Gems of Sosaria - Discussion Topic

[Lord Mammoth]

While the previous encounters as far as I know have been near or inside towns they have remained quite peaceful - at least the previous one at Brit where I also joined - but the latest one was at Dagger Island and more notably in the dungeon Deceit wasn't.

There are two issues that let this one down:

First, random newbies have very little knowledge of the map let alone a rune to Dagger Island. I browsed a few public rune libraries and found one quite fast but still, it wasn't "easily accessible". I strongly suggest an "event gate" is opened at BB that allows people to find out and join any staff run event. If it was the whole intention to make it less accessable then all went according to plan I guess.

Second, as this event was on a stranded island and deep inside a dungeon it didn't take very long for pks to arrive. A fairly fun PvM event that worked for newbies (skeles and such) and deeper in the dungeon for more skilled players it ended up in a pk looting party and at least our group left quite fast, not all alive.

Let me underline that I love the thrill of running away from reds and it keeps the game more challenging and eventful but that it prevented many (new) players from attending a staff run event is something I wanted to point out.

Looks to be functioning as intended. Which was to create a PvM/PvP hotspot with a story behind it. We know the dungeons of Sosaria are not as accessible as the graveyards. This was one of the reasons we started at graveyards. By doing that it aloud many people who are newer to the shard to attend the earlier portions of the event in relative safety as many of the graveyards hug guard zones. With higher rewards come higher risks and we can't please everyone.

[hifi]

Would like to hear from people who did go to the dungeon and how it ended up being. Was it outrun by PKs and everyone just left or did the good guys get control of it? Did people actually participate regardless of the remote and dangerous location?

As it was intentional, it would be important to hear player reactions to it: was it fun/rewarding for those who fought the PKs. In my opinion it would be a bit sad if one or two PKs just drove everyone away and the event died out because of that. I have no way of knowing because we were the ones that were smoked out in the beginning.

With higher rewards come higher risks and we can't please everyone.

I would suggest keeping events blue accessible as PKs have already chosen their path and can grief everywhere else and in my opinion a PK flood to friendly event is a big turn off. YMMV.

[Lambo]

Would like to hear from people who did go to the dungeon and how it ended up being. Was it outrun by PKs and everyone just left or did the good guys get control of it? Did people actually participate regardless of the remote and dangerous location?

As it was intentional, it would be important to hear player reactions to it: was it fun/rewarding for those who fought the PKs. In my opinion it would be a bit sad if one or two PKs just drove everyone away and the event died out because of that. I have no way of knowing because we were the ones that were smoked out in the beginning.

With higher rewards come higher risks and we can't please everyone.

I would suggest keeping events blue accessible as PKs have already chosen their path and can grief everywhere else and in my opinion a PK flood to friendly event is a big turn off. YMMV.

When the event was announced I noticed a pretty good spike in the population comparable to what it usually is during that hour. If you are aware of the current state of UOSA any type of event hosted by gms is great!

[Ulfrigg]

The spawn wasnt only in deciet, it was also on the Island aswell. Dungeon wasnt outrun by pks for the hours i was there.

[Boomland Jenkins]

For the record, this event is on-going. It wasn't a short span of time, like the graveyard events (which ranged from 2 to 8 hours in length each.)

That's all I'll say about the duration of this event.

[Menkaure]

Would like to hear from people who did go to the dungeon and how it ended up being. Was it outrun by PKs and everyone just left or did the good guys get control of it? Did people actually participate regardless of the remote and dangerous location?

As it was intentional, it would be important to hear player reactions to it: was it fun/rewarding for those who fought the PKs. In my opinion it would be a bit sad if one or two PKs just drove everyone away and the event died out because of that. I have no way of knowing because we were the ones that were smoked out in the beginning.

With higher rewards come higher risks and we can't please everyone.

I would suggest keeping events blue accessible as PKs have already chosen their path and can grief everywhere else and in my opinion a PK flood to friendly event is a big turn off. YMMV.

Come on man, thats what UO is/was. Its not everqyest, or WoW. If your playing this game, ESPECIALLY this shard that is accurate to the era when player killing wasnt such a rare thing, then you need to just accept that most people here like to either pk, or enjoy having some risk involved in their gaming. Its comments like yours that cause the original OSI UO to make a trammel.

[hifi]

Come on man, thats what UO is/was. Its not everqyest, or WoW. If your playing this game, ESPECIALLY this shard that is accurate to the era when player killing wasnt such a rare thing, then you need to just accept that most people here like to either pk, or enjoy having some risk involved in their gaming. Its comments like yours that cause the original OSI UO to make a trammel.

What part of this you did not understand:

Let me underline that I love the thrill of running away from reds and it keeps the game more challenging and eventful but that it prevented many (new) players from attending a staff run event is something I wanted to point out.

I didn't say UOSA should be in "easy mode", just that PKs make PvM events less fun.

[Greenhell]

I popped into Deceit yesterday morning to see if there were any chests that needed popping. Here's some observations...

The Lich Lord room usually has one normal lich and one Lich Lord spawning. Now They've been re-named, the normal liches are now 'gem-encrusted lich' and the Lords are re-named 'X-encrusted Lich Lord' where X is a random gem from the 9 available in-game. Ie; a Star Saphire-encrusted Lich Lord.

Instead of 2 mobs spawning in the room, there are now 3, sometimes 4. One is the Lord, the other 2 or 3 are the lessers. The lesser liches aren't too bad, just enhanced versions of any other lich. The Lich Lord is a different story.

They target quick and like to drop these huge Flamestrikes that can hit for almost a full life bar. It can hit quite a bit harder than a full health Ancient's breath attack. They also have a much deeper mana pool and will dump these Flamestrikes over and over, as well as the other high priority stuff like Exp and EB. And to top it all off, they have some new enhanced mana-drain took me from over half a bar to zero in one cast. You can get into trouble very very fast in this room now.

So, yeah, the risk part has been made clear. Not sure where the reward is coming in tho. As far as I could tell, they have the exact same loot as before.

Lessers dropping 250'ish gold and a couple of a random reg and scroll, a gnarled staff sometimes magic sometimes not.
Lords dropping 700'ish and a couple of a random reg, a gem or two and a scroll, and staff. The occasional magic item.

No extra gems, nothing can be skinned off the corpse, or pried off as far as I could manage with any tool I tried with. Not to mention, the room is now under constant patrol by entire gangs of reds.

So unless we're talking extra rewards for the PK gangs, not sure what's to be gained for the rest of us. They only carry junk gm items anyway, or travel in packs of half a dozen so there is no risk to them whatsoever. I mean, the room can be Provo'd very effectively if you are extremely cautious. The Lords will vaporize a lesser in a few casts. I had one with 3 lessers on it, it melted all three of them, had a third of a life bar left and plenty of mana to FS me with. Just not sure if farming liches under constant patrol of PK swarms is worth it.

I'll have to spend some more time in the place I guess, I'll post more as I crawl around the rest of the dungeon. BTW Downs, you should have looted the chest instead of planting one of your silly chumboxes in it. I scored a 77 charge reflect bracelet. Just sayin'.

[inkognito]

I indeed agree with the placement of the event. But the above gentlemen is correct, same loot tables with higher chance of being ganked = not worth it

[Lord Mammoth]

Each monster has gems on it and the monster spawn rate and amount is increased. Taking that into account you would deffinentally make more hunting there now than previously. That being said any constructive feedback is greatly appreciated and there is always room for improvement. Thanks green hell and hifi for the feedback.

[Greenhell]

I agree Mammoth, it's much more profitable now than before if you can survive I'd like to say, I didn't say it earlier but I appreciate the time and effort you and your team are putting into the shard. Im not to sad to say I'm too drunk now to post more but I'll pop in again when I'm sober and have more to report ) Have fun everyone!

[memememe]

Especially for an undead dungeon this is pretty insane. People don't realize how much you can earn with gems.
Pretty much any half developed dexer/warrior can farm the lich spawn at deceit fire eles and make like 30% more than they did before. That's a big incentive to go where you previously might not have gone.

I agree that "just" gems might get old fast, but there isn't much else they can do.
More gold is even less fun.
Silver? The drop chance would have to be so abysmally small that I'd be way too random.
Magic items? Might be fun, but also VERY random.


There really isn't much the staff can do without going way more out of era.

Something I'd personally like to see, but have little faith that it will ever get implemented, would be some "bossy" type spawns in the event dungeon.
So for instance: For every 5 (random number, can be lower/higher) liches you kill their gem typ goes up one tier. When you reach diamond a "rare bossy" lich spawns that drops 2 guaranteed magic items (again, reward can be anything, 25% drop chance on 1 silver, whatever is fun, maybe even a loot table with both that randomly changes).

That'd break the monotony of farming up quite a bit and make it more fun for people to actually stick around a bit in a dungeon. Cause as it is "farming" means either recalling between AW, Hyth Balrons and Blood Eles dropping EVs and collecting loot or Dragonturreting EGs / LLs and collecting loot.
The first only leaves seconds of possible player interaction once you get the timing down and the second isn't a lot better either.
Contesting for "charged up" spawns on the other hand could be lots of fun and draw different factions to compete for said locations.

Anything really to draw people, both pvm and pvp, outside of town.

[Fireball]

The Gems of Sosaria


First of all, I would like to thank staff for putting on a series of events. It is great to see.

I don't want to be negative about these events, but...

You mention extra reward, though, and I'm afraid I'm not seeing this. At least not in relation to the greatly increased danger. Generally, these mobs carry exactly the same loot they always did but with a random gem on them. Some are perfectly capable of killing you with a single spell, and yet when you successfully dispatch one, you just get the regular fame/karma amount that you would get from it's normal counterpart. It is also implied that skinning the creature will produce more loot and additional mobs but this doesn't happen. The only thing we have is quite a lot more mobs than normal and they have a gem encrusted name and gem on them. Plus we see boss mobs in a town graveyard. This is kind of unbalanced though because they can still nuke us with one hit, but our magic does not work on them because we are in town.

I would, therefore, like to request some amendments: That these monsters be upgraded to carry at least twice as many gems as they currently do and also to provide twice as much fame/karma as their regular counterparts. I would also like to see in-town player magery turned back on in the affected town. Boss mobs, such as lords, should carry a pretty decent weapon or armour piece. Without this, it's a lot of danger for very little reward. If you go to one of these events you WILL almost certainly 1die, and that is fine if the reward is increased appropriately. Otherwise we may as well all just carry on killing balrons.

I'd also like to add my thanks for the superb Halloween event. It was a great idea and I saw one of the reward robes which was awesome! Now everyone will want one, including me

Fireball

[Boomland Jenkins]

We'll look into the loot tables on the higher strength monsters. Gem encrusted monsters have "the same loot" + 1-2 gems (2 for most), and for some, a higher % chance to drop additional magic items.

There is also a special monster that spawns in Deceit 4 on a longer than usual delay, with a much higher loot table than anything else in the dungeon (or game for that matter), can't say much beyond that ... you'll have to talk to the brave warriors who have dispatched this "boss monster" in the past.

[archaicsubrosa77]

We pulled some nice magic items off the Lich Lords including an imbued Vanq club. There were PKs but we had this Wyrm (yes one) with us that can take on 2 EV's, a Lich Lord, and PKs without breaking a sweat. I would like to thank the ones I stole it from. It is a beast.