I think it’s just a way of timegating, which in some instances is fine.
IMO it would feel worse to have 5 second research time and not be able to do it until X day, than having a long time to research and the next level being locked behind it. Watching that research progress is important from an immersion standpoint.
They just need to lay off the timegating sauce
It worked when ZM was new, (I know not everyone agrees, but I think making us take ZM in all at once would have been very overwhelming, but the pace we had because of the timegated cyphers felt nice) but I feel like they should have reduced the time for those researches to 5 seconds (like it is for alts after you finish) the week after the first people would have finished it.
Timegating is fine in moderation, but only when those timegates are removed once they served their purpose of slowing down the initial progress.
Anyway, came here for three things:
I deleted my post about the Treasures spawning too fast. They either adjusted it the next day, or I was on right at the hotfix and every treasure mass-spawned or such, because the treasures feel good now. They’re easier to get than when ZM first launched, but they aren’t popping up every 5 seconds like when I made that post.
Please lower the spawning requirements for Helmix. I had a raid group of I believe 12 killing worms for about 40 minutes before he spawned. We had the worms at hyper spawn. And it still took that long. To add insult to injury, he spawned a second time 10 minutes later. The RNG of Helmix is ridiculous, and most people won’t fight him except when that specific WQ to kill the worms is up.
On that note, can you go through and make the non-elite rares into Elites? This is a minor issue, but the nerf to Toxicalic was only for Elites. So for non-elites, you still do 6% of their health regardless of how much health you have. This makes some rares, like Otiosen and Orixal die very fast. This also makes Helmix even worse, as there’s 3 of him that share health. So… yea, you do 18% of their health every 15 seconds. And if another person is there with that power? He’s dead in like 10 seconds in combination with actual damaging moves.
My only concern with that, is please lower the level of the rares you make elites to 60, so that hunters can still tame them. I’d also like to see a taming pass of the rares, as being unable to tame rares like Garudeon, but being able to tame Tahkwitz is a bit weird. (Also, we can tame the non-hooded Viperids, but there isn’t a single tameable hooded Viperid, which is really weird) I know in the PTR, there were books to learn to tame Garudeon, Orixal, and I believe two others, but those seem to have never made it to live, as Orixal is tameable without a book. Garudeon and Chitali are the only 2 I believe that aren’t tameable, but I might be forgetting one? The Sand Matriarch also needs a fix to retain her name after being tamed. She’s the only rare that doesn’t - she reverts to basic Beetle.
And before someone says hunters taming rares is bad - it’s no different than if they killed it without announcing it, stopping a tame is very easy, as the hunter has to have threat to tame. So a taunt will stop the tame, doing pretty much any damage will usually stop it, as very few hunters tame after doing damage, etc. The only reason rares like Soundless were tamed while people were fighting it, is because people weren’t very smart and would spam stun and other CC like Polymorph on it to try to heal it. Unfortunately, if a mob is CCed, they have no target, so if people chain CCd it in such a way, the hunter could get the tame off. This seems to have been fixed in Shadowlands though.
I have given it a couple weeks because I prefer to get a better feel for it than the first day impressions. I am a casual player who has not done group content for several expansions. I was going into ZM with some Korthia items, but none full upgraded. I needed some of the catch up gear to even start. So, that is the perspective. Char chosen was Venthyr Assassination Rogue.
The catch up gear is great. If you have been leveling an alt you have Anima already just from leveling so can pretty quickly get geared. Those tokens are also Account bound so your main can easily fully gear an alt.
I found the mobs a bit hard at first, I won’t lie. However, that changed pretty fast as I got gear. I am now around 240 and doing just fine.
Cyphers and cypher research is pretty cool because while it does not give you player power in raids, it gives you a really nice boost as a solo player in open world. I can have several buffs from the buff stations, the Wellspring buff, Poco to help me in a variety of ways + Poco friends, and the buffs from the Provis Chest we can do each day. Those buffs stack up fast!
Pacing is comfortable. I don’t feel that I HAVE to do more than the 3 World Quests and 2 Daily quests. Those take about 45 mins. If I want to, I can stick around and do some rares if one has an item I want. Treasure chests spawn so nicely though that those are more efficent.
I love the puzzles. I just wish we had the matching one from BfA again.
Zone art is beautiful and such a relief from the Maw and Korthia. The little details constantly delight me. It is worth taking the time to just zoom in and look closely at things.
I do like the crafting of pets and mounts! Nice idea and I am looking forward to making things.
I am really glad flying is not going to be a multi month thing.
Negatives? Not a whole lot I guess. I wish rare spawns were on some sort of predictable timer like we had in the SL pre expansion event. That was fun to just move around the zone with the pack and down the bosses. We had 10 mins between which was time to easily move to the next spawn point. I also see why movement and jumping might be an issue. I selected a Venthyr char just for the movement so I can quickly get things done. The gear with the teleport is at least a help on that for anyone without the movement skill.
Will have other thoughts as we go.
Right now my biggest gripe with Zereth Mortis is Cosmic Flux.
What’s the point in a currency that has no value. I can’t spend this on anything. We’re also missing a socket item which has had a trend to come from this type of world content in the past.
So, my biggest gripe with ZM on this week… 4? 3? is the rep. You can get 375 rep a day from quests. That’s it. 3 World Quests. You also get 1250 a week from the weekly.
There are 32 rares, however, I believe 12 of them are on a rotation where only 5 are available each day, which give up to 250 rep a day as well, however, I imagine the average player only kills around 5 a day in the course of doing their dailies, as a lot of the rares are nowhere near where we get sent for dailies.
Which amounts to approx. 425 rep a day. Now with just the daily world quests and 5 rares, that’s almost 4 months straight of logging in daily to get Exalted. Now if we add in the weekly quest, it’s 11 and a half weeks, almost 3 months, of daily play to reach Exalted.
(I’m not counting the rep from the raid, as not everyone raids, so it’s not easily accessible right now with LFR’s massive timegating), and even when it is, that’s only like 500ish more rep a week for a full clear)
Even Archivist’s pre-nerf wasn’t that bad. I would routinely get 800-1000 rep a day for archivist just doing my daily rotation of the zone. (After the buff, if I actually did my rotation, It’d get 2000+) Even if you killed every single rare every single day, that’s still 2 and a half months of daily play for Exalted.
It could really use some sort of buff, be it adding rep to daily quests or adding more rep to the weekly quest, etc. Just something. Especially since the conduit catchup for casual players and their alts are tied behind the higher ranks of rep on the vendor, and it’s not an account-wide unlock.
EDIT: And yes, I’m aware there is some rep from the campaign, however, most people do not want to touch that on alts after their main, so including it wouldn’t help much as it’s not just the first time reaching exalted that matters, as they tied alt-helping things behind the rep, as noted above. Plus, using the alt skip to Zereth Mortis makes you skip all of the rep from the first 3 chapters, which is the majority of the rep.
Also, if you guys insist on making the Aurelid Lure require fishing up the goop again every time you want to summon Hirukon, please add a new source for the Aurelid Lattice. Hirukon groups are becoming more and more rare, I’ve waited 3+ hours for one before. EDIT: Another source has been found, albeit tied to a specific world quest, and rather long respawn times. But it’s a source nonetheless.
And the Viperid Lattice needs another source as well. You removed the “reliable” source late PTR when you changed Furidian from a Viper into a Worm. So now there’s quite literally only like 8 mobs in the entire zone that can drop Viperid Lattices, and they’re very out of the way and non-hostile so they aren’t killed often. (For some reason, the bigger Viperids don’t drop it, just the small ones)
I kind of agree that the rep feels a little slow, but I also don’t mind that much, because most of the rewards locked behind it are cosmetic and you’ll likely reach exalted naturally while trying to collect the other rewards in ZM over time. For the rewards that aren’t strictly cosmetic, I think it would be better to make them BoA or just unlocked account-wide. I’m not looking forward to having to grind the rep on my alts when I eventually get around to playing them more, but I won’t feel as forced to do that if I can get the essential rewards on my main.
All that being said, I wouldn’t be against buffing rep gains by a bit. Two months is a really long time to get to exalted, and then you have paragon chests to grind after that… I would prefer it to be done by making WQs or the weekly quest give more, rather than adding rep to the daily quests or other sources. The daily quests primarily offer cyphers, flux and the occasional gear rewards, so once a player no longer needs these rewards, they won’t have to do them anymore - and I think that’s nice and something worth preserving.
Just a quick question:
We get the “Vestige of the Eternal” required to craft the level 7 legendary base items by completing Chapter 5 of the Campaign.
How does a character that completes chapter 5 get the Vestige if they learn an applicable profession AFTER completing chapter 5? I don’t see it on a vendor anywhere. IMO the additional option to obtain it from the Enlightened rep vendor at revered would be appropriate.
I’d post a bug report as well about that. It’s most likely meant to be on the reputation vendor lol. (Cause it required Honored to even use). The 9.1 tome is on the rep vendor after you unlock it, iirc.
Anyway one final comment about Zereth Mortis, as someone who plays too much, and outdoor content IS my content:
Cyphers of the First Ones and the Olea Cache
Can we get an item on the Jiro vendor to send Cyphers to our alts? Even if it’s at a loss, like the Soul Ash item. After I’ve capped the research on my main, I feel punished to keep playing her instead of an alt that still needs research even though I need to for rep.
Maizou finished all the research like a week ago, I’ve bought my 3 alts I’m playing at the moment the +50% Cyphers earned items, I bought the Pocopoc Battle pet for 500, and the toy for 100.
Now I have nothing else to buy except https://www.wowhead.com/item=187781/olea-cache
This costs 700 Cyphers, contains a few SILVER (you read that right, SILVER, not Gold), and 12-25 Genesis Motes. It has an very rare chance of protoform synthesis materials (there’s been only 2 reported, and none recorded) and a rare chance at the legendary crafting material (only a handful reported). It also has a handful of unique transmog items. However, you can loot the staff as a paladin, the mace as a hunter, etc. And they aren’t BoA, so you can’t learn them and have to delete them. (According to one comment in one of the discords I’m in at least)
Just like… what incentive do we have to buy these caches? 27 silver and 12-25 motes for 700 cyphers is, to be blunt, downright insulting. Considering you can kill devourers/wasps for less than 5 minutes and get more than that. And if I got a cosmetic item I couldn’t learn? I’d be mad.
doing the same cypher quests on 3 alts is not fun
So I just finished my cypher yesterday and I’m starting to work towards these things, and I am already starting to feel the same kind of things described here. I’m really glad this cache exists in the first place as it gives us a place to dump excess currency, but if the rewards truly are as abysmal as listed here, it’s really not something I’m looking forward to. For the transmog items you can get from the cache, why not make those available to purchase for cyphers at a premium price to add a deterministic way to spend it, and then have the cache on the side to allow you to farm a little gold and other currencies, perhaps even with the chance of getting the transmog at a cheaper price? At any rate, 700 cyphers takes a little while to earn, so the rewards should be worthwhile.
I would love this as an option as well, I’m going to start playing my alts more when flying unlocks tomorrow (for us EU players) and it’d be nice to have the ability to give them a little boost, beside just giving them the 50% bonus cypher gain item. I’ll probably have more to say on the alt experience once I’ve actually started doing just that.
I bought one just so I could have “proof” of what it gives rather than rely on wowhead comments:
Yea. 700 Cyphers for a Lattice and 62 silver. (The 18 gold is from selling junk items)
I didn’t even get Genesis Motes.
700 Cyphers for 62 silver and a lattice. I’m at a loss for words.
I could make more gold from selling the greys they drop and get a lattice just killing cervids in the same time it would take to earn 700 Cyphers. Heck, I would’ve gotten 100+ Genesis Motes in the same time doing it.
Seems like it has to be a bug or its super disappointing
I just want to provide some feedback on cypher gear acquisition.
Currently my cypher level is 6/6. This means that cypher gear will be dropping as iLvL252 I believe or thereabouts as the gear does not automatically upgrade and is not otherwise upgradeable by levels.
Obviously I’ve ground all of the cypher currency required to get to 6/6 and am now reliant on new drops of iLvL252 items to replace all of my old lower iLvL items now.
I have opened about 50-100 chests in the last week and have received zero pieces of cypher gear. The only gear I’ve seen is what comes from dailies and world quests. Since the Rare mobs don’t drop anything of particular interest to a lot of people no one is regularly killing them in groups large enough to kill more than 3-4 a day if you happen to run across a kill in progress most of the time.
The biggest issue is that I am entirely dependent on RNG to get item location upgrades I actually need. The drops that I do get are very often for the same 3-4 locations. Often rings, cloaks, boots or shoulders. For my druid I have never once had the chest item drop.
I suggest the following:
Please don’t wait 2-3 months to make these types of adjustments. Do them now. The next expansion will likely not be until very late 2022 but more likely 2023. The game will very quickly become entirely about playing alts until then.
For myself personally I’m going to hit revered today. There is nothing I want from exalted reputation and it would take something pretty spectacular to make me want to grind it. Once that happens I’m not only done in ZM on this char I’m also not planning to do the same thing on any of my alts. I will simply be done with ZM without some or all of the suggested changes above.
I think that rather than changing existing cypher gear drops/rewards into tokens and increasing their drop rate, there should be a vendor that lets you purchase these in the slots that you want them for cyphers. The pricing for this could even be fairly steep (say 500 cyphers a piece) without really hurting too much, since you can also get them from other sources and you’d realistically only purchase the slots that you are currently missing. This would also help solving the problem of having nothing to do with your cyphers once you’re done with your progression.
Having spent this week flying, I am disappointed that the landmasses off the main central area do not have anything to offer. I would hope that in the future flying would be integrated into content more to allow these areas to offer something.
I don’t expect them to offer anything game-breaking. A few ideas off the top of my head would be:
The Burning Crusade had several areas in each zone that were inaccessible except via flying. I am unsure why this approach has been abandoned and would welcome its return.
I was trying to avoid posting in here again as I feel like I’m posting too much, but wanted to respond. (Plus, as a mainly outdoor content player, Zereth Mortis is kinda my endgame lol)
The token would be nice for the ones with buffs. I looted 5 or 6 252 Boots, but none of them had the affix I wanted. Thankfully, once flying came out, I didn’t want that affix anymore, but still was annoying. Likewise, I still haven’t looted a second shoulder with a gem slot. (The worst part is the campaign quest this week was supposed to reward one, but the game just… didn’t give me a reward.)
Are you doing every daily and world quest each day? Cause there hasn’t been a day without at least 2 pieces a day from them.
They can also drop rarely from treasures, but I think I’ve only had like 3 pieces from it?
They could just add
to the rares in ZM. Yes, we can upgrade all conduits all the way to 239 with Revered, but that’s still lower ilvl than we were able to reach on our mains with Adamant Vault/Korthia rep last patch so…?
Please. Maybe even add it as a rarer chance to treasures. I am scared to death if I have to switch to Necrolord or Kyrian in 9.2.5, cause I’ll be out of the easy catch up renown.
Personally, I feel only a few need adjustments, IMO. I have -almost- everything to craft every mount/pet and that’s from just regular play, I haven’t farmed any of them except the Protoform Sentience Crowns, but that took like 30 minutes when the daily quest was up. What I feel could use improvements from my experience:
Viperid have very limited enemies that can drop them, only the small snakes that have like a dozen spawnpoints total over the entire zone, and they’re neutral, so people don’t really kill them. Just add them to the big snakes as well, and maybe buff the drop rate a little. That, or you could revert Furidian back to being a snake like he was on the PTR, and re-add the Lattice to his drop table. A worm in a box is weird, but a snake in a box is something that’s a common trope. Lol.
Vespoid, as anyone knows, is the 2nd most needed Lattice, and has a terrible, and I mean TERRIBLE, drop rate. Please, just buff it.
Aurelid only has 1 reliable source, Hirukon, which groups are becoming rarer and rarer to find. The other source is locked behind a single world quest and only has like 5 spawn points with a 15 minute respawn. Please fix the inability to get a new Lure from vashj each week. The gms we ticket say is a bug but it’s been weeks.
Helicid… needs the most Lattices of anything on ZM and yet has the 2nd least sources (behind Aurelid). There’s 7-8 snails in zereth mortis and all have the equally small chance of dropping the Lattice. Either add more Helicid mobs, or buff the drop rate please
Glimmer of Cunning can ONLY drop from the Tarachnid Egg treasure. Problem is that treasure has a very lengthy respawn time. I have done the Tarachnid Eggs at least 5 times a day for over a week and still only have one Glimmer. One of my friends, who has crafted every pet but I think 3, still hasn’t looted a single one.
Glimmer of Satisfaction can only drop from eating from a Feast of Gluttonous Hedonism or Stone Soup in Zereth Mortis or Sepulcher, with a 15 minute cooldown between attempts. Problem with this? If you don’t raid, you aren’t going to be doing that. I drop stone soups in Zereth Mortis every hour or so on maizou, and eat from it on as many alts as I can (for some reason, they spawn in different shards a lot of the time). And still haven’t gotten one. I’ve gone through I think 2 stacks of soup so far. There’s reports on wowhead that these can drop from the bag Xy’mox drops, but I’m thinking that’s a bug in wowhead’s system cause I literally sat in ZM doing nothing but open that bag for 2 hours and nada.
I’m not exaggerating when I’ve already considered not playing until 9.2.5/10.0 over the Satisfaction Glimmers. I’ve never been more aggravated with a game mechanic. And yes, I know “You have a year to do it!” that’s not the point. I don’t raid, so I don’t eat in raids. And people don’t drop feasts for rares in ZM. I’m spending 400-500g PER ATTEMPT at this, and I’ve already gone through 40 of said attempts, at least. That’s ~20,000g I spent on something with nothing to show for it. This is made more frustrating by the fact we don’t know if the 15 minute cooldown stops when we log out, so some of these attempts may not even be eligible, as they made the cooldown completely hidden with no way to track it.
3. Bauble of Pure Innovation
This just need a respawn timer adjustment. It’s far too long. I got mine, but it took a LOT of realm hopping because Proudmoore is just way too populated to ever catch it on Proudmoore.
EDIT: Spawn Rate Increased.
Please add a secondary source for these. Having them locked behind dropping from a raid boss is a ridiculous restriction, for a system designed for open world players. The same goes for the schematic the same boss drops.Why not make them a low drop rate from the 3 Dune Dominance Rares? As devs, how do you think raiders would respond if you made it so a raid boss was locked behind having caught every battle pet in the zone? The same can be said for the Mawforged Bridles. Those require being in a Normal+ raid, because for some reason, you guys opted to not let the chest spawn in LFR.
My frustration with this is immeasurable beyond words. I’ve slaughtered those avians to the point I’m surprised they don’t override their code and run away from me. I still haven’t had one drop. I know quite a few in the same predicament. It doesn’t help there’s so few Avians that drop them and they are immensely spread out.
I didn’t have an issue with this, but I know a lot of people do. The fact they just drop from pretty much every elite mob in the zone is weird and makes targeting them to farm difficult. Mine dropped while I was in the group that was confirming where the Mawdapted Raptor schematic dropped, so I was lucky.
PERSONALLY speaking, I think motes are fine. But I also know they are the biggest turn off for a good majority of players, as we need something like 18,000 total. And as elites don’t drop them, that makes them rather hard to acquire for people who aren’t killing non elites for other reasons. Honestly, just adding them to the drop table for elites would go a long way.
…that’s the point though? They’re part of the Treasures of Zereth Mortis achievement. Lol.
Anyway, one last note, from personal experience:
I want to personally say, this is by far, BY FAR, (I genuinely cannot stress how big the gap between this and the 2nd place is) the worst thing in Zereth Mortis.
Not only is it a jumping puzzle, you made it so none of the things you gave us to help with jumping puzzles work. The Dimensional Gear, Door of Shadows, heck, even Warlock Gateway, Heroic Leap, etc.
And If you are like me and use trailblazer talent to move faster, or you use the ZM gear that gives you 20% speed? We will jump right over the orbs. I had to mail myself a talent change item to get rid of it. (Because I didnt want to farm the 60 energy to get back).
To top it all off, there’s random orbs flying around the room, where if they hit you, you will go FLYING and land on the ground. On top of this, when you get high enough, the orbs seemingly start to seek you out, limiting how long you have to line up your jumps.
And the icing on the cake? When I finally got to the top and looted the cache? I expected something fun like a toy or a unique piece of gear. (Like how the sands gave a unique trinket that is actually pretty good)
No. It had 25 anima, cypher wrists, and a costume for Pocopoc I already looted from another treasure.
That was it.
Why is this thing even in the game other than to cause frustration?
As always, none of this was written in a rude manner, if anything comes off as rude, lemme know and I’ll edit it, I never intend to be rude in any of my forum posts anywhere, and I apologize in advance. 
My brain’s a bit frazzled from RL stuff yesterday so I’m doing my best not to talk too much in general.
Players who tell Tal-Inara that they have been to Zereth Mortis before and have already met Pocopoc will now receive the Enlightened reputation they would miss out on by skipping those quests.
On this recent hotfix: I realise it might be difficult to figure out a good solution on how to do this, but it would be great if this rep was awarded retroactively for those who chose to skip, as it currently seems it didn’t. It feels a little unfair to those who skipped, even though they knew they would miss out on rep if they did so. I actually skipped the intro on one of my alts hours before the hotfix was announced and that feels pretty bad :>
Super disappointing it is. I won’t be buying another one until they change it.
I am cypher level 6/6 but am getting iLvL236 non-cypher gear drops from rare kills. The drop rate from rares is already pretty low, when I finally get one and it’s unusable that feels pretty crappy.
Also yesterday between world quests and dailies there were only two that gave a gear reward and they were both the same ring. They also seem to very frequently be for the same few item location: ring, back, belt, boots and rarely a trinket. Also I haven’t seen an item drop from a chest since I got cypher 5/6. As the cypher level goes up does the drop rate go down? Subjectively it seems to me that it has.