Feldon It’s been just over a week since Fabled Deathtoll, a level 95 x4 raid zone opened in Norrath. While the zone and enemies may be familiar territory for Kingdom of Sky veterans, the boss battle strategies have gained a few twists. But perhaps most surprising about this revisited zone is the way loot is awarded. The EQ2 team seem to tried out several new approaches, and so far, the response has been mixed.
Instead of the typical drops off each named, certain names drop one-use recipe books that create powerful items. Other enemies drop new cyan-colored adornments. I won’t try to parse the entire structure of how loot works in the zone, but the official Fabled Deathtoll thread met an untimely end as the tenor of the feedback did not amuse the EQ2 moderation team.
The thread got a number of responses from the EQ2 design team. Indeed, just before the thread was closed, it earned this response from Kander pointing the way towards a number of corrective changes, some of which have already been patched into the game:
As we stated, this is an experiment. We will be adjusting some things.
We are changing it so you can make an item from each pull. So you’ll be able to make the items from the books you get from the first 3 bosses.
Cruor and Tarinax drop actual items plus the better books.
Blue adornments actually have a chance to drop off of each boss, and can also be crafted.
Blue slot adders start at a 25% on the first boss and go up in percentage from there.
We will be watching the rate of entry and making adjustments on a weekly basis. You will still have to save up shards for the more desirable items. But there will always be something you can craft right away.
Changes will be going in on Tuesday, July 1st.
So what do you think of the loot and overall design in the resurrected Deathtoll zone?
even with the last set of changes.. i think the system is still a failure for X4 raid system.. x2 raid or even heroic zones would be a better fit for this set up..
as far as the adronment go they are decent but 2800 crafting mats iirc makes them nearly impossible to obtain
I totally expected it to be a heroic zone, for a group of six to enjoy. As a raid zone, it simply fails. If you want to know why, just go there for an hour…..or zone out after a minute and spend the next 59 smacking yourself in the head, same difference.
The Loot –
Named 1’s loot, fine. The idea behind it is innovative but I’m not sure I like it yet. Would much rather have 3 day lockout and 3x the loot.
Named 2’s loot is identical to first named. Which is ridiculous when the difficult difference is tremendous. To get the exact same loot from 2 different nameds is pathetic.
Overall I hope this isn’t the way forward with the expansion, it’ll be horrific and just promote Botting more than they already do.
When they say “blue adornments” and “blue-slot adders”, they are referring to the new cyan adornments which can sometimes be found in HKC and Fabled DT right? They are not referring to blue adornments I can buy with Battlegrounds tokens? While that would be interesting, it wouldn’t be much different than adding a second purple slot.
Cyan adornments are not PvP.
Blue adornments are.
I’ve been in the zone a couple of times and don’t have an opinion about the loot system, yet, because of the following “disruptive factors”:
1. Maximum lockout is far too short if you don’t raid every day. We’ve had to reset when we wanted to progress. Max lockout needs to be at least a week; more would be better.
2. The fights are still in flux a bit and new-ish so the time & effort seems far too high for loot that no main toon needs. Some advanced books might be worth it, but we have to get to them faster.
On the single use recipe I’m not sure. If books were multi-use but required a component on a sliding drop scale drop from named (like the cyan slot adder) it may be a little more rewarding for raids. Maybe.
Crafting and permitting experimentation on items is interesting. I think I like that bit. It adds a bit more reward if you put in more effort and risk your item.
Fabled DT should have been tested and given feedback before launch. The community gave it 2 thumbs down.
crap, i don’t pay attention for a bit and they add cyan adornments.. grumble, I’ll fix DA for these over the holiday weekend
I hate this zone atm.
The idea of loot we have to salvage to create something better is terrible.
I wouldn’t mind if the materials dropped the same way they did during Skyshrine – so random drop of 1 material which you can use to create something. Add recepies to raid reserachers and let guilds decide what to research first. Sorry – this is raid zone and we expect to go there and get loot from named.
I do get it is an experiment but don’t we have test/beta server for that? Do we really need to experiment on Live servers? Devs could hear the feedback about this zone and their new idea of loot way earlier if they started to use Test server most often.
We have 35+ in our alliance and all of them hate this zone. If I will take them more than once per week they will quit raiding.
18hrs lockout timer? I hope devs are happy they finally created zone for bots 😀
The zone is defined as “Mid ToV” difficulty so I really don’t see how “Bots” will be able to accomplish much in there. Not to mention the fact that the further in the very much higher resists you need (around 80k) for 4th name.
I absolutely hate raiding a zone so guild leaders can get any drops and hoard them for themselves, friends, raid alts then, if they haven’t rolled a new toon, the rest of raid force. Thats all Fabled Deathtoll is and I hate it.
It doesn’t take a math wizard to compute the number of runs to acquire a piece of gear, times that by the number of raiders, the bench, raid alts, etc and frankly I’d just as soon have little bamboo shards shoved under my nails!
Kinya this is exactly why I put myself down to pt raider. As long as my guild’s raid leader insists on going there, I can exercise my enjoyment of a good book, sit outside and watch a sunset, work in the garden or be a couch potato and clear some old stuff off the DVR:)
Mobs:
Mob 1: Tank spank and boring. Only good item is the tank wrist with uplifting stamina and is far too good for what this mob is but at least it’s only one item.
Mob 2: Cool script followed by somewhat annoying perma interrupt script which is becoming slowly but surely overused. Loot wise drops the same, wrist may be somewhat appropriate reward but not sure how tough the aoes hit on lesser geared raids.
Mob 3 Add non death and healing bugs will annoy me as long as this is current. General concept is good for 2nd part. Burst dps checks instead of consistent one makes it annoying however in first phase. Powerhungry earpins are straight up brokenly overpowered and will be a big step towards all raid items being totally broken in power level.
Mob 4: Broken beyond belief and horrible fight even if you get past the aoe that requires some god like level of resists.
General system: screw killing this every day, I’d much rather go to Maw, shame this zone is way easier to get much better loot pieces when Maw drops bugger all worthwhile until the update.
We went in there one time killed first boss cleared trash and took a number of pulls on Fitz…have to agree maximum lockout timer needs an increase to 7 days which should provide enough time for any guild to run the zone (provided that can kill all the names) and still have time to do other raid zones for this xpac.
Loot pattern does seem bit spastic…components needed for crafting seem bit excessive considering the recipe books are 1 use only and as a side note I have been in HKC in the last few weeks than I care to say and have yet to see any lesser weapon adornments drop from any names since HKC was tied in to the release of the new DT as an incentive to run to have a chance at getting a lesser weapon adornment drop chance for them should be reevaluated seems too low.
With a 1 in 4 roughly chance to get a Cyan weapon slot adder (which tbh is a decent drop ratio for raid loot) from first 2 names (first one is relatively easy) not sure why they didn’t follow through with making the lesser weapon adorns drop little more frequently in HKC since the raid ones require crafting for the most part and are pricey component wise.
You can mark another guild that has imploded due to this entire mess. I just came back from vacation to read our forums and find out were no longer a progression guild, and were only into farming old content like as.
So yes soe screwed up big time on this one.
In addition to Equilibrium on AB? Or is that who you mean?
I am on Guk, so I just watched my guild just go to pieces. It was right after the posting of what all we needed to do to survive in the raid zone. So no, its not just Equilibrium, it’s other guilds. Fortunate for me, other guilds are taking us in — just going to have to sit on the bench.
My guild killed the first 3 named, and we haven’t been back since. It looks like we “might” go back after the change in loot scheme, we’ll see.
Loot is FUBAR’d. But, as I said in another post, at least they are trying new loot drops AND they are listening to players and fixing this mess. We’ll see what the fix is in the next couple of days. There will probably be a patch on Thursday (or Wednesday) to change the loot table (just guessing).
Our guild avoids this zone like the plague