Curse

virtusdraco · Apr 20, 2007, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Right after Hard Mode went live, three guildies and I formed a team (and drug Tahlkora along) for the Old Ascalon zone.

It took 3.5 hours to complete the vanquishing title (I think the required number of kills was 279, including the moa birds and stalkers in the zone). We had difficulties so I wouldn't consider the time "optimal".

The beasties were in the level range of 22 to 24 I think. The "junk" drops seemed to be typical for beasties of that level--I would expect similar drops from level 22-24 beasties in normal mode.

From this initial impression, the "junk" drops weren't spectacular, but it seemed that the lower side of the "quality" range might have been raised up a little. I did notice some interesting quirks though. In terms of collectible / crafting drops, gargoyles dropped stacks of 10 to 11 scales which seemed appropriate to beastie level. However, the gargoyles, devourer and thorns would drop 5gp skulls, fetid carapaces, and abnormal seeds which salvaged to ... a few bones, a few chitin fragments and one fiber respectively. This seemed out of tune with the other drops given the level of the beasties.

As for the beasties themselves, they did provide some nasty skill surprises in addition to being higher level than their normal mode counterparts. Oddly though, some of the bosses (necro and ranger whiptails) seemed very easy to deal with, even at a high level, compared to their non-boss counterparts. However, some bosses (grawl smite and mesmer) bosses were pretty challenging to deal with, especially with several (Heal Area spamming) grawl ulodytes in tow.

Beyond the junk drops, I did notice purple drops seemed to happen a bit more often than I am used to from normal mode. Interestingly enough, by the time we cleared the zone, the three of us each had gotten a gold hammer drop, which was a very strange coincidence.

There was at least two 'locked chests' in the zone so one player got to try a lock pick (which of course broke after the first use) to get an ok purple drop. I'm curious about the relative quality of the locked chests. Will chests in later areas of the game tend to give better items? If so, I would imagine earlier areas of the game will end up with ignored chests due to people using the pricey lock picks on better chests in later areas. If not, I would imagine chest farming would happen in earlier areas of the game due to chest runs being a bit easier. We will see I guess...

As far as new items go, one player managed to get a warrior skill tome drop, but we didn't see any other new items the rest of the time.

Then there is henchie / hero AI... I'm not sure if it was a build problem with Tahlkora or what, but the player that brought her swears she was set for avoid combat but it sure seemed like she was aggroing and attacking a great deal on her own. She didn't do a very good job of healing and ended up dying quickly all of the time. As it ended up, we were very close to completing the vanquishing requirement and spent at least an hour dealing with some tough grawl boss groups. Since Tahlkora was essentially useless, we ended up using her as a minion factory which helped with sheer numbers of damage sources to finish of the ulodytes and take out the bosses afterwards.

In terms of difficulty I can see hard mode being a source of frustration for those wanting to work on the vanquishing titles. Our group got far along enough in getting the vanquishing requirement for the zone that we didn't want to stop, even though we realized our builds were not the best, tahlkora was next to useless as our only healer (it is a good thing at least two characters had rebirth), and our weakened characters were dropping in one to two hits. We must have burned through almost 20 green candy canes to avoid the 60 death penalty party wipe of doom that is a new feature in hard mode. Also we kept asking ourselves "how many more kills do we need?" since there is no clear idea of how far along we were other than the general position of the progress bar under the vanquish icon.

With some build and team tuning I'm sure we will do better in the future, but I can see getting down to the last few beasties with everyone at or close to 60dp and just not having enough power in such a weakened state to finish the job and thus having to start all over again. In a way I guess hard mode is a good excuse to use those shrines in PvE areas assuming your territory has favor and you carry enough gold.

Overall, hard mode in explorable areas was an interesting experience. It definitely brings new life to the "noob" areas of the game that I would imagine most players have left behind for good in normal mode. I certainly think some more tuning of drops (collectible and crafting stuff in particular) as well as tuning of boss vs. non-boss relative power is needed.

This was just my experience with one zone in hard mode, so I can't really say if this was an "average" hard mode experience or not.

Dutch Masterr · Apr 21, 2007, 06:56 PM // 18:56

I have been hearing alot of complaints about hard mode, but in my opinion it is the greatest update this game has ever seen. I have been playing for over a year, my first character being made in Prophecies. I love being able to re-play old missions i havent even seen in over a year. The update put a whole new twist on the game, including the cool new battles sounds and animations. I was playing Frost Gate mission and had 6 max damage golds drop and 10+ purples. Only thing that sucks is that solo farming is pretty much gone...

Mercury Angel · Apr 21, 2007, 07:09 PM // 19:09

While your opinion is welcomed, it is preferred that when possible, new threads aren't created when an existing thread closely, or exactly, covers the topic.

Unfortunately, thread merger is not viable at this time, as it causes the forum to crash, so if you wish to, you must repost your content manually in that thread. Sorry for the inconvenience.

ElinoraNeSangre · Apr 21, 2007, 07:21 PM // 19:21

Dunkoro was really sucking last night, too, for myself and a guildie.

This is pretty consistant with what I saw, too, although I got 4 gold drops just myself last night. Two were in one zone, and the other 2 were in two different ones.

Mercury Angel · Apr 21, 2007, 07:30 PM // 19:30

While your opinion is welcomed, it is preferred that when possible, new threads aren't created when an existing thread closely, or exactly, covers the topic.

There are also some related threads to check out on general hard mode AI for henchmen and heroes, along with specific AI quirks/bugs in the Hereos & AI forum to check out if you're interested in the subject; Hench/Hero Intelligence + Hard Mode and Hard mode hero ai.... bug or intentional?

Unfortunately, thread merger is not viable at this time, as it causes the forum to crash, so if you wish to, you must repost your content manually in that/those thread(s). Sorry for the inconvenience.