EZ Server

New Mini Dungeon!

That's right, a new mini has been added! This should help with the monotony of farming for essences. It isn't an "easymode" zone, more of a farming alternative. I HIGHLY, HIGHLY advise you find friends as this zone is big, loaded, and scales to the highest level.

First, find the Miner in Nexus or Stone Hive. Follow his prompts to start a new expedition.
(http://i.imgur.com/lVxdRjo.jpg)

Once inside, move towards the first big tile to initiate the essence selector menu. It will let you farm up to your highest level.
(http://i.imgur.com/pGgcjSm.jpg)


Please report problems/suggestions for this zone IN THIS THREAD, not in tells. Additionally, the newest spellfile is needed to adventure here!

New spell file (3-29-16) is now available!


-Hate

Awesome, looking forward to farm essences in this. Keep up with the amazing jobs!

Coth is disabled, is that intentional?

Ninja is also disabled, not sure why.

Cleared about 2/3rds so far, zero loot. Mobs are T9 but using T10 mechanics.

Projection of tactics dropped nothing.

Got a GLS from trash and some SLS/GLS and plat bags from a boss.

Next boss had SLS/GLS and plat.

Projection of power dropped a plat bag.

109 mobs left and we found our first essence.

Projection of Realms dropped 2 plat bags.

Blitz through, Ninja, CoH. Murder, loot. Blitz through more, Nina, CoH. Murder, Loot. Rinse & repeat until completion.


Projections have highest essence chance (can be MUCH higher). Minibosses are the loot mongers, if it rolls favorably.


The two testers saw some. One had 4, other had 2 (I think).


-Hate

I would be fine with ninja being disabled but coth is killing me. Can we enable coth but remove its ability to memblur here? To many tight turns with lots of things to catch on, and with leashed bosses I have to move my group to the far corners of the map.

Finished the zone and the only loot I got at all was from the final boss, zero off any of the minis or projections.  Final boss dropped 5 GLS, 1 essence and a bunch of gems.  It was a lot of rezzing alts, but was a fun run through with level appropriate challenge and the last boss had a few surprises that I won't spoil.  All that said, unless there's a substantial bump in loot chances I'm not sure how this does anything to offer an alternate avenue for viably farming essences. It's a good start though for sure.

Finished up as well and as Dim noted, its a challenge but not really worth the time for the reward. We got 2 essences a handful of plat bags and about 5 SLS. I also had an issue with the members of my group who died in the final fight not getting credit (http://www.ezserverwiki.com/File:Proving_Grounds.png) for the final boss, so they didn't get a reward.

I made sure I did /say #e tasksync before final hail to avoid that problem, not sure if there's a good list of #e commands in game or not but I remember someone telling me about the tasksync one.

That's bad. It was working gloriously during testing. I'll manually run it a few times tomorrow to see if i can pinpoint the issue on why sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't giving loot.

-Hate

I lost 3 from my first group at the start of the fight, and they ended up as the 3 without credit. Alesana was there with me in the second group and died at the end of the fight but got credit. Not sure if that helps but that was the only differences I saw, hope it helps.

Final boss or a Projection?


-Hate

Final Boss.

Aye, when he spawned his buddies I guess I took more of them at first from my AE procced before leis's i guess, then eventually died - I got credit for him on Alesana while she was still in stone hive...but oddly enough Leis didn't get the credit when he finished the final boss off.


Would love to see coth enabled with how big that zone is. It's terrible to navigate your other 5 characters through those corners (it's a huge headache as it is and with it dropping so little loot/essences or whatever it makes it that much much worse of a grind imo)...I'd also comment and would encourage to keep all the bosses Tethered, keep ninja disabled, and disable the memblur from cothing in the zone like leis said.

CoH should be enabled in new instances.


-Hate

Awesome!

I think the idea of this zone is great, BUT I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of loading my 12 toons to kill content for sub par essences. See example below.

I am only t8 squad but I load my 12 toons and kill ToV scaled mobs for CT essences. Or do I load my Warrior, remove his UW and pull the entire zone of CT.

I know the loot tables are still being worked out but really unless there was some kind of multiplier for scaling down the essences it's going to be a rough sell and it sounds like Hate put a lot of time and effort into it.

IE.
ToV Mobs + ToV Essences = 4
ToV Mobs + LP Essences = 6
ToV Mobs + Anguish Essences = 9 and so on.....

Scorpien

just killed Pain Incarnate and did not get credit for him so I lost out on completion.

Take a look into it please.

Specifics please. You didn't get credit soloing the zone, you didn't credit on your warrior while group did, etc?

Found and fixed!


-Hate

I have tried the mini killed all projections got the upgrades

but didnt get it from Pain Incarnate, not me and none of my groups

Zone is effectively unfarmable for lower level stuff with any alacrity.

I was hoping to see this be a change of pace from the typical zones.  It's not even worth doing as it is configured.

Mob lvl should probably be based on essence selected.

As a zone its great but for xp / farming essences its not so hot as killing tier 9/10 mobs all day to get a qvic essence as a reward is rather cold lol

Great concept.  Love the zone, but time vs. reward just needs some tweaks.  At entrance T10 geared, I just can't see any essence on the list being faster in this zone that going to the appropriate zone.  Even T9. 

Can you get a few hundred thousand plat farming QVIC? How about SLS and berries? :-)


-Hate

I've added a feature to let players turn in Charm Prism Upgrades to the Hive Queen for 1 berry each.


-Hate

Actually, by the time I got 20 Qvic ess from mass pulling Qvic, I got 2 million platinum worth of box/bag off trash.

Funny enough, those box/bag were never seen again in CT and RARELY drop 6000pp bag in PoDragon. I can't recall any dropping in HoH.

O_o

QVIC is only supposed to drop lil plat bags. Also HoH and PoDragon should be dropping? Digging in.


QVIC had all plat bags droppable. This is a lil...overpowering and has been fixed. Halls of Honor, Plane of Dragons, and Cazic Thule all have plat bag drop chances now. :-D


-Hate

I'm sooo sorry, guys!

Calm yer boobies. I slightly increased the drop rate to compensate. :-)

I am VERY seldom "all take".


-Hate

That's not what you said last night!

Excuse me while I cry like a little girl for a few days. I have let so many rot.

selling upgrades bugged char out so cant target or anything .. had to camp

So now lower level players with 6 or 12 toons are even more dependent on hitting the GSOA lottery and/or GLS farming in order to equip their toons with strike augments/mana necks/SoA?  I think the QVIC plat rate was pretty solid as it was.  If you think the plat bags were overpowering, then how is the 12-15m GSOA lottery not as well?  If we're encouraging players to GLS farm more (as it was in the past, yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was a good design) I think that's a step in the wrong direction for the health of the server.  By the way, can you please reduce the gem drops in CT drastically?  They're not good for anything but cluttering the hell out of corpses  :-\

I think removing GSOA completely from qvic/CT, leaving the plat bags where they were before your recent change, and increasing GSOA drop rates on all higher tiers would be a better overall fix than making lower level players even more dependent on hitting the GSOA lotto.  

Also, maybe if you alter the Ring of Ages as you mentioned in the other thread, you can actually make it so that players are encouraged to AA some in PoFire, and maybe consider having the no drop ores rarely drop there off mobs?  That way a player is encouraged to do some AA'ing in Fire and can make a decent value return as well by occasionally getting strike ores.  Just an idea.  Some tweaking would have to go in to prevent people from being able to bypass the crafters guild completely though, since the metals are the only thing preventing that.  I just hated that when I was in t0/t1/t2 that there wasn't many plat farming alternatives than GLS.  You either get lucky with a GSOA, farm GLS, or sell off the same essences that you desperately need to make your augs/SoA/necks.

Kathina

Augs/SoA/Mana Neck are not required to get through qvic, cazic, or t1/t2 so the plat drops are perfectly fine after the adjustment.

So on the one hand, we want to make sure players aren't getting augs/SoA/necks/UW from tiers ahead of them (the other thread), and now on the other hand you want us to discourage players from actively keeping their augs/SoA/necks on level/tier par because there's no viable plat options besides the GSOA lottery or farming GLS ad nauseum?  

I don't see how that's a good message to send to the lower tier community:  you can't get your augs ahead of your tier (which I agree with, for the record), and you can't realistically keep them on tier either, unless you play the GLS mini game for hours on end.

I can't see a good argument for encouraging players to neglect their on tier items and instead play catch-up later (unless you get the GSOA lotto winning ticket a few times).  

Kathina

I think the point is that there already exist viable plat options in lower tiers...options that didn't exist on EZ until somewhat recently when Hate itemized the zones with plat bags.  Before then people got by with straight plat drops off of mobs and collecting and selling the gems they dropped, still getting enough plat to make their crafting items.  The biggest cost toward making the items seems to be people buying SLS for tons of plat to save themselves from having to farm them; they are easily selling for 5x what they used to sell for.  250k+ per SLS is a crazy price to pay unless you have a heavy bankroll, and at lower levels you can farm enough yourself in small increments to suffice and save a shitload of plat along the way.

The only thing limiting players from making craft items ahead of tier is people somehow being convinced that you NEED a 12mil payday from seeing and selling a GSOA that you come across instead of just grinding away at content relevant to your level.  Once you hit Qvic you get access to essences and those still fetch a good deal of money for newer characters because the market is always active there...high end people are always trying to stockpile for the next UW they are working on.

tl;dr There are avenues that already exist to make enough plat to progress your gear even if Hate were to remove plat bags from NPC loot tables completely, you are not limited to farming SLS or GSOA to acquire what you need.

I don't think my point was clear enough, so I'll explain it a bit further:  the amount received from plat bags in qvic, prior to this recent "fix," was negligible compared to the amount of plat earned from the GSOA drops.  I personally got 4 or 5 GSOA drops myself just clearing qvic for 12 toons and clearing qvic a few hours more for essences for SoA and strike augs.

The problem with Hate's fix is that it was the wrong fix.  If the higher level plat bags dropping in QVIC are OP, then the GSOA situation is infinitely worse.  

However, if you remove the instant 12-15 mil payday GSOA from the Qvic/CT players, and you also have this overall reduction in qvic plat with the recent bag nerf, then you're basically telling players not to bother with their strike augs/mana necks/SoA at all and wait until you get your 3.5 and the subsequent mitigation gain and start grinding your plat away at that point when you can pull all/most of Qvic, 1/4 to 1/3 of CT at a time, and 1/6 to 1/8th of HoH at a time?

So here's the dilemma:  a player wants to keep their gear up to date for their tier, but at that point, if GSoA plat-gain didn't exist, they would do so by either:

a) artificially keeping themselves in Qvic for an absurdly longer period of time than necessary to farm lower end plat bags
b) grinding SLS for hours on end
c) farming essences at a slow rate, which they could be doing 5-10x faster once they get their t2 gear, a few levels of their RoA, and a 3.5 for 35% mitigation boost
d) a combination of the above

You know what the problem is with those options?  They're inefficient and a terrible investment of time, because, as was mentioned earlier, the strike augs, mana necks and the SoA are in no way required to advance to higher tiers which allows your plat/essence/etc farming to become infinitely easier.  The wikis are going to say "don't bother grinding away slowly in qvic for plat bags, essences, or even going after SLSs until you get to level 72 with your 3.5 because the strike augs, mana necks and SoA are completely unnecessary and trying to keep your gear up to date on tier is an inefficient spending of your time."

When I went through those lower levels the only reason I had strike augs and SoA up to date was the GSOA drops. I 100% support removing GSOA lotto as a source of income, but I also 100% support giving people viable options to keeping their gear up to date on tier.  Spending 20 hours farming QVIC without buffs at level 70 or farming SLS to keep your gear up to date seems pointless when you could instead just get to t3 (which isn't hard at all) and earn that same amount of plat in 10% of the time when you gain 2 levels and 35% mitigation.

By the way:  I have a new thread put up where I suggested reducing plat drops overall and eliminating the GSOA lotto, reducing the AA gain rate in progression zones, and having combined AA/plat grinding zones as an additional server aspect to make people work for their AAs and plat and not just gain them through passive play.  Currently, active AA farming is nearly non-existant, and active plat farming is generally limited to SLS and essence farming.  Another option would be great.  I don't think people should gain plat and AAs as a side effect of normal gameplay.  It devalues both currencies (plat and AAs).

Kathina

Plat bags are worth a set rate, vendors will buy them for X plat depending on the type. 
GSOA have no sellback value, they are only worth what people are willing to pay for them. 
People kept up fine with gear upgrades before plat bags were scripted into lower tiers and before GSOA existed at all.
People grind AA quite often, but generally when they get more gains out of RoA or EoA upgrades than progression upgrades.
The overall reduction in Qvic plat is pretty small considering the big plat bag was an incredibly rare drop anyhow.
The game isn't now and never has been balanced around GSOA drop rate, every point of progression on EZ can be accomplished without ever seeing a single GSOA drop.

Sorry but you're wrong on many points. If a player started today with a group of 6, and GSOA did not drop in qvic, there's not a chance in hell they would be even 10% done with their strikes/neck/SOA on tier without significant farming of SLS and essences. My point stated in the last post however, is that doing that significant farming at any point before level 72 and 3.5 is a collosal waste of time. I don't really see why we would want to discourage a new player from keeping their gear on tier by having such an inefficiency.

And lower tier content is, whether you want it to be or not (it's not up to you), severely affected and balanced by the GSOA drop rate.  I saved dozens of hours of farming myself just by getting lucky with GSOA drops and it afforded me with UW3 before I was in t5 and nearly everything else was on tier. If GSOA didn't exist for me I would have probably quit the server at the prospect of farming SLS and essences all day to keep my gear on tier. I don't want to ignore on tier gear and then catch it up 4 tiers later. That's bad design. You can't close your eyes to it.

Hate did said he upped the drop rate on small plat bags and I definitely seeing them dropping more to make up for the big box plat removal in qvic. By the time I was done grinding CT and T1 for essence/gears, I made well enough platinum to cover for more strike augs off small bags alone.

EDIT: You'll be in Qvic (or any tier) for many hours either way with 6+ characters to flagging and gearing up.

Red and Orange Points: The assumption that Strikes/SoA/Mana-Necklace *MUST* be 100% on par at all times is flawed. EQ really wasn't about all "get all the things" every zone. Hell, EZ is so off course that it can't even really be considered "EQ" anymore. That being said, you can progress very well up to T4 without NEEDING augments/SoA/etc. I did it with a SK tanking, cleric healing, three wizards, and one bard. That's QVIC to T6 without Halloween pets, without UCv2, without Stonewall, and without Drake. At the time, wizards had only Yamakagi's Fiery Passion Inferno and then a REALLY crappy Kaldar's Heavenly Fire. No multi-ZERK groups, UC on SK and Hateborne (WIZ) only, and no strike augments until T6. This was well before plat bags, GSOA, or even really SLS.

I'm not trying to go all "uphill, both ways, in the snow" on you, but it's really hilariously easy to progress on EZ now. The mentality of "it has to be the up-to-tier" only really applies in the extreme high end.


-Hate

That's just it though, I don't want it easier. I want it harder. I think the best way to treat early content for retention is to make it harder and to make strikes/SoA/mana necks relevant and farmable without needing to farm SLS. You removed the big play bags and called them overpowered but the only thing overpowered in Qvic is GSOAs. Why not remove them and give players another more enjoyable grind to get their strikes? Active plat farming is fun but if you want to active plat farm as a low level player right now it's either essences or SLS. I really think an AA/plat combo grind would be great for the server.

Currently, as you guys are stating yourselves: lower tier strikes are relatively meaningless. Some of the lower tier gear is meaningless too. Plat farming is meaningless once you get lucky and grab a few GSOAs. So what are we left with? A lot of meaningless everything until your warrior's 3.5 and a handful of zones that are way too easy.  Make it relevant!

You mean it isn't like Diablo 2 Hate?! *Gasp*

The only thing I get in this zone is.... MURDERED... 

Selling upgrade charm star things bugged me out so i had to camp just now.  Not sure if I got credit for them but still saw 19 upgrade charm star things in my inventory when I camped.

Also not sure if you can increase the esse drop rate but the drop rate kinda sucks in there for the time it takes to clear.  if not no big deal....whats the berry per completion though?  Sorry but my slack ass hasnt paid attention.  ;D

15 berries on final hail and 3 berries on the mini named autogranted when they die.

Was going to do MPG in between HoH respawn with my T4 boxes, apparently I've reached over the HP threshold because mobs in the zone are now 2 level above me and destroyed my tank on first pull.

When can we do away with this HP = level scale?

At this point, I may as well just wait until I reach T5 then do MPG again.

I like the scale because it makes it difficult.  Tired of everything being 5 minute runs on dailies.  ;D

With it being scaled to highest level, it's already take me 2 hours to complete it with Projections and Pain smacking serious ass!

With it scaled on HP and trash destroying tank in couple rounds isn't "making it difficult." It's just dumb and only reason it really exist is to combat against low level with high RoA/UW/T8+Buffs.

And before anyone say it, my RoA is only in level range 250-330 and I don't have UW. I made sure that I don't have the buffs either.

With UW level limits, HP scaling may disappear this week.


-Hate

Another good news! Maybe I'll finally get to do MPG now, hah.