Rhovanion Desert

[-firecracker-]

I suggest moving the entrance to this place to North Ithilien to try and promote its use a little more. At present it is not being used due to to high failure rate, low party numbers and long travel time.

[Nobutadas]

This area is difficult to make more available because we don't want to change the world layout.  According to a middle earth map, Rhovanion is where it should lie, and moving it would destroy the layout of the world.

Will still look into ways to fix this problem of under use of this area.

[Rodriquez]

How about introducing a travellling system? An order of magi that will, for a small fee, teleport you to a harder to reach area? Or they maintain a system of portals across select areas of the world?

OR, better yet, a gnomish artificer guild that is operating a zeppelin airline! Goggles, vents...in addition, they sell cool Xbows and ammo

[NLawson]

Or better yet - just allow more ways to take advantage of Turril's Travelling service thing in the Lounge... all you need to do is allow certain areas to be accessed without needing those special tickets (charge a fee instead), and boom - instant airline.

[Redaurora]

Well a service such as that would require someone visiting the area manually each server restart at least. They could possibly unlock some teleport mechanism that has a long cooldown per person, for the rest of their faction to access the area.

Honestly though, I'm not really a fan of easy teleporting, I thought about this a while ago, and that thought was that several people could participate in some teleportation ritual that sent one person somewhere else, maybe 3 mages could teleport 1 person somewhere, so to teleport the entire group they would need at least 6 people, 3 to teleport 3 of the group members to a destination , and the 3 teleported to summon the 3 left behind to their location.

Bottom line, .. Meh. Not biggest priority.

Teleporting is hardly necessary if areas arn't a trial and tribulation (read: pain in the ass [read: unecessary]) experience to get to.

[NLawson]

I agree, I don't really like easy teleporting, but it beats walking for 20 maps whose only purpose is to make the destination seem appropriately far away...I don't know if those hugely expensive "teleport to party leader" books are still in the shops (they were more than a little pointless - who's going to waste that much money when the action widget thing that every player gets given has a "Follow Nearest PC" option on it for free? Doesn't cut down on time. but it saves on clicking), but they were another way of crossing huge distances without walking.

Some areas truly are pointless though. Khamul's approach always springs to mind for me...I would really like his scythe (among other things he drops), I've heard it's very good, but he's the ONLY boss Gondor can attack out there, and he's absolutely miles away from anything else. A few good drops, from a VERY difficult boss (unless you attack him right), with virtually nothing else of any value out in that direction...it's not worth even trying. Which is why I haven't tried, and I still don't have it.

That, and I haven't played in a good while.

I agree, it's not a priority...I would like to see SOME way of getting to certain areas more easily, just because they're so very far away. It doesn't even need to be a centralised teleport area - just things like the little boats in the desert south of XR, and the south end of PF...the PF one doesn't even skip that many maps - only about 4, and it's still REALLY useful, and loads of people use it. Even just a few portals or shortcuts in certain spots, like Rodriguez suggested, to cut down on the traveling time between certain areas.

[Rodriquez]

Yeah top priority is killing lag IMHO (e.a. reducing summons etc). Nothing worse than hoofing 20 minutes to get killed cause u were flat footed by lag  

I will stop about portals and travel in this thread

edit: started new post about travelling in general. See "To hoof or not to hoof"

[Nobutadas]

I did a little experiment and here is the time it took to get to Rhovanion Desert.


12.7 – Minas Tirith: City
16.1 – Minas Tirith: Gate
35.1 – Pelennor Fields
20.5 – Anduin West Bank
43.5 - Osgiliath
29.9 – Anduin North Bank
29.9 – East Bank
53.4 - Nindalf
44.2 – Dead Marshes
3:09.0 – Emyn Muil
32.3 – Brown Lands
46.5 – Mirkwood South (Had to recast invisi
57.3 – Mirkwood North
26.7 – Mirkwood Mountains
<time> - Mirkwood East  (Didn’t record this time. Doesn’t matter too much.)
Total: 11:30.2

Just for anyones information. ;)  Also, I was hasted and invisible with no monk levels.

On a side note, I personally don't feel like getting to the area is the main problem (traveling is still a pain and might be a problem. ;)  ).  If your going to spend a few hours farming there, what's 10 min to get there.  I feel like the big thing is spending those 10 min, dieing in 10 min, going back out there for 10 min, dieing in 5 min.  If those times were changed to traveling for 10 min, living and farming for 2 hours, people wouldn't care too much about a teleportation system.

[Noruas]

You are right Nobu, the work must be done on the playability of this aera, not on the time to travel to.

Time from MM is about 10 min too.

And perhaps removing brownland aera or invis purge thing.

[Redaurora]

I did a little experiment and here is the time it took to get to Rhovanion Desert.


12.7 – Minas Tirith: City
16.1 – Minas Tirith: Gate
35.1 – Pelennor Fields
20.5 – Anduin West Bank
43.5 - Osgiliath
29.9 – Anduin North Bank
29.9 – East Bank
53.4 - Nindalf
44.2 – Dead Marshes
3:09.0 – Emyn Muil
32.3 – Brown Lands
46.5 – Mirkwood South (Had to recast invisi
57.3 – Mirkwood North
26.7 – Mirkwood Mountains
<time> - Mirkwood East  (Didn’t record this time. Doesn’t matter too much.)
Total: 11:30.2

Just for anyones information. ;)  Also, I was hasted and invisible with no monk levels.

On a side note, I personally don't feel like getting to the area is the main problem (traveling is still a pain and might be a problem. ;)  ).  If your going to spend a few hours farming there, what's 10 min to get there.  I feel like the big thing is spending those 10 min, dieing in 10 min, going back out there for 10 min, dieing in 5 min.  If those times were changed to traveling for 10 min, living and farming for 2 hours, people wouldn't care too much about a teleportation system.

That also assumes your intimately familiar with which door to go in, which takes half a dozen trips through or so, which would be very much slower.

[NLawson]

Good test Nobu - this also assumes that it's WORTH hanging around for more than a few hours, as you said. Even if I go out to (again, drawing on personal experience) Khamul, there's essentially nothing else in his area worth killing, so I'd be as well porting back and going off somewhere else for a few hours.

And also - that assumes you HAVE a few hours...if you're just logging in for a quick boss hunt, spending half of that time simply walking there is a pain, and you get ported back from most places (or they're not safe to log out in) which means doing the whole walk again.

I agree though - if traveling time was ignored and playability increased, I can't honestly say I would complain still. If the area is worth going to, then the time doesn't matter THAT much.

Some areas are still obscenely far away though...look at the Hobbits - you spend a good half hour walking out there, and then they hips you with 91 ab and 100 damage per hit, and you die. If that was more playable, people might actually GO there.

[Noruas]

Hobbit aera is ridiculously hard, remove it to fix server charge...

[-firecracker-]

RR built this area for party play, and the NPC difficulty reflects this which is why I don;t think the NPCs should be nerfed (and I hope they are not) - it should remain as a 3 or 4 minimum person party area. The only nerf I would consider is removing the ability for them to dispel.

If the entrance can't be moved then the remaing option is to make it easier to get to. The approach to it is the same as a level 40 group going to Rivendell or Dale or w/e and just think, how many times do you see level 40s die in Mirkwood South due to a combination of the NPC setup and AI. So:

1) Remove the maze in Emyn Muil
2) Remove invis purge (or even Brown Lands althogether as it seems redundant) so you are not instantly killed in Mirkwood south

[Terrorble]

Heh, and here I thought the answer was to quit making sprawl.

Emyn Muil is going to see some changes.

[Terrorble]

I need a little more info about which parts of Khamul's approach aren't very good.  I realize all the areas north of there are basically for Mordor players, but Dagorlad and Morannon are only a few maps away from Dol Guldur.  If you mean Emyn Muil, say no more.

Khamu has some nice things.  His necromancers have nice things, the swordsman has some good stuff, and there are unique spawns and another boss in the basement.  The orcs are junky, but that's how the basic soldier mobs often are.

[sestitodc]

I think one of the problems fire was talking about was the npcs in Brown Lands. The Treants have True Seeing, and the branches have Invisbility Purge. The problem with this is the branches always cast invisi purge (I guess b/c the AI notices that the TS mob is chasing after something). Since every group just tries to run through Brown Lands and ignore the mobs, sometimes the branches follow to Mirkwood South, continuing to purge anyone's invisi. The spiders in Mirkwood South then have web bolts that last for ~a minute+, if the player isn't killed outright.

[Nobutadas]

I think one of the problems fire was talking about was the npcs in Brown Lands. The Treants have True Seeing, and the branches have Invisbility Purge. The problem with this is the branches always cast invisi purge (I guess b/c the AI notices that the TS mob is chasing after something). Since every group just tries to run through Brown Lands and ignore the mobs, sometimes the branches follow to Mirkwood South, continuing to purge anyone's invisi. The spiders in Mirkwood South then have web bolts that last for ~a minute+, if the player isn't killed outright.

This should be an easy fix. ^.^

[NLawson]

I need a little more info about which parts of Khamul's approach aren't very good.  I realize all the areas north of there are basically for Mordor players, but Dagorlad and Morannon are only a few maps away from Dol Guldur.  If you mean Emyn Muil, say no more.

It's mostly just that there's really no point in going all the way up there just for him (ok, and some of his minions) and yeah it is mostly Emyn Muil on that side of things. By the time you get all the way up there, you could have gone after something else (say...the Black Serpent and everything else en-route) and made decent progress along that path. Or maybe gone to hit Baragor or the Serpents under Outpost or the Thrall or possibly working your way towards the Prince dude and Old Man Willow... if you don't have the right toons you really have trouble with Khamul, so it's much easier to just pick a different line of bosses and go for drops that way.

He does have some nice stuff, and I'd quite like to kill him more often, but it's just too far out of the way to make it worth farming when you can get stuff that's only slightly worse (and a lot quicker and easier to get) by going to say...Helm's Deep, or something around that area. Hell, if you're willing to go good/evil you can get the execution from the serpents (which is MUCH closer and easier to farm), and it has similar damage bonuses even if they are slightly lower (the only real downside being lack of keen - wands =D).
Since most of the things that drop good stuff take a good while to respawn (which is fair), you can clear the whole area in say...ten to twenty minutes, but then you have to wait for a while for some of them to come back, and a LONG time for Khamul (couple of hours at least).

And when you go ALL the way out there, to find out somebody already killed him...that's just annoying.

Yaaaay for brown lands invis purge going away possibly.
I should play more...stupid university giving me work to do.

[Nobutadas]

We have to be careful making everything easier.... Some players like to be able to solo stuff and easier stuff.  That's fine, they should have those options.  However, some players like challenges.  And if you are going after a challenge, shouldn't the prize be worth more?  If everything is simple, people will lose interest, if everything is hard, people will lose interest.  It's finding that balance.

[NLawson]

Well it's not so much making him any easier, just making it less of a hassle to get to him...he'd still be just as hard to kill.

For example - if the Balrog could be accessed by a secret door in Osgil sewers, that wouldn't make him ANY easier to kill. It'd make him more convenient, sure, but he's not THAT far out of the way as is, and there's enough stuff out near Moria to make it worth going and killing them if you can. I like Helm's Deep - it's not too close, not too far away, not TOO hard, but hard enough to give a challenge, it gives decent drops from a few NPCs, and it's pretty close to some other nice areas.

And there's no crazy mazes or invis purging branches to stop you either XD

[cosmic_pariah]

Please remove lvl cap to this area. it would actually see some action if ppl didnt have to worry about leaving at lvl 36/

[-firecracker-]

Now that the area is more accessible with the changes to the maze map (what ever it was called) I think all is well again - this area is tough for sure, but keep it at the level Red Raisin designed it for IMO...considering its rewards...