Returning player; need help
Hey everyone,
I'm a returning player and just have a few questions and hope someone can answer. Please forgive me if I'm posting in the wrong forum - I wasn't sure where to put this post but felt that "Bi-Peds" would be slightly appropriate as I have a few questions about bi-ped schools and don't have interest in creating a Dragon at the moment.
Anyways, on with the questions/concerns.
1) Are there still a decent amount of players that play? Whenever I login, there seem to be a solid 30-40 players in the "New Player Assistance" channel. That's a decent amount but I wonder if the entire server is in there or are there around 200+ players at peak hours?
2) How is the grind? Right now, Istaria seem as grindy as Everquest 1. This is NOT a bad thing as my first exposure to MMOs was on EQ and therefore:
1) Grinding the same 5 mobs for like 3 days to get 1 single drop on a recipe only to fail said combine - check!
2) Grinding 1 placeholder mob to spawn 1 mob that has a 2% chance to spawn then a >1% chance to drop an item you need - check!
3) Grinding for 5 hours of exp just to get 3% of your level - check!
I suppose what I'm trying to illustrate is that I'm ok with a decent amount of grinding. I have played WoW and am now playing Rift yet there's something missing about those 2 games - effort. Getting a rare item is as simple as grinding a few dungeons for like 2 days or killing a mob twice. No effort involved; everything is just handed out.
There's a reason why I'm asking about the grind level of Istaria but I'll get to that later.
3) Dragons vs. Bi-Peds - I have both a Dragon and a Bi-ped on my account and have heard/read that the two play a different game. That's fine with me. What I'm concerned with is how balanced the Bi-peds are vs. the Dragons.
From my own experience, I was on New Trismus doing a kill quest - I'm hitting for about 12-16 damage on average but haven't really come across any difficult content yet (For reference, I'm a level 8 Warrior, have level 2 Monk for Dodge passive, level 4 cleric for Insta-heal and plan to continue raising Warrior to 100.) A dragon then walks up, flame breaths the mob I'm fighting for like 42, silver strikes him for around 35ish (I don't recall the exact numbers as I wasn't truly paying attention to his damage until I saw this) then Ravaged the mob 3 times for about 14 damage a piece. I definitely felt a bit inferior at this point. I then saw some screenshots back from 2006-2008 of people 8(?)-manning a high level monster. The dragon on the screenshot hits for around 900 damage where the caster hit a spirit bolt for around 90. Perhaps the screenshot might be biased towards the dragon as it only captured that moment. Who knows? However, I read on this forum that veteran Istaria/Dragon players have troubles going back to bi-peds because it's just that much more challenging. Anyways, back to combat, leads me to my 4th question:
4) Combat - One thing that irks me about this game is that the combat feels so static. However, playing EQ1 for 5 years as a rogue, it was literally engraved into my brain that pressing 1 button every 8 seconds plus auto-attacking = combat lol. I suppose I have been spoiled by newer MMOs where you can chain abilities together and only have 1.5 second global cooldown imposed, plus some abilities that may have a 1 or 2 min cooldown. In Istaria however, what I'm always trying to do is 'setup' a mob with abilities like Rend Armor then follow it up with, for example, -slash resistance and then follow that up with Power Strike (or critical strike, multistrike, melee flurry) in order to maximize damage on those long cooldown abilities. It almost seems pointless though as everytime I use an attack ability, it imposes a delay on everything by about 10-15 seconds. Is this truly what combat is about? Swing-swing-swing-Rend Armor-swing*10-Power Strike-swing-swing-swing.
Now what I was talking about in post 3 - that dragon that I saw using those 3 aforementioned abilities did so in about 3-4 combat rounds and it literally felt like they were done in rapid succession compared to my Warrior. Were my eyes deceiving me or is Dragon combat just that much quicker paced? Or am I just being a classic newbie and not realizing that I could activate abilities much quicker?
5) (and almost last question) Schools - I'm intending to do a build as follows:
Raise Warrior to 100 > Raise Monk to 100 (for Special Attack masteries) and Dexterity boost passives > Raise Druid to 100 > (to get Fortitude masteries and help emphasize a Warrior's physical resistance) then I was planning to move into Shaman for Steal Strength/Dex debuffs, Corrosive Rain for -resistance, instant heal masteries and may even Ruin to pull from range.
Yet I wonder, is this viable as a Warrior? Will I have enough focus as a Warrior to land said spells on higher level monsters? Or will I have to spend a large number of training points in say a Warrior "main" / Shaman setup? Again, Monk and Druid are there more for masteries.
Also with schools, to get to Shaman, I note from the Wikia page that it takes 200 Nature skill and 200 Blight skill. I then noted that Druid gains 10 Nature/level and Spiritist gets 10 Blight/level. Therefore to reach 200, it will take getting to level 20. My question is - am I able to level Druid and Spiritist to 20 to satisfy the requirements or do I have to take say Druid to 20 then spend my training points on Blight to get to 200? What is the most efficient way to get to Shaman?
6) Last topic - What is "end game" or even the leveling game like? Are there enough players to do high end content? Are there any elements in the game that still require a group to complete or is this game now a 'solo online adventure'? Are there any instanced areas / dungeons to complete? As much as I love the combat/questing aspects of an MMO, I definitely love it when the game has a good sense of community and enjoy doing things with other players - aside from chatting in a global channel.
Sorry for the wall of text and I promise to wrap this up soon! I'm only asking the above questions as I want to rejoin the Istaria community and play this game again! I've always had big hopes for it and still do now. I just hope that anyone has managed to read this far to help answer my questions and concerns. Any input is greatly appreciated!
Thanks for your time,
Talithra, of Chaos
Re: Returning player; need help
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Areimus
Hey everyone,
I'm a returning player and just have a few questions and hope someone can answer. Please forgive me if I'm posting in the wrong forum - I wasn't sure where to put this post but felt that "Bi-Peds" would be slightly appropriate as I have a few questions about bi-ped schools and don't have interest in creating a Dragon at the moment.
Anyways, on with the questions/concerns.
1) Are there still a decent amount of players that play? Whenever I login, there seem to be a solid 30-40 players in the "New Player Assistance" channel. That's a decent amount but I wonder if the entire server is in there or are there around 200+ players at peak hours?
2) How is the grind? Right now, Istaria seem as grindy as Everquest 1. This is NOT a bad thing as my first exposure to MMOs was on EQ and therefore:
1) Grinding the same 5 mobs for like 3 days to get 1 single drop on a recipe only to fail said combine - check!
2) Grinding 1 placeholder mob to spawn 1 mob that has a 2% chance to spawn then a >1% chance to drop an item you need - check!
3) Grinding for 5 hours of exp just to get 3% of your level - check!
I suppose what I'm trying to illustrate is that I'm ok with a decent amount of grinding. I have played WoW and am now playing Rift yet there's something missing about those 2 games - effort. Getting a rare item is as simple as grinding a few dungeons for like 2 days or killing a mob twice. No effort involved; everything is just handed out.
There's a reason why I'm asking about the grind level of Istaria but I'll get to that later.
3) Dragons vs. Bi-Peds - I have both a Dragon and a Bi-ped on my account and have heard/read that the two play a different game. That's fine with me. What I'm concerned with is how balanced the Bi-peds are vs. the Dragons.
From my own experience, I was on New Trismus doing a kill quest - I'm hitting for about 12-16 damage on average but haven't really come across any difficult content yet (For reference, I'm a level 8 Warrior, have level 2 Monk for Dodge passive, level 4 cleric for Insta-heal and plan to continue raising Warrior to 100.) A dragon then walks up, flame breaths the mob I'm fighting for like 42, silver strikes him for around 35ish (I don't recall the exact numbers as I wasn't truly paying attention to his damage until I saw this) then Ravaged the mob 3 times for about 14 damage a piece. I definitely felt a bit inferior at this point. I then saw some screenshots back from 2006-2008 of people 8(?)-manning a high level monster. The dragon on the screenshot hits for around 900 damage where the caster hit a spirit bolt for around 90. Perhaps the screenshot might be biased towards the dragon as it only captured that moment. Who knows? However, I read on this forum that veteran Istaria/Dragon players have troubles going back to bi-peds because it's just that much more challenging. Anyways, back to combat, leads me to my 4th question:
4) Combat - One thing that irks me about this game is that the combat feels so static. However, playing EQ1 for 5 years as a rogue, it was literally engraved into my brain that pressing 1 button every 8 seconds plus auto-attacking = combat lol. I suppose I have been spoiled by newer MMOs where you can chain abilities together and only have 1.5 second global cooldown imposed, plus some abilities that may have a 1 or 2 min cooldown. In Istaria however, what I'm always trying to do is 'setup' a mob with abilities like Rend Armor then follow it up with, for example, -slash resistance and then follow that up with Power Strike (or critical strike, multistrike, melee flurry) in order to maximize damage on those long cooldown abilities. It almost seems pointless though as everytime I use an attack ability, it imposes a delay on everything by about 10-15 seconds. Is this truly what combat is about? Swing-swing-swing-Rend Armor-swing*10-Power Strike-swing-swing-swing.
Now what I was talking about in post 3 - that dragon that I saw using those 3 aforementioned abilities did so in about 3-4 combat rounds and it literally felt like they were done in rapid succession compared to my Warrior. Were my eyes deceiving me or is Dragon combat just that much quicker paced? Or am I just being a classic newbie and not realizing that I could activate abilities much quicker?
5) (and almost last question) Schools - I'm intending to do a build as follows:
Raise Warrior to 100 > Raise Monk to 100 (for Special Attack masteries) and Dexterity boost passives > Raise Druid to 100 > (to get Fortitude masteries and help emphasize a Warrior's physical resistance) then I was planning to move into Shaman for Steal Strength/Dex debuffs, Corrosive Rain for -resistance, instant heal masteries and may even Ruin to pull from range.
Yet I wonder, is this viable as a Warrior? Will I have enough focus as a Warrior to land said spells on higher level monsters? Or will I have to spend a large number of training points in say a Warrior "main" / Shaman setup? Again, Monk and Druid are there more for masteries.
Also with schools, to get to Shaman, I note from the Wikia page that it takes 200 Nature skill and 200 Blight skill. I then noted that Druid gains 10 Nature/level and Spiritist gets 10 Blight/level. Therefore to reach 200, it will take getting to level 20. My question is - am I able to level Druid and Spiritist to 20 to satisfy the requirements or do I have to take say Druid to 20 then spend my training points on Blight to get to 200? What is the most efficient way to get to Shaman?
6) Last topic - What is "end game" or even the leveling game like? Are there enough players to do high end content? Are there any elements in the game that still require a group to complete or is this game now a 'solo online adventure'? Are there any instanced areas / dungeons to complete? As much as I love the combat/questing aspects of an MMO, I definitely love it when the game has a good sense of community and enjoy doing things with other players - aside from chatting in a global channel.
Sorry for the wall of text and I promise to wrap this up soon! I'm only asking the above questions as I want to rejoin the Istaria community and play this game again! I've always had big hopes for it and still do now. I just hope that anyone has managed to read this far to help answer my questions and concerns. Any input is greatly appreciated!
Thanks for your time,
Talithra, of Chaos
Hello Areimus, and welcome on Istaria.
I am a playing dragon on Order but I thik I can answer to some of your questions.
1) There is more players on Chaos shard than on Order and Blight. I don't know if that number is around 200 but they are sometimes more than 70, at the peak hours.
2) Crafting is rather long, but it is worth the time and effort, and you can ask for help to get it faster. Fighting mobs is nice in solo, but funnier in group. The best way is to look at which mobs the trophy hunters ask you to kill.
They'll reward you with coins and experience in exchange of trophies looted on the mobs. I personally managed, at times, to get a level in two or three hours, like that. It can depend at the rate, the mobs' types, and the rarity of the loot.
3) Dragons and bipeds have each their own forces and weaknesses. While the dragon may be stronger end hit harder, he has less healing power and needs to fight, mostly, on close combat. Bipeds can be less resistant but can have long range and fast reload attacks, as well as stuns,... they also have more classes (mage, monk, warrior,...) than dragons, which have spells, but can't go without melee attacks.
4) I don't know well about bipeds but I think it depends of the class.
5) I can't help much about this question, sorry.
6) Not each day, but rather often. Talking about a planned event and posting it in a thread is a good way to prepare such thing. There is no real instances in this game but areas with mobs/boss requiring more or less large groups.
Dralnok's Doom follows a questline at the end of which a large group is neeeded to reach the most dangerous areas and to fight and kill the boss and the other mobs (many or though).
Don't worry, other players can help and some are very helpul to new, returning or any player who needs help. I hope you'll enjoy the game and the community. Don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions or need help, there or in game.
