LoML Purpose?

[Karna5]

I'm currently in the fifth or sixth story unlock for Land of Morning Light (hard to be sure since they often flow into each other without me realizing a new story began).

I'm countless hours into this (it's around two or three hours per story), and I'm struggling with the worst impediment in a PC game: Boredom.

Mind numbing, painful, want to cry boredom.

I've been hit three times with the bug in which it puts me into combat without me being able to move or attack until eventually I die helpless or give up and reset in futility. But these are just bugs.

I've been hit 1,000,000,000 by the friggin annoyance in which I pull out my awakening weapon, and the game puts me back to main hand. so i switch back, and it switches me away. And I switch back, and it switches me away.

So far two or three times I've beaten boss monsters in story and then had a cut scene saying I lost the fight (gosh that's stupid).

The character voice actors are all over the place. One guy talks in Texas drawl, and another talks in stereotypical California surfer (or valley girl), and the over acting melodrama is so absurd it should be funny, but it's not. It just makes me not care about the actors.

When I was playing Red Dead Online they'd periodically introduce characters who were very interesting. Villains that made me hate them or quest givers who delighted me and wanted me to visit them for quests and their shop. But I have not met a single interesting character yet in LoML.

I'm told there will be fourteen stories to unlock. I've no clue if that's true, but I know my GUI shows me 8, and I'm struggling to care.

What exactly is the point of doing these story unlocks?

I have no interest in Boss Blitz. In fact, I literally despise the idea of doing it based on my understanding of its mechanics.

So is there an actual reason beside quest count to do LoML? I don't seem to be getting any rewards which will help me in my BDO characters or game.

I don't get caphras. I don't get crystalized despair or silver or PEN boss gear (like Magnus). It doesn't seem to offer anything at all useful.

Is there a reason to suffer this life killing boredom doing this quest chain?

[Karna5]

I appreciate the detailed explanation, Dargoth. It means a lot.

P.S. I'd seen that official page before but didn't and don't understand it. It doesn't help I can't read it. Your answer helped more than the official page by far.

I also watched a few CM films including one in which a CM and a streamer talked about the boss blitz. However, they also didn't explain it helpfully at all, and they used 315 AP characters which made me more than a little angry the system is designed for people already in End Game gear.

[Daggoth]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Karna5:

they used 315 AP characters which made me more than a little angry the system is designed for people already in End Game gear.

Boss Blitz uses Light Orbs attuned to whichever element the boss is weak against (really just match the colours but 2mil silver every time you switch the colour).
This provides NINETY PERCENT of your stats against the boss, your normal gearscore is scaled down to 10% and added on top. As such, there's little difference between average and max gear players.
IE: with four light orbs provides 200AP against the boss, Tulvua Timmy with a normal 200 sheet AP will combine with that to total 220AP against the boss, whereas SuperMcTryHard with 350 sheet AP gets a total of 235AP against the boss; 200 from the orbs, and 35 from their normal AP being scaled down.
... At least, I think it's sheet AP, dunno if it takes hidden/bonus ap into account or if it applies such bonuses after the total is determined. Either way, they've made it so it's not amazingly gear dependent.

• The bosses of the Black Shrine receive/deal damage based on a ratio of 90% aura attribute and 10% character attack/defense power.
• Only 10% of the skill add-on effects and buff effects related to the character’s AP/DP are applied.
• Only critical hits from attribute attacks are displayed during the boss blitz. (Critical hits based on the character’s existing stats are applied, but are not displayed.)
• The critical hit rate for attribute attacks is applied at 50% during the boss blitz.
• All debuff resistance is applied at 20% during the boss blitz. (Resistances that have been increased due to a character’s existing stats are not applied.)

[Karna5]

Daggoth, Thanks again. I checked my in-game GUI for the orbs, and I have three. I did all twelve stories plus the epilogue. Should I have four? And if so, from whence do they come? Thanks.

p.s. I did try again to read that link you gave to the official page, and I just can't figure out where the orbs are acquired. It just says what to do with them (more or less) but not how to get them.

p.p.s. In high end PVM 15 AP is kind of a big deal. If the CM and Pearl Abyss want us to believe normal gear doesn't matter, they should have made the demonstration with gear worse than or at the soft cap, not gear with all PEN accessories and all PEN BS or PEN C20 Boss and all maxed out slumbering origin armor.

p.p.p.s. Also if I were to try what you say and need to beat five bosses, can I beat, for instance, one boss at level 1 five times, or do I need to have five different fights? The guy in the demonstration which PA linked in-game said he spent 14 hours to beat one boss. I don't want to go through that kind of grief. This is a game, so that would not be fun. For one thing, he's a streamer and gets paid real life money to play. And the CM likewise gets paid to play.

[Daggoth]

There's the base orb that's locked for each aura, three assignable light orbs from the story, and two more light orbs from black spirit quests to beat Calamity 3 and 5 bosses.

The five rewards are gained from five different wins. They have to be different either in Boss or by difficulty.
EG: You can do Calamity 1,2,3,4,5 Bamboo General for the 5 fights, or you can do Calamaity 1 Songakshi, Calamity 2 Golden Pig, Calamity 2 Bamboo, Calamity 5 Bari, and calamity 3 Bari. Any combination you like, as long as there's 5 separate combinations of boss/difficulty.

You can't do 5 copies of the same fight for 5 rewards, but you can re-do any fight you won that week to improve your clear times. Knock them down from 1min 30sec to 1:15 and get a higher rank on the leaderboard and possibly better rewards, for example.
Low calamity bosses are downed in seconds just overcapping them to nothing before any mechanics happen. Calamity 3 is a couple of minutes max.
Higher gets more difficult and time spent is more in retrys and learning mechanics than a single fight. There's a kill timer for each boss, around 10mins depending on the boss, after which you're just one-shot autokilled.

[Karna5]

Thanks, Daggoth. It takes me an hour to sail each direction from port epheria to LoML with my Bartoli sailboat (and 40 million silver round trip to use the well is too much). So I'm not up for another two hour boat trip.

But you gave me much to consider, and in a couple of months when I get a better ship there's a good chance I'll take your suggestion to at least do one set of five fights. Thanks again :)

[Daggoth]

Yeah it's definitely a boss-alt sort of situation, you don't really want to take a trip every week. 40 mil through the well isn't the end of the world since mainland grinding gets hundreds of mil an hour, but it's the principle of the thing.

[Karna5]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Daggoth:

Yeah it's definitely a boss-alt sort of situation, you don't really want to take a trip every week. 40 mil through the well isn't the end of the world since mainland grinding gets hundreds of mil an hour, but it's the principle of the thing.

Just FYI, I very rarely make over 150 million an hour even with agris. Usually I hunt at Saunil Camp Elvia. I can't sell the crystalized despair and scorching sun fragments because I need them for gear upgrades, so only the trash loot counts for me :)

[Simple Man]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Karna5:

It takes me an hour to sail each direction from port epheria to LoML with my Bartoli sailboat (and 40 million silver round trip to use the well is too much). So I'm not up for another two hour boat trip.

Use an epheria cog if all you want to do is loml and back and dont rely on alts. As long as you don't use breezy sail (obliterates durability) it will be ok for a few back and forths at least, plus its the much faster boat when compared to bartali. 1 hour is nearly slower than public transport, for reference it takes me 9 minutes in a volante carrack from velia.

You can buy a cog with 1000 loyalties, or you can build them yourself out of port epheria, the license costs 7 million and nodes around heidel can have workers retrieve the materials for you (like flax). Using the magnus well from velia is "only" 16m too, making the roundtrip 32m rather than 40.

LomL isn't so bad, its the best story so far in BDO, especially compared to the likes of valencia, the zone has some nice attention to detail and is very nice looking, and just like port ratt was, due to being remote, its a largely peaceful place where you can get your fishing boat out, or fish from the docks that nobody will even try the "kidnap" stunt, the fish is always worth about double its price in velia due to distance, good gathering, multiple fast respawning meat sources and little contest, farming is ok too since i could man every worker node while still having 10 free workers to tend farms and keep growth times in check. More produce, more harvest/breed, more money. On nodes, some of the crystals i've created out of LomL go for 1 billion silver.

Boss blitz is good too, tho i didn't enjoy Imoogi, one boss that has more mechanics just in his phase 2 than all other bosses in the event combined. Nice that it exists, just definitely not for me.

[Karna5]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Kodiak.pW:

Use an epheria cog....

LomL isn't so bad, its the best story so far in BDO, especially compared to the likes of valencia, the zone has some nice attention to detail and is very nice looking,...

I kinda hate using anything which can't be repaired. It makes me feel like I'm throwing away silver an/or effort. But thanks for the suggestion :) I'm currently saving up for a frigate which I plan to upgrade once I get it.

As for the aesthetics of LoML, I personally felt it suffered from terrible graphics. The cut scene characters often didn't even move their lips, and worse they had the texture and detail quality of a 2011 PC game rather than a 2023 PC game. I honestly kept wishing it would have the realistic detail of Red Dead Online rather than Saints Row the Third :( (though in SR3 at least the lips always moved and were delightfully acted).

In fact, I honestly felt LoML suffered from terrible acting as much a terrible graphics, but I suspect it may have been an issue of the directing rather than the actual actors they hired. My complaint is not related to it being Korean because South Korean films are among the best in the world and have been for a very long time, often much better than Hollywood.

On a side note with regard to the purpose of LaML, I had a lengthy talk with a friend of mine in game today, and he said he did two sets of 5 boss blitzes and got junk for loot, as bad as garmoth. But garmoth takes a few minutes while each set of 5 blitzes takes hours.

So in spite of the bad graphics and bad acting and far away location of LoML, at this stage I think I'll hold off until they make the rewards worthy of hours of time instead of what we get in 7 or 8 minutes at a world boss.

I'm grateful for all the answers in this this thread, though, because they helped me understand LoML a lot more than I could understand it by playing it and a lot more than the official websites and official steams explained it.

p.s. I should also say he found the Calamity 3 boss fights absolutely impossible, and as his characters and mine are of equivalent strength (we often group together in game), I will likewise not consider trying to do the Calamity 3 fights a viable challenge.

[Kazaanh]

I find story in china region quite interesting, learning a bit of korean mythology and stuffs.

Worst part of that continent is janky combat, they spawn 5-10 npcs and you 1shot them and proceed to R.

Or boss fights feel jank too.

But i guess its good alternative if you dont care about grind or pvp. I also use korean VOI and its much much better