Thursday, August 30, 2018

Dungeon, Island Expedition Impressions

Dungeons

I have almost finished the Kul Tiras story. I'm have to do the Siege of Boralus dungeon. It would have been nice if Blizzard had actually noted that Siege was a Mythic-only dungeon in the quest text. It was very confusing.

Actually, this is a bit of a general problem so far at max level. Blizzard isn't providing obvious directions that I think should be provided. For example, emissary turn-ins. I finished a Champions of Azeroth turn-in and I had no idea where Magni was. Apparently there's a portal to Silithus in Boralus? When did that happen? Same thing with the Tortollan emissary.

Dungeons so far are interesting. I finally got to i305 and started doing heroic dungeons.

It's kind of weird doing the Horde dungeons. Normally during an expansion, I've done all the quests beforehand and know the story for each dungeon. But now you enter a Horde dungeon, and there are trolls and gold and dinosaurs running around, and you have no idea why. Especially when a boss is talking smack to you.

If the tank pulls one pack at a time, heroic dungeons are pretty easy, even at minimum item level. If she pulls multiple packs, all bets are off.

I did get my item level up to 312 or so, thanks to a couple lucky drops. Perhaps that's enough to start tackling Mythics, at least with my guild.

Island Expeditions

I also did an island expedition on Normal difficulty. I'm not too sure what to think. The thing is that we were rushing to gather Azerite so fast that you couldn't really understand the nuances of the place. Apparently the opposing faction NPCs have really cool AI or something, but everything went by in a blur, so I'm not sure what really happened.

I kind of wish it wasn't a race, and there was more room to slow down or be strategic. But I don't really know how you would accomplish that. Maybe increase the damage and disallow resurrecting when you die.

The only thing I noticed about the Horde NPCs (a blood elf mage team, I think) was that they jumped an awful lot while fighting. So kudos to Blizzard for successfully imitating human PvPers.

13 comments:

  1. Rohan, the AI for the Island Expedition dependent upon the difficulty you choose. I highly recommend you get into a group to farm heroic. It also help if you're using voice chat.

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    1. Perhaps I will look into this more in the future. Right now, though, I'm trying to gear up to be ready when raiding opens next week. So it looks like dungeons are the name of the game for me this week.

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  2. I'm really disappointed that the last bit of story is mythic gated. Tried a random group and just got eaten alive on the last boss. Cool encounter, but unforgiving. Sitting at 327, I thought it wouldnt have been so bad but it was a pug.

    Island expeditions are cool for a bit. I feel like theyre missing something. Maybe structure, maybe rewards. Its like doing a dungeon for the experience only. I guess that ok, but any other incentive would rock.

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    1. Right now, the main incentive for Island Expeditions is getting to 40K azerite collected so that you get the 1,500 rep with your war faction and the 2,400 AP to your Heart of Azeroth.

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    2. Yeah, but right now, everyone is chasing gear to get enough item levels to be able to raid. From that point of view, island expeditions can't compete with dungeons or even world quests.

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  3. The portal to silithus was created by you during one of the starter quests, together with portals to capitals.

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    1. No, it was not. At the introductory quest, you get to the portal rooms and meet human mage, dwarf mage and draenei mage, who open portals to their respective cities. When they are done, there are 3 portals in the room.

      I suspect that portal to Silithus quietly opens when you unlock world quests.

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    2. When I did that starter quest I saw only 3 portals, because there were 3 mages in the room, and I thought portals to Ironforge and the Exodar was unexpected.

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  4. Also, the azerite amror reforger is not mentioned when you get insrtuctions on azerite armor use (because you get instructions in Silithus before going to Kul'Tiras). Consequently many people may not know that they can change their traits...

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    1. That's true. I found the reforger, but I'm still unclear on how the increasing price works. Is it per-item, or always increasing to a max value, or something else? A guildmate says that the price resets every Tuesday, but I haven't verified that.

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    2. No, the price just doubles every time you reforge and halves every time you did not reforge for 3 consecutive days.

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  5. Speed running is required for victory in island expedition, but it gets in the way of exploration. At heroic setting (9000 azerite), you barely explore 20-30% of the island when you win.

    So the experience is that you run around, kill things, grab azerite, and then it's over. Not something that I would call interesting.

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    1. Yeah. Speed running, though, is very hard to stop. All the incentives point you towards it.

      But I think expeditions made it worse than normal, adding a sense of urgency over and above the normal incentives in a dungeon run.

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