Feedback Dark Dwarf Heist - February 2017

I had exactly the contrary: even without the antidote i was immune for some minute

 

Seemed like the drop rate in Challenge 2 of 2 was awfully low. I only ran it once to see what it was like.

 

That miniboss is not even dropping burners anymore

 

btw...i'll NEVER buy an amphora key!!! LOL

 

both mini bosses drop burners for me on mini 1 and mini 2. 10 each time. the drop from the admiral boss has been slashed though, I'm sure last event it was around 100 or so, but now its between 25-40 that I have seen

 

So far, did 1 run of mini 2 at normal, got 84 progress. Has anybody done other difficulties and noticed a difference in the mini progress drops?

 

You must be playing in normal mode.
In all other modes the second miniboss is not dropping burners ... it was the case with the first challenge ...and now with the second one as well.

 

I believe that was "my" immunity haha

I noticed that you wrote this before so I paid close attention on the loot and this fella drops me 10 burners every time. I don't know what to say..

EDIT

Uh..I didn't know mode 2,3 don't drop burners

 

yeah, I'm only playing normal as my drop of progress was same as fatal so thought why bother with higher level

 

I did ... the progress drop is the same as in the other modes.

I play only in painful ... because it is very easy and fast to clear the map and the drop (not progress) is better.

It is happening in Painful, Excruciating and Fatal difficulty. The second boss never drops burners ... it was the case in the first challenge as well. It is not just me ... it is happening with my friends as well (solo runs ... we are not playing in group). Sometimes he drops materi fragments

That was in the first challenge ... and this screenshot was taken last night/morning.

I know what happened
There is a bug with the immunity ... if you see my picture above (with the burners missing from loot) you can notice I am immune because I am using antidote. However ... that antidote expired while I was in town ... yet the next run I was immune to poison even without using the antidote. In this situation if you activate the antidote ... you will start getting damage from the poison even if you are using the antidote. This can also happen if you finish your run and start another one (running to Steamship Harbor from town) ... your antidote is still active but you are not immune to poison. It is a bug.

Update:
There was a player who told me he got x9 pickaxes from Jullov ... so I assumed the drop of pickaxes from Jullov can be 9-15.
Well I was wrong
Yesterday a friend of mine sent me a screenshot of his drop ... and he has got x5


So according to all info we can only state that Jullov's pickaxes drop is random between 1-15

 

Super disappointed with the latest Dark Dwarf event. Here is the list of aspects I like and I wish I saw improvement on.

Well done's
- The jewels of enhancement offer incredible value. If these were to ever be removed, the event would lose more than half of its value. I'm serious.
- The new runes are nice and encourage alternative builds. They opened my appetite for a one-handed mage. Will take time to see if I can get the right book/wand for such a build but it's a nice experiment. They are definitely an improvement for rangers, so kudos for that.
- The burners drop is acceptable. This is combined with some to improves, and the many long runs, but I have to say I never ran out of burners without any special extra effort. I am not saying this so you can nerf them more. On contraire, I would not touch the burner drop or increase the requirement amount! It's alright as it is now.
- The raw viscanium and maps drop on alternative maps is alright. You can progress in the event even if you are doing something else, but you need dedicated farm to complete them. Plus the burners farming guard against doing the minis only. This is good.
- I got the chance to cooperate with my guild via "knock knock Jullov" messages and teamwork. While this is unintentional and in essence is bad as it does not encourage teamplay but rather individual play with occasional forming/breaking of groups, it had its positive aspect.
- Increased resistance to poison vials which was good and actually relevant. Don't really need to use them in the first place, but it's an alright approach.

To improve
- I still don't get why the drop of axes was nerfed. If it's because of the amphorae keys business, this could've been approached way differently. If 30 axes = 1 key was just too much, change this formula. Don't lower the axes drop which was already at the limit prior to this event.
- The event overall is a grind fest. It's worse than the New Moon. The viscanium amount dropped from geodes is painfully small especially when coupled with the few axes.
- The difficulties were totally useless. Nothing related to event drop scales, so there's really no point in going above normal difficulty. Very poorly executed once again. Not even burners drop scales with difficulty, let alone geodes drop and random drops on the map. Uttermost disappointment regarding this aspect.
- No scaling in parallel worlds for event drop (especially raw viscanium). If all stacks ought to grow with difficulty, event stacks need to be considered as well. Another sloppy, inconsistent implementation.
- Minievents were worsened with poorer drop (final boss second event) and higher requirements (first minievent). There was no point to this rescaling as the minievent is main event is already painfully slow. Left a bad taste in my mouth and once again increased expectations with meh extra rewards.
- Minievent drop is still highly skewed amongst players in the same group. Some players are simply more lucky than others. I would heartily recommend a uniform drop rate per map run for an entire group. Choose the random factor more wisely or you'll lose more and more players who are feeling a lack of fairness.
- No point in doing this event in groups. Doing the first map in parallel opens 5 times the chance to find a jullov barrel - which was mandatory for advancing at a decent pace int he event.
- The pieces for the wings are just annoying. Give the wings as a fixed reward and replace the rest of the pieces with more meaningful rewards.

Overall: This is a nay. Better than dunes of disappointment, worse than New Moon (which was already the second worst event on my list).
Might I remind you about the trust and transparency issue your team is facing? These changes in making the experience more painful to the players were not made transparent in any way to older players who already had expectations from this event. Trampling over those expectations is just bad. Don't expect us to trust the team that matters are improving when in fact you keep making changes in the disadvantage of the players.

 

Things I didn't like:

1) Difficulty scaling (normal, painful, etc) did not confer significant drop/progress benefit. The higher difficulty levels should have better drops.

2) Event appears to provide no benefit to grouping, which I believe is needed to improve game's social atmosphere (this should be done for pws as well). This game is turning into a solo game.

3) Progress bar was too long for main event and mini. Designers should consider shorter progress bars (2000 for main and 1500 for minis, but take into account other improvements) along with better repeatable rewards (for example, each additional 500 progress gets a legendary equipment or gem bag or draken, etc)

4) Event forces players to play one character on account - would be better in my opinion if multiple characters on account had chance to complete main event and mini's

5) I second the complaints about pickaxes. This could be addressed by havin the viscanium drops scaled with difficulties or just by increasing the axes dropped.

 

I agree with all the negative comments on the pickaxe drop, Jullov nerf, increased grind, etc. However there is one thing that I did appreciate. The drops did NOT include any white item. THANK YOU!

I found the gem drop to be very nice as well. I even had a full Radiant drop (just wish it were a Ruby instead of a Diamond).

 

Radiant? In what mode? I have averaged about 1 fractured (or whatever the bottom tier is called) gem per run. Nothing higher than that bottom tier. I did get a tier 5 reistance gem in one of the gem bags received as event progress reward.

-=-=-=-=-=-

Positive: Andermant drops have been decent for me, 3-4 drops per run (as always user mileage may vary: My parallel world andermant drop rate is about once per map, so I'm dang excited I can build up 1,500-2,000 anders in a couple of days playing this event; end-gamers talk about farming upwards of 10K anders per day, but that's an entirely different league)

Negatives:

1) grind (I estimate if you're playing solo and starting from scratch, nearly 100 runs to complete main event progress bar)
2) rewards (as noted by a commentor above, splitting the mount into pieces that can only be picked up by playing both the main and the minis, combined with the slow grind, means many players will have to run the event twice, once for the main event progress, then again in the future to play the minis, in order to get all the pieces and put the mount together)
3) consistent worsening of events by the developers; this is not a one-time problem, but a clear pattern of devolution perpetrated on the game / players, presumably to extract more cash???

 

Ok. I'm going to put my 25 cents into the pot. Here is my background for perspective on the Dark Dwarf Heist event:

• Last year: I had an approx level 20-25 Steam Mechanic. Got it's but kicked, even when in group. Had little to no blue+ and was fighting with green and "foods". Never collected enough burners to ever go down to Steamship. Don't even think I ever made it even to the 3 Amphadora keys. Got lots of axes. Was stupid enough to trade them for Amphadora keys that were used weeks later in the Norse fields.
• This year: I have a level 48 Spell Weaver. Got lots of Blue, Snow, Purple, and Orange. Only teamed once with three/two/one person for 3 or 4 runs (one of them had Jullov) on Friday (first day of 2nd mini). Started out using green and blue. Went to blue/purple, then last day to snow/purple.

This year: I didn't start the event till the last day of the 1st mini. Only got in Harbor once. Documented here: https://board-en.drakensang.com/threads/dwarf-heist.71779/#post-664782
When Friday came, I'd gotten about 1200 on the Main. I'd been warned about the gaseous death world and that the one 5 minute anit-poison potion wasn't going to do. I was also warned about all the turrets. Well, the turrets, for a lightning SW are mostly cake. Fried cake that is. The whole Harbor wasn't poison either.

So, Friday, tried to do group. It didn't help my survival-ability at all. What it did do was cut down on the drops I got (most everyone went willy-nilly and the drops from what they killed vanished before I got there ), so I lost out. Outside of group, I was using mostly blues, I was able to work my way through the mine in about 1/2 hour. With the second mini, another 1/2 hour for the Harbor. Got to play about 5 hrs Friday, 13-14 Saturday, and 8 hrs Sunday (that was all I could get). So, about 25 runs for the weekend. At end of Saturday night, I was going to have a serious burner supply issue on Sunday. Sunday, I had to make 3-5 Mine runs for 2-3 Harbor runs (lack of burners).

Took progress pictures at end of Sunday. Main: 2385/5000. Mini 2: 1520/2500. Conclusion:
• Mini 2 : needs 5 weekend days to complete (or a full 7 days if it is a week with low evening event schedule at my house ). Need more of the 5 minute anti-poison potions. Last runs on Sunday I was skipping the northwest section due to the small opening and massive poison once inside. While I had 5 minute potion, I could wait till then to use it and clear it in about 3.75 minutes (then ride to the other small poison area at the west end).
• Mini 1 : can't say anything as I only saw it once, other than I wish I'd started earlier.
• Main : One week, not even half way. Need boo-coo more pickaxes. There are 30 geodes. We should be able to use at least 1/2 - 2/3 every run. I started with a stash of axes which made a great jump off the start line, but quickly fizzled into pushing my dragster down the track instead of driving it.

Rewards:
• No white items. Yes. This was much appreciated.
• The drops in the Mine were consistently 21±2 and mostly green. An occasional level 1 gem. Disappointing till Mini 2 started.
• The drops in the Harbor were a variable treasure trove of useless greens, blues, some purples, and 1-3 orange/yellow (each run ). Greens were only about 1/2, which was very nice. I'm used to having green being 80%+ of what I find that is not white. I say useless in that nothing found was as good as the gear I have. I say treasure trove because the amount of Glyphs of Power I got for the weekend to be about 450-500K. I was able to update 4 items (>150K each) through the weekend. I got so many items my first time down in Mini 2 by myself that I had to activate my 3 day Premium that I had been saving because I was short room by more than 14 slots . Each run in Harbor was filling 50+ slots . That's an hour round trip bringing back usually 70 to 90 items to melt (because of the premium I was moving gems to the "chest" as I went).
• The Gem drops in the Harbor was wonderful. I made more progress updating my sockets in 2.5 days than the previous 2.5 months . I got lots of 1st and 2nd level gems, some 3rd level ones and even a 4th level. Yes, getting that 45 armor gem was sweet. I went from 1 of those on Friday to 3 of them on Sunday. Not including weapon and adornment, of all my other items 29 of 35 sockets are +26 or higher.

The grind I'm reading all about. Yes, I can see where it would be for the advanced level 50's who've already advanced their gear. However, for those of us 45-50 and are still building/growing, it was a far more enjoyable grind than the beetle cloths grind we had to go thru in Atlantis above Water.

I've did that twice now (DK and SW) with weeks of very little drops of anything worth while (mostly white and green, 96%+), and I _dread_ doing it for my next two characters. It was so bad there that my DK actually used the quest guidance to get to the beetles as quick as possible and was only killing that which attack/was along the way.

Summation: The even is too short for those of use with jobs/lives/families that don't get to power sit for 10 days. Even had I started on day one, I don't think I would have made the 5000/2500/2500 needed to get the final rewards.

Anyone want to buy 2 parts to "wings of uselessness"? I don't think I'm going to store them. With no schedule to know that another Heist with the same "contraption" is coming, it just seems to not make sense to keep them.

 

Oh, noes! Thought you were cured :O. Damn it =)).

Yep, I liked that the first boss also had a nice drop, instead of the old x2.

Tehehe . You owe someone (like a light-year DK xD) a bit of copy-right .

Also, 5 large ones from the 2nd mini bar. +1 there. Didn't really need them myself either, but OK stuff.

Well, trakilaki dropped a nice ruby (check the lucky drops thread)... so this is normally random and not really tied to the event.

+1, was quite OK. One of the very few positive things about this event.

Remember your call out on "IIRC" ? Well, it's actually "my two cents" . Anyhow, it seems to me that you're over-complicating yourself. That much essence used and general sloppy survivability in this easy event means you have to focus on something else. Just direct all your efforts on getting to lv50 (depends how many characters you wanna manage) and then start building up a bit, even if a level expansion is to come soon (it'll still be a while until it gets here, I reckon). You won't have too much of a good time in events while you're leveling... I doubt they keep all levels in mind when making events. And even more so, as you and others have noted, this was indeed more of a bad event than good. Cheers!

 

It dropped from a Longhelm Mine Supervisor (or whatever they are called) in the Steamship Harbor on normal mode.

 

In the announcement of Dark Dwarf Heist - March 2017, "Required levels 20-50" should be 20-55, right? If not, a lot of players can't play this event.

 

Yes, this is now until level 55, once you will have Infernal mode.
Thank you for pointing it out.