Architecture:

1. Miragul. Love the fancy rooms with fancy furniture; lots of detail. Just similar enough to Erudin. I just wish there was less fog so I could better see and enjoy it.

2. Takish. More fancy rooms with fancy furniture, this time more like Felwithe. Because it's all sand the designers had to use lots of drab brown and beige. It's actually quite good, considering how limiting that is. There are doors between most rooms, you spend a lot of time opening them over and over again. I wish the doors would stay open instead of closing every ten seconds.

3. Guk. Small rooms and narrow twisty corridors are more than a design decision, they make this setting more difficult. The atmosphere is really good (or should I say evil?) -- dank and dark. It's also the only setting with much depth -- there are slopes and dropdowns so deeper parts of the dungeon are actually at a lower elevation. But I personally like the fancy furniture better.

4. Rujark. Seems boring at first, with wide straight flat hallways. But as you explore more you find really unique rooms -- elaborate rope bridges, slave pits, mines... some of the best features in all of LDoN.

5. Mistmoore. There's variety here -- some of the dungeons are built like Takish with fancy rooms, others are rough natural caves. But it just lacks detail, it's... plain.

Mobs:

1. Mistmoore. Very well-done undead models. The best-looking mobs, you have to see them for yourself.

2. Miragul. Many of the monsters are copies from PoP, but that's ok. I like the variety, having so many wild shapes all in the same dungeon.

3. Guk. More creative and well-done undead models, all frogs. The animations are very good... but I still like the Mistmoore models even better.

4. Takish. All the mobs fit the theme, and I think they look good. But the undead models just outshine these.

5. Rujark. Orcs, goblins, wolves, pigs, beetles... and nothing else. The models are fine, but just not very interesting to me... I prefer more variety. The weapons they carry are excellent though, actually better than the mob models.

Special note: it's really hard to loot the whirlwind corpses, and sometimes impossible if they die near a wall or in a pile of sand or under furniture.

Difficulty:

1. Mistmoore. Seems easiest for average groups, I don't know why.

2. Rujark. Wide-open corridors and level floors tend to make pulling easier.

3. Miragul. Some people think the stairs and columns make it harder than Takish, I don't.

4. Takish. Constantly opening doors is an obstacle for pulling, scouting, and sometimes even for fighting if everyone needs to squeeze through the narrow doorway to the next room.

5. Guk. It's harder here. Less space makes pulling and even fighting difficult at times. Anti-undead abilities might make up the difference, but they help just as much in Mistmoore.

Adventures:

1. Slaughter. Easiest and simplest.

2. Assassinate. Sometimes you can pacify, invis, ITU, or Call of the Hero past half the dungeon to reach your target. Plus the boss might have loot.

3. Rescue. Takes extra time to lead the hostage out... and pathing, additional attacks, and mistakes can happen on the way. Also you can't sneak past large portions of the dungeon, the hostage needs a clear path out.

4. Collection. Drop rate is random. Sometimes it's easy and fast, other times the items just don't drop. Sometimes you can clear every last mob in the whole place and still not get enough... that's fubar.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
There are doors between most rooms, you spend a lot of time opening them over and over again.
[/quote]

This has always bothered me in EQ. I'm *alone* in a zone and open a door, who the hell closes it? Ya ya ya.. magic closing doors.. But seriously EVERY door in EQ is magic then?

They're automatic doors, duh!

Incidentally the doors at Wal-Mart aren't magic either. ;)

To target the whirlwinds -

/tar an intense sandstorm's corpse

Or whatever the actual full name is. Its a pain, but that's how you can do it for now.

Or get a Necrotic Divining Device, with clicky Track Corpse. It makes it easy to target corpses stuck in walls, in addition to actually locating corpses.

Haven't managed to get a group to Guk yet. I think I agree with most rankings there. Not sure about the PoP models in Miragul though? I've seen Holgresh (Velious) the Golems which I thought were new, the tornadoes and Biles (Kunark and on) plus the good ole skele haven't seen anything else in th dungeons but them

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>4. Collection. Drop rate is random. Sometimes it's easy and fast, other times the items just don't drop. Sometimes you can clear every last mob in the whole place and still not get enough... that's fubar.[/quote]Not sure what you have done there for your missions, never even come close to running out of mobs before finishing these, seems to be about 150% of the required amount of items in the ones where we have actually gone through and killed everything.

The dungeons all look set to about 60% of mobs need killing. Collection - it takes about 2/3 the dungeon to collect all the items needed. Rescue - The path to the hostage takes about 60% and they don't spawn until about 60% has been cleared. Assassination - The boss mob doesn't spawn until about 60% of zone is cleared. Slaughter - this is around the 60% mark also.

Difficulty I'd put in order of
Slaughter - Easiest
Assassination
Collection
Rescue - Hardest

Mainly put Rescue hardest (I have only done one) mainly becuase if it takes you all the time just to get to the hostage and things are running close you still have to take into account running the hostage to zone in. Which took 3 minutes in the zone I was in yesterday, doesn't seem long but if the clock is running low that could be a killer.

...if you run, the person you rescue runs too. Just fight to em, hail em, and run back through the halls you have already cleared.

None of the dungeons takes more than a minute or four to backtrack through.

I had a collection mission where we got 70% of an AA and still failed, having collected only 12 of the 20 items.

Every other type of mission we've won after getting about 50% of an AA.

No more collection missions for me!

guess mileage varies, I've never lost a collection but its been close

I would rank them...

1. Kill them all (easiest)
2. Assasination
3. Rescue
4. Collection (I skip all collections - I really hate them)

The general feel I get from MT server is to skip all rescues and take any of the others, although some people are now starting to say skip collections. Not becuase they are harder but becuase they are too boring - which I find hillarious becuase slaughters are the most mindless of all the mission types.

For interesting mission I'd like to see a slight modification to the rescue, it would be worth more points and would give about another 15-30 minutes. Once you reach the hostage and get them to follow you, on your path back to the entrance mobs would pop on you and you needed to defend the hostage, much like the gnome protection quest in Cazic Thule.
I think that would be fun and would offer a higher risk vs reward challenge for thos who want one.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>slaughters are the most mindless of all the mission types.[/quote]

while true, I love to see how <strong>fast</strong> the group can kill XX mobs

"Kill them all" has bodies flying !


Just died twice tonite on a "killing spree" due to my overpulls, but it was fun

Actually collections can be one of the fastest if your a litle logical the way you get them.

Dont get anything more than say 24-25 item collections any more and its just too slow.

Dont pick collections in the bigger dungeons..for example some of Everfrost ones are simply too big and you have to clear a zillion mobs.

I beleive Ruj is a good dungeon for collecting if my memory serves me right...also i think guk isnt too bad too.


Tils

The collections can either be the most difficult or the easiest depending on your luck with the RNG. When your killing at better than 1 mob/min and still go 30 to 40 minutes without a drop it makes it basically impossible to win.(yes this actually happened to me). We lost, the creature that died 5 sec after time ran out had the last item we needed. It was that 30 to 40 minute no drop stretch that did us in.

I had another fail where we were within 8 of what we needed no drops in the last 20 minutes (again a group kiling at a good pace). About 4 or 5 mobs after the time ran out every single mob we killed until zone depop had one of the items we needed on it.

Most collections are not like that. I do think they should add 5 or 10 minutes to collection adventures or up the drop rate on items slightly. On average the groups I have been in usually finish a collection mission within 10 to 20 minutes of the time running out. The above two examples are abberations in the way the RNG allocates loot and distributes it around the dungeon.

Borblefoot Furtoe
Storm warden
Ancient Darkness
Firiona Vie Server

Slaughter is definitely the easiest. You probably end up killing twice the mobs in the other 3 type of adventures than in slaughter.

Not sure which I would rank as the hardest. To me, Rescue and Assassinate are basically the same thing. I really don't understand how one person can like the one but hate the other, but that's just me. Collect is just too random. You can take a 28 item collect and complete it in 40mins and get a 21 item collect the next time and go almost the full time. Collect is too much like farming in my mind, but I do like when you get down to the wire and have to start killing really fast. I like the adventures that are more challenging.

I finally did a Takish dungeon last night. Really loved the look of the dungeon and the mobs!

Just wondering, Are the designs of the zones so detailed that you lag like in the previous expansions (Luclin and beyond)?

for whatever reason, I get horrible framerate in rujork (I think, whichever is triggered by EC). That's the only one, I'm fine in every other theme. It doesn't seem any more detailed or populated, maybe it's the texturing /shrug