Is CN worth the time you invest?

gankdalf

Castle Never is one of the hardest dungeons in the game ATM and is a thirty minute dungeon (according to dev-blog Return to Castle Never). Now I always felt like the new CN had some pretty bad loot compared to the time invested running it.

I'm not even gonna get started on the drop-rate for legendary rings and the artifact. I'm just gonna say that I haven't seen any artifact drop in any party I've been in for 70+ runs now. Legendary rings do drop but extremely rarely (and even when it does drop, its often not the one you wanted).

With the new salvage values in Mod10 I feel that the loot from CN needs to be looked at. Its already bad and now its getting even worse. I know you put some time and effort into the revamp of the dungeon, so it feels bad that nobody is gonna run it in mod10 because of the terrible loot.


Small = Neck, Waist, Ring, Shirt, Pants
Medium = Arms, Feet, Head, Offhand
Large = Body, Mainhand

Small T1: down from 3000 to 2000
Medium T1: down from 4000 to 2500
Large T1: down from 5000 to 3000

Small T2: up from 3000 to 4000
Medium T2: up from 4000 to 5000
Large T2: up from 5000 to 6000

+1,+2 rings: down from 3000 to 2000
+3,+4 rings: down from 6000 to 4000

gankdalf

The loot is bad in mod9 and gets worse in mod10

Updated the post with new salvage values in mod10.

jugger71

The loot is fine now and will be fine in mod10

If insignias were bind to account or even better, bind on equip it would be perfect imho. You always get something and im fine with that. Could be better yes, but isnt that always the case?

archangelzorak01

The main problem with the quality of loot from CN is the RNG of it all.

Its a fast dungeon with the right crew, often times a CN run will take as few as 10-12 minutes. Bosses die before you even get a chance to blink. (this is a whole different issue that I wont get into)

Despite how fast you can run it it just doesnt matter. If you do 10 runs with the same 5 people each can have extremely varying degrees of rewards. One member may get a purple salvage drop from every boss and a handful of rank 8's along with +3 or +4 rings from the chest while another will walk away with nothing but a few +1 rings. Same amount of effort, vastly different rewards with nothing but 'Luck' to explain the disparity.

At a bare minimum each boss should guarantee one of the refinement items (sword/neck/belt/shield) and Orcus itself should guarantee at least 1 piece of purple salvage.

ecrana

The loot is bad in mod9 and gets worse in mod10

defiantone99 said:

I swear, but have no proof, that some patch nerfed the drop rates

I'm with you @defiantone99
The first 2-3 weeks I swear I was getting loot at every single boss. Ever since then I'm lucky if ONE of the bosses drops anything and I usually run with guildies and a lot of times no one gets a drop from 2 of the 3 bosses. Thats just ridiculous that an entire party of 5 manages to come out of CN with a drop a piece if they're lucky.

lukejones77

CN was meant to be a gift to long-term players that loved and missed the original run.

What we got was a major disappointment, almost a fraud:
- A long run, with rewards nothing like what CN used to have.
- *The* top-tier dungeon, with rewards that barely stack up to reward for time/effort of other runs.
- The top reward (+5 legendary ring) seems so rare, that if it's the reason you do the run, you eventually just end up angry with your self for buying into it. And that's assuming you get a bound +5 actually useful to you.
- What we end up with from CN runs is another tiny, tiny contribution to the constant grind that currently defines the game.

I don't know if designers don't understand what we *actually* liked about the original, or.... I just don't know what they might have been thinking.

Was it perhaps a clever way to help destroy the memory of something that used to be a loved pinnacle of the game, in favor of aligning everything to the principle of:
1.grind
2.grind
3. grind
4. See 1

gankdalf

The loot is bad in mod9 and gets worse in mod10

etelgrin said:

I think it is, you get two chests at the end which makes the dungeon superior to running epic gray wolf den which is longer and doesn't offer any reasonable reward, inside the chest you can find a rank 8, some purple salvage ruined gear on the way, I usually find at least one piece, a lesser or blue ancient RP thingy which can sell quite well on AH, a ring from regular chest and a ring from demonic this isn't bad for the time spent, depending on how fast can your group run it, if I spent there around 15 minutes it's quite fine for me, but I swear the shard is a myth, sometimes I feel that they stop it from dropping after super fast speed runs farmed CN to death with buggy demonlords set before it got fixed to give players some sort of time penalty and those in AH are already farmed not fresh drops. I haven't seen anyone drop it recently, even from hardcore pve players I don't see such auctions.

That only means that epic gray wolf is even worse than CN. Actually all of the other dungeons are kinda "meh".

pr3stigex

The loot is bad in mod9 and gets worse in mod10

etelgrin said:

The game doesn't actually offer many PvE grind-worth options at all for time spent/profit with mindset that you grind to obtain wealth to improve your toon like enchantments, refinement and so on. Namely it's

1) Demogorgon both options, easy to finish, takes short time, rewards a ring and stuff to unlock more keys for more runs/chances of rewards.
2) Castle Never like mentioned.
3) Dragon Heralds, especially if you save rewards on the toon you do it and open during double runestones event for double rank 5s + dragon hoard coffers which sells nicely.
4) Once a week - Tiamat for a cache with purple reso+purple ad voucher which you can't donate anywhere cause AD is almost always on cap since the changes to professions + something purple to salvage, usually armor.

Otherwise it's Cragmire/Wolf Den is too long and offers nearly no rewards for completion and egwd can actually be hard depends on setup. Lostmauth/Valindra/Kessel/Tauern multi runs are getting nerfed cause the value of salvage from these are going down. With new salvage values it's probably going to became more popular a temple of spider multi runs instead. Prophecy of Madness is terribly long, it's the longest and most boring thing I ever seen, Throne of Dwarfs has some nice rings in it but its also boring and terribly long although a bit shorter than PoM.

Not for me, my requirements to even run anything are .....
Two of these must be met for me to deem a run worth it.
1. Must drop salvage.
2. Must drop something to benefit my character.
3. Must drop something of value.

Which leaves eDemo/demo, CN, LoL, Kessells, Valindra.
For me its not worth it to even run T2's at all.

They could fix this by adding Superior marks to the boss loot table in T2's

klangeddin

The loot is bad in mod9 and gets worse in mod10

It's only worth it if you queue solo and pop at final boss right away, and you somehow find a good group that can take it down, otherwise it's a gigantic waste of time. A 1/200 chance of being worth it, more or less...

luks707

Loot is fine in mod9 but wont be in mod10

The main issue is that at present you get 2 rings guaranteed (with a campaign key admittedly) which both now will be worth less. Yes, there's a chance of other drops, but I've gone through and got nothing, and I've gone through and got several. Surely the chest at the end should be the key thing? Otherwise I expect we'll see 2/3 or even 1/3 runs soon.

gomok72

The loot is bad in mod9 and gets worse in mod10

I honestly gave up with CN and Edemo, while I did get two Demon lord's sets and two sets of weapons from the campigns, I still have yet to get what I actually went in there for (power and crit rings, even purple).