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A Complete Analysis of Mod 10:
thefabricant
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 5,248 Arc User
Hello all. So, I have posted a lot of threads on mod 10 and so this time, I intend to look at all the mechanics of mod 10 as a whole rather than just a few of them, to highlight a few of the issues I see with it.
Problem 1: The Grind for Boons.
Assuming all you are after is the boons (and have 0 interest in the gear) then this section interests you. Particularly if you intend to do the grind on multiple toons.
Firstly, you gain 9 Reputation per day from the dailies and 4 for each weekly. You gain 3 Secrets from each daily and 4 from each weekly. The maths here is dependent on this. Assuming that all 3 zones were unlocked on day 1 (which they aren't) and you earned the maximum amount of currency each day possible, it would take:
500 (amount of reputation needed to unlock last boon)/(9 (daily currency)*7 (number of days in a week)+4 (weekly currency)*3 (number of weeklies)) = 6.66666666667 ~~ 7 weeks to get the reputation per character.
However, this is not the limiting factor. In fact, the limiting factor is secrets. You earn 3 secrets for the daily and 4 for each weekly. You need:
280 (amount of secrets needed to unlock all boons)/(3 (amount earned daily)*7 (amount earned per week)+12) = 8.48 weeks. So, assuming you had access to all 3 weeklies right off the bat, it would take you 9 weeks per character to complete the campaign for the boons, just looking at the campaign grind. This is excluding the cost of voninblood and you need 55k voninblood, which admittedly you can grind whenever you like.
Problem 2: The FBI Entrance Requirements
You need 28% EF resistance to get into FBI for each character. To do this for free (nothing from the zen store) this means you need to reinforce the boots that drop from HEs, which means you need 25 lanolin (which is worth 500k AD). Furthermore, you also need 1 of the 2 potions of EF resistance, the blue shirt and pants and the reinforcement kits for that shirt and pants, Makos's Signet and the 2nd boon. This means you need the following to get into FBI:
1) 3.1k ilvl (which is already quite an investment for a lot of players)
2) 40k voninblood (For boons+unlocks+gear+enhancement kits)
3) 380+ Ten Towns Supplies (For boons+gear+Campaign Progress)
4) 25 Lanolin (Either bought from other players or grinded from HEs, worth 500k AD)
The TT supplies are the limiting factor in terms of time, it will take you over a month to get the supplies assuming that is all you farming for. Those supplies will be invested into:
Liberate Bryn Shandar
Save Lonelywood Refugees
Scout Cold Run
Resist the Cold
Unlock Fangbreaker Island
Assist Refugees
Winter Warrior
Northern Survivor
Blue Shirt, Pants + Reinforcement kits.
This will get you into FBI. So ultimately, a lot of work and grinding to get into a dungeon, that you need to do on every single toon that you want to do the dungeon.
Problem 3: Voninblood
You need a lot of it. A HUGE amount of it. You need it for almost every task in the campaign and you then also need it for buying AND sustaining gear. You need:
55k for boons.
10k For shirt and pants (version 1) then another 10k for version 2.
4k voninblood to keep each piece of gear fully enhanced. so 16k in total. This needs to be constantly replenished.
Now, HE farming is the LEAST efficient way to generate this, netting 200 voninblood per HE. The most efficient way to farm it is ofc with the shovel from the zen store. However, even assuming you invest 1k zen into that shovel, its still impossible to sustain the gear unless all you are doing is farming relics. The big issue with this comes in with FBI. With a perfect group, you could do just under 20 minute runs (would be my guess.) in which those 20 minutes were all pretty much combat. That means 3 runs an hour and 6 runs every 2 hours. The chests in FBI look like this:
Now, to be able to afford to chain run FBI WITH the gear up, you would need to at least break even on voninblood, which means you would need to make 16/6 = 2.67k voninblood/run, or 1.35k voninblood per chest at the end assuming you ALWAYS using the zen key chest. Since its unfair to force that on players, you would need to make it ~2.67k voninblood per chest. As you can clearly see from that picture, that is NOT 2.67k voninblood, its nothing near it. This means that not even a perfect group could afford to chain run FBI and just sustain the gear off FBI. This means the gear is completely unsustainable. Now, bear in mind, most group are not perfect and in fact, I estimate most groups will take 1 hour+. This means that an average group wouldn't even be able to sustain T3 combat time for the period of 1 run. This is completely silly, because it means that the people that need the T3 combat time, can't take advantage of it at all.
Problem 4: FBI Loot
Here is, from my understanding, the complete loot pool of FBI:
From the first, 2nd and 3rd boss:
20 seals of the protector, 30 seals of elements, a chance at elven raid/assault gear and insignias.
From the chests:
1) Small amounts of Voninblood.
2) Low chance of R8s.
3) Medium chance of elven raid/assault gear.
4) 10 TT supplies
5) Medium chance of random transmute stuff like in CN
6) Extremely low chance of getting a legendary ring
7) Low chance of T3 unrestored gear.
So, all in all, not really worth the effort.
My assessment of mod 10 as it currently stands is a complete waste. With the exception of the epic shirt and pants, everything is self contained within the campaign. Even if that gear is BiS, nobody is going to go to the effort of sustaining it. This means its a complete failure. The only thing that I actually want from the campaign is the shirt and pants, I will unlock the dungeon to run it once or twice for fun, but ultimately, running this dungeon, will be, for most players, less appealing than running epic grey wolf den.
Problem 1: The Grind for Boons.
Assuming all you are after is the boons (and have 0 interest in the gear) then this section interests you. Particularly if you intend to do the grind on multiple toons.
Firstly, you gain 9 Reputation per day from the dailies and 4 for each weekly. You gain 3 Secrets from each daily and 4 from each weekly. The maths here is dependent on this. Assuming that all 3 zones were unlocked on day 1 (which they aren't) and you earned the maximum amount of currency each day possible, it would take:
500 (amount of reputation needed to unlock last boon)/(9 (daily currency)*7 (number of days in a week)+4 (weekly currency)*3 (number of weeklies)) = 6.66666666667 ~~ 7 weeks to get the reputation per character.
However, this is not the limiting factor. In fact, the limiting factor is secrets. You earn 3 secrets for the daily and 4 for each weekly. You need:
280 (amount of secrets needed to unlock all boons)/(3 (amount earned daily)*7 (amount earned per week)+12) = 8.48 weeks. So, assuming you had access to all 3 weeklies right off the bat, it would take you 9 weeks per character to complete the campaign for the boons, just looking at the campaign grind. This is excluding the cost of voninblood and you need 55k voninblood, which admittedly you can grind whenever you like.
Problem 2: The FBI Entrance Requirements
You need 28% EF resistance to get into FBI for each character. To do this for free (nothing from the zen store) this means you need to reinforce the boots that drop from HEs, which means you need 25 lanolin (which is worth 500k AD). Furthermore, you also need 1 of the 2 potions of EF resistance, the blue shirt and pants and the reinforcement kits for that shirt and pants, Makos's Signet and the 2nd boon. This means you need the following to get into FBI:
1) 3.1k ilvl (which is already quite an investment for a lot of players)
2) 40k voninblood (For boons+unlocks+gear+enhancement kits)
3) 380+ Ten Towns Supplies (For boons+gear+Campaign Progress)
4) 25 Lanolin (Either bought from other players or grinded from HEs, worth 500k AD)
The TT supplies are the limiting factor in terms of time, it will take you over a month to get the supplies assuming that is all you farming for. Those supplies will be invested into:
Liberate Bryn Shandar
Save Lonelywood Refugees
Scout Cold Run
Resist the Cold
Unlock Fangbreaker Island
Assist Refugees
Winter Warrior
Northern Survivor
Blue Shirt, Pants + Reinforcement kits.
This will get you into FBI. So ultimately, a lot of work and grinding to get into a dungeon, that you need to do on every single toon that you want to do the dungeon.
Problem 3: Voninblood
You need a lot of it. A HUGE amount of it. You need it for almost every task in the campaign and you then also need it for buying AND sustaining gear. You need:
55k for boons.
10k For shirt and pants (version 1) then another 10k for version 2.
4k voninblood to keep each piece of gear fully enhanced. so 16k in total. This needs to be constantly replenished.
Now, HE farming is the LEAST efficient way to generate this, netting 200 voninblood per HE. The most efficient way to farm it is ofc with the shovel from the zen store. However, even assuming you invest 1k zen into that shovel, its still impossible to sustain the gear unless all you are doing is farming relics. The big issue with this comes in with FBI. With a perfect group, you could do just under 20 minute runs (would be my guess.) in which those 20 minutes were all pretty much combat. That means 3 runs an hour and 6 runs every 2 hours. The chests in FBI look like this:
Now, to be able to afford to chain run FBI WITH the gear up, you would need to at least break even on voninblood, which means you would need to make 16/6 = 2.67k voninblood/run, or 1.35k voninblood per chest at the end assuming you ALWAYS using the zen key chest. Since its unfair to force that on players, you would need to make it ~2.67k voninblood per chest. As you can clearly see from that picture, that is NOT 2.67k voninblood, its nothing near it. This means that not even a perfect group could afford to chain run FBI and just sustain the gear off FBI. This means the gear is completely unsustainable. Now, bear in mind, most group are not perfect and in fact, I estimate most groups will take 1 hour+. This means that an average group wouldn't even be able to sustain T3 combat time for the period of 1 run. This is completely silly, because it means that the people that need the T3 combat time, can't take advantage of it at all.
Problem 4: FBI Loot
Here is, from my understanding, the complete loot pool of FBI:
From the first, 2nd and 3rd boss:
20 seals of the protector, 30 seals of elements, a chance at elven raid/assault gear and insignias.
From the chests:
1) Small amounts of Voninblood.
2) Low chance of R8s.
3) Medium chance of elven raid/assault gear.
4) 10 TT supplies
5) Medium chance of random transmute stuff like in CN
6) Extremely low chance of getting a legendary ring
7) Low chance of T3 unrestored gear.
So, all in all, not really worth the effort.
My assessment of mod 10 as it currently stands is a complete waste. With the exception of the epic shirt and pants, everything is self contained within the campaign. Even if that gear is BiS, nobody is going to go to the effort of sustaining it. This means its a complete failure. The only thing that I actually want from the campaign is the shirt and pants, I will unlock the dungeon to run it once or twice for fun, but ultimately, running this dungeon, will be, for most players, less appealing than running epic grey wolf den.
Post edited by thefabricant on
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Comments
given the time constraints I guess when most ppl unlock all the stuff from this module, a new module will be released making all the grinding pointless...
I'm really looking forward to see what kind of awesome stuff FBI will drop to make it worth while.
I did my dailies in less than 10 minutes today. Yes, Cold Run will add some more to do, but I am not expecting much there.
Even if this new dungeon is the most difficult so far, no one do runs just for fun, they do it for rewards as well. I'm not going to run something 40-50 times just because I like the pretty landscape or the challenge. You can see all that in 1-3 runs. That chest needs to justify all the requirements to go in, or it will be dead content.
But the part that bugs me is the empowerment process. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. While Module 3 had the Black Ice empowerment, it was trivial to keep up with the necessary amount of Black Ice needed by just doing the content. I still have about 120k left over from just doing stuff.
It's the exact opposite here. There is absolutely no way to even come close to sustaining the Relic armor while doing the content it was designed for. It's impossible to have it as your "main set", given that you'll lose empowerment faster than you can earn it in every situation. It essentially necessitates the use of a primary and secondary set, since there's not much incentive to use an unempowered Relic set.
My suggestion would be twofold.
One: Substantially decrease the cost or drain of the armor. Right now, one level of empowerment lasts 2 hours for 8k Voniblood. At worst, the empowerment needs to last for 8 hours.
Two: Coupled with that change, make Relic armor only lose empowerment as you take Everfrost damage. If you're using it for other content, IE trying to make it your main set, it shouldn't lose empowerment since it's not being subjected to the Everfrost damage it was meant to protect against.
People asked for challenge..even if there werent rewards. Now we have it. Careful what you wish for....
Did someone steal all the zeros from Cryptic's keyboards?
I would also second @ironzerg79. It's complete bs that you have to switch sets. If the rewards are worth it, players will find ways to complete FBI without the armor sets (like Kessell), because you don't get enough Voninblod in a run to maintain them.
If the rewards are not worth it, then people will just continue to run CN.
What a mess!
It means nothing.
Well I was looking foward to this module, I no longer care, that is the sad part, I will do the dailies and get the boons and never step foot into this supposed fun new dungeon.
EVEN if I had to buy 2 trade bar pieces and 1 zen piece, I wouldve done it.. no skin off my back.. sadly, they couldve even monetize this right..
I thought paying for stuff was supposed to allow you access , but in this case it DOESNT.. you can shorten access, but not really that much. Then the whammy of the empowerment process gets thrown in..
Gawd, I thought they couldnt make a more boring campaign then TOD.
CONgrats, I shouldnt have underestemated you guys, you actually did, you made something more boring then waiting around for 16 mins a day waiting on dragon pops .
Black ice is a mysterious substance with dark magical appearance.
Ostorian Relics are pieces of old statues, buildings, etc.
Cryptic's mistake in module 10 is to assume that farming relics is as interesting as farming black ice.
Unfortunately, farming relics is not interesting. it's not fun.
Black ice mining is acceptable to me. It's almost fun because black ice is interesting.
But Relic gathering is completely uninteresting. Not fun at all. Would rather play other game than gather relics.
Relic farming should be changed or removed. Cryptic better do something quick.
If black ice were re-used instead of Ostorian relics, I think players would be more happy,
especially because they would have more choices on how to acquire it.
Also give us loot worth having in FBI. And seriously the legendary rings are character bound? HAHHAHAHA
https://www.theholycrusaders.com/
I will grind the minimum to unlock the campaign and collect the necessary vonistuff.
Concerning FBI, the only solution is to reach the minimum requirements, enter the dungeon and equip my ordinary set to not waste the reinforcements, forcing me to find some workarounds to mitigate the EF damage. If I can make it ok, otherwise I can live without it: the rewards don't worth the effort.
In any case, from whatever perspective I see it, it's a very poor design.
If the rationale behind is to not cannibalize the masterwork sets, then you fail: grinding vonistuff makes a player upset.
If the rationale behind is to have a temporary set that you use sometimes for the most challenging contents (if they exist), then you fail again: that's not what the players want.
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Those things need drastic reworks.. drop down requirement to like 10-15% ..
empowerment either should cost like 75% less or they should drop like vblood like 100% more from all sources.
Dont make us buy HAMSTER gear , none of us want. Im ok with a couple of gates, but they went banana ballistic on this .