Why always Park? (aka my take on the next mod)

I find my life to be quite a Korean drama. Whenever the bandwidth gets eaten up by that bandwidth glutton known as my sis, why always me. More specifically, it's SingTel's fault for giving up the online gamer customer base to rival telcos. Why always me? I don't feel understood by human beings around me, why always me? I just can't get a chance to test my mettle despite my nation boasting itself as a meritocracy, why always me? Is it any wonder then that I refused to keel over for the Singaporean way when it comes to taste?

Above is the Singaporean taste...


Above is my taste...


Above is the Singaporean taste...


Above is my taste...

And now, back to why always Park?

2017 can be seen as the year of the Park. We have the political Park and the beautiful Park. Then we have Jurassic Park.

To be honest, I'm starting to have mixed feelings here. While on one hand, I hope mod 12 will be a success, it was a miracle Storm King's Thunder/Sea of Moving Ice didn't sink the game. While it wasn't as disastrous as Elemental Evil (i.e. the mod which still ranks as the worst one ever because the entire gear system got nuked down to ground zero), it's basically another Icewind Dale. The fights are good with the usage of terrain being more vital than 90% of the other zones. However, with good fights comes poor loot. There's not much for the players to be motivated about beyond completing the campaign. And even then, it's much more of a drag than anything else. At least Icewind Dale won't really take you that long.

Ultimately, I'm actually wondering whether the devs will do anything to alleviate the excruciating process of completing the whole damn campaign. Hopefully, the River District won't be the only place where you can purchase voninblod. Or even better, make the final boons for SKT much powerful than the rest (then again, it'd defeat the purpose of playing the campaign post-completion).

A lot will hinge on how fast you can complete the new campaign. Once you finish it, you can pretty much go back to the other end of Icewind Dale. Problem is, what should the devs do in order to make SKT more playable? For EE, at least they added in campaign boons which were quite good (apart from the final boon which is mediocre, that is).

Problem with SKT, it seems, may not be down to the duration. Rather, it is the quality of the drops. You only get 100 voninblod plus the customary XP and gold. If you can complete any of the side quests, it's 50 more voninblod per turn in. Which is stupid considering how long it takes even for hardcore grinding. Of course, this will mean that getting a map in a bottle will help a lot. After all, this should be where you get plenty of bonus voninblod. The only problem? Navigation. The Sea of Moving Ice is one large piece of ocean with large icebergs. There are only two indications that a treasure chest is nearby.

1. The presence of a flag. This indicates the specific iceberg has one or more treasure chests.

2. Skeletal remains of whoever unfortunate enough to meet Kelemvor. This is a cast-iron proof that a treasure chest is nearby.

If you want to profit from any map in a bottle, my suggestion is to memorize one location at a time. Don't try to do more than one map in a go unless your orientation skill is on the par with Sir Edmund Hillary. Thankfully, the reddit manual is still around.

Note: In case you've yet to notice, it seems that the Arc in-game browser has been taken down. You can no longer press Shift+Tab.

Add note: Storm King's Thunder isn't all doom and gloom, though. If you're playing as a melee hunter ranger, rejoice because we all know what anema did before quitting Cryptic. Doing a god-mod for archery is one thing, realizing the insane damage caused by Skirmisher's Gambit plus vorpal enchantment is really quite a discovery. As for the trapper, nothing much has changed beyond the CC duration getting buffed.

Any way to make the other end of Icewind Dale more replay-friendly?

Actually, the answer is yes. Putting the relic armor set into the wondrous bazaar, however, isn't the way. If there's anything to go by, it will only make the excruciating process of grinding into an excruciating form of necessity.

Firstly, it'll be nice to have rewards like a Mark of Power/Stability/Union per standard quest completion. For optional quests like aiding Kelemvor (e.g. quests like killing the Returned and releasing the Ghost of Bryn Shander from her misery), killing giants (basically doable in Bryn Shander, Lonelywood, and Cold Run) or critter population control (mostly in Lonelywood because Drizzt isn't around to help his girlfriend), why not provide a chance to get loot like Superior Mark of Power/Stability/Union?

As for Sea of Moving Ice, why not do the same for the optional quest with the reward being (rare) marks used for the relic weapons specific ones? At the same time, completing standard quests will provide you with a chest where you'll get an aquamarine and a gigantic enchantment plus a chance of getting a random rare relic weapon mark. Because I'm in the mood for schadenfreude, why not trigger the gigantic enchantment drop via the relevant campaign progress? Say for example you completed the campaign quest that will give you a rank 4 gigantic enchantment (i.e. doing it 3 times), completing any standard quest in Sea of Moving Ice will yield a chest containing 1 gigantic enchantment of that rank. Once you managed to aid the Elk Tribe barbarians 3 times out of 3 tries, the chest will drop two rank 4 gigantic enchantments and a rank 5 gigantic enchantment.

For the rewards given this way, the loot should be either bind on equip or bind to account. Apart from the relic weapon marks since that will give the auction house economy more options. Not to mention more profitable as well so as to speak. As for the greater and superior marks for relic weapons, I won't mind them being bind to account in this context.

Rewards for Fangbreaker Island, both versions of Svardborg, and epic Spellplague Caverns

I won't go that far as to suggest heightening the chances of a legendary ring drop. At the same time, I also feel that the dungeons are quite okay the way they are now. The main problem here lies in the standard open world PvE. Period. If nothing is being done apart from moving the relic gear to the wondrous bazaar, I truly doubt there will be much reason for gamers to complete Storm King's Thunder campaign beyond the need to complete every single damn campaign in the game. Which is terribly dumb, if you're to ask me.

Which now comes to the Kavatos weekly quest where you're required to finish epic Demogorgon, Fangbreaker Island, epic Svardborg, and epic Spellplague Caverns. Yes, the blood ruby is nice to have. 50K refinement points per pop. But why not adding a chest where you can choose between a few options below?

1. One twisted ichor with a chance of getting two instead.

2. One uncommon relic weapons refinement item with a chance of getting a blue one instead.

3. Two hundred abandoned treasures with a chance of getting a blue companion (i.e. lava galeb duhr, yeth hound, and blue fire eye).

Note: Above rewards should be bind to account in order to prevent a total crash in the auction house economy.

Gear system breaking the glass ceiling?

Apparently, level 500 gear will be available for Jurassic Park. While there's plenty of information yet to be outed, I won't be surprised if said gear will be either bind on equip or bind to account. The presence of a new set of level 420 gear may mean a few things.

1. Armor which can be purchased with guild marks may still be there. This is due to the likelihood that earning 6K+ guild marks may still be easier than earning astral diamonds. Apart from the shards, you can also earn extra guild marks via donating Sharandar and Dread Ring campaign currency since these two are the easiest campaigns to complete.

2. It's possible that the new level 420 gear set will confer set bonus since there's no point for the devs to create a white elephant.

3. The new gear set is very likely to be classified under the standard assault, raid, restoration, and ward categories.

4. The set bonus may vary according to the relevant category.

5. Hopefully, this also means the elemental drowcraft gear will be upgraded to around level 430. Actually, the article above may have hinted at this.

6. Will dragonflight and lionsmane gear be upgraded to a higher level? If elemental drowcraft gear can be upped to level 430, then it would only make sense that the dragonflight and lionsmane gear are upped accordingly.

7. Hopefully, there's an option to upgrade drowcraft rings via a maxed out black ice forge. No point making Icewind Dale 100% redundant.

As for the new epic seal system, this may easily mean the only gear which can be purchased will be the relic armor set together with the reagents needed (including lanolin hopefully).

For the non-masterwork gear amounting to level 420 and 430 (apart from the possibility of level 430 drowcraft gear), it means the gear craftable this way will most likely focus on power-recovery or critical-armor penetration. This is due to the current masterwork gear being focused on either power-critical or power-armor penetration. Therefore, it'd be terribly stupid for the devs to mess this up via a watered down "masterwork" gear system. Interestingly enough, the pricing for epic profession persons has hit a decent spike in the auction house. If you want to play safe, I suggest you start getting the epic profession tools asap before the next mod. I'll explain this much later on. Just be patient.

Total Recall on masterwork gear?

Which now comes to the current masterwork gear. Because more and more people will be doing the new dungeon as time goes by, it'd be utterly unthinkable that masterwork gear will be stuck at the current level 435 and 480. Already, tier 1 masterwork gear will most likely be made redundant due to the availability of level 480 gear obtainable in-game. Therefore, I won't be surprised if a tier 1 masterwork equipment will be fixed at around level 500 with tier 2 masterwork quite likely to break that mark (possibly around level 520 by my guess). It's either that or crafting tier 1 masterwork gear should be much easier (which also means they will come much cheaper in the auction house).

Seemingly dumb gear

Currently, I've gotten Brynnyr's Demise, Bloodlord's Visage, and Psion's Shroud. And that is not considering Morlanth's Shroud. On the first glance, some, if not, most of the current level 450 gear looks useless. However, this seemingly half-assed gear system is catered to specific builds more than anything else. Even something seemingly useless like Psion's Shroud, Deepknight Brigandine, and Morlanth's Shroud does have its purpose. Psion's Shroud is quite useful for temptation scourge warlocks with the damnation tree also profiting from it (that is, so long you max out Mocking Spirit and Spiritfire for open PvE and Warding Spirits plus Wrathful Souls for raiding). Deepknight Brigandine is more for healadins, dps guardian fighters, and sentinel great weapon fighters. As for Morlanth's Shroud, it's useful for any great weapon fighter (in particular instigators due to a buff-dps hybrid play). Survivor's Wraps can be absurdly useful for healers and great weapon fighters due to their high-end survival gameplay. Cambist's Gauntlets can deal absurdly high damage upon proc while that head gear you can loot from Malabog's Castle (forgot its name) can proc like crazy if you're playing a guardian fighter utilizing Knight's Valor (read: every tanking guardian fighter's BFF with no exception).

So what this means is very simple: I don't see the current level 450 gear phasing out anytime soon.

Note: The current level 450 gear you can purchase from the stronghold mysterious vendor will most likely be your best bet in upping your character's efficiency in preparation for Chult. If there's anything to go by via what the devs have teased, the dinosaurs will be more dangerous than the frost giants.

Economy

I'm pretty sure the economy in the auction house may be moving out of its mass deflation status. More specifically moving out on a partial basis. Because of the new non-masterwork gear crafting recipe available for the next mod, I'm foreseeing a price jump in terms of epic profession tools/assets/both. While epic profession persons won't matter much (unless you're out to unlock all 9 profession slots), the same cannot be said about the tools. It'll most likely be another case of crafting a level 135 personalized adamant ring of piercing so as to speak. The only way to get the desired outcome is to slot in epic profession tools (legendary or mythic in one of the slots if you happen to have the gondhammer like yours truly).

As for the rest, I doubt there will be much change in the auction house economy. In fact, the reason why there's a mass deflation for pretty much 70% of the things on sale lies in the availability of epic to legendary loot whenever you finished running an epic instance with your 4 other BFFs. Yes, the rng can be really annoying at times. Or rather, most of the time. But imagine getting a legendary Celeste complete with her cleavage. Don't laugh, someone in my alliance really got that lucky a few weeks ago or so. Quite obviously, chances of getting such loot on a bind to account basis are quite high with the unbound ones capable of fetching a handsome sum in the auction house. So far, the only unbound loot I got so far was a green phoera. That was like donkey weeks ago.

As a result of the new loot drop changes, the auction house economy hit a massive deflation. While stuff like preservation wards and coalescent wards remain slightly changed, the rest have hit a pricing nosedive. For starters, getting a green companion would have cost you like a few hundred thousand astral diamonds. Now, you can just get one for around 1000 ad or even less than that. Epic mounts used to cost a mother of all bombs with legendary mounts costing an atomic bomb. Now, you can easily grab one for around 500K while a legendary mount would go like 1-2 million by my own estimation (note: epic mounts used to cost that much before Cryptic decided to go socialist mode on the auction house).

My advice to you is very simple: Either get an epic mount via the zen store (read: any mount you buy from the zen store can be obtained automatically for every character in your current roster) or get one from the auction house. There's no way you can travel through River District so as to speak with a mount speed of 80%, let alone 50%. Which means trying to do so in Chult will guarantee an auto takedown by the aggro. No refund, only respawn.

Note: The zen-astral diamonds exchange seems to stay the same atm. A no-brainer since this aspect of the game is all about the zen users calling the shots (read: it's still going like 496-500 astral diamonds per zen). In other words, there are people who pay real money for the zen just to rig the market. And I don't see that changing unless Cryptic decide to bring back the planar idol. Which is not gonna happen by my own guess.