Dear Administration:


I understand you work your collective asses off in order to make fun things for us, and I appreciate it. But whoever decided these creatures should be so frigging hard to slay is a #$%!@$ moron. I don't care if it's Iashe himself. I sit here and hit these damned serpents for 10 frigging minutes, and nothing. NOTHING. The story is great, the mechanics are fun, yadda yadda yadda. LEARN TO TEST THESE THINGS BEFORE YOU LET OUT SUPERMOBS THAT WON'T DIE WHEN A HIGH LEVEL PERSON SITS THERE BEATING THE CRAP OUT OF THEM FOR TEN SOLID MINUTES. All I ended up doing is running out of mending because not only do the serpents entangle you, but they break two limbs. Come on, people. You can do better, I know you can. I've seen better. Sitting around coming up with a good story line is great, kudos to you. But deciding to make some frigging transforming mobs that enter cities and kill people that can't possibly defend themselves is retarded, plain and simple. I'm rather disgusted with Lusternia right now.

Have a nice day,
me.

EDIT: Oh, and this?





Yeah, that's not the problem. The problem is the fact that these things are so damned resilient and hit so hard. It wouldn't be so bad, but they prance through the city killing people. Lusternia is quickly losing that fun factor for me, and you're about to lose a customer over it.

Event mobs always have to be fought in groups. Always have been that way, always will be.

Simple solution: Don't bash them. Plenty of other things to kill, if that's the mood you're in.

It is hardly the administration's fault that you find denizens intended to be fought in groups difficult to kill alone.

It's not so much that, but the fact that they aggro inside cities.

The mobs only progress to the more dangerous stages if you kill them in the earlier stages. At the moment, I just suggest leaving them as crabs until you have a decent group who can take out serpents easily.

I think you're over reacting. If you don't want to fight the sand creatures, don't fight them. You're a faeling so you can just fly to avoid getting hit if you need to move around your city streets.

Dear Trinit,
Welcome to the world of large-scale doomsday events, where hordes of heavy-hitting mobs roam aimlessly about and you'll probably die at least once. Compared to past events, this is tame. You want to hear some stories, ask any one of the Lusternia greybeards. I'm sure they'd be delighted to tell you in detail exactly how this is nothing compared to the great Serpent Scare of ought-whatsit, or Kethuru II: Electric Boogaloo, or that time with Muud. Things will only get crazier, and if you're lucky, you'll get one of those sweet 'I survived the coming of Whats-His-Face and all I got was this stupid honors line' deals. Just sit back and enjoy the insanity.

XOXO
Arix

They really that bad? The elementals in Hallifax give paralysis, blackout and broken limbs but they don't seem that bad, tedious yes and if there's more than two or three you can have a close call but not really terrible.

Been there, done that. Multiple times.

Ah, muud. And the raziela in muud event. How fun was that. Anyone remember the undead beauties? That was fun too. Or the fake gods that ran around in groups of like 10, were aggro and hit for like 2k damage a piece. Ah, fun times.

Just encountered the first crobstle (crab/lobster/turtle), yeah, that's pretty tedious, though it seems pretty interesting and quite well done. Is there a fourth stage? I just wailed on the turtle for a little while before giving up.

Just because it's been worse doesn't mean it's not bad.

And just because the danger level was worse doesn't mean that the events were worse. Tons of danger and death can be fun, provided it's part of an interesting story, you get to feel at least a little bit in control of your own part in the story, what you're doing seems to matter, and you're not isolated from the people you play the game to be around. In short, danger as part of fun is fun; danger as part of no-fun is no-fun.

Ah, the days when Viravain returned to the basin with the whole soulless god business. During the whole fight between them, I must have died what, 9? 10, 11 times? This event is a bit more easy going in terms of deaths.

Clearly, he just needs more

HOOOOOOOOOOOO!



They're time consuming, but not "omg why?!" frustrating either.

I mean, in my first MUD, the admin dropped horrible demons right on top of midlevel characters, resulting in their immediate death. In a game where a death could take several RL months to recover from, even with an active play time.

My only semi-concern really isn't one. Lorina, Naralis and I tearing around Celest trying to beat back sand creatures and the odd elemental was fun fun fun for me, but it did make the city fairly unusable for random newer person and co. But that's also sorta what makes it all epic like.

I also suspect it's more of an issue in newer orgs, with fewer omni-trans, artied tank types than the older orgs.

Which makes me wonder if Trinit is speaking from the perspective of someone from, say, Gaudiguch.

Hrm? Naw, Gaudiguch's all chill about the events. A little too relaxed, I might add.

Maybe you came from Achaea where outright trashing the administration lead to results of some kind, but here it's generally better to not overreact and treat the admin with respect. Their experience values were increased by 70% with a reasonable post (now locked because people baww about events all the time). So long as you have a group of 2-3 competent people, I don't think sand creatures will be major problems - annoying, maybe, and people might have to avoid your local harbor district/gate/entrance if they can't even handle crabs - but it's not the end of the world. Leading around 20 people and sand-creature killing last night was pretty epic until we realized they'd just respawn endlessly.

Turtles/Serpents will take awhile to down. Crab -> Lobster -> Turtle -> Serpent is the chain on those that evolve linearly, I think. If you don't have the manpower to take them down then avoid them.

And really, as a note, I'm pretty sure all the sand creatures save for the Serpent can't destroy pentagrams/circles/shields. Just go with it, immerse yourself and try to enjoy the game.

edit:

Scuttling backwards and then forwards, a dense, snapping sand crab smacks your
leg with one side of a claw.
3649h, 5025m, 4525e, 10p, 14170en, 19030w esSilrxkdb-(-282 Health)
3649h, 5025m, 4525e, 10p, 14170en, 19030w esSilrxkdb-shield
evoke pentagram
Muttering words of power, you trace a cobalt blue pentagram in the air that
remains hovering before you, protecting against assault.
3845h, 4995m, 4525e, 10p, 14170en, 19000w sSilrxkdb-(+196 Health, -30 Mana)
A dense, snapping sand crab hurls himself against your shield in a futile
attempt to harm you.

Seriously.

Turtles can as well, actually. I didn't write the attacks, but I can take a peek and see if anything is terribly out-of-whack.

(You know, I remember one event where even looking at someone got you insta-death. That was one of the most awesome events ever. Your -eyes- melted out of your sockets.)

Edit: I took a peek at the serpents, and the worse they do is entangle+broken limb, 15% of the time. Certainly, I've seen bashing mobs do worse! Their other attacks are blunt and cutting damage (all of which anyone who is infected has +35 DMP against), and don't do much at that. One of them can knock you off-eq for a very short period of time. They really don't seem all that bad to me!

(But I did slow how often they spawn by a bit, see if that helps!)

Think you guys need to harden up. I heard that Fillin changeling'd into unspec'd Merian and has been newbie kicking groups of serpents to death.