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Comments
Mirror Tower boils down to "Walk in room. HOPE you can kill the few that are in the room (if there are 4+, you're already GG'd because more will wander in and stay there). Once you get past that initial hurdle, you have to do the RNG shuffle up the tower, hoping that the next room won't absolutely demolish you and your crew. By the time you get to the 'boss', it becomes actually one of the easiest areas! Some minor commands that are used everywhere else, and boom. you win!
Ogre Fortress is awful for this as well. Swarm of a ton of enemies, and then oops you're dead. Got to the final boss? Well. You might live through it. If you get wiped out the first time you fight him, then try again? Well... good luck. It's going to be a TON harder now. Hope you came prepared.
Margam... Either Atalkez, Farrah, and I seriously missed out on something, or this is just "pray that you don't get RNG fucked and instantly killed." Because that is what that foray is. Getting RNG fucked and instantly dying. Even if you survive for a bit, it becomes infinitely harder once more, and then you have to deal with all the extras. To which.. they don't go away (iirc).. so enjoy not finishing that time. PS: there is a timer. If it runs out, it kills you again! (though, fucking up once gets everyone on the ship insta-killed anyways. So enjoy death).
What do you get out of a lot of these? 1-use items, or limited use. Mirror Tower gives you old Kai Banish, once. Ogre Fortress is the stat-boosting artie vials you can purchase from the SoW... like 5 of them, at random. Once all used, they go bye-bye. Margam gives you a SUPER SECRET SEA MONSTER BOSS thing which is.. kind of lack luster, considering the fact that sea monsters are just a hassle, and exhausting to deal with.
I don't even know what the boulder does, but I assume something that instant-kills, considering it's.. counterpart.
You don't have to finish these just once to get it. Not twice... but upwards of 16 times, potentially even up to 32 or more (for the Foray Map that leads to the mythical.. SIXTH FORAY!!!!!!!!! That is apparently "so ballbusting hard it's Margam + icosse + ogre fort, cranked up to 100" )
The later Forays, namely Icosse and Margam, are the ONLY ones to give an honours line. And.. guess what? It's not to everyone who participated in the Foray. (we'll get into THAT later). It's only for the person who got the last hit. That person is ALSO the only one to get the talisman pieces. So, 2 or more people are doing it? Well billy bob. Fuck you, it's my talisman piece now! It's not great. What's more-so, is that the experience is.. honestly? Awful for the reward. There is barely a gold reward (something like 15k~ overall from total drops).
Now, to difficulty. Supposedly, these are "possible by people that aren't dragons, and are scaled down appropriately!" Which.. seems to just not be the case. The difference between 2 people and 3, at least in regards for farrah, me, and one other, was horrendous compared to just two of us. All of these require two people. Barring potentially like... Ogre Fortress. It's been awhile since I've ran that one (over a year). The rewards are simply just not worth the experience loss of being insta-gibbed 10+ times every time you wish to do it.
I adore forays, as when I started doing them, they were pretty reasonable and had a level of excitement about them from being the first person to do it... but if @Ahmet were here, he'd agree that these are still ridiculous.
Also, most forays go untouched because of just how obscene of a time requirement it is to get to them. Not to mention the fact that some have you scouring the ENTIRE continent on Wilderness. Ogre Fortress? Any forest.
Margam? Does it have a coast? HAVE FUN.
Icosse? "Ruined...." it's one of like 10 areas, have fun running around.
The worst offender though, is the god damn bird. It's any 'hill/mountain' area, or some such, meaning that it's an absolute pain in the rear to find, considering every damn hill/mountain in the entire continent. It's reward? Well.. it instantly teleports you and co ( i think ) to.. your.. next.. Foray location...
The things are also supremely unfriendly to people who have a hard time navigating the wilderness, namely blind Achaeans. If Mezghar could actually find them, he'd probably be doing em with Farrah now.
Let's not even get into how ridiculous Zsarachnor is now-a-days, considering we took 20~ people, mostly dragons, to fight him and barely got him down to 70% before he insta-gibbed everyone.
Margam was not RNG. It was just very punishing. Atalkez and I managed to do it all right once, but it's still very difficult even knowing how we did it before, and we've never had the motivation to put in the effort it would take to get a second win. Ictinus implied we were making it harder than it actually was, though I never actually determined an easier way to do it. Some of the mechanics also might just be plain buggy. I don't know if they're intended to screw you over as much as they do, or just bugged (still not RNG though, you can deal with them if you take them into account).
One sad thing about it is I do think it requires significant arties to win. I'm not sure if anyone less artied has completed it. Putting all the "tricky" mechanics aside with the ship, just tanking the denizens is really hard. This is true of all the forays, really.
The fact that you can't actually find forays with a screenreader is pretty frustrating, too. I was trying to do one with Mez once, and the fact that I had to find it myself, and took like an hour to do so, made me never want to do one again.
I mean, with my current playstyle and hours I guess that suits me just fine, but that means I'm mostly only involved with stuff that was released 3 or 4 RL years ago. It seems a waste.
"reasonably artied" generally means sip 3, regen 2 (at least), lvl 3 con/reserves, deathcape doesn't help (due to a time limit and death will make you lose it)...
If you have a "NO DAMAGE HAHAHA" stick, you might be able to survive longer, but again...
If these are actually scaled down for people that are under 80, then they're either not scaling enough, or it's broken. I have seen two or three groups of level 80ish people attempt it, and absolutely get curbstomped before they even got to the boss. Again, and again. And again.
Forays just aren't that rewarding, or are they really that fun after the first few times you do them.
They're overtuned, unless their 'scaling' is also based on escrow value. In which case I can very readily go "What the fuck".
Meaning if UW and forays are even to approach that level of participation the reward has to meet or exceed e-lord in desirability
Now if you talked about a scenario where you got rewarded for -dying- in the Underworld, that'd be interesting.
The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."
(Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
The soul of Ashmond says, "Always with the sniping."
(Clan): Ictinus says, "Stop it Jiraishin, you're making me like you."
In my opinion, and from my experience, Achaea’s policies discourage inviting others to engage with content they either do not know exists or where to find it.
A few years back, when I started playing again, I had no idea what forays or the underrealm were. I heard about the icons and that the shards were used for something else, and saw mention of forays on the resolution list, but after asking around about what either were and where I can find them, I was consistently given the answer “find it on your own”. To note, I was asking where to go to -start- a foray, or where the place to use shards and enter the underrealm was for exploration, and yet every person I asked seemed to regard this as sacred knowledge, leaving me entirely unable to engage with that content.
Similarly, when the elemental planes opened, I spent an hour trying to guess the verb that would let me into the water plane, asking multiple people who I knew had gone in, and again the response was “figure it out”, until finally someone relented and told me the single command that would let me start actually doing things.
I missed the Nur opening event entirely, and unless I had followed someone who wanted to go there I would have no idea it even existed or where/how to get there. I still only sort of know where it is, and have no idea how to navigate it or get out, but that is at least something I can figure out now that I know where to start.
This may just be my experience, and there are other instances, but I feel it highlights two issues with engagement that Penwize initially asked about: the general attitude not to reveal anything at all, which I feel is going a bit beyond “do not give away quests” to “do not let people play the game” at the intensity I encounter it; and the prevelance of “guess the verb” puzzles that go far beyond the base commands list, with every single emote, says, and even commands that only exist for the express purpose of that interaction being possible options, on top of needing to get the syntax right even if you do have the right idea.
The former leads into more problems: without being able to communicate and collaborate, and without the admin willing to say anything, even knowing if something works at all is difficult, forcing us sometimes to figure out if we have not solved the puzzle or if it is another bug.
The latter is just annoying and tries the patience of people attempting to engage with something, and easily strays into the realm of moon logic puzzles, which by their very nature discourage people from even bothering when they know (or suspect, see previous) that it will not even make sense if they do figure it out.
This kind of ties in with the call for engagement, too, but it fit a little better here than in a thread asking for ideas rather than critique. Honestly, aside from a policy change (or people just being more helpful and less dismissive so they can go back to being AFK), and going through to fit puzzle solutions to some series of commands that we all know are going to be used to solve puzzles and staying within that realm, I am not sure how to solve those issues, or if anyone else experiences them.
Requiring extremely specific syntax, especially when it's a command that isn't used elsewhere, ends up feeling OOC and metagamey aside from just being frustrating.
If the command is CLIMB DOWN, then those exact words should appear somewhere, eg. the room description containing "The cliff face looks treacherous to climb down."
Any day of the freaking week mate.
*edit: especially if the pieces are bound to me forever because they're for me to collect, not sell.