The addition of the Anima deposit and the soul forge is a great help in Haven in Zereth Mortis but with all the stuff we have to carry and all the time it takes to go back to oribos id would be really nice to be able to earn a Bank and a Mission table at least through unlocks or something.
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Posting this for visibility but seems the last tree research is bugged for alot of people and causing people to lose literally hours (myself Included) because the game thinks we are research on an alt when we are not. (zeros alts in Zereth Mortis yet) Any chance we could get this looked at?
Seems it was reported on the PTR alot and never got fixed
11 hours later and it seems to have fixed it self
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Iāve had time to thoroughly soak in 9.2, and itās been absolutely fantastic thus far.
The zone looks great, feels great, and Iām looking forward to having more to do as the cypher upgrades roll out and more story quests/flying get added to the mix.
That said, obviously there are some minor points that could use some elbow grease, most of the ones Iāve noticed have already been mentioned, like rares with HP pools that scale to ridiculous sizes, or Pocopocās enhanced perception option highlighting objects weāve already discovered/Echoed Jizo we canāt interact with yet. Hereās some issues Iāve noticed in my time in Zereth Mortis:
- 1H Swords with Agi dropping for Warriors/Paladins, 1H Swords with Str dropping for Rogues/Mages. Hotfix the swords to all have Agi/Str/Int so everyone that loots them can actually use them.
- Otaris the Provokedās Charged Barrage does splash damage that can easily chunk 60-70%+ HP off a non-tank character. Most times Iāve killed it in a group, half the group drops dead 2 seconds into the spell. Very punishing for a rare located inside a tiny cave with little room to move.
- Shifting Stargorgerās Consume Vitality ability canāt be interrupted, so itās effectively immortal unless you have a large raid group to spam it with stuns. Very annoying, and the necessity of large raid groups means waiting for long periods to recruit enough people.
- The Engulferās Health Pool doesnāt seem to scale when engaged by multiple people, so it tends to die mere seconds after spawning.
- Itās probably already common knowledge that Gluttonous Overgrowth is bugged and the roots arenāt available most of the time. Protector of the First Ones occasionally has a similar problem, where the runes on the locks arenāt there, making it impossible to open the door.
- Tahkwitz and Gorkek are spawning, but canāt be engaged without Goblin Glider/Door of Shadows tomfoolery.
- Sandworn Relicās only use is to buy iLv246 armor sets. Why are these soulbound, and not Bind on Account?
- Remove/increase the unique restriction on Sandworn Chest Key Fragments, and increase Sandworn Chest Keyās stack limit from 10 to 200.
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Personally, I am enjoying the new zone added this patch. However, I do wish the elites for the Dune Dominance achievement should have their respawn timers raised.
Iāve waited well over two hours tonight alone - Waiting for an elite for this achievement to spawn. As a result of this, I think the respawn should be only about every 15-30 minutes. This would make it easier for everyone to get their kills in for chances at loot.
Total times, Iāve seen the elites up for this since the patch dropped is only once.
I am wondering too why these 3 rars, that also share their respawn have such a long respawn timer. Furthermore one of them is also droping a mount. If there is a group in the tool, it is full in like 10 seconds.
Further Feedback, after 6 days:
- Some of the bugs are annoying, was good to see the Cypher Research one fixed quickly, but the one affecting the gluttonous overgrowth is frustrating.
- Being a DK feels bad sometimes. I play necrolord so unless I swap to venthyr I simply canāt access some of the chests easily (Edit: This is easier with the teleport gloves, but DoS goes much further) And Iām not a DH to just double jump.
- Some of the abilities by the rares feel overtuned. I donāt hate the massive health pools, as it allows time to reach the rares (I saw Engulfer mentioned above, that would be a good fix) but some abilities like Otarisā are way to hard to see, let alone dodge in a small cave with a lot of people.
- Iāll agree it does feel weird to not have the dailies give rep as well, I suppose lore wise it makes a bit of sense given that these come from Firim, and he is not welcomed among The Enlightened, but itās annoying from a player perspective.
- I want to come back to this:
In theory this was a great change. Allow players to reach revered by week 5 without killing a single rare. Do your world quests, do your weekly, do the campaign, youāll get there āon timeā
What Iām still seeing though is a āneedā to farm as many rares as possible to stay ahead of the curve. Iām trying to hit Honored as fast as I can so I can capture my part of the legendary market on a small server. It feels bad camping a rare and running laps for 10 rep.
- These things aside I would echo a lot of what is mentioned above about specific QoL changes, but I am enjoying the zone, although it would be nice to have a few more world quests / dailies to engage in.
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Iām glad you like how the zone looks. We definitely went for a bright and vibrant look for this zone, in both the vegetation, devices, and structures.
It was interesting designing props for this clean geometric aesthetic as we hadnāt really done something like this in WoW before.
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Its a really nice change from The Maw and Korthia. They had a really cool vibe and aesthetic, donāt get me wrong, but after a year the change is welcome 
And yeah the new designs are super cool too! I love all the new assets that were brought in!
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Thanks for your feedback on Rare tuning and feel. A couple things to talk about:
Generally, the Rares (especially group Rares) in Zereth Mortis have a bit more health than say Korthia or Mechagon. We wanted to try out making Rares that were a bit more dangerous than previously seen. Health is actually a great way of making something a bit scarier to fight without increasing damage done. If an enemy has a bit more health, that enemy will be able to attack more often ā dealing more damage in the process. We do however see a few enemies that likely have too much health currently. We are taking an active look at some of the outliers in that regard.
On the tuning note, I am assuming you are referring to the damage done / frequency of abilities (please correct me if I am wrong). This is largely due to the same point above. There is an active want on the team to make more engaging, non-instanced combat. Rares, Elites, Quest Bosses, etc. are a great place for that, but there are some outliers for sure. The upper echelon of what we would consider appropriate for a Rare Elite would be something like Otaris with their rotating beams and missile attacks. We are okay with some Rares being more difficult than others - those peaks and valleys provide valuable texture to the game and can make for some memorable play experiences.
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Iām really enjoying the running around and killing rares portion of ZM. The rares are interesting and the mechanics are fun, although in the instance of Otaris in the small room itās easy, especially for melee with no self heals to get into trouble and end up corpse walking 2-3 times.
I do want to make a note though for you all to consider as you begin this damage pass that there are far fewer players in ZM chasing rares this week compared to last week. Itās likely due to two things:
-
People are working on the new PvP, M+ and Raid content. and;
-
The rares donāt drop anything of particular use to people doing that content.
I see groups of 3-5 people standing around spawned rares without enough people to kill it. The rares in Korthia were often tanked by hunters which doesnāt work quite as well in ZM due to positioning and other more intelligent factors.
I know the idea is not to tie much in the way of player power onto anything in ZM; however if the player population is not high enough there the content will go stagnant quickly.
I suggest giving the Rare bosses a chance to drop a conduit upgrade token, renown, or something along those lines to give people something to chase unrelated to reputation and reputation rewards to give them a reason to keep killing the rares.
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I did get a small kick out of the Spider rare having more health than the world boss when each are attacked by a full 40 man raid group.
The ability I specifically referenced on Otaris feels harder than the others due to the damage done and the way it targets. In a melee heavy group itās very hard to survive. Larger groups attacking Otaris also make this ability hit for over half of my max health, so two hits in quick succession kills me.
I agree that rares should have a challenge to them, but for me that particular doesnāt feel survivable.
I kinda like otaris as it makes it very easy to get the tag back in warmode but he should really be able to be pulled outside the room without bugging out
Some more feedback after week 1!
I still would love if daily quests provided reputation, especially with the third quest available. Just an added bonus and reward for completing them, although the cipher reward is great.
The zone feels like it could use more events, so itās not just killing rares all the time, similar to the Uldum/Vale zones. I personally enjoy those a lot more - itās just more variety, especially for completing the weekly quest. I love the puzzle chests of course and how the shape aesthetic was incorporated into them. Please keep adding the minigames into each expansion; theyāre awesome!
One of my main gripes is the bag space management. With the forge tap reagents and the proto-synthesis reagents, Iām very quickly running out of inventory space. Mechagon had this same issue but this zone took it to another extreme. Since you need like 18k genesis motes to craft everything in addition to the lattices and glimmers, Iām going to be hoarding these for awhile.
I like the addition of the elite area of the zone. Just provides a stark contrast and challenge when navigating and doing things. Aesthetically I like the theme of shapes and how theyāre integrated into the zone and quests. However the zone to me feels like itās missing an area. There are the grass plains, garden and the desert andā¦ thatās about all you see. I think sprinkling more visually distinct places like the garden across the zone would be neat!
One other gripe is that the sandworn relic acquisition feels super slow, and should be a currency or a boa item. My main character has extensively been in ZM killing all rares and opening all treasures and Iāve only ended up with 250-275.
Also wanted to give big props to the alt-friendly features especially with the research. Please continue these in other zones!!
There was one big change that I donāt see anyone mentioning yet. All the weapons/armor can be looted by any class/spec regardless of specialization, which can use the appearance (i.e. strength sword on a Mage). I think there are some remaining issues with this (hunters canāt loot the swords) but itās been noticed! For transmog farming, this is amazing and a change collectors have wanted. Although not retroactive, I hope this can continue to future expansions and zones.
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Most of them feel fine. However, there are two in particular that Iāve noticed - Mother Phestis and Akkaris, that take far too long to die, and unlike usual, where more people make things die faster, more people actually make these two die slower due to how their health scales. A group of 5 can down Akkaris in 2-3 minutes. Whereas my raid group of 40 took 10 minutes.
Likewise, on the opposite end of the spectrum, there is one rare that dies WAY too fast - The Engulfer. I know you guys just hotfixed his health scaling, but itās no where near enough.
Iād also like to point out that Helmix for some reason takes significantly longer to spawn than any other rare. Weāve worked out itās based on killing the worms in the area, but I had a group of like 12 clearing out the worms for a good hour before it spawned. But Iāve also had him spawn almost immediately after he died because we killed a worm that aggroed with him.
And finally, a last comment on rares - Rhuv. Why is the Mawrat mount on Rhuv and not Iska? Rhuv dies literally within 10-15 seconds of spawning. Itās incredibly hard to find a group where it isnāt already dead.
Iād also like to see a way to tell if a rare is currently spawning. Like, for instance, we can see Xyārath is up if thereās broker corpses in his spawn area. But for other rares on rotation like Chitali, Vexis, etc. Iāve seen no noticeable way to tell if theyāre spawning.
A suggestion I had in general was simply make Shandris able to talk to in Haven, and have her say something like āThe Sentinels have been tracking high profile targets in Zereth Mortis, but we recently lost track of a few of them.ā then a dialogue you can press where she lists them. That way players arenāt stuck camping something for hours before realizing it isnāt on the rotation.
I would also like to talk about the swords that drop in Zereth Mortis. They were very obviously meant to be transmog. This is reinforced by the fact you made it so the agi swords can drop for str users and vice versa, as well as letting both the agi and str swords drop for warlocks/mages.
However, neither appear to be dropping for hunters (Iāve asked every hunter I know, communities, etc.), even though we are capable of using swords, so we could add them to our transmog wardrobe.
And finally, pocopoc:
I actually like pocopoc. Iāll be at Cypher level 5 tomorrow (I would be now but Iām saving Cyphers for the 4th row to make him a stronger fighter). Thoughts:
- The Jiro Buffs are borderline useless. Theyāre good to get once a day for Cyphers then never again. It feels like a genuine waste of cyphers to ever put points into those until we have no other option.
- The enhancements are fun, but some are very strong. For instance, the Healiac and the Toxicialic. The Toxicialic melts certain rares, as they arenāt elites. So their health goes down 6% every 5 seconds per person with the power. Perhaps make it so the strength of the power is reduced if more than one person has the power engaged with it, scaling with how many? Also, is it intended that this power is meant to aggro everything within 40 yards if you are in combat? IT also breaks CC when this happens. Iāve killed quite a few people on accident cause I ran by and my power broke their CC.
- The Pocopoc controlling: These are fun, and some are very strong.
However, the Tarachnidās power doesnāt work 99% of the time. It uses an energy but nothing happens. The Scarabidās power is so weak a melee attack does more, so why ever use it for 1 energy?
The Helicid, Geoelemental, and Vombata are great though. Itās just the first 2 that I fail to see much use for.
Canāt comment on the 4th row as I havenāt unlocked it yet.
- And finally, Perceptive Pocopoc. Can you please make it so Pocopoc stops pinging the minimap for lore concordances youāve already added to your console, or lore concordances you canāt decipher yet? Also, you can only unlock one of each type of puzzle chest a day, but Pocopoc will continue to ping the area of a puzzle chest you canāt do - even though it wonāt be visible for you. He also pings Jiro for me, even though I havenāt unlocked the ability for him to ping Jiro?
I think thatās all for now. I try to avoid critiquing things until Iāve fully experienced them. As such, canāt talk about the raid as Iām waiting for LFR, and I do not have interest in the solo queue PVP, because as a PvE player, I have zero chance against someone in PvP gear.
EDIT: On the topic of alt-friendliness - any chance you can make it so cyphers and protoform synthesis items can drop on alts who havenāt advanced that far in the campaign/pocopoc research? Feels bad looting treasures/killing rares and not getting cyphers cause I still havenāt unlocked pocopoc. Likewise, missing out on account-bound items my main can use sucks.
To add to this, even just adding a bank to Haven would make this significantly better. As well as double-checking all protoform synthesis items can be put in the reagent bank. Some canāt, according to a few communities Iām in.
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One other thing to mention - It really feels like the battle pet system wasnāt given much attention, especially for a later patch. Some thoughts:
- No battle pet world quests or dailies (maybe these are unpopular due to rep rewards given in the past, but those could be removed)
- No new legendary pet battles/trainers (i.e. Tanaan Jungle / Argus) or dungeons
- No new battle pet achievements - usually thereās a Safari/Family achievement
Korthia also had this same treatment so I know itās not specific to ZM, but Iām disappointed to not see any new battle pet content apart from just new wild pets. The proto-synthesis forge doesnāt feel like itās a good replacement.
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This & Korthia is the first time since Pet Battles were added new daily quests of some sort werenāt added.
9.1 at least also added Anthea - so we got something new, daily wise. But 9.2 hasnāt added anything to my knowledge. Kinda disappointing. Especially with how cartoony and alive the Jiro are, I would have thought weād get a few world quests fighting Jiro tamers.
At the very least, it wouldāve been a good time for Raiding with Leashes 7, since I imagine those take minimal dev time, as itās just re-sized existing art assets added as pets and attached to existing raid fights. As I mentioned in the battle pet thread I made, they even have a perfect candidate for the meta reward, being Rooby Roo. (I could be wrong about the dev time, but I struggle to imagine it taking longer than actual new content like unique trainers and such)
Anyway, something I wanted to add -
Can we get some vendor food buffs? In past expansions it honestly wasnāt that noticeable as you rarely took damage. But Iāve taken more damage and had to eat more in Shadowlands than any time in the past, even vanilla.
But in Zereth Mortis, this is a horrible feeling, because I have almost 50k health in LFR Sanctum Gear, but the best food we have restores 30k over 20 seconds. Thatās a lot of time spent eating. And itās just going to get even more noticeable and worse as I gain more health.
Same with Bandages.
Itās gotten so bad I queue for Seething Shore and Ashran just to talk to the mage NPC (For those curious - the mage on the airship will conjure you some in SS and in Ashran, just go to the top of your tower) to have her conjure me food then leave the bg. Which isnāt fair to the PvPers, but I donāt have any other options, as I rarely find a mage nice enough to conjure me food outside of a party. (And yes, I know I can stay and do the battleground, but leveling 7 toons from 10-50 JUST through PvP in 9.0, I have developed a seething hatred for seething shore, and in my experience, Alliance rarely win Ashran, so I donāt like to waste my time.)
If the worry is PvP, then why not have food have a reduced effect in PvP, so as to not punish PvE players?
This would be great, although it would definitely feel bad to not have had it in place for the first week of the patch, it would be great to have some other incentive to kill the rares. I hit honored on Tuesday, after spending a week doing everything I could. Iāve killed all the rares and collected most of the cosmetics from them - silly mawrat didnāt drop yet though - so Iām not likely going to spend my time farming them for revered, when thanks to our other thread we know we donāt have to to hit it āon timeā
But it would also be great for my alts who I plan to bring through the zone before long to have a conduit upgrade item drop.
Also, Iāll bring this up again, from another thread, I wish there was an item to mass upgrade conduits to a higher level.
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Without echoing most of the feedback everyone else has given (which I think is great and I agree with almost all of it), a couple of thoughts that have marinated for a while:
- I really like the zone for its artistic merits, its ambience and the feelings these things invoke as you play. On launch day someone said ābreath of the wild vibes!ā in general chat, and I totally agree with that. ZM feels so peaceful, untouched and relaxing most of the time, and suddenly youāre in a desert filled with mawsworn and itās putting the war in Warcraft again! Itās really well designed.
- I initially thought the travel time between hubs, rares and treasures was too much, but I have since changed my opinion on that and I think it is pretty decently designed as a whole. Traveling on foot means you can usually pick up some treasures or a rare or two on the way to somewhere else, so taking the flight paths almost feels bad because you can see everything youāre missing out on. Once flying is unlocked, rushing over to rares is going to be much less of a pain, which Iāve seen is one of the biggest issues with the travel time. As always, it feels bad to see a rare spawn you want, and not be able to hurry over there to grab it because someone else pulled it.
- The story feels a littleā¦ empty. Iāve enjoyed the quests so far, but Iām surprised at how few there are. When all the non-daily/weekly quests are completable in 30-60 minutes every week, youāre often left wanting for more. I would have loved a couple of extra quest chains that delved deeper into the origins of ZM, some more personal storylines, and to see some of the ramifications of discovering the place. (Not gonna talk about the Anduin cinematic right now.)
- I really like the pacing of the zone. The quests are well-paced (I wish there were more!), and the daily/weekly to-do list is very well-shaped. Prior to this weekās change, I was going to write that I did not like the 3-day Patterns within Patterns quest, but so did everyone else it seems, and now that it is weekly Iām very happy with it. I know exactly what Iām getting when I log in every day now, and it feels great to not be forced to spend hours in Zereth Mortis to do something because of a lockout. I know some players still feel forced to kill as many rares as possible to āstay ahead of the curveā with rep, but Iāve never really felt that is much of a problem now that you can easily get to revered when you need to be, without grinding anything. Thank you for listening to feedback on this point :>
- Cosmic flux!.. I have more than 10 000 of it, and I donāt know if Iāll ever use any of it. As far as I know, it is only used to upgrade a legendary to its highest form, or change any season 3 item into a tier set. Iām unlikely to get either of them, as I donāt participate in raids, pvp or m+ to get tier-eligible items, and the legendaries are so expensive that I canāt justify spending so much gold on an item I know that I wonāt need to do the content that Iām doing. Yet, I keep getting more and more cosmic flux, and a cool reminder that Iāve just looted it every time I open a treasure chest, kill a rare, or complete a quest. My question is, can we get to change Cypher equipment into tier sets, and could we get another way to spend our cosmic flux? (the latter also kind of applies to soul ash/cinders).
Edit: Forgot to say that Iāve been really happy with the bugfixing of ZM! Every time Iāve encountered a bug, itās already been noticed by the community at large and itās usually been fixed the day after.
3 Likes
A few more thoughts as Iāve experienced a bit more playing ZM:
- Rares - The rares are fun, the mechanics are great! I think some focus on how they scale down rather than up so that they are more doable early in the morning or late at night when there are much less people on. I often do WoW stuff before I start work around 6AM, itās just not possible to do a rare with 3 people like it was in Korthia
- Rep - The rep gain rate is slow, Iām farming up to honored on 5 toons for the crafting items. I have to say that it is definately getting to be a chore to do all of that every day across 5 toons and Iām really looking forward to scaling back once that is done. With that said I canāt imagine intentionally grinding out to Exalted, doing what Iāve already done 4 more times ā¦ bleh. There certainly doesnāt seem to be much in the way of reward for all the effort it would take unless I just happened to get there in the course of doing other things. Not exactly sure what that would be ā¦
- Cyphers - Iāve almost got all of the cypher cooldowns done, very glad that gets done once across all characters, thanks for that! It was disappointing to realize that cypher gear does not scale iLvL with cypher gear level automatically. It often will take a lot of time to get the individual pieces with the effect and stats I want. Iām supposed to gather all new pieces for each of the 6 levels? Nope, not gonna do it. The levels are already ground out with the cypher currency, now its double gated behind RNG ??? FFS Gah ā¦
- Treasures are sometimes very interesting, like the submerged ones and ones that require interaction with the environment to get. Some parkour is fun to a point but some of them I just havenāt figured out or canāt do
- Terrain is both not too flat and boring and not to mountainous and inaccessible. There are a couple of spots where aerial mobs die and slide onto a slope that is inaccessible (near the FP to the WB for instance) and a few places where Iāve died that I cant actually get back to but not very many. Iām not finding myself cursing at the terrain while trying to get to a rare so thatās good!
- Fishing Iām enjoying entirely because of the goop mount
Leveled up fishing for the first time in SL as a result, still donāt have any goop but will probably keep going for it a little at a time, easy spot to fish from, nice environment to look at! Also lots of fun to go to some old content to get the lure and to share the boss with friends when it gets fished up etc. More fishing stuff would be fun too. - Puzzles I like and they do tend to take a while to solve. I solved each of them manually once and then was like there has to be a faster way to do this, and yup there was, thereās an addon for that! So the puzzles are a fun way to open a chest. Getting 2-4 cyphers for my effort is pretty ridiculous though! Thatās it?!?! Nothing else? No rep? No goodies? 2 cyphers? Bleh, ok, I still open them anyway lol
- World quests are great and fun and reward rep! Yay!
- Daily quests are great and fun but dont reward rep Booo! I hear people in chat complain all the time that there is no rep for them. I tell them that they can mix their chocolate, strawberry and vanilla into whatever proportions they want but they are still getting one box of ice-cream a week and to shut up and eat it! e.g. weekly rep is capped (more or less unless you want 10 more per rare) and youāre not getting more. Although it sure doesnāt FEEL good not to get rep for dailies even though you do indirectly since it counts towards patterns within patterns; but no one cares to think that deeply on the subject. Whereās mah rep !?!!?! is what they all complain about.
Iāll add some more feedback later as I think of things and maybe add to the topics above in some more detail as thoughts come to mind.
Id love to see a PvP ffa quest come back in this zone tbh
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