Likes and Dislikes about SK

Post Reply
curiousredmonkey
Posts: 109
Joined: Tue Jul 07, 2015 6:02 am

Likes and Dislikes about SK

Post by curiousredmonkey »

What I find good about the scenario:
  1. That we have new maps, NPCs, and content.
  2. That you can build your armor from parts.
  3. That we have new weapons, that scale.
  4. That we have other new gear, with tiers and stats.
  5. The Silver areas (nicely balanced, for both solo or party).
  6. The Gold floor (balanced for party play), with a new type of wandering Boss.
  7. Drops a scroll to a new scenario, Refuge.
Problems, struggles, and issues:
  • The armor-part numbers do not drop properly. The same number will drop again and again, making holes in drops for certain numbers.
  • The armor-part drops are too rare. This is especially problematic on Black, Green, and Parapet. You cannot kill as many NPCs.
  • Regular NPCs (armor) block too much (tiers are the only option, for many classes). Brewed pots do not help much.
  • Regular NPCs have way too many hit points. Coupled with #3 this becomes a slug fest when solo (that can take minutes to kill 1 NPC).
  • Having to search a corpse to get gear and coins.
  • Gold floor begins to be a struggle solo. It is still engaging, but starts to wear you down.
  • Black floor is definitely a struggle solo. Because of #1 through #4 and (partially) #5 it beats you down.
  • Green floor is a mind numbing attack on your game play.
  • Parapet floor is more of the same, like #8 on steroids, that the mind goes beyond numb into something ugly.
If anyone wants to add to the lists above, please do so. Or post your disagreements too. I refrained from suggestions...oh man did I want to suggest, but hopefully this like/dislike approach will get better results.

At the core of SK is some great content and ideas, but so many other things get in the way there. The recent change that make the Captains initially non-hostile is a good first step. But in my opinion it will not address the real issues there.

Others before me said that SK was a long horror that you must bear. I didn't believe that any Drakkar scenario could be that bad. But now I know they were right. Please note, that I am burned out on SK, having spent hundreds of hours there with almost nothing to show for it. That even the idea of testing any new changes to it, makes me cringe. So, rather than being a Nancy Nay Sayer, I listed my likes and dislikes above. I hope that "up and comers" will benefit from any changes to the scenario.

The only way that I can image playing a short stint there would be in an SK Event - not for XP and Skill but for drops, because I have yet to complete my Black and Green armor for my Thief and Barb.

seiyria
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Aug 07, 2016 9:19 am

Re: Likes and Dislikes about SK

Post by seiyria »

I agree with a lot of this. Specifically:

* Searching corpses is just rough. It's literally a full time job, and it's easier to just not search corpses than to do so, since XP is the bigger grind besides anything else there.

* Black/Green are rough. With the captain changes and the scaling fixes recently made I can't confirm this still being the case.

* Armor drops, I wouldn't mind as much if I didn't have to search.

* I stayed in one zone from 86 to 94. It was safe and provided a decent amount of xp. I never had a reason to go to gold, black, or green until 94, where I could no longer get xp in my safe area.

I really think SK needs a lot of changes too, personally. It's too small for anything more than the current population to hunt there, if people were to come back, it would be cramped. The XP gain cuts (it goes down by ~15m every time you level up) just make it a really long and dreadful grind. The lack of decaying dropping items is insanely frustrating because it becomes a balancing act between searching and killing. It really is a full time job. And if you're solo? Tough luck.

Post Reply