Feldon Players have discovered an unexpected change in yesterday’s update which introduced Heroic Characters.
From GrouchyMouse on Unrest on the EQ2 Forums:
As I was in game tonight, there was chat about the NPC at Tenebrous Tangle who’d normally flag a epic’d toon for ER (talk to him and then go to Lavastorm to get the quest) was handing out a “Shattered Weapon“. The person who’d gotten the item hadn’t done the epic for their non-HC [Heroic Character] toon. I meandered up on my HC toon and also received the item. The dialog, however, was near exact for the dialog when you speak to him after getting your epic. On a hunch I went to Lavastorm and sure enough, Epic Repercussions was started with Fiery Jewel of the Underfoot quest.
So…the epic for a class doesn’t need to be done at all now, or so it seems.
This change isn’t completely out of the blue. If you read yesterday’s Heroic Characters article posted by Cyliena on EQ2 ZAM, you may have noticed this passage which hinted at a change:
Digging deeper into some of the quirks of Heroic Characters we found out that, in the time consuming process of backtracking into years-old content to obtain epic weapons, the team has “made a few adjustments, but we don’t want to trivialize those items.”
Apparently, if you are level 90+ (or maybe 85+) you will also receive an in-game mail when logging in which points you to this NPC. Thanks to Serana Masiop for the screenshot…
Summary
With yesterday’s update the Epic Weapon quest has now become optional.
ANY character (level 85+ ?) may speak to Kinloch Skry’mir in Tenebrous Tangle and get “a shattered weapon“, take it to Researcher Sel’Quar in Lavastorm, and then continue on to Sa’ib Waseem in Paineel in The Sundered Frontier, to do the quests A Fiery Jewel of the Underfoot, and later Epic Repercussions.
Though the faction grinds were needlessly tedious, I did enjoy the lore of these quests.
It would have been nice if instead of giving the option to bypass them entirely, they had opted to replace them with quest lines (and awarded weapons) that were more relevant to today’s end game.
It took nearly a dozen developers 3 months to make the original Epic Weapon quests.
I believe it. And I’m sure we’ll never see it done again. It’s a shame.
I got a mention! *^_^*
Loch: Oh, I intend to still do the epics. Then again, I love the lore. Sure, there’s always looking up the info, it’s out there on Zam and other sites, but it’s altogether different to experience it, imho.
Hmm I wonder how this will effect mine and other BLs?
I don’t think it will, Bb. What it’s giving you is the starter for Epic Repercussions, and beastlords don’t do ER since they get the level 90+ weapon and their buffs directly. Channelers will probably be the same.
The only reason for ER was to convert the T8 weapon and equipped effects that only affected T8 abilities over to a T9 weapon and until-cancelled buffs that you didn’t lose as the level cap (and the level of weapon you needed) increased.
well since BL’s can not do Epic Repercussions… i HOPE this does not affect them at all.
My BL got the mail. Kinloch Skry’mir just speaks as usual. no Shattered Weapon. nothing changes
Can’t say I’m happy about this at all. Not only did the quests have great lore behind them, many of them were structured to emphasize the mechanics of the class. Without this, it’s going to be harder for folks to learn how to handle the characters they’re making.
I hear this a lot. That a lot of people won’t understand their class if given all of the features and instantly fast forwarding to end game. However most mechanics of many of the classes out there are obsolete. Any how many new players come on EQ2 for that matter?
Let’s face it, the game is made out entirely of Veterans at this point. Many of which have an army of alts and are easily able to adapt to any other class given to them.
I love this update. Biggest problem with Myths is that you had to have the buffs off of them. It was essential to the player and the raid they inhabited. Compare pre-RoK to post-RoK. The player has to do a lot more then he did prior to RoK in order to play with 95% of the playerbase which resided in endgame. And damn I’m tried and exhausted of the amount of guild alts i had to drag through the SF zones for the final conversion to get their buffs.
And as I’ve found out leveling up a coercer, things have changed. With the AA and stat and gear revisions I’m so over-powered compared to older content that it’s not until I hit Great Divide that I actually hit anything that lives longer than one or two hits. The way things are you don’t learn most of the mechanics along the way like you used to. You won’t learn it soloing or running with a merc, and even in group instances you won’t learn most of it until the SF instances at the earliest, DoV if you’re running with well-geared players.
This about sums up the current state: as a level 92 coercer I have yet to do any power feeding or worrying about power regen, I have yet to need to worry about crowd control, I have yet to use my aggro control abilities on anything but a training dummy, and I don’t have to seriously worry about using my various procs, short-term buffs and debuffs. The most complicated mechanics I’ve needed to use are “Stun/daze/etc. to make life easier for the merc.”. And I know that’s not going to cut it in a raid.
Crowd control doesn’t exist in this game anymore. And even during launch, it was rarely used due to the static nature of the mobs.
If you start raiding, then yeah, aggro control, power feeding are extremely vital. A good coercer can make ten fold of a difference against a x4 names.
I bet one reason why they are doing this is because they did not create an epic quest line for Channeler’s? I could be mistaken.
Yup
Yay, sometimes procrastination DOES pay off!
lmfao
Indeed it does! I was preparing to drag my bruiser from level 20-92, and then found out Heroic characters were coming out, and everybody got one free!
After a dozen alts I’m happy for this change. The quest themselves weren’t too difficult but some had some horrible faction requirements. It was easier on some classes to betray, do your epic, run ER and then betray back.
I can box ER easy enough and plow through that in an evening after the kids go to bed.
Welp, I just logged out after being done with 2/3 of my dirges epic. Maybe I’ll finish it someday.
This feels a little over-the-top to me. I think a little bit better choice would have been to reduce/ remove the faction grinds required for some epics and maybe simplify the dragon language quest a bit. Maybe also add the mythical effects to the fabled weapons so they provide some benefit.
I’m still going to do the epic quests on my new characters for the lore, but I can understand not wanting to burden new players with what can often be a rather tedious grind.
Seems that once you have an alt that has done the Dragon language Q and obtained the Rune that can be shared with your alts that it doesn’t get much easier then that…imho.
Streamlining quests would have been better, but probably doesn’t matter. New players will jump in, grind to finish, then bail when it gets too repetitive. I’ve raided with a guild or two where most of their members do that cycle every few months or so.
New players will likely never even know about most of the content vets bitch about doing for the 15th time. The game just got a LOT smaller for new players.
Making this available only for existing accounts with an 85 toon would be great, but the $35 price tag leads me to believe it’s more likely that I’ll have a snowball fight in hell next week.
whaaaaaaaaaa!!! who put all of these quests and activities in my cow clicker… what a time sync they are.
I want so hard to be mad about this but cannot figure out why if bothers me so much. Maybe it’s the 15 mythed alts.
The EQ2 devs want people to get to the top line content ASAP, disregarding 9 years of wonderfully fun content that players should experience on their journey to level 95. So this was necessary. It sucks how streamlined they have made the path to level 95 now, but ultimately it was bound to happen.
Can someone please give me a quick run down of Epics.
I am currently doing Prismatics and am on the Darathar bit. I have tried reading up but there seems to be two versions of Epics and upgrades. Where do Prismatics fit in to that?
Prismatic (the level 50 signature quest) is the original main endgame questline from EQ2’s launch and isn’t related to the epic weapon quests.
Epic weapon quests are from the Kunark expansion (level 80).
But there are two versions of the Epic?
Not worried as I am going from level 1 and doing as many Signature/HQ quests as possible. That seems to hit most of the big areas of the game.
The level 80 epic questline will get you a fabled weapon and if you continue that questline it converts the weapon to a mythical.
You then take that weapon (either fabled or mythical, doesn’t matter) to start the epic repercussions line which gives you your new spells to replace the epic weapon effects.
Or you can skip the epic questline entirely and pick up the shattered weapon that this post is about and go straight to epic repercussions after that.
Cool, thanks Zizz. I understand it all now and what this shattered weapon skips.
Anyone know if you pick up this shattered weapon and go and complete epic repercussions, can you then go back and do the actual epic/myth weapon quest and obtain the old mythical?
Once complete, you can buy it from the Shady Swashbuckler dude in Nek Forest (on the dock).
I loaded up my 95/320 SK and got the Shattered Weapon.. then in Lavastorm Researcher Sel’Quar had nothing to say to me 🙁
Language?
Went to Tenebrous Tangle with a level 81 Swashbuckler, got the dialogue and the broken weapon. Did Epic Repercussions no problem, my guess is that this is now available at lvl80.
Sorry meant Fiery Jewel, started Epic Repercussions now.
I couldn’t get it on a 78 so you must be correct, it’s probably 80 now.
There’s nothing negative about this change.
The people suggesting as much I feel are just upset that they had to do the quests, and now people won’t have to. It’s human nature, and no, making these quests optional isn’t going to somehow make people playing these toons worse at their craft.
I got the Broken Weapon on my Zerker and did ER and got my Enervated. Then I went and did my Epic Weapon quest and also got my fabled. Only downside is they are both main hand. I was hoping to use both as an appearance, but that will prolly not happen
I’m probably most disappointed that new players will see the game as being so much smaller and more shallow wrt lore than it is.
The learning mechanics argument is weak; classes aren’t hard to figure out, most current players seldom do, and botters are common. The ignorance argument still holds water if we get new players, and occasionally we do.
On an aside, I’d like to see more recycling of content and characters to keep the old areas (or at least recycled variations) relevant.
considering that we got the er so folks could bypass all the raiding content and get into end game back in the sf days. Is anybody not shocked. We all saw this coming with heroic characters. They want folks in the end game instances and raiding. Since most folks require your to have you er done, as a requirement.
I just finished mine on my coercer and I did it the hard way, ground out the aa ran my epic time line quest that was the easiest one I done out of my 11 toons. Then did the er last night.
Honestly this will help my wife who working 60-80 hours per week, and she really does not have the time to play the game like she did.
Lol you play 11 toons and have your wife work 60-80 hours? Way to go man!
Need to be lvl 90 to get into The Hole.
Can now zone into The Hole 85+
So can do Epic Repercusions at 85
The Hole can be zoned into in the 70s…perhaps you mean Vasty Deep?