An interesting topic has popped up on the EQ2 Forums asking the question:

Is there Raid Progression for Small Guilds?

The Shadow Odyssey ended up offering many choices for Casual Raid Guilds. Sentinel’s Fate has not been quite so generous with such progression choices. Game Update 56 will add two raid zones, but both are intended for 24-person raids. We compare the expansions in today’s commentary.

Sentinel’s Fate Group Dungeon & Raid Zone List by Difficulty

Difficulty Rating Key

Easy
Easy to Moderate
Moderate
Moderate to Hard
Hard

The Hole contested (82-90)

Sprawling dungeon with 3 wings of difficulty, most content tailored for 2-4 players.
Old Paineel
Dartain’s Fortress
Tower of Serilis

The Hole instances

Demitrik’s Bastion (85+)
The Outer Vault (88+)
Spirit’s Resonance (88+)

Vasty Deep

The Conservatory (86-88)
The Abandoned Labs (90)
The Vestigal Cella (90)

Erudin

Erudin Library (87-89)
Erudin Research Halls (90)
Erudin Royal Palace (90)

The Vigilant

The Vigilant: Incursion! (90)
The Vigilant: Infiltration! (90)
The Vigilant: Rescue! (90)

Sentinel’s Fate x2 Raids

The Vigilant: Final Destruction (x2)

Sentinel’s Fate x4 Raids

Sentinel’s Fate: Lair of the Dragon Queen (x4)
Perah’Celsis’ Abominable Laboratory (x4)
The Palace of Roehn Theer (x4)

From EQ2Players:

Raiding is an important part of gameplay for many and is a part of every MMO. Roger “Patherpanchali” Uzun designs the raids for EQII and Brett “Timetravelling” Scheinert often works with him on these. Timetravelling was kind enough to sit down and give us an overview of the new raids coming with Sentinel’s Fate.

We have three x4 raid instances launching with:

• Sentinel’s Fate: Lair of the Dragon Queen (x4)
• Perah’Celsis’ Abominable Laboratory (x4)
• The Palace of Roehn Theer (x4)

For x4 content players will discover the Lair of the Dragon Queen first, then Perah’Celsis’ Abominable Laboratory, and finally The Palace of Roehn Theer. The relative difficulties progress in a similar pattern. One thing that is relatively new is that they are all built in a manner similar to Miragul’s Planar Shard—the normal mode encounters are challenging and offer internal progression. However, the challenge-mode versions within all zones are a step above and offer players a truly difficult foe!

There will also be a x2 raid — The Vigilant — based on the 3 Vigilant difficult level 90 group zones.

Further, Timetravelling has dropped the other shoe, so to speak, on the other Adornments which will be available to raiders. Instead of 12 sets or 24 sets of gear, there will be just a handful of raid gear sets. It would seem that the Sentinel’s Fate Raid Gear Sets will have a second adornment slot which will allow players to further specialize their gear how they see fit.

There were numerous balance issues in both TSO and RoK that came up again and again:

• Unique set bonuses were often so desirable, that players often worked very hard to avoid having to break the bonuses when upgrading to a later set
• With 24 classes and 24 sets, loot tables had a tendency to often be…unkind

In The Sentinel’s Fate we are addressing these issues by moving away from class-specific sets. Many of the sets will fulfill a role/playstyle—such as a plate-wearing tank, or a leather-wearing healer—instead of being the Berserker or Fury set. However, we certainly did not want to cause players to lose the unique focus effects and set bonuses received from their gear.

For that, we have created a new system of adornments based upon color. Gear in Sentinel’s Fate can be created to allow more than one adornment upon each item. Almost all items will have a ‘white’ adornment slot that will allow players to continue to apply adornments normally as on live. In addition, raid armor will receive an additional ‘red’ adornment slot that is restricted to raid-level adornments. These adornments can be either powerful generic effects (such as dps-enhancing stats or critical mitigation) or a number of class-specific adornment effects. For example, the Berserker might—in some bizarre Kiara-run-world—receive an adornment that causes them to spawn Rabid Bunny pets whenever their Berserk effect is activated.

These changes should help to reduce the often extremely wide range of loot on any particular encounter while additionally providing players with even more ways to tailor their characters to their playstyle and spec.

Check out the complete article at EQ2Players.