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Thread: Solo Farming Rares

  1. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kurt2013 View Post
    How does your experience of a ranger make my post untrue? Obviously a ranger can kite the boss, but still you need to survive one or two hits in case of unluckiness. And you should agree, that as ranger with single dps you are not the fastest in killing the rather lnear mob army before the ape. And again, i was not assuming new players know all the tricks and shortcuts...or even if they know, they most likely can not do them all due to power. 30 mins is even a good average in my opinion. You have to take into account, that lower powered chars (i also would NOT consider a char with t1 and t2 items or khitai blues undergeared). For an average number you can not assume you win all the fights or blast through them or manage to run by. Not all players can even do this due to the game setup. And when you get unlucky, the days chance for a hardmode is ruined and you have only a shot at 1-2 rares. You still don't believe me? Do the maths: One encounter roughly takes at least 05-2 minutes. Hippos, Snake, knockback, Tigers, Birds, snake, spiders- boss (skipable, if you only want normal mode) - panther, snakes, (optional runpast), snakes, spiders, tigers - statue fight (due to script at least 5 mins) - pirates - pirates - (optional runpast) - birds, boars, pirates - final boss (10 mins). Boss fights take longer obviously. Sure, you can run past a few, but only at specific points. And here it comes into play that you can actually survive a few hits from normal mobs as well and have potions. As undergeared player you do not kill the mobs fast. You also have to kite a lot. You also need potions. You need to rest more and longer. You also can not skip certain parts (depends on class as well here). You can encounter a fight you simply can NOT win with current build or power level. All these things have to be considered, if you throw out numbers...(trust me, i have grinded the isle with all classes at different powerlevels myself with and without knowledge of how it is done AND i talked to people in various guilds and various power levels).

    It is also not a matter of paying attention. You need to be able to survive a few hits due to latency and sheer combat length and murphy. You can not take a lucky shot (or a good run) and declare it to the average. And even if you manage to do it on one char (out of?), it does not mean others are not sharing the problems i mentioned. And i have not even ventured into the psychology of grinding a lot...

    And 4-5 rares in ONE day, compared to the normal modes you can repeat at a hourly schedule AND have an additional chance to get blue or purples for your class.
    I do admit that my suggestion to do normal and hard modes was biased on personal preferences, because i can simply not do these solo instances more than a few times a week on a good mood, though if subbed, i could do a few group runs in a row. And if i personally solo, i have to take my time...
    Not trying to be anything but helpful Kurt, but you don't know what you're talking about. It's all about paying attention, with the buffs, a Sin can stand there and take several hits from the ape before they need to run and refresh them.

    If you want me to show you how to do these instances much faster, send me a PM and I'll show you how sometime. You can skip almost every add on the island. The only things I kill usually are the big spider, the statues, maybe 2 birds near the final rez pad, the 2 birds under the ape, and the ape itself. You don't have to touch the rest of them. The only toons I've done these instances with in years are undergeared toons while waiting for a K6 run. You don't have to have great gear. On any class, even ranger.

    If you fail because of your build, that's not an encounter problem, that's a you problem.

    As the OP mentioned about, you can get a dozen rares doing the solo stuff. Throw in a flame/vortex/palace run once a day or so, and you can buy both your major armor pieces - not including pants - in just over a couple weeks without doing anything hard, and on an undergeared toon. And a toon, even a tank, with full K6 gear can do almost anything in the game.

    As for grinding, you think you should be able to do easy content and get the game's best gear. I'll never understand that mentality. At that point, it's obvious what you're looking for is not an MMO, but a solo game.
    Last edited by Chillee; 26th January 2015 at 21:02.

  2. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chillee View Post
    Not trying to be anything but helpful Kurt, but you don't know what you're talking about. It's all about paying attention, with the buffs, a Sin can stand there and take several hits from the ape before they need to run and refresh them.

    If you want me to show you how to do these instances much faster, send me a PM and I'll show you how sometime. You can skip almost every add on the island. The only things I kill usually are the big spider, the statues, maybe 2 birds near the final rez pad, the 2 birds under the ape, and the ape itself. You don't have to touch the rest of them. The only toons I've done these instances with in years are undergeared toons while waiting for a K6 run. You don't have to have great gear. On any class, even ranger.

    If you fail because of your build, that's not an encounter problem, that's a you problem.

    As the OP mentioned about, you can get a dozen rares doing the solo stuff. Throw in a flame/vortex/palace run once a day or so, and you can buy both your major armor pieces - not including pants - in just over a couple weeks without doing anything hard, and on an undergeared toon. And a toon, even a tank, with full K6 gear can do almost anything in the game.

    As for grinding, you think you should be able to do easy content and get the game's best gear. I'll never understand that mentality. At that point, it's obvious what you're looking for is not an MMO, but a solo game.
    No offense taken, but as you speak about buffs: i remember a state of my assasin (with a defensive prot build even and some AAs) where it was impossible to properly kill the ape even when watching the buffs. Then a few weeks later, with some improved gear and a new dagger it was easy and had a 75% success rate to hard mode. Also the time for the run decreased a lot. You need to understand that depending on rl tech and latency, the threshhold is shifting.

    Also these couple of weeks are for 1 piece of the k6 set (afaik). And i assume you did not mean casual play of a few hours a day and not playing all days in the week.

    Quote: "As for grinding, you think you should be able to do easy content and get the game's best gear."

    Where did i said that? All i am saying is, that you should not give public numbers that only make people feel bad and demotivated, because they take 1h + for a run you said takes only 15 mins. Also if player A spends his time doing content x and player b content y, why should player b have a tremendous advantage over player a? (assuming both content is pve and playing with people, sure just watching the nice sky should be a reward on its own!). The difference as you mentioned lies in the difficulty, yes. But i never said it should be easy. It should be FAIR per design. Thus not only relying on one threshold and making more than one build or fotm class valid for grinding a spot. Also it should be FUN. And for clarification: offering more and some easier routes as well is NOT wanting things for free. You have a point for the end content, when it gets introduced. There some kind of timesink or threshold makes sense, but i can see no problem if you adjust and keep balancing the numbers for "outdated" gear or reduce the grind at some spots to make it easier for players to get to endgame through ANY route they prefer. That's why you can have different progression curves. In NO way i linked it to playing solo (i even advertised normal and hard modes), but grinding solo rares is kind of the topic here and i was mainly clarifying some numbers.

    The unchained modes were a nice step here as were adding some exchange rate for basic khitai tokens and raid tokens. But what is missing is more ways to gain rare tokens and a way to exchange other tokens into them. To me good design is, when mastering a challenge opens FASTER ways to get the things you want, but especially in a MMO, where you have some real life things to consider as well, these challenges should not be used to halt progression till you grinded enough. What is important to me is, that these options EXIST, you can still argue about the rates and prices a lot. The only limitation i see when it comes to completely different gamestyles (e.g. you convert pve tokens into pvp ones or similar, but this does not mean these rates can not exist there) or endgame/tiered content (here you might even have a conversion rate too, just make sure the players have mastered the content and played it).

    In AoC you have most progression in power through gear (the basic important AAs are filled rather fast now), you can spent hours farming group instances and low tier raids (well, this is kind of fixed now) and get no progression at all, till you grinded at the spot the devs want you to grind. If that is no fun for you, no progression. Bad luck. Thanks for the money.

    This state is nice for controlling designers (but only on short sight terms), but not in longterm. It is a mistake many MMOs make, imo though. Let me give you some basic rules on i see how it can be improved again:
    - Playing content should always give a CHANCE at progress (with luck component). Grinding content should give results in a given time (based on tokens or quests for example).
    - Different content should offer different progression curves, based on difficulty and availability. Easier content for example should yield less rewards or the same rewards in considerable longer time (maybe with a luck factor too)

    AoC already offers this to a point, but as i see it, especially in rare token prices, availability and rewards, there is a lot left to optimize. Why are there no random drops of rares (from selected instances or bosses, of course mainly)? Why does the "chained" old world content not offer rares (you could increase the "new world" revenue accordingly to balance it)? Why are the rewards so focused on being given all at the end? WHy not some less linear instances with optional bosses rewarding them (i know these exist in raid instances, why not elsewhere, too?)? You could easily avoid abuse there through the quest system and cooldowns, but this steps alone would help upgearing players a lot (Can't kill the final refugee boss after 2 hours wasted time? Well, then just get 1 token instead of 4 and try again tomorrow! Or just grind 4 times harder...at least you see progress). I hope the circle to the beginning of the wall of text (demotivation, making people feel and appear bad) is drawn now.
    Last edited by Kurt2013; 27th January 2015 at 10:19.

  3. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kurt2013 View Post
    No offense taken, but as you speak about buffs: i remember a state of my assasin (with a defensive prot build even and some AAs) where it was impossible to properly kill the ape even when watching the buffs. Then a few weeks later, with some improved gear and a new dagger it was easy and had a 75% success rate to hard mode. Also the time for the run decreased a lot. You need to understand that depending on rl tech and latency, the threshhold is shifting.
    Well, there you have it. You got a little better gear and you could kill him on the squishiest of toons. You just described pretty much how every game works.

    But to the broader point, if you're taking 30 minutes on any of that stuff, you're fighting way too many mobs and not taking the shortcuts on both Iron and Dead Man's. You don't have to kill much of anything in either place besides the bosses.

    As for reaching hard mode for the ape, unless you DC or something, there is no reason to not have 100% rate. There are several places on the run up to the statues where you can reset the mobs following you, and you can beat the clock without even having to hurry. Unless your latency is horrible to the point the game is unplayable, it shouldn't be an issue for anyone. The margin for error on both instances is pretty big.

  4. #14

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chillee View Post
    Well, there you have it. You got a little better gear and you could kill him on the squishiest of toons. You just described pretty much how every game works.

    But to the broader point, if you're taking 30 minutes on any of that stuff, you're fighting way too many mobs and not taking the shortcuts on both Iron and Dead Man's. You don't have to kill much of anything in either place besides the bosses.

    As for reaching hard mode for the ape, unless you DC or something, there is no reason to not have 100% rate. There are several places on the run up to the statues where you can reset the mobs following you, and you can beat the clock without even having to hurry. Unless your latency is horrible to the point the game is unplayable, it shouldn't be an issue for anyone. The margin for error on both instances is pretty big.
    I know, but even if you know the shortcuts you have to fight a few mobs. My point was that you can go a risky route with pulls or do it "slow and sure", but there you have the "slow" already in the name
    And sadly the latency for many players has become "horrible". Recently it got better (at least for me), but there is no guarantee it does not get worse again with a patch.

    Designwise i have a problem with the linearity and "hidden" shortcuts (some border on exploiting, imo). Personally i would have preferred more fun fights with less mobs on the way with maybe a few (legal) choices of what to skip and what not (with better rewards, if you spent time killing...either with random drops or as with the spider on isle to include in the hardmode triggers).

  5. #15

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    The Isle of Iron Statues is, in my opinion, not the best of designs, either. It's hard to say if all the shortcuts are actually meant to be there of if it's an exploit to use them. It is so commonplace, and triggering the hardmode without using them so... well... pretty much out of the question, I guess it actually is supposed to work that way.

    I do not agree regarding general difficulty though. Some classes and specs are, of course, better suited to solo play. But it all more or less works. I've done Refuge, Isle and Deadman with all classes very often, and although I'm pretty horrible on some classes (and far from a class A player in general), it all worked out. Even Drostan as a final boss on Deadman's Hand is possible on all classes, although it needs some learning and maybe even regularly several tries on some (at least for me).

    The HM solo dungeons are, however, apparently balanced not for "noobs" in blue gear, but for pretty experienced players that at least carry some raid epics. Which is, in my opinion, perfectly fine. They give Kithai HM tokens, just as Kithai HM dungeons do - and those are not supposed to be done in culture gear, either.

    Kurt, which HM do you consider to be the most difficult on what class? I'd like to check it on a toon in blue gear - maybe it'll give me another point of view.
    Make Hyboria raid again!

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  6. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kurt2013 View Post
    I know, but even if you know the shortcuts you have to fight a few mobs.
    Well, I guess the two birds in the last room count as 'a few' You can run past / avoid literally everything else. And 30 mins? Even on a rubbish toon that's about 15 mins too long. But, yes, lag could cause issues
    Yangrin | Yangbear | Krem | Marsheesh | Oforawesome | Pappalegba | Yangryn
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  7. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by Khaletohep View Post
    It's hard to say if all the shortcuts are actually meant to be there of if it's an exploit to use them. It is so commonplace, and triggering the hardmode without using them so... well... pretty much out of the question, I guess it actually is supposed to work that way.
    are you serious?
    i've done that instance with almost all my toons, i always avoid shortcuts, and i never had much troubles to trigger the hm...

    and, before you ask, i normally start that when my toons has mostly blue gear and very little aa...
    "in the depths of a mind insane fantasy and reality are the same"

    Yawgmoth (Ranger) - Nyxathid (Necro) - Yixlid (HoX) - Kaltas (DT) - Heung (BS) - Teysa (HoX) - Gatzu (Guard) - Krovax (Ranger) - Hurkyl (Barb) - Vedalken (PoM)

  8. #18

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    can someone clear up what you get from where and what its for please?
    as far as i understand it:

    khitai epic gear is bought with trophies.
    tier one to three is bought with relics. do these drop in solo dungeons?

    does culture armour still exist, is this still recipe drops from raid bosses only?
    is there a full plate khemi themed set, and how do you get it?

    i see conflicting, or maybe out of date, info on what drops relics and what drops trophies.
    solo farming only mind

    thanks

  9. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by thorgeir View Post
    can someone clear up what you get from where and what its for please?
    as far as i understand it:

    khitai epic gear is bought with trophies.
    tier one to three is bought with relics. do these drop in solo dungeons?

    does culture armour still exist, is this still recipe drops from raid bosses only?
    is there a full plate khemi themed set, and how do you get it?

    i see conflicting, or maybe out of date, info on what drops relics and what drops trophies.
    solo farming only mind

    thanks
    Some pieces of Khitai epic gear are bought with rare trophies, Helm, BP, legs and various faction required pieces like jewelry and weapons/shields. Then you have boots and bracers that are gotten with Marks of Acclaim and require Rank 4 faction. Some other pieces are drop only from the group dungeons. This applies to the Khitai full plate question as well. Last Legion and Wolves of the Steppes are the factions with the full plate gear though Tamarin's Tigers have the best dps plate.

    The various relic currencies are from raids only, though you can get T3 relics from the world bosses.

    Culture armor still exists. I have no idea where the recipes come from as I ignore tradeskills as much as possible in every game I play.

    AoC Armory is a great resource for finding location and costs of the various armors.

    http://aoc.is-better-than.tv/armory.php

    Edit: As an addendum to my earlier post here: Now that I've gotten the guardian some of the Tiger gear and crit rating dps rings things have become much, much easier. Also, with Tiger gear the bear shaman has basically ascended to Godhood as well. Haven't done anything else with the ranger yet.
    Last edited by Raeil; 11th February 2015 at 16:42.

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