how's the new zone doing?

reiwulf

I haven't been able to play CO lately, and my character is just around lv 10 or so, so it will be a while till I can get to try the new zone, so I would like to hear from others, how is it doing? is it hard? is it easy? is it FUN? are there repeatable quests? is there a storyline to go with it?
I'd really like to hear about that

sterga

Mobs were "updated". However, their AI is still stupid, they just have more attacks. Some of them incredibly irritating. The zone doesn't seem to be solo friendly. I can't imagine trying to go through this with a dodge based toon solo. Some people use vehicles or sniper rifle for soloing. And, of course, the easy peasy cheesy juggy builds work. The recommendation is 2 people for missions though.

I haven't tried any of the open missions. The one day I had zone on, people were being giant bags of dicks to each other over one of the OMs, so I figured I'd pass. The dailies aren't terribly exciting. The zone basically exists to farm SCR. And I guess GCR from the OMs. I've seen some bugs where people can't get their loot and a zone crash bug, so it's probably best that you can't go into it right now.

There are repeatable quests. I think doing all of the dailies is 20scr total. There is also a 5 day quest which may be bugged somehow. Sadly, mobs drop until rec instead of some extra scr. Oh and there's Hermies (sp?) rec. Nothing terribly interesting to buy with that outside a bunch 'meh' of consumables.

There really is no story. Some guy reads you Yeats in a cutscene, because reasons. I asked about lore and info for the new zone, but no one really has any answers. You are in a Qzone of sorts which may or may not be the Gateway Between Worlds, but it could also be the actual Qrealm. Neither of those things should be possible according to the other Champs lore, so I can't say.

The zone is extremely purple. Purple sky. Purple rocks. Purple puss trees. Purple buildings. Purple mobs. Purple filter effect to make you look kinda purple.​​

roughbearmattach

The new zone is awesome. It's the Qliphothic Realm, like in Demonflame. Bunch of open missions, open world minibosses, and a Cosmic.
You can earn SCR, GCR, get gear drops the equivalent of Merc gear. Also, the mobs and standard missions are challenging. You have to form small teams or be fairly careful . . . like back before On Alert when dealing with lairs.

If the new zone seems tough, ask folks to team up. If I am in-game, I will, for sure.

pantagruel01

It's essentially a wrapper for some fights, the actual missions in the area are pretty basic, but the fights are decently put together.

nepht

It has a giant Satanic fish tank. That is a win in my books.

pantagruel01

nepht said:

It has a giant Satanic fish tank. That is a win in my books.

Two actually, but neither one contains any Karkaradons.

pr0fp0tts

How is it doing? It seems to be doing well, although as with any new content it's had some teething problems with bugs and the like. I've seen a lot of players in there (less at the moment, with the Bloodmoon event drawing people's attention).

Is it hard? Is it easy? In basic terms it's hard - the mobs are level 45, and there are some particularly nasty guys in some of them... then there's the open missions, which need a pretty high level of co-ordination between teams of players to get the whole thing done (which seems to lead to some finger-pointing in zone chat when things inevitably go pear-shaped). On the other hand all the basic missions are rated as (2) two player missions, and if you follow that advice it should be challenging, but not impossible, for most characters - including squishy ATs. Overall, like other 'tougher' content (lairs, rampages and the like) you need to play 'smarter' than when running the standard 'easy mode' solo content you get for most of the game - but that's half the fun...

Is it FUN? ... well, yes... if you like the content - as always it'll vary person to person, but for me, at least, it's a lot more fun than grinding UNITY for silver champions recognition, or waiting around Ren Centre for hours as people try to form a team to hit a lair or something. It's in the Qliphothic realm - which is a setting I personally don't like much - but there's three or four different enemy groups to add variety (rather than just Qliphothic Horrors and nothing else) so it's not too bad overall.

Are there repeatable quests? Yes - you need to run through a series of basic quests, then you get dailies, some of which repeat those first few quests.

Is there a storyline to go with it? Yes - and there's plenty of voice acting too, which is a treat for Champions Online. While the zone as a whole is clearly designed for 'farming' recognition, the dev team have made the effort to wrap it in a story which makes sense in context, and builds on previous game content (such as the adventure packs, the Nemesis Confrontation mission / lair, and the like).

jonsills

My understanding, from the meeting with Dweomer and the others before the last Nightmare Invasion, is that the Kings of Edom were "killed" and the Qliphothic "destroyed" at the end of "Aftershock" - except that there's a sort of Conservation of Evil going on here, none of those things can ever be completely destroyed, and the new zone is in fact the staging ground for another Qliphothic attack on our Earth, a sort of dimensional foyer if you will. And while I haven't run it yet, if the loading screen is any indication, Shadow Destroyer/Citizen Harmon (who was dispatched to the Q-Zone at the end of "Resistance") is now the head servant of the new Kings.​​

markhawkman

Well... Shadow D is now called Eidolon of D.... and yeah.... he kinda runs the place.

jaazaniah1

Has it ever been explained how humans can now survive in the Q zone without being warped and going completely insane? That was a basic aspect to the entire Aftershock series. Now we have an actual permanent base camp there with permanent staff and nothing bad happens to them.

avianos

It's not going anywhere, because people IGNORE Q warzone for the Bloodmoon event right now

It has potential, despite im not a huge fan of CO DEEP DARK LORE, especially Grimdark Qliphothic stuff, i only care for the costumization truth be told


Only fought Eidolon of Destruction ONCE so far, not sure but the fight feels really anti-climatic to me, we get to fight one of the CO's iconic villains (Dr.Destroyer called, he wants his place back) yet the the end of the fight feels dissapointing

Guess its the lack of an end battle cutsence like Therakiel which is very satisfying
a cutsence would work to show the aftermath of the fight and give more personality to the fight

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

Has it ever been explained how humans can now survive in the Q zone without being warped and going completely insane? That was a basic aspect to the entire Aftershock series. Now we have an actual permanent base camp there with permanent staff and nothing bad happens to them.

Gameplay and Story Segregation​​

roughbearmattach

jaazaniah1 said:

Has it ever been explained how humans can now survive in the Q zone without being warped and going completely insane? That was a basic aspect to the entire Aftershock series. Now we have an actual permanent base camp there with permanent staff and nothing bad happens to them.

The base is warded by Witchcraft and the beings from Elysium.

aesica

It makes Heroic gear seem more affordable and less like the colossal waste of SCR it was at the start of the price hike since every quest awards SCR. (Doing all the dailies each day will net you quite a bit) The problem is that, unless you like to be dependent on teaming with people for everything, or unless you use a solo-oriented build (invulnerability + self healing) you're going to feel like you need heroic gear (or better) just to participate in the quests.

Some of the quests are decent, others are pretty annoying, but since they all use the "kill X boars" or "collect Y bear asses" templates, you shouldn't expect much in that regard.

Personally, I think it'll be useful for gearing up my fresh 40s, but my geared character is going to be doing all the heavy lifting. Assuming heroic gear is BoE. FFS, if it isn't...

markhawkman said:

Well... Shadow D is now called Eidolon of D.... and yeah.... he kinda runs the place.

Naw, he spends most of his time sitting on the toilet.

roughbearmattach

aesica said:

Personally, I think it'll be useful for gearing up my fresh 40s, but my geared character is going to be doing all the heavy lifting. Assuming heroic gear is BoE. FFS, if it isn't...

I've had great luck taking non-min/maxed builds into Q realm using merc gear and Q-gear (about the same stats as mercenary). One of my existing toons got a couple pieces of Q realm gear as drops, and I bought the rest fairly cheap on the AH.
I slotted this blue gear with R6 ability mods and R5 cores. Worked out great.

sterga

Heroics are still BoE. I just put up a piece for sale on the AH a few days ago. How affordable Heroics are depends on if you can even farm the Qzone. The price on the AH has not gone down for this gear, so, I'm thinking it's probably not affordable for most people. And before anyone says "bla bla bla Bloodmoon", it doesn't take that long to do Warzone dailies as long as you aren't trying to solo sniper the whole zone. Especially since you don't have to go through 5 loading screens just to finish those dailies.

roughbearmattach wrote: »

The base is warded by Witchcraft and the beings from Elysium.

That's the most garbage ward ever considering the base seems to be getting eaten by the purple rocks. There isn't even a proper floor and one of the walls is clearly partially consumed by a bunch of random rocks. I call shenanigans. Maybe if it was a floating base in a bubble so that it doesn't actually touch anything in the Warzone, I might buy that, but with how the base is right now, no.​​

roughbearmattach

It is very hard to ward out the corrupting chaos of the Q Zone. What you see is the best that can be done.

spinnytop

reiwulf said:

I haven't been able to play CO lately, and my character is just around lv 10 or so, so it will be a while till I can get to try the new zone, so I would like to hear from others, how is it doing? is it hard? is it easy? is it FUN? are there repeatable quests? is there a storyline to go with it?
I'd really like to hear about that

New zone is lots of fun. Challenge is moderate, you might end up wanting to group to get through the dailies. It has daily quests in it, and that is the entirety of the quest content. The storyline is pretty basic.'

aesica said:

Personally, I think it'll be useful for gearing up my fresh 40s, but my geared character is going to be doing all the heavy lifting. Assuming heroic gear is BoE. FFS, if it isn't...

Oh sorry to hear that, on PTS you made it sound like the zone was so easy for you. All my toons can solo the quests there, so let me know if you want some help for your other toons :'3

jaazaniah1 said:

Has it ever been explained how humans can now survive in the Q zone without being warped and going completely insane? That was a basic aspect to the entire Aftershock series. Now we have an actual permanent base camp there with permanent staff and nothing bad happens to them.

I believe at some point the game explains that the Q zone we are going to is not the actual Q zone. It is a "bridge" that Luther Black built for his purposes of trying to steal the power of Edom. Something like that.

sterga said:

And, of course, the easy peasy cheesy juggy builds work.​​

That's a new one... but sure, that's what we can call my builds that have a hot bar full of attacks on a build with no con :'3

Or you could add "Approaching the missions in a tactically sound manner and using the strengths of your build while accounting for its weaknesses" ;'3. Truth be told, my glass cannons finish the missions faster than anything else...though I can guarantee you if you tried to use my fun theme builds to do it you wouldn't find it so easy peasy cheesy juggy ^w^

spinnytop

oh good double post.

pwestolemyname

roughbearmattach said:

The new zone is awesome. It's the Qliphothic Realm, like in Demonflame. Bunch of open missions, open world minibosses, and a Cosmic.
You can earn SCR, GCR, get gear drops the equivalent of Merc gear. Also, the mobs and standard missions are challenging. You have to form small teams or be fairly careful . . . like back before On Alert when dealing with lairs.

If the new zone seems tough, ask folks to team up. If I am in-game, I will, for sure.

This. It's very much like pre On Alert dealing with open missions, when chaining was a real thing and could get you beat down fast. I'm loving the new zone, aside from getting tired of the purple.

It does seem like a replacement for UNITY. Better than UNITY, since you don't have to zone in all the time and travel time is a little less.

chaelk

jaazaniah1 wrote: »

Has it ever been explained how humans can now survive in the Q zone without being warped and going completely insane? That was a basic aspect to the entire Aftershock series. Now we have an actual permanent base camp there with permanent staff and nothing bad happens to them.

because for that, they have to be sane to start with.
"come here, we want you to go and repeatedly do missions in this hell dimension,w hich has a good chance of warping you and driving you insane."
" sure , no problem. Let me just rescue this gadroon from a tree. Martha scared it again ."​​

roughbearmattach

pwestolemyname said:

It does seem like a replacement for UNITY. Better than UNITY, since you don't have to zone in all the time and travel time is a little less.

Excellent point. This is a way to earn SCR either solo or in small groups.

mithrosnomore

sterga said:

And, of course, the easy peasy cheesy juggy builds work. The recommendation is 2 people for missions though.

Sometimes you just can't win.

I have some toons that can solo through the Q warzone dailies (well, of the four that I actually play I have taken two to the warzone and they completed the initial missions solo, and one has actually been soloing dailies) so they must be "easy peasy cheesy juggy", but those same toons (and I, despite knowing the fights) aren't considered good enough by the "leets" to get invited to their private channels or to go on any of their "stealth" cosmic runs.

=============

But anyway, new zone is fine.
A steady source of SCR if you want it, often find others looking for groups for the dailies so no real worries there, and the open missions (Portal Guardian, Slug, and Oubliette) are, if nothing else, good practice for people thinking about doing some cosmic runs in the future.

The open missions also have some unique drops, so even if folks are not interested in unlocking the Eidolon fight there is some value in just running those.

sterga

mithrosnomore wrote: »

I have some toons that can solo through the Q warzone dailies (well, of the four that I actually play I have taken two to the warzone and they completed the initial missions solo, and one has actually been soloing dailies) so they must be "easy peasy cheesy juggy", but those same toons (and I, despite knowing the fights) aren't considered good enough by the "leets" to get invited to their private channels or to go on any of their "stealth" cosmic runs.

What are you even complaining about? I was giving examples of what can work in the zone for soloing. Does it look like an all inclusive list to you? I did mention the missions are meant to be for two people. As in, if you can't solo it, that's not necessarily a bad thing because the devs don't intent them to be. It's not as if you couldn't chime in on other builds you've used that work for soloing.

Or you could just quote people and say random nonsensical jibber-jabber and allude to goblins. Oh, wait....​​

darqaura2

Thanks Devs for the new zone. It's fun doing it with a duo. And fast SCR gain also.

spinnytop

sterga said:

Or you could just quote people and say random nonsensical jibber-jabber and allude to goblins. Oh, wait....​​

You goin' nuts again?