The intro and discovering all the new things was great on the first day. Now that I’m into grinding it for alts though, it has lost its luster fast. To me this happened mostly because day one rares were always visible even after the first kill, making it feel like there’s something to farm all the time, aside from needing to get the treasure buff from expedition and look for the tiniest treasures for a small chance at a key. Whereas on day two now the rares stop showing up after the first kill but still drop loot making finding out which rares are up after the first kill a pain.
The Good- The story and cutscenes were amazing, best yet for their type.
Some of the rares abilities have been newish and are a great variety. (Though having profession locked ones means I’ll rarely ever see half of them, yea you can buy those off the AH but I like doing those things myself which will just take me a while longer to do because alts and not having every profession available to a single character at one time).
The vault is nice to see that it’s slightly different with each character allowing for replayability.
Catch-up gear just like most of it’s type is easy enough to obtain and send out to alts and the small upgrade path for it allows me to feel like I progress my alt afterwards as well.
The Bad- A whole zone that after the intro quests becomes a desolate wasteland of Rares (that are only visible for your first kill but still drop loot after that), Forbidden Hoard (It’s fine as is, something that doesn’t spawn often but gives guaranteed keys), and the Primal Storm Boss (which should have a collaborative effort to trigger or a visible timer). All other mobs get to be ignored unless part of a daily quest which we’ll see what they’re like and how often they repeat.
Also the Vaults Spider consistently respawning when re-entering is annoying and the Runic Ward chest is broken.
Also Also the gems being upgradeable isn’t mentioned anywhere in-game unless a Jewelcrafter/someone knowledgeable says something in chat about it. Researcher Imareth really should have a dialogue option about it letting you know more power can be unlocked from the gem by a jewelcrafter…
Suggestions- Make it a more living world, there are no events and no reason to care about the mobs walking around each of the little areas within the zone. We’re here to help them reclaim the Reach so why aren’t we pushing against the Primalists, persuading the Sundered to help us or at least weaken them, also the Irontide are there where’s their surprise raids on us.
These could all be events that happen that escalate from negotiating with the sundered, turning into a raid from the Irontide, drawing the ire of the Primalists culminating to the Primal Storm boss bit that we have now. Or each event has several variants that after one of each has been completed the Primal Storm boss triggers. Just a couple thoughts I’ve had on improvements to the World Quest system that’s been stagnant and boring for so long. Turn them into ‘World Events’ that have stages of development, that can progress if completed or not completed (advancing in a different direction).
Conclusion- So much can and should be done for these mid-patch zones but what we got was the bare bones. Unless more is time-gated which I can only hope is the unfortunate case. It’s barely enough to keep my interest for the first couple days of the patch and maybe one day each week to see what-if-anything is new. At the very least make it so when I have the Essence of Divination Buff, that we pay 2k Elemental Overflow for, the rares keep popping up on my map and I can more easily farm them for what I want.
TLDR; Zone is dead after first run, rares are only visible ONCE per day… but still drop loot…
Making the rares easily farmable by making them still appear after first kill would make the island bearable and slightly more lively.
The Island could be made more living and breathing but we only received the bare-bones.
Totally agree! I had so much fun for the First day chasing down the rares Now it feel empty like do a run than log off. I wish the ring was more of a grind instead of just giving it too us and now i have to Farm Bis Gems or level jewel crafter.
if i had a quarter for every time ive seen someone bash this amazing new patch chock full of riveting and enjoyable content, id be able to buy some mcdonalds meal.
Cave rares are the worst part. Slog through the water to that underground cave. Warden Entrix, so many people have said not worth the time when I try for a group with him. Cant forget that one storm chest that doesnt work at all.
Ignoring that, it’s a nice typical catchup island.
I have underwater mounts, but that doesnt make it less of a slog. Fly into the water, dismount just to remount to another mount, go to cave where people already dont like going so less show up making the fight a bother. Unless they gotta, most people have ignored it. Can easily get 20+ people at other rares, but maybe 8 at these ones.
I went there just trying to find some old familiar characters. I am a sucker for nostalgia. Ebornhorn story line was awesome for me. Now I hope they could introduce Muradin from WOTLK and his drake-killing eagles and my life would be complete.
Rares have timers. The timer on day 1 is the same as the timer on day 2. I got 14x keys on day 1, 16 keys on day 2. I stopped at my 30th key.
When there’s no Bosses, go inside the caves and look for chests. Go on with your Gathering Profession and in time you would get mats that would summon mini Bosses from Profession. I summoned the Herba mob like 3 times today, Cooking mob like 2 times today and it dropped keys on them too. I think I participated on Miner Boss twice today and I am not even a Miner. Was there accidentally becoz I just look at caves. But I saw a miner summoning them.
If you skip the cave, that’s the reason I have more keys than you. Whining wont get you more keys.
I actually put a ticket in, because I didn’t understand why today all the rare icons stopped showing up…
The day of the patch I had all my enemy nameplates go away, and I thought at first it was just the addons werent updated. About 30 minutes of trying things I figured out what was some how unchecked because of the update. So when the rares icons just stopped appearing I though there must me a reason.
I spent hours looking for addons, googling how to make rares show up on my map, copying my alts ui in screen shots and going over my main’s to see if I accidently clicked anything to disable it, exporting my alts ui to my main, disabling addons, submitting a ticket to support, asking people in discord and even in game… If the first day they didnt keep showing up, i wouldnt have thought it was a bug…
I took a couple days off of work to relax and enjoy farming the new area, and I only have one alt and its a fresh 70, so between the two thats like an hour and a half of farming…
They have both done all the quests and the whole vault. Looks like im just gonna farm the trash mobs for the pieces.
I hate dailys, I always enjoy games that let players decide if they want to play in binge blocks or chore like smaller dailys. I was enjoying running around killing these rares.
Just wish I didnt waste half my day trying to figure out what i messed up in my settings or up to make them stop showing.
If you mean the trial of storms or whatever, the conduits/pylons you have to power for that are on the walls surrounding the chest. I think they were accidentally made to spawn inside the walls rather than in a visible spot. It’s 4 targets in total you have to power to get the chest to open.
That has nothing to do with the fact that imho if the mobs keep dropping loot, keep showing them on the map… I mean getting a starter kit for an alt should take a little time AND should be fun.
Once this zone dies off, the mobs are way too tough for any alt who needs this gear to deal with them, so it’s gonna be crawl with a main toon, down to a boss thats ment for a group, just to hope to get the piece for the alt you are making.
Ive farmed there since the patch came up and I have only gotten 1 ring, 1 neck and 2 weapon boxes(both were the same offhand), along with random armor pieces. Your alt will have to do a bit of killing here too to get the upgrade materials. I enjoy the events and the chests and the rares.
The vault kinda is meh. its different on each character. My warrior got a water/bubble jet on the first floor that pushes him to any floor and the tornado jump potion is in an easy room to get to, making the whole thing fun and effortless.
My Warlock on the other hand had to use the random tp scroll and I didnt get the rockets till after my 19th key. I did not enjoy the waiting on Demonic Gateway, just to have to backtrack and do it all over again because i opened a room that let me progress in a previous room that i needed for another room…
There are so many gems and you get a lot of dupes. I would have enjoyed being allowed to choose how much time and effort I wanted to put in with each character to get all the items I wanted for each character.
Like you said, this is just a “stopgap” until the real patch… Games and content are ment to allow people to pass time in an enjoyable way. Making it an annoying pain in the butt to find the rares after 1 kill and turning it into a daily chore kinda takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.