New Assault Area (03/01/2007)Follow

It's not hard to do research/learn from watching your sister play lol.

If it's early/mid month it would be by the 15th probably.

Cool, it there anything schedule for today? I think I hear something about a March 1st update. Sadly, I have not been able to play much.

First monday of the month is for billing

Edited, Mar 1st 2007 9:40am by snky

I hope this is where the new abjuration drops are going to be that s-e spoke of. Even if it is Nidnhogg but a dummied down version for only 6 to kill yet still very very hard, it does what the playerbase wants.

Hard to kill, not impossible to get the right to try. If abjurations dtropped I would **** mysself.

yeh maybe i can get my black belt without puting in 100 of hours to get one item or knowing 17 people that will do the ksnm /cheer

Well, for the rank 3 dragon, isn't there an uber tough version of that dragon in some high level area? I think SE would have changed the monsters greatly if it's supposed to be for a small group of players.

Finally, an endgame event that I might actually be interested in.

If something like HNM does pop in the new area, it will be much easier version one. The "Fafnir" in Apolloyn (Limbus) can be taken down with 6 people (or even less).

I still seriously doubt this will be the true end game area of ToAU. I still remember Stainslaw digging out Dynamis-Valkrum/Buburimu/Qufim/Tavanzia before it is added, and it is a hidden area of the game that even map mining can dig it out easily. It could have been that too.

LOL!

This update news is pretty much win, but taking a step back from all the over-excitement and negatives, lets break this down section by section:



Free Assault tags? Win. NO specified Rank? Win.

3-6 player group - To me this spells a more balanced group to even be able to progress further up the floors. I see a group of 3 useful in specifically just for farming the lower floors, and a group of 6 actually being able to progress further up and take on some of the mega bosses. Just following the salvage logic, yea u can do salvage with 6 people, but if u wanna beat Long-Horn Chariot or the other bosses, u might wanna bring a few more people if u dont have the strat to beat him with 6. Just my opinion

Its obvious that SE would implement mobs/bosses which would discourage burn parties or manaburns in this assault for balance... try TP burning soulflayers in Nyzul Caedarva Mire they'll use you to wipe the floor. I'm sure u can do it, but it'll take u long time, which under a time restriction is not a good thing. So I see a more balanced party being able to beat these, maybe the "old skool" exp setups with lolSkillchains will reappear more frequently for these.



Time limit per objective assault style, estimated 5 floors during single attempt? Being geared to more endgame players, potential is there that your job setup may not work for every floor. Most players that have been playing for 2-3 years have 3 or more 75 jobs under their belts, so maybe when running up against a certain floor, you wont be able to beat a certain mob/boss without key jobs/setups ie FF/KB/Aspid style fights. Alot of experimentation here i see, and leaving the assault area to switch jobs to progress up the floors per difficulty might be common.



Certain number of tokens to progress up the higher floors? This spells farming runs for tokens only if u dont have enough to get past the certain floors. So no sneaking/invising (if its even allowed) to tele up the next floor like Salvage looks like. 1 person operating the Rune of Transfer might sound meh, but this seems to be more geared towards SPing this type of Assault, being that you'd know who is on certain floors and if they meet the coin requirement to head up the next floor, doesnt bother me at all.



No Assault points = Win, Possible drops from all mobs on all floors? = Win

Having FF or Behemoth type mobs isn't discouraging, its called a challenge. Like it was best said by a previous poster, "the right to try" is something to be valued here. I'm looking forward to this.

Edited, Mar 1st 2007 11:19am by CerBalbanes

Sometimes when I read the fallout of an announcement from SE about upcoming additions to the game, I just kind of chuckle.

SE doesn't have to include the Nidhogg or King Behemoth; they can just include Wyrm and Behemoth type mobs that are a bit stronger than the NQ versions but not quite as deadly as their King equivalents on the ground in Quon. That satisfies the desire of a lot of players to fight things like Wyrms and Behemoths without actually having to camp them (or do CoP ie. Ouryu).

Some (though probably not all) of the people wildly speculating about what might be found in these areas are the same ones who are going to come back a few days after the update is done complaining that SE dropped the ball again. Why not just accept the information that is offered and wait and see what happens?

I'm fortunate in that I'm the shellholder of an Assault LS, and I can already tell the core group of players in the shell is going to be psyched about this. I can see all other Assault plans being dropped for a while just so we can play around in the new Assault area, although I'll be interested to see if completion of blocks of floors in Nyzul Isle will grant credit towards increasing your mercenary rank. That's primarily why I do Assaults; 2 hour Sanction duration is terrible.

What I'm expecting to see from this along the vein of Assaults already in the game is that there will be floors that are a real challenge, and floors that you can mow through quite easily. It seems as though SE has tried to arrange the new Assault areas to discourage perpetual pickup groups; having a regular group of people you do these with would improve your chances of moving up the floors. I don't see SE making this so that some jobs are practically useless in some areas, as that's contrary to what they've been doing in ToAU thus far. Having missions/quests that you have to be X job to contribute to (according to the majority of the player base) was one of the major gripes about CoP, and SE has obviously invested a great deal of planning to ensure that ToAU isn't like that.

As far as what drops might be available from this area; why guess? I don't see a purpose to getting my hopes up that I'm not going to have to lose 30k exp in Dynamis to get some RNG relic pieces, or whittle away dozens of hours in Sky or camping HNMs to get abjurations. If they're part of the new Assault area, great. If not, c'est la vie.

It's great to have an imagination and both know and express what we'd like to see in terms of new content; it's not so great to create expectations around those hopes; that often leads only to disappointment. I know not everyone who is speculating about content in the new area is creating an expectation, but I also know some of you are.

Just have to wait and see ^^