Because it would level the playing field and when we’re in a group, it would be even more obvious who are good players and who are just making excuses.
If I group with someone who sucks, then T1 void shard armor might carry them along a little bit further, but eventually they are going to either flame out, or learn the game.
It really is a more complicated issue than just what is “fair”. And folks who NEVER do pickup groups or who are in guilds that have enough players to group on a consistent basis seem to be the first ones to start telling other people who they should or should not be able to group, even though they don’t actually go outside their guild to group.
If you really believe this, then why do you care how fast people get void shards? The game is balanced for 6 decent players with a set of legendary armor. I understand it’s going to take work to get into Guk, to get into the harder Befallen and other zones. But dying over and over in Deep Forge? WTF?
It is frustrating enough to go into a dungeon and die over and over because the players suck, but it is just stupid when you hit all kinds of roadblocks because of how bad the itemization in Kunark was.
All I know is that closing the gaps for exploitation the way SoE are doing right now doesn’t really stop the exploiting so much as hurt those folks who are just getting into the 70’s with mastercrafted and are expected to make this huge leap into TSO dungeons.
I don’t understand why SoE upgraded the names in Deep Forge. This was supposed to be the easiest zone.
When I first saw TSO and started thinking about it, I realized that the folks who would get screwed the most are mid-70’s with a mixture of gear. 50’s and 60’s will get to level 70 with very good gear and ready to do these dungeons. But the folks who are low to mid-70’s right now will have to work the hardest.
There is no CoA or VoES to run endlessly to gear up.
Well, I have to disagree with most points in the reply above.
First, my main and only level 80 is warden, so if some class/player has to complain about the gear in RoK it is me then.
I also in a smaller guild where there is almost no guild grouping and 90% of the groups I go with are pickup ones. Then, I do not do more then 4-7 instance runs per week in the best case, having 5 crafters alts with or near their epics and big stores to suppply 🙂 And yes, I still have A LOT of real life. So, I am myself in the big army of casual players.
I still have 6 pieces of Wayward Moon set (legendary 77) for healing spec, this works great in most TSO zones. The T1 TSO set is not better at all, but it is not worse either. It took me some work to get the full set, many hours of browsing the instances for the no-trade pieces and a few plats to buy the boots. Getting TSO T1 set is a cake compared to that and can be done in a course of 3-4 weekends just by doing a few easier missions and chests. This should prepare casula players to face but the most difficult parts of the game.
However, if you read carefully the above text, I was talking about shard-intensive T2 set and T2 jewelry which are a substantial boost compared to RoK level 77 sets. This is a different story as the items are fully comparable with the best legendary pieces and even some fabled from places like Maidens, Veksar and RE2! And I do think that there should be an incentive to explore the more difficult places to get better gear, not just keep farming the Forge!
Then yes, the game is balanced for 6 players in group and the groups should be setup taking fundamentals into account, like 2 healers if going to more difficult place (which is always relative). With T1/RoK sets equipped full group (even tank) all but most difficult instances are doable if people actually care to learn the strategy of particular nameds and the zone. The recent tweak to DF did not change this at all, just made it more difficult for incomplete groups with bad-to-average gear.
If we talk about mid 70’s people with MC gear… Well, if the new zones seem too difficult beacuse of the gear, why not do a few quest lines in Moors or RoK zones to get starting pieces? I do not see though how people can have gear problems in scaled down Scion, Forge or Abbey. Last nameds can be tricky if you don’t know use the strats, but no gear helps against Kaern’s sparks anyway! Snake woman in Abbey is completely optional and in the worst case of a weak group with one healer can still be done with timing her stunning AoE and jousting it. Of course, it will take double the time for weaker groups, but that’s how it is supposed to be as well! Anyway, Karnor, CoA and Vaults are still there, as well as tradeable RoK drops. Pieces like Firefury Leggins, the best leather legs for druids apart from raid gear, are still in game and on broker!
I think SoE did a great job by introducing strategies to non-raid content and balancing it in such a way that there is no “must-have-in-the-group” classes for the new instances, like RE2 case for instance. And I believe it is a right decision to slow down the shard race to let people have more long-term goals in game then farming same place over and over every week-end.
And last nice bit of balance from SoE – the fabled gear dropping in the new instances is very desirable for raiders as well. This means that casual groupers will have more chances to get stronger groupmates and move faster too 🙂 No need to keep content difficulty too low 🙂
Now when the void shards are shareable by using the shared bank amongst the toons in the same account, you can get decent amount of voids by simply doing the following (more lvl 75 chars you got in the main account you’re using in the missions the better): do missions in commonlands, lavastorm and in everfrost by first mentoring down to your lvl 50-55 toon in other account. Get the mission, zone in, and unmentor your lvl 50-55 toon once inside. Kill absolutely only mobs you require for the mission. Once done, zone out and goto the text mission / zone. Once you’ve done all the above zones, switch char in the main account and repeat.
I have in my main account 3 lvl 75++ chars and I got char to be mentored in my 2nd account. Lets do little math, every day I can then get 3 x 8 void shards by using the above method. Granted some missions are tricky, and one run of above zones will take some time. Even routined player will spent at least 1 hour per such run. 3 of such runs will suck 3 hours.
If you enjoy such way of void shard grinding its one’s choice, my sk atm is not geared for grouping, but I’m working on getting him better geared with this void shard gear and after that’s done, I’ll take my changes to try the tanking in pug/guild group.
Some will take alternative approach of acquiring void shards. They actually play with other players do pug/guild groups without any mentoring tricks. They get the changes to get decent gear from the nameds and extra void shard from the chest.
I don’t see any harm in doing the mentoring in the way I described – you’re excluded from loot as all the mobs con cray, all you get is 15 gp and void shard per successful mission.
PS: By mentoring down to lvl 50-55 with lvl 75++ char and doing the mission will save you lot of time vs by mentoring to higher lvl toon. As cray con mobs do not agro. Its after all for the void shards I’m doing this 🙂