the new campeign grind is out of control

royinever · August 2016

the title says it all

we have topic on fangbreaker everfrost requirement , topic on ten town supply grind ,
now here is a third one if the devs didnt see it clear enough

this entire campeign grind is insane even in the terms of neverwinter grind or grindwinter if u wish

first, im not just talking about the supplies gated behind daily and weekly quests

im also talking about vinblood or whatever its called

i allready doing the campeign on 6 toons daily so naturally im sticking with the dailies and weeklies only, no time for HE farm on 6 toons because there is also other stuff u want to do in this game beside grinding campeign (there is ad grind also XD )

anyway... this far by stick to the dailies each toon has 1200 vinblood +- , aka allmost nothing in term of tasks requirement
and its over a week now ,
other campeigns i have allready 1-2 boons in a week, this one not even close to the first boon

this is way beyond insane

this entire campeign needs either buff to the currency earned or nerf the requirement to the tasks

plain and simple

i will add no more

oldbaldyone · August 2016

I honestly cant see why you would do 6 toons through this. The boons arent that great, its long and tedious and the only real end game is the island and i cant imagine all 5 toons have what it takes to be effective in there.

The game passed alt friendly territory long ago. Focus on a toon or two and be happier.

Aside from that...yes...this grind is nuts but it is reasonable in regards to time per day. Its the overall time thats not.

ghoulz66 · August 2016

oldbaldyone said:
I honestly cant see why you would do 6 toons through this. The boons arent that great, its long and tedious and the only real end game is the island and i cant imagine all 5 toons have what it takes to be effective in there.

The game passed alt friendly territory long ago. Focus on a toon or two and be happier.

Nooo I want my 8 toons!

stretch611 · August 2016

Lightweights... 10 Active toons.

However, I'm smart enough to wait and see if it is even worth it. The boons seem meh... The only reason to do anything in the campaign is to unlock FBI. As much as I want new content, I am not going to waste my time until I make sure the dungeon rewards arent the same level of lame as every other dungeon.

Also, the EF resistance requirement will probably need adjusting as well. While the new armor is slightly better for some classes, having it become worse then existing armor if you do not grind enough voninblood is a horrible idea. I will not be buying armor just to get into FBI, just to take it off when I get inside to use the good armor.

kvet · August 2016

I'm mostly grinding for the boons. I'm not interested in the addiction-ware. I recall how annoying Black Ice addiction was, so I have no desire to become a voninblod addict. I'll wait until Cryptic comes to its senses and drops the resistance requirement like they did with KR. If that never happens... well.. Oh well - I can live with that since I plan to wear Prestige anyway.

nameexpired · August 2016

royinever said:
the title says it all

we have topic on fangbreaker everfrost requirement , topic on ten town supply grind ,
now here is a third one if the devs didnt see it clear enough

this entire campeign grind is insane even in the terms of neverwinter grind or grindwinter if u wish

first, im not just talking about the supplies gated behind daily and weekly quests

im also talking about vinblood or whatever its called

i allready doing the campeign on 6 toons daily so naturally im sticking with the dailies and weeklies only, no time for HE farm on 6 toons because there is also other stuff u want to do in this game beside grinding campeign (there is ad grind also XD )

The obvious plan by management is that you do the campaign on only one toon and later buy the campaign for about 5k Zen for your 5 other toons.

shiva79 · August 2016

you buy it for 5 other toons and still need 98347698756439876539786934879376 voninblood, if you want empowered gear.
empowerment is the biggest flaw in that system, with its current expiration rate (think 12k voninblood to bring all 4 pieces to t3, just to see it expire back to t2 after ONE hour)

shiva79 · August 2016

sry doublepost

kvet · August 2016

The sad part is, while most people hate it, very few will actually boycott it. It's the Walmart effect. If you don't like it - don't do it, and tell all your friends and get them to boycott it too. It's the only way Cryptic will listen.

shiva79 · August 2016

think it isnt easy to please everyone, as a developer.
but its even harder to please no one, and i think this is happening right now with the current campaign.
the setting is nice, i also like the zones, but the campaign content in general now is simply no fun for me, so i stopped chasing after it.
and that this is happening the second time after black ice stuff, is just the topping

tvcity · August 2016

i stopped playing the new campaign after 2 days of fishing...

cdnbison · August 2016

It's about 70k voninblood to unlock everything. A guy in my guild said it took him about 10 hours of relic farming to hit that point.

While I'm not a huge fan of the gating, I do understand it. It seems overwhelming at the start, but as I've unlocked weeklies, it seems do-able, and my progress has been steady. I mean, they generally look at the content taking 5-ish weeks to open up completely, and I'd say I'm on track with that.

Lastly, I am ok with how they did the new gear. Not having to grind out a profession makes it way easier to deal with. I'll often use time waiting for queues / groups to form to farm up some relics to keep my voninblood stock up. Not difficult at all.

urabask · August 2016

cdnbison said:
It's about 70k voninblood to unlock everything. A guy in my guild said it took him about 10 hours of relic farming to hit that point.

While I'm not a huge fan of the gating, I do understand it. It seems overwhelming at the start, but as I've unlocked weeklies, it seems do-able, and my progress has been steady. I mean, they generally look at the content taking 5-ish weeks to open up completely, and I'd say I'm on track with that.

Lastly, I am ok with how they did the new gear. Not having to grind out a profession makes it way easier to deal with. I'll often use time waiting for queues / groups to form to farm up some relics to keep my voninblood stock up. Not difficult at all.

You do realize that you'll basically need to spend half an hour grinding relics for every two FBI runs, right?

pr3stigex · August 2016

They should just re-haul the whole campaign, take out the empowering effect, take out the everfrost dmg or reduce it. They said they need more time to work on FBI, so how about just take some time, unlock the dungeon when you finish but don't punish us for it.

weaver936 · August 2016

pr3stigex said:
They should just re-haul the whole campaign, take out the empowering effect, take out the everfrost dmg or reduce it. They said they need more time to work on FBI, so how about just take some time, unlock the dungeon when you finish but don't punish us for it.

They always do SOMETHING to lock people into content... with the old Campaigns they gave some minimal rewards for doing the old stuff that was repeatable. This looks like a campaign that has been designed from ground up to keep people locked into doing it over a very long time. AND... it's in the SAME spirit of the other Ice Wind Dale areas of the game. The last IWD campaign was similar and the only reason we don't still have to farm Black Ice is because the gear that used it is obsolete. So, they aren't doing anything different there.

I think it is GREAT to not WASTE content that already exists in game........ HOWEVER... I think it's HORRIBLE to lock the ONLY interesting playable content in the zone behind a month or 2 month wall which is essentially DELAYING the release of Mod 10 in actuality but providing window dressing of new zones and busy-work and promoting it as a full mod so they don't lose the influx of new and returning players they seem to shoot for every mod release.

It's almost like they faked their way through this cycle to get all the benefits of a Mod release (financially) but not actually giving the player base much for it's time.

IDK... I'm still HOPING that I'm wrong.. but I'm so TIRED of having to make excuses for the Devs every Mod and making up some story to motivate me not to quit playing.

wylonus · August 2016

it is "pause-mode" online game, it is a game where almost everyone stuck with same item score that hadnt been raised since mod 7 and c-wards taken away.

no sense of progression with characters, it like having a writer's block, nowhere to go.

sm0ld3r · August 2016

cdnbison said:

Lastly, I am ok with how they did the new gear. Not having to grind out a profession makes it way easier to deal with. I'll often use time waiting for queues / groups to form to farm up some relics to keep my voninblood stock up. Not difficult at all.

How so? What good is gear you can't actually use? It will run down and need recharging faster than you can farm vb to empower it.

raydroot · August 2016

I don't know what the big deal is, running 2 toons through the dailies takes 35 min tops. Have boots restored for both and 2 boons. This is no where near as bad as the Sharandar campaign. ; )

niadan · August 2016

I have had no issue with "the grind". Campaign is easy, and a little more rep and I will be ready for Fangbreaker by the time I get my new undies. Rather smooth so far.

kvet · August 2016

So, my GF is in regular DF raid gear (not elemental). With the 3-piece set bonus included, the difference is something like +124 power, +24 HP, +100-some Defense (can't remember) and -264 (I think) crit for the relic raid chest.

That's the net difference to upgrade to the lvl 150 version.

Worth the MASSIVE grind and effort and expense? Hmmmmm?

kemnimtarkas · August 2016

kvet said:
The sad part is, while most people hate it, very few will actually boycott it. It's the Walmart effect. If you don't like it - don't do it, and tell all your friends and get them to boycott it too. It's the only way Cryptic will listen.

I stopped after half an hour on one of my 2 main toons. It seems like IWD all over again to me, just more complicated.

At this point, I'm waiting for the weekend - 2x RP and 2x Refinement. Been saving up leadership boxes for months. Once that's over...I'll probably take a break from NWN, check back in to see if anything worthwhile is happening in Mod 11.

kiraskytower · August 2016

Last night I finished my dailys and realized I now had enough reputation for boon 2 in the new campaign (After almost 2 weeks of playing it). I went to see what I was missing and realized I needed 6000 Voninblood for the boon .... after 2 weeks of working through the campaign I had amassed a total of about 2300 Voninblood. So I organized a Heroic encounter run and after about an hour and a half I finally had boon 2.

I don't mind running the occasional HE (though HEs are content I do wish Cryptic would use less of), but it's a bit silly when after 2 weeks of grinding through the campaign quests I still need the help of 20 or so other players for an hour and a half to get me to a relatively insignificant boon ...

As this campaign goes on I for see many, many hours running the same group of major HEs instead of the content we really want to be running ... the dungeons.

sneak · September 2016

royinever said:
the title says it all

we have topic on fangbreaker everfrost requirement , topic on ten town supply grind ,
now here is a third one if the devs didnt see it clear enough

this entire campeign grind is insane even in the terms of neverwinter grind or grindwinter if u wish

first, im not just talking about the supplies gated behind daily and weekly quests

im also talking about vinblood or whatever its called

i allready doing the campeign on 6 toons daily so naturally im sticking with the dailies and weeklies only, no time for HE farm on 6 toons because there is also other stuff u want to do in this game beside grinding campeign (there is ad grind also XD )

anyway... this far by stick to the dailies each toon has 1200 vinblood +- , aka allmost nothing in term of tasks requirement
and its over a week now ,
other campeigns i have allready 1-2 boons in a week, this one not even close to the first boon

this is way beyond insane

this entire campeign needs either buff to the currency earned or nerf the requirement to the tasks

plain and simple

i will add no more

This game is incredibly easy compared to most MMORPGs and it's your choice to try to dedicate time to 6 characters. Characters typically exist in MMORPGs with the intention of being the only character played. Some people CHOOSE to play more characters. If you make that choice, that's on you... not the company working on the game.

The voninblood is also incredibly easy to get and a lot easier than having to wait day by day for the reputation and other currencies.

kvet · September 2016

FB and boon 3 unlocked tomorrow I think - maybe boon Saturday (can't recall how many secrets per day there are). Not so bad, though I don't plan to run FB anyway. The bad grind is for empowerment and the need for resistance.

Edit: 3 secrets per daily, I'm at 41 - need 48, so that means boon 3 on Monday.

niadan · September 2016

I look at the empowerment in the same way as overloads, just cheaper.

silverkelt · September 2016

if they changed empowerment system and also dropped vblood from daily quests from 50 per to 150 per.. this would be a little more fair all around.

This way , yes you could start working on alts some.

They clearly overgated it , except for anyone just running one toon.

kvet · September 2016

niadan said:
I look at the empowerment in the same way as overloads, just cheaper.

You can get overloads for free without any significant grind. I can't remember the last time I've had to pay for one. In any case, they're either 2x or 8x longer lasting and you don't have to grind out 200 dailies just for that 1 hour of combat time. Plus they add more than a barely negligible bonus over existing gear. Anyway, it's a bad comparison, since there's no alternative to overloads - you have them slotted or you don't whereas Elemental Dragonflight, including set bonuses, is more or less superior to Relic anyway, so there's a choice.

While the maps and even the story is well done in SK (in fact, some of the best maps in the game, IMO) - the big reward is a complete bust. Empowerment and the entire everfrost mechanic is simply a return of Black Ice - which the players loathed. A solid definition of insanity is doing something twice and expecting difference results - at the very least, that's a good definition of incompetent management. But, won't matter because enough players won't care how terrible of an idea it was to bring these mechanics back into the game and will run this content anyway and all of the appropriate KPIs will be hit and Cryptic will think it's a big ol' success.

qexotic · September 2016

silverkelt said:
if they changed empowerment system and also dropped vblood from daily quests from 50 per to 150 per.. this would be a little more fair all around.

I think you meant to say 'increased vblood from daily quests from 50 per to 150 per..' It would be helpful if they also increased the amount given by the weekly quests. The 18 handed out at present is just ridiculous. Maaybe they left out a zero on the end ?

loboguild · September 2016

I would love to hear somebody pointing out the internal thought process of this campaign. The only reasonable explanation I personally have is that they are actively trying to troll. "Hey you want reasonable campaigns for your ALT play? Try to complete THIS muhahahahah!"

There's not enough Voninblod, Supplies, everything. Now that Sharandar sized campaigns and Mod 3 failed systems are back, can we at least kill bosses from below again and run from start to finish with TRs in CN?

the new campeign grind is out of control

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