Feldon Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum is a new challenging one group dungeon which will make its first appearance at Fan Faire this August.
From Kander:
Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum will not be available until the day of the tournament. It is part of the Fan Faire to get to see the zone before it goes live. (This was done also for Veksar last year)
For the live version, this is the first zone that will have a normal and a challenge mode for single groups. Challenge mode is “Punch you in the throat and burn your face off” difficulty and will most likely only drop fabled items.
The Fan Faire version is only a normal version, no challenge version is available.
4 Bosses, 2 Guk Outer Stronghold Style Ring Events.
Exceptional Group Zones
Having a challenging group dungeon has almost always been a part of EQ2 history.
The Fallen Dynasty adventure pack brought the Village of Shin and the Isle of Mara. Undoubtedly the most difficult dungeon in this pack was Nizara, which was a challenge for even the most well-geared players.
The Estate of Unrest was a challenge when it was introduced shortly after the Echoes of Faydwer expansion. This zone also contained an optional x2 epic boss.
Runnyeye: The Gathering challenged group players with its own x2 epic boss and many popular fabled
The Shadow Odyssey brought the Palace of Ferzul, which at first seemed to require two healers to make any progress at all.
Sentinel’s Fate Challenging Dungeons
Crabbok has pointed out that the Outer Vault single group dungeon has a hard or “challenge” mode on the boss of the zone. In a separate thread, we saw this clarification from Gninja:
The final boss in Outer Vault can indeed be taken as a “Hard Mode” and it is very difficult. So yes you might get some better rewards for adding difficulty to the encounter. And also yes it was intended to be a reward for those who are able to figure it out.
Based on the following description from Kander, it seems Zraxth’s Unseen Arcanum is destined to take its place in that group, but it will also be available as a regular dungeon for those who want to explore but aren’t as well-geared.
You chose within the first 20 seconds of entering. Challenge or Normal. Everything that spawns afterwards is challenge mode should you chose that. All the bosses are [Epic] x2’s.
No Character Copies
From Kander:
I made a buffer and have a merchant that is offering T1 raid armor and Vigilant x2 jewelry and weapons, shields etc. Not starting anyone off with legendary or anything like that. I think this will help a bit, but yeah we just do not have the time to beta buff 200 characters. It would take all day.
From the EQ2 Forums.