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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Did anyone else dislike the quest to find two soldiers in a cave (the cave with Nightbloom)?
TroyGG
Member, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
Just curious if anyone else (solo players only) disliked the quest to find the two soldiers in the cave (the cave with nightbloom)?
It felt like a bit of a grind to kill everything on the way in and then back out, as there was no way to path between mobs sneakily.
Probably just my latency making it more of a chore than fun though, to be honest. Spider CC was super janky with high ping and made it hard to run past / skip mobs.
Mob placement was pretty annoying though as mentioned above, lack of natural patrol/movement on enemies feels like it is replaced by just spawning a ridiculous amount of mobs in all possible avoidance routes. Definitely did not feel like a good time given the tiny amount of XP from mobs / lack of AoE for larger pulls in early game.
Lack of internal area map also was painful, even something with a fog of war would have been nice so that you can quickly check where forks in the cave might lead.
It felt like a bit of a grind to kill everything on the way in and then back out, as there was no way to path between mobs sneakily.
Probably just my latency making it more of a chore than fun though, to be honest. Spider CC was super janky with high ping and made it hard to run past / skip mobs.
Mob placement was pretty annoying though as mentioned above, lack of natural patrol/movement on enemies feels like it is replaced by just spawning a ridiculous amount of mobs in all possible avoidance routes. Definitely did not feel like a good time given the tiny amount of XP from mobs / lack of AoE for larger pulls in early game.
Lack of internal area map also was painful, even something with a fog of war would have been nice so that you can quickly check where forks in the cave might lead.
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Comments
I didn't run past the mobs though. No need for internal map in an open world area.
First time I did that area I was in a group and to many flowers got picked up. The group getting credit for each flower was good and bad at the same time. One of the group died from it.
As for the mobs, like most of the map they are over spawned and packed pretty tight when there isn't really a need. Everything else is just bad Alpha code that needs fixed.
I also liked that you had 1 quest sending you there, and another one available at the entrance, so should you stumble upon the cave during exploration, there is still a quest inside of it.
Formerly T-Elf
Same thing happened to me. I figured out to stay away from the insta-spawn spots and thought of them more as traps. (I know it was a bug so wasn't intentional but once I figured out what was happening it wasn't difficult to get around it.)
I didn't like how I walked past one of the soldiers (the dead one) multiple times until I very carefully combed through the cave. Even when I talked to the injured one he said, "I am surprised you didn't see her on your way in." It's pretty bad when an NPC criticizes you for your poor quest performance. It's not my fault, get off my back! At least I didn't get myself stuck in a cave, Mr. Solider, so there.
The quest was pretty neat overall. I didn't think there were too many mobs. Then again performance on my system was really good. I recently swapped out my CPU/MB/RAM because I've been having a number of BSODs on my system the past year related to drivers, and the latest drivers for my MB were from 2016, which was the universe telling me to upgrade.
Despite the number of enemies, I found it wasn't too difficult to pull them one at a time, and I didn't get overwhelmed by too many at once as long as I was careful and methodical. It was a great quest; it required exploration, and took some effort, but it didn't take forever and was relatively low-stress.
didnt know group gets credit for flower picked up by one people but i find it good : the "collecting ground items quests" were most of time bad quests to be in party. While party was help with killing (and all group got it) was generally easier for looting quest (it is faster to kill 50 ennemies as 5 people than 10 ennemy alone most of time) The item on the floor with their respawn time was a problem for a party... and i dislike "instant respawn" or similar shits, getting all getting credit for the loot make this again easier for party (spread = find them all faster)
And because i think AoC should do things to make people group... all good !
This. I must have spent a couple hours in there prior to the one of the server resets and then again after. One time it was me and two other players. We must have run past Zemez like 8 times without noticing her. Pretty sure we were all looking for some kind of visual queue. In this case, it was literally an unselectable body on the ground that you only got an interact prompt when you stood right on top of it. I found it purely by accident.
Compare that to a little later on when you pick up the A Burden to Bear quest. There's a body on the side of the road with a highly visible indicator above the body. Seems a little awkward to have one quest early on that is this annoying to find and then just a little later on another where a body is so clearly marked as a quest objective.
I like if I pick up more than five I die.
I dont like the first soldier being difficult to see, the corpse really blends in with the terrain and without the quest indicator on the map I would never find it.
I liked the platforming to jump to the flower.
I liked if I told the NPC it was a criminal it killed me.
Makes me pay attention, good quest!
Well... now I'm glad I decided to er on the side of discretion when handling that conversation.
As for the cave itself: I enjoyed the atmosphere and the variety of mobs. It would be even better if that variety of mobs was distinct from the mobs found outside the cave, but that is a content issue to be addressed later.
I handled the mobs methodically, working my way in along the side of the wall in open spaces, and eventually reached the injured soldier. No problems. It took me a while to find Zemez, who was stuck on the wall out of reach. I eventually gave up on her, gathered the rest of the glowy flowers, and left the cave behind.
P.S. My favourite part of the quest was gathering up the dropped essences from other players that had been killed by the mushrooms. The dealiness of that part of the cave gave it a spooky feel that I enjoyed.