The situation:

The New Celest Epic quest requires the raising of Princess Marylinth, for which they must win a new Sea Battle each time. Winning the Sea Battle is a matter of Turtles verses Wolves. Both are midbie fodder. If the dead sea wolves are turned in, they become dolphins. If dolphins are turned in to Ladantine, they become Sea wolves. Either way, the count between them is always static, as each respawns when killed unless converted. Necklaces make dolphins immortal, but fall off with time.

If Lanikai is killed, or is otherwise removed from the Sea, then the wolves cannot be converted. (Same is true of Ladantine and dolphins)

The problems:
o Turtles do not respawn naturally unless there are no turtles (even then, only one spawns).
o To make more turtles, you must kill a shark and give its corpse to a golden dragon turtle who is frantically searching for 'something'.
o Lanikai and Ladantine are both killable, but unlike Ladantine, there's a way to force Lanikai out of the Sea indefinitely without enemy status.
o If there are no dragon turtles, Celest cannot win. If there are no sea wolves, Magnagora? Can.
o Dead wolves/dolphins left unconverted still count toward the totals. Dead Turtles, of course, do not.
o If Jeitara's mutant kelpies are released, turtles will not accept sharks (rather, they will, but giving them one will not let you birth another)

To summarize:
To disrupt Celest winning : Kill Lanikai, kill turtles, complete the dark Cay rite, aid Jeitara, or kill dolphins and hand them to Ladantine.
To disrupt Magnagora winning : Kill Ladantine, Block Jeitara, complete the light Cay rite, and kill seawolves and hand them to Lanikai.

Potential solutions:
o Reduce the battle to Dolphins vs Wolves, give wolves a 'necklace' to make them unkillable for a time.
o Allow dolphins to count, give the sea of Despair a turtle equivalent and allow them to count toward the totals as well.
o Allow amnesty only once per year (or longer) to SoD/Inner Sea, and enemy to the opposing side when doing the Carai/Cay/converting.


EDIT: While I made this thread in response to the above situation, by no means am I averse to other conflict quests being discussed here.
EDIT2: Incorperating Ixion's suggested solution, adjusting for new information.

Could you explain this a bit better? At the moment I don't see the issue. Both quests seem fairly even. Just complicated.

Edit: Wait, is it that killing dolphins gets Magnagora seawolves, what they need to win and killing seawolves just gets Celest dolphins? I don't think that is any issue. The quests are not meant to be a 1 to 1. The fact that Magnagora only has one step while Celest has to kill sharks and seawolves is that killing seawolves only hinders Magnagora, it isn't 100% necessary for them to run into a protected area and kill things. Instead Celest can hunt right in the inner sea to get their turtles. Magnagora also can't protect the wolves in the way dolphins can be protected.

The quest isn't 1 to 1 but it seems balanced.

Points added/more clearly explained:

-Ladantine doesn't come back automatically like Lanikai does- a mini quest raises him, one which is easily disruptable.
-Amnesty makes both sides of this ridiculously abusive in avenger avoidance.
-Wolves need wolves to win and likewise for the counter, if there are none or nearly none of each the SB results in a draw and the cycle resets in a sense.

Esano can probably add a few other points I left out. The cay added a whole new level of annoyance to the SB, that's certain, and mostly it would be fun to have the prime conflict except abusing amnesty dismembers the entire process from being defended against.

Solution: Allow amnesty only once per year (or longer) to SoD/Inner Sea, and enemy to the opposing side when doing the Carai/Cay/converting. This would still leave room for avenger avoidance, but hey it's a start.

Yes, it's a lot of work, every week or so done mostly by only a couple individuals on each side but I found the efforts to be worth it on my epic quest item. In that way it sure beats the trivial nonsense of, say, the newbie Verasavir, Moon bubble, or Hifarae quests for ones of the final 3 quests needed.

The largest part of the issue is that it takes a not-insubstantial investment of time to birth turtles: Finding and killing sharks, finding which among the turtles is ready to birth (only one will be, and I don't think a tracker can separate it from the ones who already have done so) if any, then leading the turtle to the Isle of Light to actually give birth. It likewise takes time to find the seashells, find a kelpie to turn them into neckaces, find a dolphin that doesn't have one, if there are any, or any dolphins in the sea. Meanwhile, killing a turtle undoes that, takes very, VERY little time, and is difficult to stop, as the layers the turtles reside on, layers 2-4, are unmeldable, cannot have shrines active, and the turtles themselves generally die in only a few hits from those likely to be hunting them.

I won't pretend that the dark Cay and Jeitara quests don't take some time to do, but there is no equivalent for the Celest side. This means that, overall, it is a simple matter for the Celestian side to be disrupted, and nigh impossible for the Magnagoran equivalent. Incidentally, even if every sea wolf is killed, it is still possible for New Celest to lose the battle if they are not turned in to Lanikai, who is not difficult to kill, and can be made to disappear for long periods of time without earning an enemy status in the process.

The only thing that can really be done to disrupt the Magnagoran side of the quest is to kill Ladantine and keep him that way, and slaying sea wolves and converting them. Dolphins can be killed any time they don't have a necklace, and the necklaces are far from permanent. The Celestian side can be disrupted by aiding Jeitara, which prevents birthing turtles; Slaying the turtles themselves; Slaying dolphins and converting them; doing the dark Cay, which causes Lanikai to vanish until its counter is done; or just kill Lanikai and keep her dead.

In short: For Celestians to win the sea battle, they have to spend at least a day beforehand, real life, watching the Inner Sea like hawks, and doing everything in their power to keep Ladantine and the wolves dead. For Magnagorans, it takes five minutes of killing turtles, plus possibly one dolphin being turned in to Ladantine. Assuming they didn't just keep one dead so that it couldn't be turned in.

EDIT: Did not know Ladantine didn't return on his own, but dead wolves still count for the wolves unless converted by Lanikai, as stated. Again, Dead turtles do not.

Uhhhh, I was pretty sure performing the light Cay quest made dolphins and turtles unkillable and releasing kelpies into the sea of dispair keeps Ladantine from converting dolphins and kills all of the seawolves. Are you saying it doesn't?

And I apoligise if I sound like an idiot. My reading comprehension is broken today and I really can't tell if that is what you're trying to say or if it is something different.

Edited the original post.

To my knowledge, Light Cay may protect dolphins, but I don't think it does turtles (We had the Cay active just a few minutes before Esano killed a turtle anyway, I believe.). And I thought the kelpies were released into the SoD through the Marylinth quest, which renders the whole thing moot, though I may very easily be mistaken, as I know little of Carai Caroo (the quest I'm assuming accomplishes this if it's not the Princess's) or the quests after the Prophesy quests. (The prophesy quest for New Celest is notoriously easy to accidentally or intentionally take from one another, but that's a seperate issue.)

We've looked at the quests in the relatively recent quests and, personally, I think they're fine - while dead seawolves counting is a bit awkward (and really sounds like a bug/design flaw that may or may not need to be addressed), last time we looked at it we added quite a number of seashells, and upped the length of times dolphins remain protected, to 4 hours.

All in all, it sounds like the quest is fairly balanced to me, honestly. With a bit of initiative and math, Celest could ensure the dolphins are, 24/7, invulnerable.

(And all of the 'Stop the Kelpies' quests have alternate sides, which help the kelpies a fair amount.)

(And the Cay quest does protect turtles.)

Carai Caroo is two different quests. One to release Kelpie Warriors. The other to release mutants.

Wrong, and the quest effects are substantial on both sides. To say what Eventru said in a different light, you can ensure victory or at least a draw reset hours in advance by doing those quests, aided by other means such as necklaces.

As Eventru has openly stated, Celest has a massive advantage in this. We cannot stop you from taking seawolves, but you can stop us from taking dolphins 24/7. That is what we call flagrant bias, they reviewed the quests and made it even easier for Celest to never lose.

Killing Ladantine enemies, stopping him from ressing does not, so it can be done while hiding in avenger, even killing Ladantine as a blob doesnt enemy (explain that to me). You can do alot without being enemied inside the sea itself, directly against Ladantine. We cannot touch a single thing in Inner Sea without being enemied to it.

I find irony you think it was so biased in our favour, when we can show you how it is so heavily in yours.

To fix it up:
-Make Vampire squid properly enemy
or
-Change how you raise Ladantine so killing the mobs needed gets you enemied

-Make mobs that give Amnesty drop the amnesty if you attack them (so you can protect them properly).

-Make seashells far less than 4 hours if they are currently that high, it should not be possible for us to be stopped entirely without ever having a chance as the battle nears.

Meh, not really. The quests are about even. And isn't at all what we need to be spending time on in terms of what the admin are working on. Both sides are pretty ok.

Did you not just see an admin admit that Celest should never lose? Where he said we cant kill dolphins ever if they keep on top of shells. That is what we call unbalanced.

Yes. You're right. If Celest worked 24/7, in shifts, and performing the math they would never ever lose. If Magnagora worked 24/7, in shifts, keeping dolphins and turtles constantly dead then Magnagora would never ever lose. In reality? Nope, not gonna happen. Especially with the fact that conflict quests don't -really- matter. People just do the sea quest when they need to access the other epic quests. If we really wanted to play nice Magnagora and Celest could just make a system where we traded off who won for the sake of epic quests. It isn't like there are any real negative effects from doing the sea quests.

Adjusting conflict quests that don't matter and are about equal just isn't worth the time.

They dont matter as you say unless you need to do the epic quest, they used to have other effects. The effects were removed because people got tired of always having issues with it (similar to gorgogs losing their effects)

Yeah, I know. I remember doing the quests and dealing with spectre isle being empty. The issue was never an imbalance anyways. It was just tedious and silly.

Gorgogs lost their effects? Don't they still cause gorgogs to fill the seas?

They used to prevent Celest and Magnagora from being able to do their org power quests (they 'popped out of a rift' and grabbed spectres and sands whenever you gathered one).

Along with their current effect.

That... is one of the most illogical quest results I've ever heard of. You sure it wasn't changed because it was hard to justify mindless monsters stealing sand and ghosts?

Absolutely positive, that was the main point of doing that quest. To grief both of the cities.

Further, gorgogs aren't actually "mindless" entirely; see, Gognigin.

Well, mostly mindless. They're pretty comparable to Golems. Sure, one has some degree of intellect, but most are violent automatons.

And purpose or not, if there was a logical link between releasing gorgogs and them stealing sands, then they removed that when they removed the ability to do the quest.

Basically, the above post was sarcasm.