Mongrelwoods Alterations

[Random_White_Guy]

I feel like the Mongrelwoods could use some love. A few ideas.

1) Please move the Orcs Quest into a random. It's a very rewarding pursuit in terms of both XP and Supplies. Not only does it give out supplies but then PCs trade their excess supplies and that just turns into this whole thing of "SERVER HAS RESET LETS HIT ORCS TONIGHT BOYS" which feels a bit against the grain set by EFUV. Morghouls I feel is ok as a static quest since it's still very tough for some low end PCs and doesn't give the best reward around but Orcs is just a lot, especially when crews start smashing it regularly.

2) More explorable content. I know it's great the Ponds is near and has its little lake area but there's so much richness of lore, danger, drama, and more that the Mongrelwoods kind of feels half baked in comparison. In all my trips there yes there's some brutally dangerous spawns but i feel like some choice discoveries or even a Nature-themed Dispesnary fight for a Witchstone (Whatever that does) or etc. could lead to a lot of beefed up lore presence in the Woods.

3) Put the Royal huntmaster's bounties to spawn as well inside there. It's great they always show up in the 94th or outer rings as a great push into the rings but I think it'd raise some natural tension with the Ponds and add more emphasis on the King's hatred of changelings if there was a bountied werewolf, a rogue changeling, or otherwise in the Mongrelwoods hiding out that needs to be hunted.

Ponds PCs then have more chance to quarrel with the Peerage PCs or etc either in the ponds at night or in the mongrelwoods as a true "WElcome to the Jungle" vibe.

4) Similar to the Royal Huntmaster, put some incentive for the Stonebuilders to oppose the wild chaos against the rings, sending PCs into the Mongrelwoods to get those who break up the stone or smash shit or etc. Maybe a Stonebuilder Bounty to counter the huntsmen on changelings/etc since their biggest narrative push of late seems to be a crusade against the destruction of the rings. The Stonebuilders have no natural foes or allies it feels like without the Butchers riled up and I feel that changelings/destroyers of rings aka the Mongrelwoods sets as a perfect foe as part of the setting.

Builders x Destroyers.

Just a few ideas.

[Blue41]

These are all good ideas.

Age of BLOAT is back and the Mongrelwoods is a big part of why.

[Anonymous Lemur]

Having the Mongrelwood quests all cycle rather than being static wouldn't be a terrible idea. I think Morghouls is much the same as orcs though and should be one of the random quests. However if it is changed to be like this I think they should be capped at 8. Also another mongrelwoods quests that could share the spawn with those two would be neat with a similar loot system.

Gotta be said though on the subject of "BLOAT." I really don't think it's such a negative thing. The supply levels at the moment are a big part of what keeps efu fun. Having to desperately scrounge for supply in the early days really made starting a new character mechanically feel like an arduous uphill struggle which required vast amounts of play time to keep up. Now though you can play quite casually and still be fine thanks to the abundance. Overcoming someone with potions, when you have potions yourself, really isn't that difficult and is a lot fairer on those with less time as fights rarely last until one side is out of supplies anymore, but rather until one side makes a mistake and mismanages their resources.

[One_With_Nature]

I disagree about making Orcs a random quest area, there aren't really any other fixed quests in the early rings that are higher tier content and the reason this gets done a lot is because it is the only one. I would rather see a couple more high end quests in the earlier rings then get rid of the only one that's there. If you are not a ring runner and you enjoy questing this makes high level questing in the early rings pretty much impossible unless you get lucky.

Having seen the alterations made to Orcs where the reward has already been significantly reduced from what it was originally, I don't think it is unbalanced or contributing in a negative way to the server. At the moment you get two orc bags and a gold reward per PC, the potions I think are fine - you get dispelled like crazy during this quest and you have to use supplies or you just die.  The random items that drop are just that random, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you get dud items that are no use to someone who has run the quest a few times - maybe you sell some items which are great for new pcs that need some items.

The end boss is particularly strong and I've seen it crush a few parties so the challenge rating seems pretty good. The XP is nice and I think scaled accordingly for lower levels risk/reward, however this could be toned back slightly at level 8+

Can't disagree with the other stuff RwG said because it sounds cool, but think the orcs quest is a suggestion discussion in itself.

[Richørd]

The orcs quest being static is good and should remain that way.
Why?
Because it offers a challenge during which you more likely than not will have to use supplies and it can be absolutely bonkers deadly.
The boss of it can ruin entire parties. I even had a run once that failed entirely at the orc boss and we simply abandoned the quest.

[cmenden]

To add my two cents here to the first point, I've had multiple members of the community tell me that Orcs is an Easy Supply Run and so I just don't buy that people think it's all that hard, especially for groups that have already done the quest (which is most everyone at this point)

In addition, the multiple daily sendings for Mongrelwood Orcs seems to indicate that the quest is farmed quite regularly.

I really like the idea of making it a random, so at least it's more of a special thing when it shows up.

Alternatively, here are my suggestions for keeping it static:

1) Keep making it harder until it's no longer ran daily :D
2) Remove the potion bag at the end and see who still does it
3) Make more static quests/seam quests that are comparable in difficulty/rewards (this would be ideal but would take some time)

[Stranger]

The balance of the Feral Orcs quest is, I think, just fine for challenge versus reward. It is a taxing ordeal. It is in a dangerous environment.

But it definitely should not be static. The economy of EFU:C was built around a need for exploration and an inconsistency of available quests. This approach explicitly intended for a dynamic, interaction-driven leveling experience where no one quest could be farmed ad nauseum in the first place. It is unfortunate that the setting's design deviated from that. The current situation incentivizes a playstyle that no one finds desirable. Although it will be some time before the community regains its previous equilibrium, we should definitely shuffle things back.

The Feral Orcs and Morghouls need to be moved into randomized explorables unique to the Mongrelwoods that have a good chance of spawning.

And besides, I hear there's already a high challenge, high reward quest permanently available in Ring 94, if we really need one to be available every reset...

[Stranger]

I disagree about making Orcs a random quest area, there aren't really any other fixed quests in the early rings that are higher tier content and the reason this gets done a lot is because it is the only one. I would rather see a couple more high end quests in the earlier rings then get rid of the only one that's there. If you are not a ring runner and you enjoy questing this makes high level questing in the early rings pretty much impossible unless you get lucky.

Seam content very much fills this void. There are lots of difficult, high end quests in the planes.

More importantly, high level questing is not meant to be static and convenient in EFU:C.

[Pandip]

I want to add to this that the recent changes to seam quests to have a lower level cap has also severely inhibited people's willingness to do anything other than crush the predictable risk/reward of orcs and morghouls every reset. Seam quests used to be max 10 across the board, but this has changed significantly over the course of the last few weeks and it makes it difficult and unrewarding to actually search for this content. This has made it incredibly difficult to be too insular in handling quests if someone in your group dies or hits a level faster than the rest. Normally, insular quest groups might be bad, but I have frequently seen people avoid conflict because it's just easier to quest "as Peerage" or "as Ticker" or "as the Ponds" rather than conflict with the people you have to be nice to to gain levels and supplies.

Most of the other explorable content also doesn't scale to these quests, making these static quests incredibly profitable by comparison. A lot of explorables are easy to build and therefore numerous and there is a sense of discovery to them that I genuinely enjoy! But they also are never on par in terms of risk/reward with most SQA content, especially if you aren't fully spelled up for crush. Some of these explorables are quite difficult but don't hand out a fraction of the potions or have rewards that involve loot that is hilariously bad compared to a greataxe or ring or helm that seems to drop every single orcs run.

I agree that orcs and morghouls tend to have a pretty good risk/reward feel to them, but that doesn't change the fact that it is problematic how often they are run while other content is ignored.

I was under the impression for a long time that the mindset about COR's quest content was that it should be incredibly easy to do things at level 7, but once you hit 8, you're forced to go out and explore non-static content rather than make a daily "aye laddeh them mongrelwood orcs need culling, meet on the bridge //max8". I personally quite liked this, but that dynamic has (intentionally or otherwise) changed vastly lately, and I think it is to the detriment of the server.

[Bio]

this is such a bad idea for a lot of reasons.


there are so few static quests to do at 8+ to keep you supplied, and I don't really wanna hear the HURRR argument of "just go rob yr supply up!!" or whatever. with a bunch of seam quests that were considered decent supply quests nerfed to 7 caps and shit as well, just taking away one of the few high quality get stuff when you need it quests seems so lame. You can login at 8+ and have NOTHING to do but orcs. sometimes i just wanna quest, or NEED to quest to have shit to make it in the PVP rat race. i dont think removing one of the few corner stone statics is a great idea unless you start adding some more supply worthy quests for 8+.


orcs is not an even an easy free potion bag or something, it's a p tough quest in a semi-hellish area that you usually break a little more than even on (how quests should be thank u)

people complain all the time about not having time or the patience to spend hours looking for quests/seams in explorables etc and this just will add more fuel to that issue by removing it.

[wundyboy]

I don't particularly agree with this. Most people have already mentioned about the seams being 7 cap now, which tremendously slows down progression at 8 already. While Orcs is rewarding, it's also super difficult. Along side this difficulty, you'll eventually 'cap out' on this quest.

What I mean by capping out is that the supplies will lose their merit to having them in your bag. Having thirty bull's strength vials, while nice, is not mandatory for any PC.

This quest helps you ringrun excessively because of how much it rewards your supplies, and ringrunning has, in general, been very detrimental to overall supply packs.

This quest helps you establish your PC relatively quickly, instead of relying on RNG to see yourself kitted.

However, I will say that I don't particularly run this quest that often- I think the last time I did was on Darcassan, and it was a single time. There reaches a point where the vials you are gaining from this quest definitely caps out, and the XP isn't that great either. At the very least, it's something to do if there are no seams that have the higher content, or if you really need to be supplied with potions.

Explorables are already plentiful enough as it is- try running around a lot more frequently and hunting for them, maybe? I hit at least 3-4 discoveries on my solo wanderings consistently, because no one else is out there exploring... Most of my time online is generally running around solo looking for seams and stuff, though. It's a nice relaxing circuit I do that I think the entire server should get used to doing, to be honest.

I like the royal huntsman idea and the stonebuilder idea, though.

[Scrappa-yeti]

All great ideas. I think randomised QAs in the mongrelwoods would be better. It suits the vibe of v5, and it would make people want to explore the Mongrelwoods, rather than just make a sending and walk straight to the QA over and over. 

[Howlando]

The plan is to have a couple of options of quests that spawn every reset in a randomized locale in the Mongrelwoods. Just haven't built them yet.

[HeWhoSeeks]

Agreed in that Orcs gives way too much reward for very little risk if the party is aware of the dungeon and how to handle it. Would be cool to see it randomized along with Morghouls. Nerf that supply bloat.

[Richørd]

Agreed in that Orcs gives way too much reward for very little risk if the party is aware of the dungeon and how to handle it. Would be cool to see it randomized along with Morghouls. Nerf that supply bloat.

"Way too much reward".
"Very little risk".
That would be true if the quest did not have two very specific factors :
1. Shamans that dispell, buff their comrades, throw fireballs and incinerate your party members.
2. A boss that can wreck entire parties, especially if the AI decides to randomly target the backline while running straight past the frontline even while attacked.


Or me and nearly everyone else that play on the server are just dirty casual scrubnoobs that have no idea how to build characters or how to play the game.