So, I get why silverfish are in this area conceptually, but from a game design standpoint I'm not quite following why we have a 120-rank critter and a 10-rank critter in the same spot. Is anyone benefiting from this combination?

If not, which I sort of suspect is the case, would it be possible to kick the silverfish out into the easterly portion of the sewers beyond the stairs/gate?

I

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"It's intended for you to have to make choices with your spell slots." ~ NINEVAH1

"Sometimes I feel like I should make that my new forum sig." ~ GM Raesh

>> I'd love a nonsilverfish area too. These creatures would be great for me to backtrain locksmithing with but with the amount of silverfish it isn't too worth it.

This is what I'm experiencing, except I'm backtraining weapons. I will be fighting a thug, a cutthroat, and two silverfish, which is effectively just a thug, a cutthroat, and two empty spaces that just prevented a ruffian from engaging me, so instead he wandered away. Heaven forbid I get four silverfish on me, and then have to slog through killing them so that I can go back to actually training.

I

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"It's intended for you to have to make choices with your spell slots." ~ NINEVAH1

"Sometimes I feel like I should make that my new forum sig." ~ GM Raesh

I've always just killed the silverfish first, it's not like they are much of a challenge. One to three lobs of whatever weapon from my offhand and they go down quick. In doing this, I often find some neat things because the loot from them is different than what thugs drop. Some things I've found are: a witch ball, treasure map, random clothing, and even a neat little frog charm. The charm was just fluff, but still, it was cool.

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You say to Tathalus, "Have you ever tried to clean a troll den? The smell sticks around for years to come."
Liev says, "That is my cue to leave."

>for being unable to get four at-level creatures to engage me.

If you kill the silverfish each time, it's really not hard to get four thugs/ruffains/footpads/cutthroats. A few lobs with an offhand weapon destroys the silverfish without much trouble and if you need four of the others to learn well, then you probably just need to move to another hunting area.

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You say to Tathalus, "Have you ever tried to clean a troll den? The smell sticks around for years to come."
Liev says, "That is my cue to leave."

>> Having a lower end critter mixed in can help immensely when moving up into a new hunting ground so there's that.

Maybe if it's a slightly lower-level creature, and it's mixed on a 1:1 ratio with the higher-level creature. Here though, we have a creature that is literally less than one-tenth the challenge of the other. Upping the threat level on silverfish by about eight or nine fold would also be an acceptable solution, but I think moving them makes a lot more sense.

I

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"It's intended for you to have to make choices with your spell slots." ~ NINEVAH1

"Sometimes I feel like I should make that my new forum sig." ~ GM Raesh

According to epedia (and my own experience, literally and figuratively) I'm actually overhunting very slightly, or exactly at level. In any case, the problem with this approach is that if I have 1 thug and 3 silverfish (which is how it tends to be), in the time it takes me to kill those three silverfish, more silverfish arrive to replace them, leading to an annoying and unproductive cycle of me hardly training any weapon skill. Weapon skill is the root of my complaint, I should mention; my defenses are moving well, given that I am right on par with these creatures, but my weapons are moving a good deal slower because I have to keep taking a break from fighting the stuff I came here to hunt in order to kill creatures that are so far below me that they literally train my weapons exactly as well as standing in front of the bank does. Even if I manage to get more than 2 thugs on me, which is quite a challenge, the moment I kill one of those, another silverfish arrives and I'm back to square one.

As I already proposed, having an area with silverfish mixed in for those few of you that actually find it useful isn't something I'm opposed to; however, it does seem to me that the lion's share of the hunting area should be devoted to people who can handle thugs, rather than people who can't. I'm proposing 20 rooms for silverfish only, 18 rooms for the thug group, and 4 rooms mixed. I think that's a very fair, and given that thugs fill a very specific Zoluren hunting need (110-150 corporeal with boxes) I think it'd be a good idea.

I

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"It's intended for you to have to make choices with your spell slots." ~ NINEVAH1

"Sometimes I feel like I should make that my new forum sig." ~ GM Raesh

I was just down there today and there were two other people. When I did hunt there was usually around 5 silverfish for every one humanoid. They could easily cut it down to cougar in brocket deer levels and it would be far less annoying will still keeping the silverfish there.

Suggesting relatively simple QOL changes is not a sin. I really don't know why people have to get so nasty about stuff like this. It's not even just this thread, it's a trend with posters on the forums in general. Just chill the heck out, guys. The GMs are capable of determining what is and isn't worth their time. Making suggestions and drawing attention to potential issues in a respectful way hurts precisely nobody, but a negative attitude is really offputting and has a really chilling effect on the community, particularly to those "low level" newbies y'all talk about wanting to keep around so badly.

I also quail a little that a skill level that took me 6 months to reach is considered so low level to as not be worth anyone's consideration but I understand that's the game we're playing now.

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Thayet
Follow @thayelf on Twitter for absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever!

>> I'm going to get a bit snarky so you can either take it or leave it.

I never back down from a snark-off.

>> This is not the first time I've heard this complaint and it won't be the last time you make it (if you play more than 2 months).

This is evidence that a change would be warranted.

>> The game isn't designed to make it so that you move from one area to the next and all the creatures meet you desired expectations.

That's true, however... The game is designed with the players in mind, and attempts are being made continuously to offer linear hunting progressions for each region of the game. Obviously there isn't going to be a perfect progression from each area to the next, but strides are made to make it not too difficult to stay within your niche as you move up in ranks. Presently, I'm discovering that the 120-150 rank niche in Zoluren is occupied by crypt fiends (incorporeal, drops boxes, tapers off before 150), dire bears (skinnable, hits hard), and thugs et. al (drops boxes). This is a perfectly adequate set of creatures to fill that niche, however the overbearing presence of silverfish in 100% of the thug rooms makes them a less-than-appealing option. I can and will slog through this rank range, but since I am playing through the levels from 0-150 (200 now) again, I figured I'd chime in with my experience; and apparently, I'm not alone in this complaint, which again is evidence that a change may be in order.

>> I would LOVE it is there were no caracal in the Lun'shele hunting area but it makes sense based on the area design.

Yes, I agree. There are plenty of mixed-creature areas in the game - none of which I particularly care for - but right now we're talking about this area, not because I dislike mixed-creature hunting, but because I think that this particular mixed-creature scenario is inhibiting the area's potential for drawing hunters. I've said it before, but apparently it bears repeating: I'm not opposed to some of the area remaining mixed, but I think it would be very good to offer thugs alone, as well. It certainly might make sense for silverfish to infest the sewers, but the same could be said of so many areas. It makes sense for rats to be in the sewers as well, but they aren't, because we have a rat area and don't need them there. What we have here is a situation where we must balance what makes sense against what is good game design. I feel (and others do as well, it seems) that a fairer compromise than what we have now could be struck.

>> Just deal with it or move on to another area so that others who are willing to deal with it can take your spot.

I am going to do exactly this, but (apparently unlike you, #snark) I care about how well the game is designed. I want to encourage rather than discourage use of new and interesting areas, like this one. I think that the best way to do that in this particular situation is to rearrange the allocation of creatures so that people have three options: 1) just hunting silverfish, 2) hunting silverfish and thugs combined, 3) just hunting thugs. For the life of me I can't see why such a suggestion is meeting resistance; it is literally an "everybody gets what they want" solution.

>> The GM developers have much bigger things to work on than catering a specific low level hunting area, that by the way has been this way for YEARS, to people that will spend two weeks there then move on to their next tier hunting.

I don't agree at all. Low-level hunting is vitally important to the game, because that is where people who have limited experience with the game cut their teeth. I've been playing DR since almost day one, and I know how to handle situations like this; I know how to maximize my training and I am fully capable of getting past difficult situations similar to the one we're discussing here. For the most part, this conversation has very little to do with me - as you noted, in a few weeks I'll not even be hunting thugs - it has much more to do with me noticing a less-than-optimal situation and offering a solution for it.

Now, couched in that sentence I quoted, I think I detect a hint of the "GMs have better things to spend their time on" argument, which is really my favorite to debunk. GMs have other things to spend their time on, to be sure, and we could certainly make value judgments as to what is a better or worse use of that time, but ultimately it's the GMs themselves that decide that. I'm not even slightly demanding that this issue be addressed, I'm simply offering my perspective on it (and asking others to share) and then presenting what I think is a workable resolution. In this case, the solution I'm offering would take about 10-15 minutes to implement. I actually think there are better solutions, but I've not presented those before now because I don't want to ask for that much development time. Since we're on the topic though, here they are...

Idea 1: Most Resource Intensive
Build new area, just for thugs. This way folks who like the way things are can just keep on keepin' on, but those who prefer thugs alone can go to the new area. This is the hardest, because it requires a proposal, design, creation, QC, and then release. Lots of work for not a lot of pay-off.

Idea 2: Mildly Resource Intensive
Place a portal between the two water-rooms (or on one side of the water rooms) of the thug area, preventing critters from crossing over it. On the easterly side, mix silverfish in with the thugs, on the westerly side, thugs alone. This would give a rather fair split of rooms with vs. without silverfish. It probably wouldn't need a proposal, but it would need someone to build the portal and someone else to give it a spot-QC.

Idea 2.1: Slightly More Resource Intensive
Same as Idea 2, but also make the mound on the northern part a Premium-restricted portal, giving Premies 4 rooms of thug-only hunting.

Idea 3: Least Resource Intensive
Take the silverfish and put them out in the main sewer, leaving the thugs in the area past the gate. All this requires is permission from whoever owns the area, and a few tweaks to the behind-the-scenes numbers. From start to finish it's a matter of minutes to execute.

I

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"It's intended for you to have to make choices with your spell slots." ~ NINEVAH1

"Sometimes I feel like I should make that my new forum sig." ~ GM Raesh

You think that area is bad just wait it gets worse!

Wait till you get to the point you have one and only one option mainland then talk.

The 0-300 range is saturated with hunting then you get two options till mid 600's that is when you hit the spot they start coding for the "high level hunting".

That 300 area ain't to bad till gryphons just totally cap out then you are pretty much stuck going to Ratha.

Deadly force, is the force which a person uses, causing—or that a person knows, or should know, would create a substantial risk of causing—death or serious bodily harm. Deadly Force is justified only under conditions of extreme necessity as a last resort,

>>That 300 area ain't to bad till gryphons just totally cap out then you are pretty much stuck going to Ratha.

That was true 5 years ago. Several spots that are decent after young gryphons are orc raiders, warklin, germish'den, stompers, shalswar and some of the DP in the area, and I'm pretty sure there is something under the Zaulfang in that range also.

I've managed to go from 0-1k range without ever spending any time on the islands training. If you are picky about what you hunt, then the islands might have to be an option.

>> Idea 4: Even Least Resource Intensive and Hilarious.
>> Get SGM approval to flex Silverfish up to level 150.

Funny you should mention that... when I originally saw that silverfish were in this area, I assumed it was a pumped-up, massively scarier version of the old silverfish I knew from before. I'm not entirely opposed to this (bringing silverfish up to a reasonably similar level) but I think that it'd be, again, more work to balance them for their new ranks and such. I'm also fully aware that you were joking. (I think; never have been 100% sure with you.)

>> Well then I would start hunting there but only so I could complain, er I mean make a recommendation that thugs, ruffians, footpad and cutthroats be moved into their own specific area cordoned off from the silverfish so I don't have to be troubled by them. I'm only recommending this because I'm concerned about the game design not because I think the world revolves around me and my training in game.
>> My last snarky comment on this topic. Go forth and prosper.

There's a difference between being snarky and still constructive and being a twit and saying nothing to further the conversation. This is the latter.

I

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"It's intended for you to have to make choices with your spell slots." ~ NINEVAH1

"Sometimes I feel like I should make that my new forum sig." ~ GM Raesh

>>I'm a little confused as to why silverfish would drop any of this, and humanoid creatures that could actually use them wouldn't.

The thugs and silverfish both pull from the "random" hopper. It's just that silverfish pull exclusively from there so you arguably have a "better" chance at something nice.

Random hopper is stuff from cards/dira to herbs to scrolls to maps to clothing to etc... aka the "junk" hopper that also has a lot of cool stuff in it.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

Really late to the game, but what I would suggest is that this is where you add in a new weapon. Kill the Thugs with your main weapons and kill the silverfish with your new weapon. Easy way to backtrain in a weapon you may want to test out.


Abison/Rystien