Alternative to Icewind Dale Heroics Legacy Quest

hannibalsmith

The Epic Heroic Encounter times in Icewind Pass/Dwarven Valley are not predictable. The general rule of "1 hour after last completion" (e.g. Yester Hill in Barovia) doesn't apply.

Using that "rule" in Icewind Pass today, I sat idle at the Remorhaz site for 45 minutes past the predicted time before it appeared. This is not "fun gaming".

The issue has been brought up before but not fixed. But what about just replacing this Legacy Quest with a new one?

I suggest "Vallenhas Conqueror" (slay 100 foes). It does not exist yet, but compliments the Vallenhas Adventures and Heroics quests that we already have.

Plus, the devs wouldn't have to monkey with old Icewind Dale code.

sandukutupu

They had the Remorhaz popping up every 25 minutes at one point. The other encounters were working before, however every time they change the system it stops working. You are lucky, if the Remorhaz counts at all. The others you can try are; Prospector Attack and Raid the Raiders! They seem to count about 50% of the time.

The worse part about the BHE in Icewind Pass, is the inability to invite. The person you invite has to be within your faction. Once invited they need to exit back to Caer-Konig and return to get into the correct instance. Chances are, by the time they do all this, the BHE will end. I don't care to do them, because of the inconsistency.

I imagine this area will get remodeled in module 22. If the developers are replacing old modules for new, #2 was Shadowmantle and #3 was Icewind Dale. There is no telling what they are thinking, but my bet is they plan to recycle all the old modules in chronological order just as they did with Sharandar. Also since they are only producing 2 modules per year this will give them 10 years worth of content. We shall find out in a few months, they should be announcing the fall module sometime in August, I believe.

pitshade

The timer is supposed to be 20 mins between spawns. However, if a Major HE is already running where a BHE should spawn, it will block the Epic. Sometimes I think that the epic will spawn if you clear the major (Mother Lode blocks Remorhaz, complete Mother Lode and Remo may spawn) but it's not easy to test. At any rate I've seen two BHEs running at the same time, and not even with the same timer, as the old patch note would indicate. Note that the one hour timer was introduced long after this campaign and only affects Chult and Barovia. Otherwise all the campaigns have their own rules for how BHEs spawn.

Beyond that, the thresholds for getting credit towards the weekly are all higher than just getting rewards from the BHE. In the case of Prospector Attack, it seems like you need to get Great Success for it to count as a BHE. Otherwise you get credit for the smaller category.

Remo doesn't require GS but still has a higher threshold than expected. Some people have said you need to mine black ice but I've gotten credit without it. You need to do some measure of damage to the boss though, fighting the small ones doesn't seem to count.

Raid the Raiders seems to give credit so long as you did some damage to the mobs and boss, just clicking quest items didn't get me credit one time. However, it has a long time problem that the quest objects may spawn late or not at all.

sandukutupu

It would be a lot easier, if the BHE was more like the ships in the River District. The HEs in the River District have a visible 5 minute timer, unless someone makes a deposit adding more time to the wait. Omu has the Lich BHE but it is a pain to get up and running. It isn't like we are asking for a lever to pull clearly marked "Pull to start BHE".

I clearly recall telling one of the developers, the wait time for Yester Hill was too long, and needed to be reduced to 20 minutes.

pitshade

It would be great to standardize HE spawns across all zones. For all its flaws, SKT actually has the best system. There is always one Small and one Big HE. When one finishes, the next one in sequence starts.

armadeonx

On Xbox yesterday, there was a full zone of people waiting for the Remorhaz! We were waiting quite a while and yes a major HE was active but the timer had triggered.

I'd been standing around with the hoard of other players and was tempted to go and see what was happening with the major to see if others were attempting to complete it but I knew that if the Remorhaz popped while I was away it'd be dead very quickly and I could potentially miss it.

Good job I stayed as when it popped, it was all over in about 2 minutes (if it wasn't for the part where it goes underground it would've been dead in less than 30 seconds).

I waited about 20 minutes but it looked like some people had waited a lot longer.

Personally I'd appreciate it if all epic HEs had visible timers like the EE dragons - at least on the map screen...