Howdy,

I've been training up a number of F2P characters over the past few months, and have consistently run into issues hunting in Zoluren. The most obvious rough spot is transitioning out of rock trolls, which will take you up to 75 ranks or so. While there are a number of critters that present "good" candidates for moving up, they are located in hunting areas that don't work.

The best place to try and move up is the blood wolves/bears/ogres area out the West gate. Unfortunately, the hunting area is not set up well because of "critter bleed," where much more difficult critters wander into lower-level critter areas and make it extremely difficult to hunt regularly.

The Rocky Outcrop area could be a perfect transition area with just three fixes.

1. Remove Up/Down exits and make them CLIMBs. This would prevent critter bleed and make it so that each area is more distinct and can be safely hunted at each step on the ladder.
2. Increase the level of the blood wolves in this area so they are more difficult than rock trolls. I believe the blood wolves in Therengia would serve as a good template.
3. Remove dire bears from the blood wolf area all together. They are far too difficult. This problem might be solved by (1) above.

Ideally, the area would look something like:

blood wolves --> silver-back bears --> young ogres ---> dire bears

(Wolves and SB bears need to be closer in level, with wolves being just above rock trolls and SB bears being right in between ogres and wolves. I think the transition from ogres to dire bears is okay right now).

I think the area has a lot of potential and really just needs a few tweaks to make the F2P experience MUCH less frustrating.

Thanks,
GENT

> The best place to try and move up is the blood wolves/bears/ogres area out the West gate. Unfortunately, the hunting area is not set up well because of "critter bleed," where much more difficult critters wander into lower-level critter areas and make it extremely difficult to hunt regularly.

This discussion comes up periodically, but I'm going to disagree. The best place I've found for F2P characters is snow beasts. You have that small track of STR before you get into the main area. A beast comes in very irregularly and you can deal with them one at a time. They also train well. After snow beasts, I like going to grave worms and then to cutthroats/ruffians. You can leave the wolves/silverfish alive to keep the harmful creature count fairly low.

> I don't know if one creature or two spawn every 10 minutes or so that is probably actually due to bleed from someone else spawning them in the proper hunting area should truly be considered 'best'.

I want to say that no one else was hunting there, but it's impossible to prove. Probably worth a test or GM confirmation.

Even if you're right, you could always spawn 1-2 and then go north west so they can't keep spawning. Easy way to control the population.

> I have no clue why every time this thread comes up you keep insisting that having to game spawning mechanics is good enough.

Slow down there turbo. I keep saying it works because I have personal experience that it works. I've done this with multiple characters at this point.

> Why so dead set against having a hunting ground in Zoluren specific for those 10 ranks?

I'm not telling people not to hunt elsewhere, but I'm talking from experience that this track works.

> It makes no sense.

Listen to the words I'm typing. I've done this. It works.

> I can't think of a single legitimate reason to be against this.

It.... works....

> Hunting grounds sub-150 ranks cover 10 rank ranges

Has it been a while since you've leveled a novice because my experience is that they cover way more than 10 ranks. Rats alone will let you easily lock until the 30s. You can spend 5 ranks or so in hogs/goblins (if you don't have guild buffs) and then jump to eels for another 15-20 [45-55]. Then to Beissworms or blood wolves for another 20-30 [~75 ranks]. Then to ogres or snow beasts (I prefer snow beasts for a variety of reasons) which will give you another 25-35 [soft cap at ~105 ranks]. Then to grave worms for another 25 [~130] and then to ruffians....

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I'm not going to lose any sleep over you disagreeing with me, but I've done it. Multiple times. I know it works. I don't say it's the only way, but I do say that it's my preferred method.

> "Make critters in a hunting area spawn then leave the hunting area and hope one or two follow you out" is a pretty awful method.


Fair enough, but I've never had to do that. I was only offering it as a suggestion IF Absolon's assumption was correct.

And even if you completely milk all of your options that only takes you to 75 with blood wolves and snowbeasts aren't a real option until 80 at a bare minimum, 85 if you aren't a guild with defense buffs at that level yet. There needs to be a better option than "listen to classes for a few ranks" or "over hunt this one creature that requires getting healed before you can even lock a weapon."

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> And even if you completely milk all of your options that only takes you to 75 with blood wolves and snowbeasts aren't a real option until 80 at a bare minimum, 85 if you aren't a guild with defense buffs at that level yet.

This is just wrong. I've done it with a paladin, cleric, trader, and a moon mage very recently.

> There needs to be a better option than "listen to classes for a few ranks" or "over hunt this one creature that requires getting healed before you can even lock a weapon."

Okay... go ahead and campaign for that. No one is stopping you. I've just given my experiences. It's possible, not difficult, and frankly more engaging than milking 10 ranks out of a creature that trains slowly and can barely hit you.

I don't get why you're so upset about this. So you have a different opinion. Cool. Variety is a good thing in a game.

<<I've done it with a paladin, cleric, trader, and a moon mage very recently.

Yes, you've explained that you sit with one creature in a place that doesn't spawn them regularly. That's a great option. /sarcasm

You're the only person in the multiple threads on this saying there isn't a gap. You're the one that is wrong.

<<Variety is a good thing in a game.

This is an hilariously ironic statement from someone who is saying there shouldn't be any new hunting area or fixes to current ones because there's a single very crappy option available.

<<I don't get why you're so upset about this.

Because you're saying that nothing should be done when there's clearly an issue and there is literally no skin off your back if something does get done. It's like you're saying you personally don't like or need ice cream therefore no one else should have ice cream.

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> Yes, you've explained that you sit with one creature in a place that doesn't spawn them regularly. That's a great option. /sarcasm

No... I gave it as an option for people who have problems with this jump. Let's keep the hyperbole in check.

> This is an hilariously ironic statement from someone who is saying there shouldn't be any new hunting area or fixes to current ones because there's a single very crappy option available.

You're so off base that I'm just going to spell out my feelings and thoughts for you.

1. It's possible for people to level solely in Zoluren.

2. I suspect that new creatures wouldn't be a high priority as this encourages F2P accounts to buy a pass outside of zoluren.

3. I personally wouldn't spend time developing for this small niche, not that this matters. I mean at all.

4. I don't think it's necessary, and it's one of many options near that level.

5. I (and this is the big one) personally enjoy the creature and ladder.

In no way have I said that there shouldn't be new hunting zones. I have said that's it's not a needed feature in the game. Not that you seem to care about my actual position compared to your imaginary straw man, but I would love to see more construct hunting zones added around the realms. I don't think it's a huge priority, nor do I think it's even pressing. Like I said before, we have different opinions. Cool.

> Because you're saying that nothing should be done when there's clearly an issue and there is literally no skin off your back if something does get done. It's like you're saying you personally don't like or need ice cream therefore no one else should have ice cream.

You know what. You're right. I'm so sorry. I don't know how I even dared to have an opinion that you don't agree with. I know it changes nothing. I know it affects you in no way. I know that your understanding of it is mostly driven by assumptions. I just don't know what to say other than I'm sorry. Please forgive me. /s

http://ak-hdl.buzzfed.com/static/2014-01/enhanced/webdr07/29/15/anigif_enhanced-3065-1391027267-11.gif

Seriously though, I give up. I'm just going to put you on ignore for a little while and let you yell at yourself.

>Maybe we've gotten soft. Maybe it's a little silly that with a minimum amount of effort we can fight for hours and gain tons of experience in the process with essentially zero risk.

As always, if you want the game to be more dangerous, use worse gear, avoid buffs, undertrain stats, etc.

> Also, if everyone took your advice about the sparse rooms where sometimes maybe a single snowbeast would spawn,

Talk about grabbing onto one little thing I said and ignoring everything else. You don't have to, you know. You can treat it the same way you treat bears. Stand in the tick of things and debilitate/kill to keep spawns down. Put some thought into the hunting experience.

Either way, I get it. Some people want a nice, slow, no-thought scripting experience. That's fine. I'm not saying they're wrong to ask for that. I still believe that the use case is fairly small. It's the sub-section of F2P accounts that aren't willing to spend $2 for a pass, and are experienced enough with the game to be in the script it as fast as possible phase.

We're starting to go in circles and get a bit heated. Lets tone it down a bit before things end up shut down.

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<<Talk about grabbing onto one little thing I said and ignoring everything else. You don't have to, you know. You can treat it the same way you treat bears. Stand in the tick of things and debilitate/kill to keep spawns down. Put some thought into the hunting experience.

Dire bears will kill you no matter how many times you cast a debilitation spell at them if you're hunting silver-backs. You certainly can't kill them at the level you are hunting silver-backs at, even with debilitation. Even if you manage to stay alive long enough to learn something, you're only going to be learning defence and debilitation training because you're not going to have time to do anything else but deal with keeping the dire bear at bay. And once it's at melee, consider yourself a dead man walking because good luck actually retreating from it once you want to get out of there. Gods forfend you get a second one. It is far from what I would call an ideal or fun situation.

Meanwhile, changing a couple of room exits from up/down to climbs would drastically reduce the rate of dire bears appearing and make it so that you can hunt the already challenging at that level silver-back bears in peace.

<<I wish Tactics (modified by Expertise for Barbarians and whatever Paladins are getting) was more useful in terms of letting you control things like range and position of multiple mobs. It ironically would alleviate some of the issues with jumping hunting areas since you'd be able to finesse things a bit. But c'est la vie.

That is would be an improvement to combat engagement as a whole, and I like the suggestion, but it wouldn't alleviate certain specific hunting ground gap issues like dire bears for the same reason as above. Its benefit would be that it would likely allow you to slow down engagement rate in a hunting area that is slightly above your level like snowbeasts, for example.

Another similar solution would be spawn management tools, like Call of the Siren. That was a wonderful ability when I had it. Being able to adjust spawn levels to suit my needs was very useful on my Bard.

Both of these would require several orders of magnitude more resources put towards them than simply adjusting a room exits, however. We have a viable creature in place already, so the best solution would be a slight adjustment to the hunting area to match that viability.

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<<That and give a point to there being missile and pole ranged weapons at all in PvE.

More of a point, to be fair. Engagement delay is the current point. Without it we would have an engagement system like GemStone where you walk into a room and everything can instantly start beating on each other. It's my least favourite part about GemStone combat and one of the things I miss most about DR combat when I occasionally dabble over there.

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This gap sucks someone tweak those new vipers to teach higher or something, this is highly unenjoyable

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As a barbarian it's brutal and this is not my first rodeo as a barbarian. I had to listen to evasion shield and party classes for a few ranks then did snow beasts. THere is a gap here and it can't be by design.

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Fair enough, yes its doable. It also sucks.

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The suck continues after this folder.

Crocs teach PERFECTLY after ogres, but getting them in your room is nigh impossible. I'm hoping the suck ends after this, with leucros, vipers, guardians, genis, etc.

I think much of the problem is that most hunting areas in Zoluren have been long neglected. The F2P folks running up the ladder have been making this more and more apparent.

GENT

Once I got to snowbeasts it was pretty much fine from my perspective, spawn issues in crocodiles and black leucros aside.

It was getting to snowbeasts that was like pulling teeth.

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Thayet
Twitter: @thayelf
Tumblr: thayette.tumblr.com

I always assumed this was an intentional gap in Zoluren to promote people temp passing to see more of the game.