Idea to make UW and FoW more attractive to full groups

In the light of the current UW/FoW weekend and beeing in the outposts and more or less only seeing people looking for duo-farm partners or going in solo i thought there would be something needed to make a full clearance of both areas somewhat more rewarding.

I thought a good idea would be to add a chest that spawns when you finished all quests in UW or FoW.

Possible rewards :

-Mini Smite Crawler , Mini Aatxe , Mini Mindblade , Mini Shadow Beast, Mini Armoured Cave Spider.
-Green counterparts of weapons/skins that drop in there.
-A set number of the rare crafting material that drops in the area (Shards for FoW and Ecto for UW , Rubies/Sapphires for both)



Feel free to add any other rewards you can think of

Add a weaponsmith to the town in forgotten vale after wrathful spirits is completed. (Semi-rare weapon skins "Eg. Elemental sword, Icy Dragon, Celestial shield" with inscription slots)
Vary enemies (Eg. Mindblade in labyrinth, Smite crawler on the chaos plains)
Upgrade enemies. (Eg. "For great justice" on graspings, Rip enchantment on DNs, Searing flames on Terrorwebs)
Add in more bosses (During quests) and give those bosses green weapons.
Add in more drops and better quality to quest reward chests.

I like the idea of making rewards for going in with a full group.

But I still think they should make it "un-solo-farmable" because it is supposed to be the hardest area in the game.

But I'm all for new GOOD (stupid mini pig) and RARE minis.

Also should have a mini panda in UW. :P

Enemy upgrade is good too.

i like this i was wondering this something like this last night
1: why is this so easy?
2: why haven't they updated to include new profs if it is a "core" area

If they made the drop rate scale with the number of people in the party it might be nicer. It's hard enough to get ectos to drop solo these days, with 8 people in a party you'll be lucky to get one every 10 runs, if that. That is the main reason people don't party up. Solution: For every player added to the party there is an added chance of rare drops, i.e. with 8 people each player is as likely to get an ecto as one would be solo. This would need to be tweaked (maybe not quite a linear relationship) and should not work for heros and henchmen.

Our guild cleared uw in 7 hours friday night. For those 7 hours, in which we killed absolutely everything in uw, we got 10 ecto, averaging just over 1 ecto per team member. One ecto for 7 hours of play time is absolutely lame, as are the phantom chests that drop purples way too frequently. Perhaps the hardest chest in all uw is the one that sometimes spawns near the monument on the chaos plains. It gave us 7 purples and 1 gold armor. You would think a chest that gets popped so rarely would have something worthwhile inside.

Stupid idea with the weaponsmith. First of all, it would kill the value of those "semi-rare" (they are all actually rare) items.
Also, a 2 man SS/SV-55 team CAN complete wrathful spirits pretty easily. That what spider runs usually are.

Yeah added difficulty with better rewards would be nice.

Frankly I don't care if the UW is made harder or left alone because I already have a really hard area with the Domain of Anguish. The UW just isn't that interesting any more with the Tombs, Deep, Warren, and Domain around.

They need to up droprates elsewhere. Smite Run? Takes 20 minutes max to solo, very hard to screw up if your use to it. Aatxe take 5 or 10 minutes to clear using a 55 SV. Mindblades take 2+ HOURS to clear as a solo trapper.

Droprates? Smites can get 0-4 a run. Aatxe 0-2. Mindblades, bollocks. Cleared the entire field, got 3 ectos and a ruby, went again yesterday in a team, 2 ectos total for absolute chaos and massive degen.

There is no way in hell the effort-drops ratio is justified. Some of the quests are ridiculous too. Ice King? 3000 Terrorwebs? Yeah sounds perfectly sensible... compared to the FoW quests. Restore the Monuments of Grenth needs a better reward. You've just cleared the ENTIRE Underworld of Grenths enemies and he gives you... 10k exp? I'd rather get a Merchant... that way i could actually sell the 500 items i'm likely to have drop for me during the mission. Specially now if you make a mistake and salvage too quickly the game kicks you out!

If a weaponsmith then rather at the end of UW.
I agree with the better rewards for some of the quests.


And of course the chest at the end should be like the Mallyx or Hall of Heroes chest. One drop for each player. No keys needed.

You read the first sentence, got farther than most. As for weaponsmith why do you think I said things that went for 50-300k, include ectos as a crafting material for them and there goes your rarity right back to what it was. As for the getting to forgotten vale you deserve it if your 55/ss gets past a group of mindblades and dream riders.

I did read more then your first sentence Craero. Way to insult my constructive criticism. I just thought the 1st one was the only one worth commenting on. That and I didn't feel like having to write a mini essay explaining all this. But if you feel like me tearing apart your other ideas would be fair... okay. I hope the following makes you happy.

Varing enemeis will just mean that farming teams will have to explore around before going out to farm. Even so, there will still be only a limited number of spawn points and patrol routes that any hardcore farmer will eventually learn and find ways to farm there. The thing is, no matter how adaptive FoW will be, the number of possible spawns is still limited. That is why farming is possible. People are smarter then the ai and will always be able to come up with some way to farm certain areas. Just like adding in the dn in the first place was supposed to stop the 55s. Even if all this reworking of the area is done, farm teams would just add in another man if neccessary. 3 man farming still isn't a "full group," but if it still worked and netted cash, then what is the problem?

Changing skill layouts is what hard mode will be. You have to keep in mind though that you have to keep the areas fair for a balanced team and not make it too hard. Also, a good 2 man team should kill a dn before he gets anything off in time. Rip enchantment still won't go through spellbreaker. Adding NF only skills into a core area is also problematic. Also, how would "For Great Justice" matter if the 55 will have SV/AV on him for the whole time anyway? The graspings still won't have any adrenaline.

Bot farmers don't care about green farming. Name one place where you see bots farming non stop for greens. Green farming doesn't actually produce money or in game inflation. It merely transfers money from one person in the game to another when somebody buys it. Very few places are really appealing only for the greens. And with every new chapter, each of the old green farms will become underused as people go to farm all the new "shiny" stuff from the new chapter which will now have a higher demand. Greens don't really create any long term demand.

Better chest rewards won't matter to all the gold selling bot farmers or casual farmers saving up for FoW armor. Farming is about efficiency and getting the most money for your time spent. If you make the quests that much harder (as you have suggested with your previous post), 2 man teams will simpley avoid the quests... How does that somehow stop them from going elsewhere.

There...

Ok I am all for changes but I find UW to be quite enjoyful. A few weeks ago me, 2 guildies, and 5 heros did UW. After we got one of them a Spider, he had to take off. Then myself and my other guildie with 5 heroes (7 total) cleared UW in about 4 hours from the Forgotten Vale (all except the Grenth's Servants and The Four Horsemen quests). We got a total of 3 Ecto drops but I had an amazing time, I found a little typo and got my first crystalline (purple, req 12, no damage mod but I never got one before) from the Demon Assassin quest.

I had a great time. While it may not have a huge reward, we were enjoying the game and not grinding or using cookie cutter builds like in Tombs, DoA, The Deep, or Urgoz Warren.

As for changes: I find it nice the way it is, no need to add special rewards for groups, I don't want to see crafters for rare skins or some of that other stuff, just enjoy it.

EDIT: Now unless they just recently added this, there were never Mindblades or Dream riders on the way to the Forgotten Vale... (yes, I have done my fair share of spider runs way back when I could 55/SS all day )

Now I may just have to agree here, I do get a nice sense of accomplishment when I seethe (Completed) sign next to the quest, but it really has no great reward for the quest.

I was idling in ToA and a group asked for a tank to go to FoW. I figured I had nothing to lose and went along. You know the first group of Shadow Beasts/Monks/etc.? One of them dropped a max, 20/20 Chaos Axe for our monk, lol.

Just a note from the other side of the fence. UW and FoW are the only places you can get Shards and Ecto. This IS the reward that drops, though it seems trivial to some I think for their purpose these areas are fine. The drop rate on the other hand is another issue I've done both areas with groups as well as using the Duo 55/(SS or Famine) and Solo builds. When farming, I rather go with the 55/partner team than a full group. Why? Simply because there is a much better chance of me getting an ecto this way.

Making it harder? This has already been done, on more than one occasion. To stop the easy farming, they introduced the DN etc. This didn't stop people from figuring out how to do it again though. Builds were adapted and people could go down again. The big thing here is that unfortunately you must have a char that fits one of the builds, though there is an ever increasing amount of builds coming out. So if you feel left out, go and find a build that you can use. That said, you can still easily go and find yourself a full group if you really wanted.

Changes that I would like to see, replace the chests with proper gold chests again. This is a high level area that you pay to enter and yet 80% of the time there are no chests and if there are the chance of getting something good from the chest is a bare minimum. Also allowing for a better chance of getting good drops (ecto/shards) in a full group would make people consider it instead of like at the moment, you go in a full group and get maybe 1 ecto out of 4-8 hours of work.

And one last note on the "Un-Solo-Farmable" : I suggest everyone reading this part and thinking "Brilliant idea" to go and rethink it a bit. This is not the only area where people can solo farm or team farm. DoA has some good spots just to mention one. If you are able to master the skill to do it, then do it. Why spoil this for those of us who spend the time to learn?

I think this is a very good idea.

It is kinda anti-climatic that nothing happens after you kill the Terrorweb Queen in the Spawning Pools.


Right now people farm FoW Beach for Shards.
UW: Smite Crawler farming.

The remaining 90% of these great areas are unused, the others are terribly soloed and overfarmed


I also have some more ideas:

Kill the Terrorweb-Queen - get a Terrorweb Staff or a Terror Shield as Quest reward.

Free all of FoW - get Balthazar's Sword - the sword of the Eternal Heroes, I do not think this model is still not ingame yet

People farm much more then smites in UW you know Aatxe have such good ecto drop rate

Chillblains. GG 55. Now for VwK... suggestions?

Leave it alone.

It won't change every bastard in ToA ...
"Man, all we're doing is Forge and Forest because we're just some dumbasses that don't want to actually try something different and want to keep being repetitive." Seriously, how many times have you done FoW with a pug group, do the forge and have NO ONE get armor?

It's because they know how easy forge is and don't want to try something different. I ask for the beach and get the reply: "No, This group are full of pansy asses, we're only doing forest and forge LIKE EVERY OTHER GROUP THAT DOES FoW" - Signed, We Hate Change.

So to throw in rewards for completing all the quests won't solve anything. Hurt, yes. Fix, no. (Hurt because people hate change)

Now if you made it harder for people to obtain FoW armor, then that would fix it in a way.
Bring balt to the tower ... go to the forge ... clear shadows ... do quest, kill shadows .. get quest .. kill spiders .. return for armor.
Sound familiar?

If FoW armor was a 2 part-er then it would be a nice change. Something like the dude in prophecies where you have to pick up the essence to infuse your armor .. Maybe have a boss spider in the cave that you have to kill (Level 30 maybe?) and he'll drop something you need. Return it (Or the quest updates when you kill it), get the 2nd part of the quest that causes you to have to shoot over in another area to obtain something else.

THAT would "update" FoW armor and the difficulty of obtaining it.

... Or if you REALLLLY (Yes, 4 L's) want to piss people off, have 5 different areas that have 1 piece of each FoW armor (Yea it sounds dumb, but too bad)

But for chest rewards ... Just buy the reward from someone, it's easier.
Paying for being too lazy, FTW

Ditto!

and ditto.

I would love to have things like that for clearing all FoW or UW.

I like the idea of items for clearing it, but it would also be good to make some parts more team oriented.

E.g. The Deep needs people to step on pressure pads to advance.

Some sort of quest that requires more than 1 person would be nice.

And those of you who want to nerf Vwk, just make the aataxe come with the grasps

Heh... force 8-character groups to get down there, I say.
The best way to prevent characters getting in groups of two and going sown there is to make it impossible.