Fungeons

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Pithy, May 30, 2016.

  1. Ravenwing

    Ravenwing I Feel Loved

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    Upper Guk is one of EQ's best dungeons. They did the game a disservice in PoP when they put in that stupid wood elf crown and made people precious about their frog faction! (The live side in lower guk is less awesome, but worth a visit, too.)

    Mistmoore is great, but I think low twenties is only high enough for the courtyard and the graveyard (and maybe the pits if you're into low red cons). The castle is probably best experienced in the low 30s.
     
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  2. anotheregostar

    anotheregostar Well-Known Member

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    Agreed. I don't play large races, so I'm not too worried about that crown anyways, seems like a lot of work for something that won't make a lot of difference for me. I'll just wait until Pop when I can just illusion my SK anyways. Really enjoyed crawling UGuk though, lots of distinct camps you can do, it had some challenge for sure, and at the time some fun drops.

    Mistmoore would just be courtyards and maybe graveyard at that level for sure. I agree that for actually experiencing a whole dungeon, probably better to wait til 30ish to crawl it if you can go somewhere else.

    Dungeons are sweet, but does anyone have any non-dungeon zones that were fun and worth a look? I remember hunting in gorge of king xorb back on live and it was pretty cool. Warslicks has that goblin fort which kinda feels like a dungeon camp.
     
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  3. John Stark

    John Stark People Like Me

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    Upper Guk: Trains & adds, enjoy.
     
  4. John Stark

    John Stark People Like Me

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    Mistmoor is fun to a certain point, plus its an outdoors dungeon. The ZEM there isn't great, but its got a mystique about it.

    As far as getting out of the dungeons (disregarding ZEMs, which are terrible everywhere else it would be fun to xp), the Sarnak fort in Lake of Ill Omen was a big favorite of mine back in the day. Tons of fun. However, Lake of Ill Omen xp sucks like a Hoover vacuum cleaner, and its just another zone to go to for a specific drop nowadays (the prod from the Chancellor for the VP key, the bracer everyone used to drool over that drops from Sarknak Legionaires, etc.).

    Frankly most of the old world zones ought to have higher ZEMs. Outdoor zones lower than dungeons, since they are easier to xp in. A lot of this game is completely glossed over because of the level treadmill ZEMs and the fact that most everyone here wants to grind to 60 ASAP to raid.

    That's fine if that is the goal of most of the player base; so adjust the ZEMs so that people can grind up through all of the other great zones where the ZEMs stink. Would it be Akurate? No. Would it be a lot more fun and get people actually interested in exploring zones they've never been to or aren't very familiar with?

    Yes.
     
  5. anotheregostar

    anotheregostar Well-Known Member

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    Agreed. Some sort of rotating zem on lower level content especially would be nice. Or adjustment based on difficulty - paludal doesn't strike me as a harder zone than runnyeye haha. But I guess you could get the unplanned outcomes like paludal dwarves with that if you weren't careful, which isn't the end of the world, but could be an issue.
     
  6. Cillipis

    Cillipis Well-Known Member

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    Like all good gnomes you should go to Echo Caverns and assist the Royal Kings of Above and Below by killing some boglings and ridding the tunnels of the more pesky of the mutants.
     
  7. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    uguk was p fun! I crawled all around and hit the spidies and shin lord and warden and witch doctor and scryer and realist and mushroom men and necro and crocs and so on. great exp with that ZEM, especially on yellow and low red cons in the shin lord area. almost made me want to stay and grind for a while! but my gnerds are 24-27 now so I think I can handle Dalnir or Paw.

    when do people start in ToFS?
     
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  8. Ravenwing

    Ravenwing I Feel Loved

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    The first couple of floors of ToFS are 25-30ish. You could go later - the top floors are 40ish - but you'd have to camp greens for keys.
     
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  9. John Stark

    John Stark People Like Me

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    Meh on rotating ZEMs. Just raise all of the dungeons with terrible ZEMs to the same as comparable dungeons, and raise the outdoor zones to about the same while keeping them lower than dungeons. It's a 22 year old game, raising xp in the other zones wouldn't hurt anything at all, and IMO would give us some much needed variety as we level our 2nd or 3rd or 4th etc. trio.

    I think your comment on Paludal is spot on. I swear they gave that zone its "dungeon" ZEM just to facilitate the leveling of twink alts. It certainly is great xp for the levels, but compared to classics like SolA, Guk, Estate of Unrest, Karnors, Seb, Velks, etc., it is thoroughly boring and the challenge there amounts mostly to how fast you can kill for that sweet xp.

    It has no charm, no character, no zing other than the ZEM. The designers ought to have hung their heads in shame that they made that zone in comparison to many of the creative and fun dungeons in the old world, Kunark, and Velius.

    If there was ever a zone that did not need a ZEM to get people to play there again, Paludal is the one. YAWN.

    Of course, Luclin overall is a thoroughly underwhelming expansion. Adding in the kitty cat race and the Beastlord class was good, AAs are great (and helped satisfy players who expected the level cap to go up, allowing for class advancement and a reason to xp without breaking the game as they eventually did with the level cap lifted time and again), but overall it was an unfinished, badly itemized, roadblock to keep people playing and the paid subscriptions coming until they could get on with it and make something like PoP.

    Luclin really does not fit the feel of the rest of the game IMO, and Paludal is a perfect example of the lack of creativity most of that expansion exhibited.

    Even Ssra and the fantastic idea of bringing snakemen into the game is quite flat. Its kinda a neat zone, and the snakes are cool, but it really lacks the fun and charm of SolA/B or Guk.

    The Shissar are kinda creepy though, I'll give them that, and the pseudo-Egyptian them was perfect. Its too bad the implementation was so lackluster.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2021
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  10. Mokli

    Mokli I Feel Loved

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    Not sure I consider Luclin underwhelming. Luclin really wasn't meant for people under 50. This is obvious because they introduced AA's which is a huge feature of the expansion. Sure, there are many lower level zones to play in, but you can clearly see they focused way more on the raid game and those zones. It was an expansion to appease the end gamers (like most expansions were back then) with a sprinkle of lower level stuff. I doubt SSRA was designed to be much of a grouping/xp zone. It was a raid zone that you had to spend time in to get keys to work up through the floors to the Emperor.

    If a lot of thought was put into the group game or the sub 50 levels then stuff like the twilight armor would have been itemized correctly and not entirely useless or ZEM's would have been correctly applied and not the standard 75 across nearly all zones. They probably simply thought that there were enough places for lower levels to play in, but threw in PC, just because.

    PoP again appeased the end gamers primarily since you can't even get into any of the zones below level 46.

    LoY then rolled that back a bit and they added more things for casuals and groupers. They likely realized the last two expansions were too top heavy.

    Luclin did have release issues that I vividly remember and could have used another couple of months to work out. Shadow Haven had sever lag if you recall. They released it a bit early, but I'm not sure much would have changed in those couple of months other than fixing bugs which happened at/around launch.
     
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  11. thucydides

    thucydides I Feel Loved

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    It’s also easy to forget what a big deal focus effects were, and the way they were back applied to old dungeons to make them worthwhile again. Focus effects were a big rebalancing of the whole game after how melee favored velious was.
     
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  12. John Stark

    John Stark People Like Me

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    Yep I forgot to mention focus effects, and the Baz too. The Baz completely changed trading, for better or worse, from the old East Commons tunnel days (which I actually loved, even though it was a PITA). Everyone hawking their wares, the fisticuffs over prices and scams and no-good bastards trading without an once of principle! The gambling there that eventually got banned was hilarious while it was going on. East Commons tunnel was the Wall Street of EQ, and I relished it, despite how terrible it was many times lol. It was part of what made the game alive back when thousands of people played across all of the servers.

    However, the Baz was a huge upgrade, and I really made my fortune buying and selling there on the Zeb server. After Luclin came out I had to run multiple traders on our 3 accounts to keep up with how easy it was to play that market, and the PP flowed! It was hella fun!

    As much as AAs changed the paradigm, so to did the Baz, at least in its infancy, adolescence, and early adulthood.
     
  13. John Stark

    John Stark People Like Me

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    I'm not sure I can agree with your analysis. Certainly Luclin like other expansions had (badly roadblocked) raid content to appease fans (which they needed to do because other MMOs were in the works and up and coming), and I did state that AAs were a means for people thirsting for character advancement to gain power without raising the level cap.

    However, as you mentioned, Luclin had a lot of content that was not created for the power playing raiders. The lack of high end content and places to get good AAxp is very noticeable. We can see it here on this server right now, after 2 years of Luclin. Some folks don't log in at all except to farm gear and raid, because the AAxp is really subpar in this era.

    A true expansion that catered to the guild/raid scene needed more than just the raids that are present in Luclin; it needed a fair amount more of high end, fun, interesting, content that was groupable so that people could capitalize on the power that AAs gave them. Some people certainly did max their AAs in Luclin (at least on Zeb server), or got close, and a lot level 60s had their xp bar maxed in anticipation of PoP.

    And yet, just like in this era we're playing in here (minus the raid rotations), everyone lived in PoP, and the rest of the old world and Luclin was nothing more than a candy store to twink alts and backflag guild members for Ssra & VT so that guilds had something to raid besides PoP that was worth raiding, given the competition for PoP zones. Besides Ssra & VT, some few quests, and some loot in Seru/Katta and a few other places, Luclin was left in the dust after PoP came out, and no one was grinding there outside of Paludal and the level treadmill. At least no on the Zeb server. Other than the Baz and some places to camp stuff, AoE, or quest, most of Luclin became a ghost town.

    To cater to the top heavy game, EQ really needed more revamps and new zones for both raid and groups that were worthwhile to xp in and raid grind at max level IMO.

    Instead, Luclin gave us more low level zones, a new "hub" zone (Nexus/Baz/Shadow Haven) and a new starting kitty cat zone based on race, with all of the attendant newbie zones, low level zones, and 30-40s zones so those new BST, SHM, and BRD kitty cat players had new content to get to 60.

    Certainly there were game changing aspect to Luclin (AAs, Baz, Focus, etc.), but the overall tone and tenor of the expansion quite frankly did not meet or exceed previous content (I mean, Kunark is freaking brilliant, and Velious is very close to Kunark in creativity and fun). There were not a lot of people that mourned when they moved on from Luclin, as they did when everything started turning green in Kunark and Velious.

    We even see this today, as people claim that "classic EQ" was the old world, Kunark, and Velious, when the game was "best" and they mourn that the game moved on from that "best" experience. I fall into that camp to some degree, as I love all of the old world quirks and all. However, I also loved PoP (though I never got to Time and other zones). I loved a lot of what Luclin brought (AAs, Baz, Focus), but I did not care for the content, and I believe that was a very large sentiment after PoP came out (again, at least on Zeb server).

    There really wasn't "a sprinkle of lower level stuff" in Luclin. There is a lot of it, which was the paradigm of all of the other pre-PoP expansions. Heck, back then it even made some sense to give the thousands of players on each server somewhere new to start out, level up new characters, and explore.

    PoP burst that bubble, and rightly so. The game needs more high end content, so when we hit max levels and the AA grind, we enjoy having lots of playable content at those levels, lots of quests, etc. to keep the game that is inevitably bound to become very top heavy worth playing.

    PoP was the expansion for high level play, and EQ always needed a lot more than that, rather than another "hub" or starting zone IMO.

    I cannot think of any of the Luclin content that I would put in my top 20, 50, or even 100 fun places/experiences in either the old world (Antonica, Kunark, Velious), the old world planes (Fear, Hate, Mischief, etc.), or in PoP that I would rank in such a list.

    EDIT: Ok, it was fun as hell AoEing in some Luclin zones!
     
    Last edited: Jun 28, 2021
  14. Mokli

    Mokli I Feel Loved

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    We agree to disagree then because I didn't care much for Velious.

    The faction between the Velious cities was 'neat' but nothing ground breaking. I find the faction between all of the different groups in Santus Seru and Katta better thought out.

    Again though, Velious had more for lower level players and likely that is what most people remember (ToFS for example is a very clever zone for the sub 50 players), leveling up through the different zones. The raid encounters were largely tank and spank and no real thought was put into them. Even Kunark had slightly better raids with what was going on in VP, etc. AoW, KT, ST are a snoozefest.

    Right now, no one levels up in Luclin (or even did back then) because the ZEMs are bad, so people still don't know much about Luclin even to this day. People only go to Tenebrous mountains to kill the vampire for that shield and that was likely the first time they went there. Or people go to DSP to get their Lucid shard or farm tradeskill components or pass through on the way to somewhere else.

    I actually find dungeons like the Deep fun because of the difficulty when so many others just go there for a Lucid shard and then run away. I find the challenge of surviving that zone fun personally.

    The cities in Luclin are actually beautifully designed zones if you take the time to explore them. No starting city from the previous expansions or classic can compare.
     
  15. Faults

    Faults I Feel Loved

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    This man has never been to Ak'anon.
     
  16. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Welp, I went back to Dalnir again and got my ass handed to me again, lol. I swear I'll get to the bottom of that damn dungeon before it greens out.

    Did a few levels in SolA and Perma - not new zones to me, but great ones. Then I crawled all around Splitpaw, which was almost entirely new to me. Fun dungeon! I think I visited every room. Really wide range of levels on the trash. Some of the nameds and other deep reds (chanters, /shudder) were good challenges. The secret tunnel to Ishva was cool. Are the Judges and Executioners supposed to kill Kurrpok Splitpaw (the green-con at #3 on the map) when he spawns? Alla comments seemed to indicate that, but on TAKP Kurrpok just kinda stands in the center of the room and engages the judges in an infinite staring contest.

    Toons are low/mid 30s now. Classes are starting to come into their own. The monk's FD skill is high enough now that he can split tough rooms, and the necro's CC is not half bad with root and Screaming Terror. Focusing dru+nec nukes on a mob is great burst damage in a pinch.

    Maybe back to Dalnir next? Or maybe a crawl around Nurga. I spent a lot of time factioning in Droga back in Kunark and Velious, but don't recall visiting Nurga much.
     
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  17. Silvermink

    Silvermink Member

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    Each floor of Dalnir is significantly higher than the previous. Most of floors 1 and 2 will be green or light blue before you can successfully deal with the 3rd floor. Crowd control highly recommended.
     
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  18. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    So Dalnir ended up being a little anti-climactic. I went back with level 32-35 toons and pretty much wrecked the place. Ironically, all my problems happened on the top floor due to the tightly-packed mobs and lots of healers. Once I got to the middle and bottom floors, mob density decreased and heals through the walls stopped being a problem.

    I wrecked the place right up until I got to the Kly Overseer, anyway. (I like the decor on the bottom floor - the pickled froglok heads really complement the moonshine stills.) The Overseer fight was hilarious. He's a chanter who conned red to all my guys. I pulled on the monk and instantly got hit with a 20-minute charm. The Overseer then proceeded to charm the necro pet, the necro, and the druid. At that point, the Overseer had his little army of PC charmpets fight each other for his amusement. The druid and necro nuked themselves OOM, then stood around slap-fighting each other while the Overseer... oversaw.

    I know it's AKurate for an NPC to be able to charm multiple players, but should charmed players fight each other? That seems like an, er, Oversight in the server code.
     
    Last edited: Aug 1, 2021
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  19. Daffan

    Daffan New Member

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    After playing UO Outlands for a while, ideas like this are to me perfectly acceptable in emulators.

    it doesn't hurt nostalgia, the 'toughness' or even invalidate the 'classic' concept and design. All it does is make the game better.

    You could even make the argument that by fixing ZEM's eg rebalancing them, it's actually REINFORCING nostalgia. Because back than, when we were young... the game didn't have these glaring horrible balance flaws in your mind, not even peripheral (out of sight, out of mind)... our nostalgia had a much more clean game... unlike today, when 50% of things are just complete trash.
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2021
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  20. anotheregostar

    anotheregostar Well-Known Member

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    Lol that sounds familiar. When I was there working on my greenmist, I stupidly thought I would just make a run for the portal. He instantly charmed my druid, who then started chasing my tank, and my enchanter proceeded to get stunlocked as I was running though. Thankfully just before she died, she got charmed (had like 50hp left), and both she and the druid were in spitting distance of the portal from chasing the tank/autofollowing desperately. Had to sit there for what felt like ages waiting for the charms to break and hoping to run the last 10 feet to the portal before everything swooped in and killed me haha. In the end the overseer saved my life!
     
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  21. prattrs

    prattrs Active Member

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    PC was there to seal the deal on the expansion for new or returning players. New or returning players pick xpac, roll kitty cause that's what's new, have an unusually easy time with the grind (maybe EQ _has_ changed!), and as a result are more likely to stick around.

    New is better (easier, quicker, more powerful) than old sells expansions. Like Iksars. And Kurns.
     
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  22. Kabouter

    Kabouter Member

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    I agree with you, the way I remember it most players were grinding in the lake of ill omen when Kunark came out. Even though the ZEM was bad there, which makes me believe maybe the resources just weren't as available as they are now and most of us were clueless about ZEM's.
    But when I look at the p1999 forum according to purists all of this information was common sense back in the day (same for bard swarming, reverse charming, AoE grinding, etc...), so I guess it depends on what kind of player you were.

    Then again with the low player population on TAKP some zones are better kept empty as well, but let's boost some of the fungeons for sure (and maybe nerf some very popular ones).
     
  23. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Yeah, I agree that rotating ZEMs would be fun, but it's been discussed a lot over the years and the devs have decided against it.

    I did some ToFS (floors 1-3) and Kedge last week. ToFS was fun but level 4 annihilated my level 35ish alts, even with aego and KEI. So I decided to exp a bit in Kedge, which has a decent ZEM. I've always liked underwater zones for some weird reason; Kedge was a nice little teaser for PoWater. But the level range on mobs in Kedge is really wide, and I often found myself going from an even-con fish to deep red piranhas or sharks that doubled my monk for 200 a swing. Ouch. Also, druid DS on trash mobs shredded me.

    So I did a few levels in the Kaesora church. Not particularly exciting, but the ZEM, respawn and mob density are great. Also grabbed Xalgoz fangs for HS keys. I stayed long enough to ding 39 on the dru/nec for new spells, then bugged out. I think the fourth floor of ToFS should be doable now with new nukes, necro pet, etc. Maybe I'll explore the rest of Kedge in the 40s.
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2021
  24. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    Oh BTW, if anyone's thinking about twinking a fungeon trio of their own, here are the items I've found most useful (in roughly descending order of impact):
    • druid Velious quest tunic (15 group regen clickable at level 1 - thanks for the tip, Darch!)
    • fungi for tank
    • good mainhand weapon for tank
    • ring 8 or 9 (DS clicky) for tank
    • haste item for tank
    • level II focus effects for casters
    • Eyepatch of Plunder for tank
    Hitpoints and resists for the tank are also nice, as are hitpoints and mana for casters, but their impact is pretty marginal when it's so easy to bum a four-hour aego and KEI.
     
    Last edited: Aug 10, 2021
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  25. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    My dudes, you weren't lying about ToFS being a great zone. I went back last week with level 40ish toons, picking up where I left off on the fourth floor. Floors 4+ were very doable with monk/druid/necro at that level. It was definitely a challenge, though! Big pulls got dicey as hell, so I actually got to use the monk's and necro's pulling abilities.

    I really enjoyed the wedding on the fifth floor. (Who doesn't want to get hitched by a werewolf in front of a fountain of blood? Every gnome's dream.) Splitting that room was a lot of fun. Some of the drops up there are not half bad.

    Floors six and seven were really cool, too. Interesting spawn mechanics, tough but doable mobs, and pretty decent exp from the white/yellow/red cons. The mirror room on the top floor is just really damn cool.

    I foolishly tried Tserrina - a level 51 necro - with my level 40ish scrubs. After lolling a bit at my puny monk, she sicced her pet and DoTted him up. When his hitpoints dropped by 30% in a tick, I started casting evac. By the time it landed, the monk was very thoroughly dead.

    Maybe I'll come back someday for revenge, but for now, having visited every room and killed every mob but Tserrina, I'm satisfied moving on to other fungeons.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2021
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  26. Mokli

    Mokli I Feel Loved

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    Her robe looks identical to the robe that the Emp drops (and you don't have to kill Tserrina 20 times to get one). That's a good reason to go back. #fashionquest
     
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  27. Mukk

    Mukk People Like Me

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    Tserrina is worth the kill. Her key to go right to the top floor makes going back and killing her again handy.
     
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  28. Pithy

    Pithy I Feel Loved

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    I've been puttering around Howling Stones the last couple of weeks. It's fun playing through the zone as it was designed to be played - crawl through the north wing to key for west, crawl through west to key for south, then do the long crawl through south to finish the master key and through the secret wall into east for higher level exp mobs and juicier named. The key crawls are fun challenges with low-50s monk/druid/necro.

    I've enjoyed learning all the necro's many capabilities. Pretty ridiculous class! I knew they were masters of DoTs, taps, kites, snares, FDs, DAs, twitches, corpse summons, EE rezzes, etc., but I didn't realize they had such good CC and charming on top of all that. Undead Enchanter isn't quite as powerful as Enchanter, but it's pretty damn strong in undead-heavy zones like HS, Grieg's, Ssra, etc. And it'll stay strong in PoP with undead charmpets in Decay and Tactics.

    I'm pretty happy with monk as the point gnome in my fungeon trio, but in retrospect pally/druid/necro might've been a better choice. Pairing pally pac/stuns with necro CC/charm would make for a pretty badass dungeon diving team. DPS would suffer somewhat in non-undead areas, but honestly most of the fun dungeons are undead-heavy anyway.
     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2021
  29. showstring

    showstring I Feel Loved

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    you forgot masters of undead slows, 70% slow is ridiculous
     
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  30. pivoo

    pivoo People Like Me

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    Can lvl 25 trio get to CC without asking for port? Is there any PoK stone combination, or Nexus port, that get you close enough to be able to make it to CC alive?