ATTN Cerest, raising the bar

[pcheez]

Yes, the whole blind issue was what enabled characters to rise so fast in level. Id like to see meleers cast a blind 8, 60 times off their weps
The situation atm is just ridiculous

[shrike]

This is also nerfing solo mages quite a lot, though.

When you solo with fear-kiting you will usually get 2-3 times the elemental exp than the def affliction exp. Meaning your def aff lvl will be usually about half your elemental lvl.

A lvl 80 elemental mage will have usually around lvl 40 def magic, for example. Now, with the changes the lvl 40 fear will probably effect only up to lvl 60-70 mobs which give minimal exp (less then 500) when you kill them with lvl 80 elemental. So, if you want to solo as mage you will have to artificially use fear more often than necessary so you get equal exp in elemental and def affliction.

[svayvti]

I don't mind roots as high level areas, but if that is the goal it needs to be carefully designed for it.

I also think if they do that they should continue to let Foragers have as good of a chance to get excellent/supreme mats as fighters. The most recent changes to all the choice nodes in the roots is rather annoying. Is the point just to increase the grind?

I also don't mind travel being difficult, but its outright ridiculous in many cases. Bounty Beaches? UnderSprings roots?

As usual though we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Perhaps after patch 1? especially if it messes some things up enough.

[shrike]

...I also think if they do that they should continue to let Foragers have as good of a chance to get excellent/supreme mats as fighters. The most recent changes to all the choice nodes in the roots is rather annoying. Is the point just to increase the grind?. ...

You want to reduce foraging effeciency even more? If we would have "as good of a chance to get excellent/supreme mats as fighters" it would be this way:

Each root area would have just one randomly selected kind of supreme shell, bark, wood, oil and sap. For which you need 5 foragers to harvest, 1 to extract and 4 to heal the rapidly decreasing source life and stability. The location of these recources would only wander slightly in a small area.

Also, there would be just one randomly selected kind of excellent reisin, fiber, wood node, amber and seed per area. You can harvest these alone if you are careful, but max you can pull are 2 mats. Usually you get only 1 and often you cannot get even one. Several sources, but randomly distributed over the whole map. Once you harvest one it respawns randomly somewhere on the map.

Then you would have *exactly* the same chances as fighters to forage supreme/excellent

[pandorae]

I hate to disagree Svay, but I think Bounty Beaches is a pretty well balanced high level area. There are no 'insta-death' mobs as there are in the roots (although I am sure the new patch will successfully be able to change that) and there is pleanty of room to maneuver. Undersprings is the only unbalanced system I have come across in the game. This imbalance is the result of one unit type, the Kitin Patrols. They are bad enough, but when there are (at least) three of them seeded in a TINY area such as Undersprings it is just absurd.

[tinpony]

I hate to disagree Svay, but I think Bounty Beaches is a pretty well balanced high level area. There are no 'insta-death' mobs as there are in the roots (although I am sure the new patch will successfully be able to change that) and there is pleanty of room to maneuver. Undersprings is the only unbalanced system I have come across in the game. This imbalance is the result of one unit type, the Kitin Patrols. They are bad enough, but when there are (at least) three of them seeded in a TINY area such as Undersprings it is just absurd.

I think they heard me Pandorae. All of the non-aggro Kiban in the 'porter town are now very aggro kinchers, and all of the very aggro kinchers are sitting on all of the nodes.

Tin (who wanders away to contemplate her big mouth)

[svayvti]

Shrikes usual trolling aside, the ratio of aggro mobs to herbivores in Bounty Beaches (and most of Tryker) is ridiculous.

If they went the next step of realism and had carnivores die out from starvation, many of them would not be there.

Yes, I do believe it is possible to hunt there, we were doing so with blind. Transportation wise I don't think travel will be very realistic without blind. My $.02

[kisedd]

From what I can tell from patch 1, this is all gong to get worse?

Mobs will be more agressive, I assume that means incrase argo range even more and make herbavores bring a lot more friends than they do now. I thought carnavores were already agressive to the point of stupid. The game seemed balanced in many areas without much tinkering.

Mobs will have more hp and do more damage? sheehs mobs already can tear my face off. It seems that all this is geared to do is destroy any hope of solo play and aim everything at zergs.

[zzeii]

I also think if they do that they should continue to let Foragers have as good of a chance to get excellent/supreme mats as fighters. The most recent changes to all the choice nodes in the roots is rather annoying. Is the point just to increase the grind?

To be honest, it only takes patience and a little bit of observation to get the mats from PR.

Allow me to illustrate with my observations of the past two weeks of serious PR foraging for the purpose of gathering large quantities of mats (just hit 118 in PR forage and i'm still only pulling q99 mats since they are what my crafting can ideally use).

Each mat type has a season where it is most abundant, where you will hardly, if at all, get the message stating you can't find any mats at this time. Then it has a season preceding/following the 'in-season' where you can still find it available, just not as often. And then there is the off-season where it is hardly up and for very short periods of time. So trying to get a ton of a particular mat is most easily done when its in-season.

Secondly, while a particular mat type is available, it fluctuates between choice/excellent/supreme. And these periods of a particular grade last for a varying amount of time. Shorter during their off-season, and much longer during their in-season.

So the trick is to harvest what is in-season and stick with it, through choice/excellent and eventually come across supreme. Kinda like farming IRL, there are seasons where certain crops grow the best, with time before and after being good, but not the best. And then the season where they hardly can grow at all, if they can period. With this frame of mind, you can now take a different approach to harvesting instead of a hack'n'slash the ground and grab that phat lewt.

Ex- i typically get anywhere from 10-25% supreme, 30-50% excellent, and 30-50% choice mats when I go and harvest an in-season mat. Typical run is 1.5-2hrs to fill up on over 400 mats (time variance for posting in forums hehe). Of which, during that time, I will never get the message that there are no mats available at this time (this is not counting the depletion message, which by default you will get if you are trying to get the most mats for your time over high quality/xp pulls).

[svayvti]

I know the trick, I'm down there plenty.

Knowing how to doesn't make it any less lame. The only reason to make choice mats in prime roots the only on a timer mats is to slow down new prime root levelers and increase the grind.

Nevrax needs to consider whether 150-250 is supposed to be high level foraging, or having any decent amount of prime root foraging is supposed to be high level foraging.

I understand foraging was too easy to begin with. But now they're making it difficult to advance or have any fun with foraging left, right or forward. Slow down advancement, prohibit expansion of other skill trees, and require more focus and health.. which effectively has to come from other skill trees.

I'd like to see Nevrax have a plan for foraging and implement something coherent. All I see right now is what appear to be knee-jerk reactions to an insane fear that people are leveling too fast for them.

What is the high-level game for foragers supposed to be in comparison to crafters/mages/fighters? roots? high levels? surviving foraging hazards?

What does Nevrax think that most people who like foraging (for the sake of foraging, not craft) think is fun about it? raising the level number? being more powerful? being useful? just making it a side process so that they can have the real fun of crafting?

It is important that Nevrax know the answer to these questions to keep the dedicated foragers around.