Bonus?

I recently picked GW and am enjoying it alot. I have noticed though that during missions some people don't want to do the bonus. During the early missions it was easy to get a PUG to do them but I have a character in the Divinity Coast area and half way through the mission the leader says we are skipping the bonus. Even though half the group advertised "lfg mission and bonus". Is there a reason to skip it and just do the mission or are people just trying to rush their character through the game?

correct!!

The problem is: its easy to get your character to level 20, and get all the skills, without doing bonuses. Some bonuses are just too damned tedious for a lot of people to bother.

As always my advice is to start your own group, make sure that everyone knows you will be doing the bonus, and if you can't find enough dedicated people; take henchmen.



best of luck, msihkin

yeah. you can go back to do the bonus later (its another 1k exp added ontop of the 1k for the mission) but a lot of people like to rush through so they can get all their skills as fast as possible/get to the good farming areas.

Allot of players you're grouped with may have already taken 1,2,3 or 5 builds through the game and realize that the additional 1000exp you get from doing the bonuses within missions......is just fluff for the most part. In some cases it is an added challenge but in none is it a requirement.

That's about the only reasons to skip the bonuses at that stage in the game.

I understand what you are trying to say. There must be a reason why the leader of your group said to skip the bonus (and he should've at least told you before you started the mission, not half way). Either he's done the bonus already, or he doesn't know how to go about with the bonus. Some bonuses are tough to do and IMO not worth the 1000xp. So alot of people tend to just skip the bonus and do the mission and get on with the storyline. Try asking your guildmates to help you if you really want to do bonus. Or form your own party and pick those who will do mission and bonus.

I guess there's a couple reasons. First is that the reward for getting a bonus is only 1000xp, even on the hardest missions in the game. Now, since you can get to level 20 by roughly the crystal desert, if not much sooner, by just playing through normally without getting many of the bonuses, the extra 1000xp doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. I think if you did every bonus on every mission, you might come ahead, what, maybe 2 skills points?

Now, remember that some of the bonus missions can be much more challenging than the main mission, or at least much more time consuming. If your group isn't very strong, then the bonus could lead to your entire group getting killed and having to restart the mission. At some point your team leader has to make a judgement call on how the strength of the team compares with the difficulty of the mission. A few of the bonuses (Thunderhead keep comes to mind) are extraordinarily difficult, and there's no reason to risk losing the mission for the extra xp.

Finally, specific to your case, Divinity coast mission is, I believe the one where you collect the chosen. This bonus is annoying and very easy to fail. It is possible that the leader was not saying "We are skipping the bonus" but rather meant something to the effect of "We can't finish the bonus because one of the !@#$ing chosen died on us"

Rico

Personally, I like going for the bonus when possible. Yes, it’s painfully easy to get to level 20, but you also run into these people who have 3 level-20 characters and have no idea how to help someone else through a mission because they never have done the bonus.

I tell ya what cracks me up: When doing the bonus makes the mission easier, and people STILL insist on mission-only. (I’m talking about Riverside and Aurora Glade and places like that.)

In your particular case, Divinity Coast: Perhaps the leader ought to have brought it to a vote to see if you wanted to start all over again. However… with that mission, there are SO many opportunities to blow the bonus! It is quite possible that bonus was no longer do-able at the point the leader says, “No bonus.” (For that one you have to defend the correct villagers – the “chosen” – from Ettins and Tengu and Imps, and then poison, in just the correct order in the correct timing. If any one of them dies, no bonus – easy to screw it up!)

EDIT: Rico, you beat me to it!

EDIT#2: What else is funny? People in Divinity spamming "LFG for bonus only!" (Bonus means taking the chosen to the--you guessed it--end of the mission!)

What this means is they have already completed the mission and now want to do the bonus, some players like to complete all missions and bonuses, and if they don't/can't complete the bonus while they did the mission, then they go back for the bonus only, regardless of whether or not it leads to missions completion(since not all bonuses require you to complete the mission).

Please give me some credit--I understand when people advertise bonus only, they have already done the mission and don't want to complete the mission again, they are coming back for bonus.

But have you ever done the bonus at Divinity (which is the mission in question)?

To complete BONUS for Divinity, you bring the chosen to the END OF THE MISSION.

I think for that mission, it is about commitment. If you join a mission/bonus group in divinity, people will expect you to stay around to complete the mission even if the bonus fails. In a bonus only group, you are under no obligation to do so and can leave as soon the first chosen dies.

Rico

I have played through that mission a couple of times with groups to get the bonus and/or mission. I just figured that there must have been some sort of point strategy for doing the bonuses at a later time. The last time I played it was a bonus only group and unfortunately one of the villagers died. Hey, 4 out of 5 ain’t bad. But in one case I was with a good group, no one had died and the bonus was doable but was called off because the leader said we weren’t going to do it. Anyway thanks for the replies.