Developer Question on difficulty of Empyrea Solo questing

[lethargy101]

We do! While we may not respond to everyone post, we do our best to review the daily updates here for community comments.

I know you do, you are always around and engage but it appears the devs seem to prefer to work with twitter exclusively.

[Flash33]

I'm near the end of Pt1 on Fire and I'd have to say hard. While mobs aren't too big of a deal the bosses are another story, with the main problem being that some of them have way too much innate damage (looking at you Baane), get shadow creatures up too consistently & frequently and that the minions respawn if you lose, which is especially problematic in cases like Dynt where it's a 1v3/4. I don't mind a decent challenge here and there nor do I mind teaming up with others if need be but when the bosses are consistently dishing out damage faster than I can heal, shield or return it then there's a problem.

I think the innate damage for bosses should go down some or at the very least make it so that defeated minions don't respawn if you beat them then lose.

[KieranCaster]

I've been playing since '08, and haven't finished Empyrea, and only have one Max Wizard - Fire. Though I personally run two (2) accounts with limited time and maxim interest in so many things W101 offers, questing is not at the top of the list. Staying at specific levels is where a lot of my enjoyment comes in.

So, I typically solo, since I don't keep up with a group who has long passed me by.

I am totally amazed and respectful of those who have maxed out ALL their wizards. How do you find the time?

It's not too difficult to solo with Fire - if you have the right gear. When I can't get past a certain boss, I will team up. Bosses like the Greggors, Felspawn, the Garbage dude in the Abandoned House and others like these, I always team up. It's fun to meet different wizards with the same farming goal as you, I rarely run into a poor "team up" team.

I would imagine Death would be the easiest school to solo with, followed by balance, then Life. The ability to heal seems to be key. Now that Death has full enchant from the steal spells, and giant boost to Crow, a four (4) pip spell that hits very hard, Death probably retains the crown for the easiest school to solo with.

What I find fun is gathering the gear to beat a particular boss. It's fun to put together gear that gives near immunity to a Boss's school and spam Power link to do damage and heal.

Just my thoughts.

KC

[Kokyota]

To Solo Empyrea is very hard. Nice to know the Developers are thinking about this. Also, I do feel the Developers are more engaged with Twitter (yuck) and they have forgotten we here at Central exist.

[IsaacGreenGem]

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but I wonder if mobs' outgoing damage could be scaled to the amount of wizards in a duel? It reminds me of how Corporal Tenni'syn gains power pips according to how much wizards are in the duel. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to make outgoing damage scale the same way.

Maybe it's asking too much, but it'd be nice to see a damage decrease if you're in a battle alone just to make things a little easier. I found it a little ridiculous how a critical scorching scimitars from Admiral Dynt can deal ~4000 to me with NO blades or traps as an ice. Ice easily has over 8000-9000 health at this point, but a storm would have maybe 5000-6000. Being able to almost get one-shot by a spell with no blades or traps whatsoever just seems outright unbalanced to me.

[goldendragon18]

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but I wonder if scaling mobs' outgoing damage could be scaled to the amount of wizards in a duel? It reminds me of how Corporal Tenni'syn gains power pips according to how much wizards are in the duel, I'd imagine it wouldn't be too hard to make outgoing damage scale the same way.

Maybe it's asking too much, but it'd be nice to see a damage decrease if you're in a battle alone just to make things a little easier. I found it a little ridiculous how a critical scorching scimitars from Admiral Dynt can deal ~4000 to me with NO blades or traps as an ice. Ice easily has over 8000-9000 health at this point, but a storm would have maybe 5000-6000. Being able to almost get one-shot by a spell with no blades or traps whatsoever just seems outright unbalanced to me.

I have found there are still a lot of spells used by mobs and bosses that have not been audited..... Beginning to wonder if the Devs are going to do those too.

I agree that something needs to change. It is a bit crazy they can hit us with huge amounts of damage without buffs other than their spells seem to be highly enchanted and their outgoing it at least 120% or more.

[lethargy101]

I have found there are still a lot of spells used by mobs and bosses that have not been audited..... Beginning to wonder if the Devs are going to do those too.

I agree that something needs to change. It is a bit crazy they can hit us with huge amounts of damage without buffs other than their spells seem to be highly enchanted and their outgoing it at least 120% or more.

I suspected that too my wizards are taking so much damage in Empyrea.

[goldendragon18]

I suspected that too my wizards are taking so much damage in Empyrea.

Acquiring Shadow pips in a timely manner is just one issue. I have a 98 shadow rating but still don't get one let alone 2 during the course of a general mob battle. During boss battles, it seems to be worse. A Shadow Sentinel ( a common street mob ) can have 2 Shadow pips before my wizards get one.


Too many mobs/bosses still have spells that have NOT been audited. Some of those spells seem to be Enchanted with much higher enchants than what wizards have available. Especially when there are no apparent Blades or traps from them in use. Too many of them have 120%+ outgoing.


Bosses like Khan are completely crazy. A +500% Blade????? An AoE Wraith that can take out a whole team????? His heals of 7k to 10k???? For an early world boss, Khan is a bit too much. Grandfather Spider was a breeze compared to Khan.


I dual box and it took me 4 tries to figure out that I need to make sure Khan does not get to the fifth round with his minions. The trick is to make sure you keep hitting his minions while also hitting him. The only bit if guidance I had was from his wiki page so I knew not to use traps. You really don't have time to worry about shields either. Just keep hitting with AoEs as much as you can.


Sadly, there are no Boss Guides for Empyrea like what we have had up to this point. In fact, there are NO BOSS guides for Empyrea. It seems that for the 30+ cheating bosses, all we have to give us any kind of guide are the Notes in Wiki, but even those seem to be leaving out a lot.

Does every boss in Empyrea have and use a Shadow? So far every one that I have fought does.


Gear drops are another issue. I realize some players will Farm certain bosses for their gear but seriously??? Shouldn't Gear drops be available through most Boss battles. And NOT Stat Nerfed??? Every piece of gear my wizards have gotten have virtually NO STATS and are 99% of the time for every other school. Extremely rare to get a piece of gear for the school I am running. I don't expect to see every bit of gear with top notch stats but it should definitely be better than what we are seeing.

[Sparck]

I know you do, you are always around and engage but it appears the devs seem to prefer to work with twitter exclusively.

Don't worry, while they are more active there, I make sure they still see your comments from here .

[Dylan489]

Im not going to vote yet as I want to experience Empyrea with the spell revamps and shadow pip changes. This means I need to bring my life through though he is at shadowwock in mirage now, so I will be finishing mirage and starting empyrea tonight.

If the current difficulty of mirage is in line with empyrea (though a tad more difficult), then it wont be a big deal. I love to solo, though I dont have an issue with the end-of-world bosses as they are supposed to be too difficult imo to solo.

The sands of time were a good way to gauge how the complete revamp has made bosses easier and spells better or worse so far. None of my other characters have been able to solo shadowbones, but I was easily able to do this on my life yesterday. I wanted to see how far I could get by soloing shadowwock on my life, and was quite surprised. Was one turn away before I got killed.

Update: so i tried soloing shadowwock again and was successful. this is the kind of difficulty that should be in empyrea.
@Sparck