Aphrodite is now a stone key boss

[bluedreamer]

For the Win...

Genius.

I had no idea Wooden and Stone keys were so coveted - I've never had as may as I have right now in my life! - but @Happy Fun Ball's idea is the best of all worlds. If someone wants to use a highly coveted GOLD key for something so lowly as a Stone or Wooden Key - why not? Maintains the value of the Gold keys and gives players what they really want - options.

Casp

Anyone remember when lowly stone key bosses could drop T Rex 2 person mounts and many Azteca Dino mounts? Hmmm now they don't cause it was repurposed. I'm sure KI isn't trying to stop players from getting 6-15,000 crown items for free, right?

I mean nothing says value like a hat, robe, boots and wand (most new gold keys) most players never wanted when the packs came out, even less when they 30 or so levels out of date and KI can't sell anyway VS MANY shiny 6,000-15,000 crown mounts? Sure gotta love KI's idea of "value"

Would you want a shiny new T Rex 2 person mount or some spellements? That gold key value LOL

[Torpzun26]

Stone Keys are easier to get than before, only if slightly, since Gold Key bosses sure do love dropping the wrong kinds of keys. Making Gold Keys easier to get didn't make Stone Keys harder to obtain, it just highlighted how especially annoying it is to farm one boss just for the opportunity to farm another boss. It worked out alright with Gold Keys since they dropped reasonably well from Darkmoor, a place you would want to farm anyway either to get gear or to help others get theirs, but Stone Keys only have House of Scales which is only a less popular alternative to Waterworks. Wood Keys have nothing because Barkingham Palace is horrible. But now that Gold Keys are very easy to get, this method of farming to farm something else is outdated.

I kind of want KI to wait until they do make Stone (and Wood!) Keys more easily-obtainable before rearranging what keys go where, but to be honest I've also expressed that I feel like I'm cheating myself out of value if I try to use a Gold Key for a boss that does not drop Spellements. I don't want to farm Corporal Tenni'syn using Gold Keys on the slim chance that the Wiki Page is wrong and he does in fact drop the permanent version of the Junk Copter mount. (Btw, add this to his loot table if it isn't already, KI! Why does he only drop temporary versions of this mount?!)

And as for the drops, it feels like a waste of time to have made the gear drops competitive with Level 150 Lemuria gear. The same update gave us Raids, which brought along two entire gear sets per school that would be intended to be on par with the stuff we get from Lemuria. So in addition to that, they would have to make or update gear for each of these bosses. Sounds simple, but let me walk you through just how much of a task this really is.



Of the 10 bosses either added or repurposed, 5 of these bosses drop three sets of Crowns Gear, each set containing a Hat, Robe, Boot, and Wand piece. (Von Bracken, Stonegaze, Loremagus, Borr, and Drowned Dan) This is 12 gear pieces each, so 60 right there. Of the remaining ones, two of them (Lambent Fire and Takanobu) drop gear pieces for the same 4 item slots for every school as well as a universal gear piece. 8 pieces for 4 gear slots means that those two bosses each drop 32 pieces of gear, adding another 64 for a total of 124 gear pieces. There's also Spirit of Ignorance, whose gear drops are stitch only, but if we wanted Spirit of Ignorance to have competitive gear drops then that's another 32 gear pieces for 156. (King Borr also drops stitch gear, but I'm ignoring that part since he already drops pack gear.) Krampus appears to not drop any gear, aside from his stitch-only Tolltaker that he always had. I can't tell what Ixcax's drops are supposed to be like because the drop table for him is barren. The tier 2 page says he drops 3 sets of pack gear alongside an additional piece of gear for every school. If that's the case, he single-handedly adds another 44 items to this list - 168 total. Even more if we want Krampus to have gear drops to make him worth farming.

Sounds like a lot, but wait, we aren't even done yet! Each of these bosses has four different versions. This is only for the highest level players! You can absolutely go farm Takanobu or Drowned Dan with a team of Level 60 wizards. If max level wizards get to have good gear drop from these bosses, then so do Level 60 wizards since the bosses have a version that's attuned to players of that level. Otherwise you're just leaving low-level wizards in the dust by focusing only on max-level wizards. So let's just quadruple the number of gear pieces to be updated, or at the very least looked at and consider updating. That's a grand total of 672 items. Good luck making sure none of them are underpowered, overpowered, or too similar to another piece of gear.

And here's the kicker: remember what update this was? That's right, a summer update. After all of this effort, a lot of the gear, at least at the highest level, would be instantly outclassed within mere months by Novus.


So why add pack gear to these bosses at all if it's almost all bad? (Ty for making Jade Gear farmable, Loremagus!) You said so yourself earlier in this thread: it's for stitching purposes. Until now, many of these items had no real way to obtain them without gambling for them in packs. This meant that if you had to pay Crowns for a chance to get the gear you want, then pay more Crowns to stitch. You'd end up paying quite a lot just to have your character look a specific way. Adding all of this pack gear to the Gold Key bosses opens up a lot more stitching options for many players who don't want to spend $40 just to have the eyepatch helmet stitch or whatever. You also have to remember that these packs aren't even always available to buy in the first place. The Crown Shop constantly rotates what it does and doesn't sell. So by letting Gold Key bosses drop these items, players can farm for them whenever they want. Removing Crown Shop exclusivity is a wonderful thing.

This also applies to mounts. I'm not entirely sure how the drop rates compare to bosses whose keys are turning to stone, but I know that I was able to get the Celestian Mech - a 50% speed mount - from Drowned Dan after only a couple dozen runs farming him for Spellements. He could be the exception, but finally getting a 50% speed mount was great. And better yet, I didn't have to throw my Crowns into the void hoping that a pack gave me what I wanted.

How do bosses dropping only 1-2 mounts compare to Omen who drops several of them? Well, it does mean that once I get the one mount then I'm done with that boss. I can move on to a different boss, freshen things up a bit. With Omen, I'd have to farm him specifically over and over, getting the Luphilim Wings fifty bazillion times before ever getting the Snow Treant mount. I'll have a bunch of one mount and none of the other, and I'm going to feel a bit awkward having to trash permanent mounts over and over again. Also, I don't care much for many of the mounts. I don't need, or want, to go around getting every single mount. Those Luphilim Wings are not worth anything, to me, because I don't care for them. So it doesn't matter to me one bit if Omen drops this mount or not. Other players will have different preferences. As for the drop rates, I know that the Gold Key bosses are designed to be incredibly grindy, at the very least if you want to fully upgrade your spells, so as long as I can reasonably get the mount on my journey to fully upgrading the spell it should be fine. I haven't really tried getting any of the mounts aside from the Celestian Mech though, so...

I think one thing to remember is that we're comparing Skeleton Key bosses who were released maybe once a year with nearly a dozen bosses who were made or repurposed all at once. Bosses like Omen were meant to keep the player occupied by himself while we waited for Mirage to be released. The Gold Key bosses are meant to keep us occupied, but not necessarily until Novus comes out. Where Omen was the alternative gear source to The Rat, the alternative to Hall of Heroes is not the cluster of Gold Key Bosses - it's Raids (and also Demiurge gear). They fill a different purpose from the key bosses from before, and that does not make them any better or worse.


Sorry for the really long response, I just felt like this thread was just way too over-the-top.

[Willowdreamer]

Sorry for the really long response, I just felt like this thread was just way too over-the-top.

Thank you for the explanations, I certainly don't think along any of the lines you went over, so it was an interesting perspective to me.

As a casual player who dislikes farming for particular gear, this idea that there are players who spend a LOT of time doing so is mind-boggling. I know I have seen many posts over the years from those who want to complete their Darkmoor or Waterworks sets, but I never have. All of this creating and juggling of hundreds of items that most players won't get due to bad luck, or won't even TRY to get if they're like me... is it all for PvP? Or bragging rights? or what?

Are changes like these really improving the game for most players? And while they create hundreds of new gear pieces for Wizard101, Pirate101 gets two mounts or two pets that are just re-colored existing items, and many of us wait for responses to questions that never come. I just have to shake my head because I don't understand the priorities or perceived value of such things at Kingsisle.

[bluedreamer]

Stone Keys are easier to get than before, only if slightly, since Gold Key bosses sure do love dropping the wrong kinds of keys. Making Gold Keys easier to get didn't make Stone Keys harder to obtain, it just highlighted how especially annoying it is to farm one boss just for the opportunity to farm another boss. It worked out alright with Gold Keys since they dropped reasonably well from Darkmoor, a place you would want to farm anyway either to get gear or to help others get theirs, but Stone Keys only have House of Scales which is only a less popular alternative to Waterworks. Wood Keys have nothing because Barkingham Palace is horrible. But now that Gold Keys are very easy to get, this method of farming to farm something else is outdated.

I kind of want KI to wait until they do make Stone (and Wood!) Keys more easily-obtainable before rearranging what keys go where, but to be honest I've also expressed that I feel like I'm cheating myself out of value if I try to use a Gold Key for a boss that does not drop Spellements. I don't want to farm Corporal Tenni'syn using Gold Keys on the slim chance that the Wiki Page is wrong and he does in fact drop the permanent version of the Junk Copter mount. (Btw, add this to his loot table if it isn't already, KI! Why does he only drop temporary versions of this mount?!)

And as for the drops, it feels like a waste of time to have made the gear drops competitive with Level 150 Lemuria gear. The same update gave us Raids, which brought along two entire gear sets per school that would be intended to be on par with the stuff we get from Lemuria. So in addition to that, they would have to make or update gear for each of these bosses. Sounds simple, but let me walk you through just how much of a task this really is.



Of the 10 bosses either added or repurposed, 5 of these bosses drop three sets of Crowns Gear, each set containing a Hat, Robe, Boot, and Wand piece. (Von Bracken, Stonegaze, Loremagus, Borr, and Drowned Dan) This is 12 gear pieces each, so 60 right there. Of the remaining ones, two of them (Lambent Fire and Takanobu) drop gear pieces for the same 4 item slots for every school as well as a universal gear piece. 8 pieces for 4 gear slots means that those two bosses each drop 32 pieces of gear, adding another 64 for a total of 124 gear pieces. There's also Spirit of Ignorance, whose gear drops are stitch only, but if we wanted Spirit of Ignorance to have competitive gear drops then that's another 32 gear pieces for 156. (King Borr also drops stitch gear, but I'm ignoring that part since he already drops pack gear.) Krampus appears to not drop any gear, aside from his stitch-only Tolltaker that he always had. I can't tell what Ixcax's drops are supposed to be like because the drop table for him is barren. The tier 2 page says he drops 3 sets of pack gear alongside an additional piece of gear for every school. If that's the case, he single-handedly adds another 44 items to this list - 168 total. Even more if we want Krampus to have gear drops to make him worth farming.

Sounds like a lot, but wait, we aren't even done yet! Each of these bosses has four different versions. This is only for the highest level players! You can absolutely go farm Takanobu or Drowned Dan with a team of Level 60 wizards. If max level wizards get to have good gear drop from these bosses, then so do Level 60 wizards since the bosses have a version that's attuned to players of that level. Otherwise you're just leaving low-level wizards in the dust by focusing only on max-level wizards. So let's just quadruple the number of gear pieces to be updated, or at the very least looked at and consider updating. That's a grand total of 672 items. Good luck making sure none of them are underpowered, overpowered, or too similar to another piece of gear.

And here's the kicker: remember what update this was? That's right, a summer update. After all of this effort, a lot of the gear, at least at the highest level, would be instantly outclassed within mere months by Novus.


So why add pack gear to these bosses at all if it's almost all bad? (Ty for making Jade Gear farmable, Loremagus!) You said so yourself earlier in this thread: it's for stitching purposes. Until now, many of these items had no real way to obtain them without gambling for them in packs. This meant that if you had to pay Crowns for a chance to get the gear you want, then pay more Crowns to stitch. You'd end up paying quite a lot just to have your character look a specific way. Adding all of this pack gear to the Gold Key bosses opens up a lot more stitching options for many players who don't want to spend $40 just to have the eyepatch helmet stitch or whatever. You also have to remember that these packs aren't even always available to buy in the first place. The Crown Shop constantly rotates what it does and doesn't sell. So by letting Gold Key bosses drop these items, players can farm for them whenever they want. Removing Crown Shop exclusivity is a wonderful thing.

This also applies to mounts. I'm not entirely sure how the drop rates compare to bosses whose keys are turning to stone, but I know that I was able to get the Celestian Mech - a 50% speed mount - from Drowned Dan after only a couple dozen runs farming him for Spellements. He could be the exception, but finally getting a 50% speed mount was great. And better yet, I didn't have to throw my Crowns into the void hoping that a pack gave me what I wanted.

How do bosses dropping only 1-2 mounts compare to Omen who drops several of them? Well, it does mean that once I get the one mount then I'm done with that boss. I can move on to a different boss, freshen things up a bit. With Omen, I'd have to farm him specifically over and over, getting the Luphilim Wings fifty bazillion times before ever getting the Snow Treant mount. I'll have a bunch of one mount and none of the other, and I'm going to feel a bit awkward having to trash permanent mounts over and over again. Also, I don't care much for many of the mounts. I don't need, or want, to go around getting every single mount. Those Luphilim Wings are not worth anything, to me, because I don't care for them. So it doesn't matter to me one bit if Omen drops this mount or not. Other players will have different preferences. As for the drop rates, I know that the Gold Key bosses are designed to be incredibly grindy, at the very least if you want to fully upgrade your spells, so as long as I can reasonably get the mount on my journey to fully upgrading the spell it should be fine. I haven't really tried getting any of the mounts aside from the Celestian Mech though, so...

I think one thing to remember is that we're comparing Skeleton Key bosses who were released maybe once a year with nearly a dozen bosses who were made or repurposed all at once. Bosses like Omen were meant to keep the player occupied by himself while we waited for Mirage to be released. The Gold Key bosses are meant to keep us occupied, but not necessarily until Novus comes out. Where Omen was the alternative gear source to The Rat, the alternative to Hall of Heroes is not the cluster of Gold Key Bosses - it's Raids (and also Demiurge gear). They fill a different purpose from the key bosses from before, and that does not make them any better or worse.


Sorry for the really long response, I just felt like this thread was just way too over-the-top.

I apologise for only responding to a few points, given the amount of time you must have taken writing this post, it feels a little disrespectful for such a poster of your quality. I too never got the snow treant mount(I'm assuming you got the name correct) meanwhile my friend got lucky! Honestly I have no idea how many runs I have done in the past of Omen and while I don't like all of the mounts, they look great as decorations around my houses. I also have so many of each that all of my wizards get the ones I like and still have more.

I doubt I have done as many battles of drowned Dan but I don't think that 24 attempts in getting one mount is particularly good. Sure it's a nice mount and absolutely I would love one. 24 attempts times four players is a woeful drop rate. By that logic it should be a stone key boss.

Honestly doesn't really matter how many individual crown items they drop in these new key bosses when very few top-level wizards which today is level 150, probably two weeks now 160 puts them even further behind the curve Of usefulness. I myself farmed for some jade gear but the fact that it's been such a huge problem in PVP for many many years, only demonstrates that the developers have plans to nullify that gear. I don't know what they're planning but rest assured, the fact that they are giving it away willy-nilly, means it's going to become useless very very soon. Just like they did with Headless Horseman, I was amazed they were dropping the spell instead of spellements during Halloween, it's because they knew they were going to wreck it in the new update. These people are cold and calculating and don't just give away the good stuff. Whenever the developers do something nice for the community, watch your back because it's about to get stabbed metaphorically speaking.

In any case the good old days of lots of great mounts dropping from key bosses at reasonable rates are gone and these changes are not to benefit us, as I mentioned, just simply doing dailies for a few minutes per day on each wizard based on six wizards. A group of four can have 48 gold key runs per 30 days. Unless KI does something to prove me wrong and I'd be delighted to be wrong, there's not going to be such an easy way to get 48 stone keys, never going to happen.

They are saying you have to farm your gold keys for these locations for spellements only, you'd be naive to think they are trying to say the old, other gold key bosses don't offer value. in reality hey are just making them harder to farm.

Also we shouldn't have to farm Gold bosses for Stone keys. Why isn't Stone Keys a drop from daily's like say day 13, say day 11 for wooden?

BTW I used to get many wooden keys from Jade Oni farming the many season items. Prior to key boss changed I'd farm them keys in Krampus and get Stone and gold keys at good rates. That a dead source of keys now.

EDIT: before drop rate changes by KI Ra used to be enormous value. I have good patches and bad but mostly they used to drop often many, many years ago and have all from there. Captain Hopkins? Zafaria used to drop like crazy, 2022 like getting blood from a stone. House of scales again *used* to drop often, I burned many keys helping a friend, he had no luck until the end, but the team just kept getting them like candy.

[icourt]

Of the 10 bosses either added or repurposed, 5 of these bosses drop three sets of Crowns Gear, each set containing a Hat, Robe, Boot, and Wand piece. (Von Bracken, Stonegaze, Loremagus, Borr, and Drowned Dan) This is 12 gear pieces each, so 60 right there. Of the remaining ones, two of them (Lambent Fire and Takanobu) drop gear pieces for the same 4 item slots for every school as well as a universal gear piece. 8 pieces for 4 gear slots means that those two bosses each drop 32 pieces of gear, adding another 64 for a total of 124 gear pieces. There's also Spirit of Ignorance, whose gear drops are stitch only, but if we wanted Spirit of Ignorance to have competitive gear drops then that's another 32 gear pieces for 156. (King Borr also drops stitch gear, but I'm ignoring that part since he already drops pack gear.) Krampus appears to not drop any gear, aside from his stitch-only Tolltaker that he always had. I can't tell what Ixcax's drops are supposed to be like because the drop table for him is barren. The tier 2 page says he drops 3 sets of pack gear alongside an additional piece of gear for every school. If that's the case, he single-handedly adds another 44 items to this list - 168 total. Even more if we want Krampus to have gear drops to make him worth farming.

Sounds like a lot, but wait, we aren't even done yet! Each of these bosses has four different versions. This is only for the highest level players! You can absolutely go farm Takanobu or Drowned Dan with a team of Level 60 wizards. If max level wizards get to have good gear drop from these bosses, then so do Level 60 wizards since the bosses have a version that's attuned to players of that level. Otherwise you're just leaving low-level wizards in the dust by focusing only on max-level wizards. So let's just quadruple the number of gear pieces to be updated, or at the very least looked at and consider updating. That's a grand total of 672 items. Good luck making sure none of them are underpowered, overpowered, or too similar to another piece of gear.

You mention Krampus, Spirit of Ignorance & Takanobu in this post, so I wanted to take some time to address my personal concerns with those bosses. Ferric and I recently talked with Cam about it so let me try bring Central into the loop. (Note, this were just ideas discussed with a single developer... not a plan by the developer team).

If you take a look at King Borr's drops, he drops either one stitch piece or one Grizzleheim Lore gear piece per run. On top of that, you get the Grizzleheim Lore spellements, a housing item, and a few other things. On the other hand, you have Krampus, who drops housing items, 1-day mounts, and a single wand... (and in December, he'll drop the 2 Yuletide spellements)... I think we can see, one is clearly valued more than the other. Spirit of Ignorance is similar to Borr, but he doesn't drop his Pack gear... again, one is clearly valued more. And then Takanobu drops his own exclusive gear, but again no Pack gear. The exclusive gear is "decent" for Levels 30-40 ish or as a stitch, but it adds no inherent value for max wizards (compared to Borr). Basically, we asked Cam to reconsider the drop tables on a few of these key bosses to hopefully push their drops to be "as valuable" as a boss like Drowned Dan or King Borr. Hope that sparks some conversation. I'll 'mention' @Eric Stormbringer here just in case he has additional feedback on that idea (or on the rest of these comments, LOL!)

I doubt I have done as many battles of drowned Dan but I don't think that 24 attempts in getting one mount is particularly good. Sure it's a nice mount and absolutely I would love one. 24 attempts times four players is a woeful drop rate. By that logic it should be a stone key boss.

...

Just like they did with Headless Horseman, I was amazed they were dropping the spell instead of spellements during Halloween, it's because they knew they were going to wreck it in the new update.

...

In any case the good old days of lots of great mounts dropping from key bosses at reasonable rates are gone and these changes are not to benefit us, as I mentioned, just simply doing dailies for a few minutes per day on each wizard based on six wizards. A group of four can have 48 gold key runs per 30 days. Unless KI does something to prove me wrong and I'd be delighted to be wrong, there's not going to be such an easy way to get 48 stone keys, never going to happen.

They are saying you have to farm your gold keys for these locations for spellements only, you'd be naive to think they are trying to say the old, other gold key bosses don't offer value. in reality hey are just making them harder to farm.
Also we shouldn't have to farm Gold bosses for Stone keys. Why isn't Stone Keys a drop from daily's like say day 13, say day 11 for wooden? BTW I used to get many wooden keys from Jade Oni farming the many season items. Prior to key boss changed I'd farm them keys in Krampus and get Stone and gold keys at good rates. That a dead source of keys now.

Sort of cropped your post here bluedreamer, I had some specific points I wanted to reply to. According to the developers, the "value" of a gold key is currently the so called "lore" spellements (Ship of Fools, Ratatoskr's Spin, Deer Knight, etc.). On top of the very high drop rate of 14-16 per run guaranteed, you can also get Pack gear from most of the bosses (besides the one I mentioned in the paragraphs above). The drop rate and the "value" of those spellements is why these bosses are a Gold Skeleton Boss.

Unfortunately, the Wiz developers do not classify mounts as a super "valuable" drop like spellements are. Spells and spellements have always been a sort of "Ultra Rare" drop, so a very generous guaranteed drop rate makes them worth the Gold Key, while a decent mount drop rate is only worth a Stone (e.g. Omen). If Omen were to have some other more valuable drops, he would also be a Gold Key.

For Stone Keys, they can be farmed in pretty much every existing Gold Key source, I believe. I think I've heard some reports of Darkmoor dropping them now? If not, both Stone and Wooden drop in every old location, so farming those places aren't super painful (Jade Oni or the Kembaalung dungeons areeasy wood key spots!). You have to remember that Gold Keys have a "limited" quantity per month (12 per character on daily assignments + the weekly time-limited events). Stone Keys do not have a time limit -- you can farm them at any time of the day, at any time of the month, and have a decent supply of them. This is also one of the reasons why the developer team values Gold Keys so much higher than the other key variations.

Loremaster was changed in order to stop the "mindless repeated battle over and over again for a 'chance' at a spell"... instead, you may fight a Gold Key boss 8-10 times and unlock the spell... Loremaster was maybe 1 in a 1000 runs... Headless was the only spell that wasn't moved because there was not an "appropriate" spot for that spellement -- no halloween key boss. Next year, it will be moved, especially after all of this "spell audit" stuff comes to an end. Maybe we'll see a Halloween dungeons update and a key boss to match. Personally, I'm hoping we get new Halloween "lore" spells with it!

Hope that helps. If there's anything else I can help with, let me know.
Court
Central Wiki-Master

[bluedreamer]

Sort of cropped your post here bluedreamer, I had some specific points I wanted to reply to. According to the developers, the "value" of a gold key is currently the so called "lore" spellements (Ship of Fools, Ratatoskr's Spin, Deer Knight, etc.). On top of the very high drop rate of 14-16 per run guaranteed, you can also get Pack gear from most of the bosses (besides the one I mentioned in the paragraphs above). The drop rate and the "value" of those spellements is why these bosses are a Gold Skeleton Boss.

Unfortunately, the Wiz developers do not classify mounts as a super "valuable" drop like spellements are. Spells and spellements have always been a sort of "Ultra Rare" drop, so a very generous guaranteed drop rate makes them worth the Gold Key, while a decent mount drop rate is only worth a Stone (e.g. Omen). If Omen were to have some other more valuable drops, he would also be a Gold Key.

For Stone Keys, they can be farmed in pretty much every existing Gold Key source, I believe. I think I've heard some reports of Darkmoor dropping them now? If not, both Stone and Wooden drop in every old location, so farming those places aren't super painful (Jade Oni or the Kembaalung dungeons areeasy wood key spots!). You have to remember that Gold Keys have a "limited" quantity per month (12 per character on daily assignments + the weekly time-limited events). Stone Keys do not have a time limit -- you can farm them at any time of the day, at any time of the month, and have a decent supply of them. This is also one of the reasons why the developer team values Gold Keys so much higher than the other key variations.

Loremaster was changed in order to stop the "mindless repeated battle over and over again for a 'chance' at a spell"... instead, you may fight a Gold Key boss 8-10 times and unlock the spell... Loremaster was maybe 1 in a 1000 runs... Headless was the only spell that wasn't moved because there was not an "appropriate" spot for that spellement -- no halloween key boss. Next year, it will be moved, especially after all of this "spell audit" stuff comes to an end. Maybe we'll see a Halloween dungeons update and a key boss to match. Personally, I'm hoping we get new Halloween "lore" spells with it!

Hope that helps. If there's anything else I can help with, let me know.
Court
Central Wiki-Master

That is the problem with changing to stone key bosses. I avoid places like Darkmoor like the plague doing as few runs as humanly possible. So I'm highly unlikely to be able to get many stone keys. I currently have an abundance of gold keys and access to more, yet few places to actually use them when this goes live. Surely it should be up to the player to designate the value of the key. To be honest before these new key bosses were added I have most of the spells I wanted through crafting and grinding the scroll of fortune (free) for the spellements for ship of fools etc etc. I see zero point in endlessly farming spellements. Yes you only need 35 to unlock the spell. The reason they are giving so many is because you need to get 600, 700 or more to get to the Max Tier. And as we see now KI are changing what they do. so 8-10 for 35, that's 200 runs for max tier. OMG

Trust me it has nothing to do with perceived value. It's we have too many gold keys and they don't want us farming those other bosses, they want us grinding for spellements. They don't make changes where premium items drop to benefit us. Clearly it's not because there's no way a group of four players can access 48 Stone keys with only minimal effort per day a matter of minutes. That should be your alarm bell that they are not telling the truth. The truth is they have devalued gold keys by removing lots of premium items and making them harder to get. In any case the decision is made and there is little point grumbling about it, it's just another case of being deceived by the developers yet again. They knew what they were doing, telling us they were phasing out stone keys knowing we would use them up, then they would bring these other Gold Key bosses making them stone key. Sadly my plans to do certain bosses will never happen now, Because I will never be able to get enough stone keys to be able to farm for the mounts I want

Thank you KI for taking that away from me.

[Swordroll]

I think the idea here was to make getting to some of these other, older bosses easier with Stone keys since their loot isn't matching the new Gold key bosses. That's a great thought. Unfortunately, in practice, it doesn't seem like it's working that way since Stone keys are often tougher to come by for higher-level wizards than Gold ones. I also am not generally a fan of these types of retroactive reworkings. I think the better solution would be to do something like pulling Obsidian Keys from Pirate and make that your next tier up after gold. Leave the Gold as is and add the new tier for bosses you want to have better loot.

[bluedreamer]

I think the idea here was to make getting to some of these other, older bosses easier with Stone keys since their loot isn't matching the new Gold key bosses. That's a great thought. Unfortunately, in practice, it doesn't seem like it's working that way since Stone keys are often tougher to come by for higher-level wizards than Gold ones. I also am not generally a fan of these types of retroactive reworkings. I think the better solution would be to do something like pulling Obsidian Keys from Pirate and make that your next tier up after gold. Leave the Gold as is and add the new tier for bosses you want to have better loot.

Absolutely on Obsidian keys.

Having farmed Omen hard this weekend, it put the new bosses to shame in value, Using 2 Wizards( no friends) I was *almost* getting 1 mount on one wiz or the other every run, multiple mastery amulets(mostly), the exclusive hat, robe or boots, plus pets.

THAT WAS BLESSED VALUE for my gold keys. I'd wager best in game until KI nerfs it.

NOTE: Picture showing, SIX yes SIX mastery amulets and a mount in ONE single run. Including 2 Fire ones on a Fire Wiz and no trade(WHY?)