I think baseline difficulty should probably be in the neighborhood of halfway between current kael and original kael.

I like 'hardmode' making it significantly harder.

I think bane weapons are a terrible idea, I've always hated bane weapons in EQ. Especially on a box server as others mentioned.

I hope the constant small knockback mechanic is not reused, especially in a cramped zone like VT.

I would much prefer "run in" adds or pops rather than instant appear/aggro.

I enjoyed the "stop fighting and do a thing" mechanics, but not if that thing is something a single random character in your box group has to do (emote or click stuff ect)

Jank would be stacking of effects as always within eq.

I think a stat squish is needed, I wish it was as easy as cutting everything down a few orders of magnitude, but I don't know how that would actually work in practice.

Early in your progress, the dragon souls are about paying attention to their hp % for when the scary debuffs happen, and having amp'd stuff up then, big heals on tank, vie, stuff like that. - going faster can actually punish you when you're first starting on them

For anyone else that runs into this, if you hail him and go through the armor line and click bulk turnin, even with nothing to turn in, will trigger the reward as well.

Characters - 33
Started with ~1/4 having UC4, end with all having UC4.
Gear - warrior mostly maxed.
7 rogues - started with 2 12.5s and 1 uw 12 and 4 SPDs

Kill speed 60-90 per for first ~100-150 enraged
25-45 for majority.

Averaged out maybe 3-5 hours a day, frequently playing at work so lots of afk time.

Shield - first shield took around 9 AoW cycles. have not completed 2nd shield, at around 20 AoW cycles.

Was around 30-40/80 when change went into place.

Finished enraged with 2.5 UC5 done.

Mantle - finished 2nd mantle same day as finishing enraged.

Armor : I experienced a massive influx of cloth - warrior is at 54/60 rot.

Only 5 of 33 had full armor sets.

.
UW 13 - finished 4 UW13, easily 2 of them were from thuledream.

Cold delivery: feels like a big waste of time with how annoying mounts are, especially with the knockbacks in kael making mounts basically completely unuseable.

Roxy aug: Finished 2nd literally on the turnin after finishing enraged.

Spells: I feel these are much too rare. finished enraged without ever seeing wizard, bard, or druid spells. First ranger spell was around 970 enraged. It's frustrating that Power ranger cannot be MGB'd.

Epic 11.0 -
Initial feedbacks without any real testing - skipping ones that are just bigger numbers of previous
Ranger : cool that it is a proc instead of click
Cleric: cool effect to keep rolling
Paladin: doesn't seem to stack with cleric click, so pointless?
Shaman: Pet seems to be garbage? hard to judge, but it can't solo sunderock mobs at all.
necro and enchanter pet: sometimes win against sunderock mobs 1v1, but normally lose.

Overall: I think Kael was a great concept.
I do think it was slightly over tuned but feels nice now after the changes in terms of monster power.

I think spells are way too rare.

I think armor is too rare as well. IIRC I had my first plate piece drop at around 85 or 90 enraged kromrifs.

I think the majority of the weapons/shields being just trash to give rot bot isn't the most fun.
The "useable" weapons, feel too rare as well. ended up getting 1 AoW sword, 4 fists, and 3 shurikens, and 1 healer range.

Even buying spells for a billion plat or something would be nice.

It feels really bad to have an AoW cycle drop not actual equitable items on the regular.

ThuleDream feels like a great step from Kael in terms of design and structure. More reliable character reward as you go does increase the fun to me (bosses actually dropping something besides coin/shard/plat).

Personally I feel like most tiers "rain" items down but kael very much feels like a draught, even when you're having good luck.

Playtime 5-8 hours per day but while working so not 100% focus, but missed I think 3 full days.

Got around 55 of each orb
about the same for each ember for weapon.
got about 9 of the weapon rare piece
got 6 gnomenclatures

Finished 2 CT quests, was only missing draco for first set.
have full set minus draco + 2 other pieces  now.

Farmed shards for aug, group vitality, and I think 4 pets. so around ~17k shards?

I'd like to see more items, but I think overall it's in a pretty good spot.

The weapons and neck are extremely powerful and they feel a lot faster than HoS weapon/neck quests.
Having a predictable train of "I know I'll get an orb or an ember/grip" from each boss is really nice.


CT fight is a lot of fun.

It'd be neat if there was an increased chance to spawn draco by killing the non-weakening mobs.
Trying to target farm for draco ct piece as is, is much more annoying than any other piece.

Only had time to play for just a few minutes so far.. but I think this was a very reasonable direction

as a short test, went and tried with eoma, halloween earring, angryface and uc4 - I don't have the RZ neck on necro and would guess that might throw things off

no self buff line no incisor crit:
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:11 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 102 damage from your Death IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:11 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 388225 damage from your Unholy Shackles IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:11 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 4889950 damage from your Insinuations of Mori IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:11 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 19502812 damage from your Kiss of Corath IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:11 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 3090227 damage from your Hungering Pyre IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:11 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 22707500 damage from your Incisor of the Unholy V.

inciscor crit:
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 102 damage from your Death IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 1151182 damage from your Unholy Shackles IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 3738606 damage from your Insinuations of Mori IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 5493750 damage from your Kiss of Corath IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 3090227 damage from your Hungering Pyre IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:18:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 80611625 damage from your Incisor of the Unholy V.

crit for 3.55x damage
this cast i had 5 of 8 ticks crit




Dark beast normal dot round tick (crit on corath):
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 444583 damage from your Unholy Shackles IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 4489082 damage from your Insinuations of Mori IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 23623125 damage from your Kiss of Corath IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 3090227 damage from your Hungering Pyre IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:17 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 22707500 damage from your Incisor of the Unholy V.
Dark beast crit on incisor round tick (and insinuation):
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:42 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 349724 damage from your Unholy Shackles IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:42 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 20980482 damage from your Insinuations of Mori IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:42 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 5493750 damage from your Kiss of Corath IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:42 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 3090227 damage from your Hungering Pyre IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:23:42 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 97642250 damage from your Incisor of the Unholy V.
on this small test it crit 3 of 8 ticks for roughly 4.3x damage


Avatar of death 1:
noncrit
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:26 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 31 damage from your Death IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:26 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 378886 damage from your Unholy Shackles IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:26 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 4613729 damage from your Insinuations of Mori IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:26 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 5868750 damage from your Kiss of Corath IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:26 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 11719131 damage from your Hungering Pyre IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:26 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 24257500 damage from your Incisor of the Unholy V.

crit:
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:38 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 31 damage from your Death IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:38 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 1527382 damage from your Unholy Shackles IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:38 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 4156248 damage from your Insinuations of Mori IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:38 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 5868750 damage from your Kiss of Corath IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:38 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 3301164 damage from your Hungering Pyre IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:26:38 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 86114125 damage from your Incisor of the Unholy V.
crit for 3.55x damage

Avatar of death 2:
non crit - i don't think the dots can crit with it up - or always crits i guess, but has no + dmg
[Thu Apr 04 15:30:01 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 102 damage from your Death IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:30:01 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 1474409 damage from your Unholy Shackles IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:30:01 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 14031203 damage from your Insinuations of Mori IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:30:01 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 19502812 damage from your Kiss of Corath IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:30:01 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 10970304 damage from your Hungering Pyre IV.
[Thu Apr 04 15:30:07 2024] Practice Dummy has taken 80611625 damage from your Incisor of the Unholy V.


I do know that with glyph of dest,1 man band, and full debuffs with AoD2 non-crits get up to around 144mil for me, but i'm pretty sure the dots won't crit during AoD2 for some reason

But I also don't have RZ neck to test for number nonsense there

Didn't have too much time to test - 33
3 war 7 rogue 1 wiz 3 zerk 1 monk 1 druid 1 shm 6 pal 3 cleric 1 mage 1 enchanter 1 sk 1 necro 1 bard 1 bst 1rng

About half the dps in uw12/uc4 equivalent, didn't really use cooldowns

Test A mobs ~2min per
frostbite drain hurts a lot.

Was able to handle 2 just fine until my stonewalls faded for some reason and my warrior got deleted (forgot to log this pull)

Test B ~6min
wasn't watching closely on 2nd pull of test b, got killed by 9x 1,469,993 + 208633 in 1 round

Are people really not able to understand the concept of "don't do the extremely obviously bad thing"? Yes you're not allowed to use druids, if you're using that druid to solo stuff because it's immune to damage. You're also not allowed to use pets that are immune to damage to tank things. If you just don't do those things, and don't do anything else that also makes you immune to damage, you will be fine.

...It's been a well established fact that Necro pets are practically invincible in any tier, I've been tanking and killing stuff with one for years...

I find it weird that this has been allowed to remain as is if people has known about it for years. I guess the only reason I can think of is that it does not seem like a common theme on EZ that people in general use their pets as tanks.

I kind of think like, 1 maybe 2 people total actually spent their time doing it.

From what I can tell, the Tunare BP for leather doesn't proc at all (is it spell cast procs only?)


I don't see the click death's embrace doing anything except 2% shieldwall as well.

also not actually seeing doomfire proc from the plate one or mail.

Can we all just cut the bullshit? EVERYONE knew! it was in OOC when ever some new player was asking for advice! Turn a blind eye if you must, but check the logs! how the hell can anyone zonepull T10 without anything else then a warrior... Nobody can say "i didnt know"

I had no problems zonepulling t10 without guardian charm for a long time, just pulled the slimes first so it took a few extra seconds each time, but not a huge amount. Legit did not know about guardian charm until Draca announced VP.

Very cool event, loved all the story.

Very well tuned fight imo, scary adds even with Sarthin there.

Thanks Draca!

SK defensive epic proc, strength from pain recourse 7.0 doesn't actually increase stonewall, tooltip says it should increase it by 20% but there is no change on /say stats window.

Do any of them work? I don't see any entries for the stonewall portion of any of the SK recourse spells

No idea, went from 1.0 to 10 on that character lol

SK defensive epic proc, strength from pain recourse 7.0 doesn't actually increase stonewall, tooltip says it should increase it by 20% but there is no change on /say stats window.