Ashlands - good and bad

[fazil.stormhammer]

Ashlands is generally great but there are some bad design decisions that turn it into a tedious zone.

Good:

- It's a perilous journey to even get to Ashlands. We get a cool new boat intended for the purpose. Yay!
- Mob diversity and mechanics are interesting, requires some thinking and target prioritization during combat. Yay!
- Mob density is higher, resulting in some epic combat. Yay!
- Cool new equipment, building materials, upgrades, etc. Yay!
- Raiding and taking over fortresses is *awesome*. Yay!
- We get a portal that enables quick transport of metals/etc. Yay!

Bad:

- Mob respawn rate away from spawners is set so high that somewhere between 80-90% of the time I spend in the Ashlands is spent *in combat*. I have 18 loot slots filled with 50 charred bones each, meaning I have literally killed 900+ so far in the Ashlands, and could cover the entire Ashlands with shield generators and power them all for the next millenium. I probably haven't killed 900+ mobs in the rest of the game across the 2-3 worlds I regularly play in. I have enough Asksvin hide to outfit an entire army of archers and enough sulfur and proustite powder from lava blobs to re-enact the Battle of the Bulge - twice. I do like the intensity of combat from the density of mobs! Coming up with a solution to two archers, two twitchers, a fighter, two Asksvin, and a Valkyrie is fun. But when epic combat happens every 2-3 minutes it gets tedious because then I get so little time to actually have fun with the OTHER half of the game - building, extracting resources. At this point I am resigned to farming stone and blanketing the Ashlands with campfires to prevent as many respawns as possible so I can actually enjoy the entire game instead of tediously spending most of my time in combat.

Note: It seems like players are seeing a large discrepancy in spawn rates. Some players like myself see constant respawns, while others seemingly see an increased - but manageable - respawn rate. Maybe what I am seeing is just a bug?

* Suggestion: Decrease the respawn rate away from the spawners (50-60% would be a good first attempt) but make the respawns coordinated when they occur. Also, suggestion: make the respawn rates in enemy fortresses a little higher than it currently is. Note: definitely keep the respawn rate as it is at the spawners.

- We have this cool new boat but approaching the Ashlands with it is tedious due to the spike density. I've done it with a team and solo, and in both cases the boat was a hindrance, not a help. Periodically stopping to repair by deploying a workbench to one of the spikes works, but deploying a workbench to a spike looks ridiculous. Trying to mine down the spikes to cut a channel doesn't work either because the ocean is too rough to cut them down far enough.

* Suggestion: Cut the spike density by about 50%. It will still be plenty challenging to approach Ashlands even with the reduced spike density and maybe even a little more fun having to fight off 2+ bonemaws during the approach.

- Players wanting to engage in melee combat have a rough time in Ashlands due to the difficulty in getting Flametal. It is really easy to advance gear for sorcerors and archers but getting enough Flametal for melee armor and weapons is painfully difficult because Flametal is not actually available until players have advanced a significant distance into the Ashlands, while the materials required for archers and sorcerors are available immediately.

* Suggestion: Add smaller Flametal ore nodes around the perimeter of the Ashlands and adjust the base/upgrade costs of the armor & weapons. It should be possible to get enough Flametal to construct basic armor/weapons with the small nodes (maybe yield 2-4 ore per node) but it should require mining the larger Flametal columns on the interior of the Ashlands and/or taking over fortresses to upgrade them.

[Steve]

Now THAT'S quality feedback.

[Nerevar]

there is more than enough flametal sources. the gem situation is far worse longterm. you get free flametal form the fortresses. if anything more gem sources are needed. not metal sources.
most mage items are gem gated.

so your claim that mages get upgrades sooner is simply not the case. you get gems and flametal from the fortresses. the only 2 things you can make early are the asksvin set and the cape for it. and fractureing staff which is not much of an upgrade as its worse than embers. melee need more flametal but melee also needs more gems so again : everything boils down to raiding fortresses to get everything at once. and that is the only problem currently. fortresses contain everything and are the only source of gems on top.

the ship is not a yay from me. its used once to sail to ashlands and thats it. it has no further use beyond that point due to the new portal and is therefore a huge design waste. plus its oversized for no good reason and its storage is fully useless on default settings. cool design. my drakkar still sits at my original landing spot. i havent used or oved it at all since then. purely a gateing thing for the biome basically.

not sure what you even mean by "more enemy spawns in fortresses" as they spawn from the 2 spawners in there. and once destroyed nothing spawns in there by default. putting in more enemies just makes aoe weapons even stronger and they already dominate currently. you could maybe put 4 spawners instead of 2. but given alot of players have already raided most of the only 20 fortresses per gameworld such a change by this point is simply too late. would have needed to happen during ptb already.

i found fortresses pretty dull since every single one is the same layout. so thats not a yay from me but rather a "its alright"

the portal speeds up the gear progression so much and it makes the ship entirely obsolete once you have arrived and thus any changes regarding the shoreline are fully unneeded. its 1 time trip there.

the respawn rate aint an issue really. its only for the players who think they need to fight anything they see or that engages them. the charred where supposed to be "an annoyence" given the devblog about the twitchers etc. and they achieved that. they are precisely that. but they arent a real danger if the player stays mobile. only asksvins and morgens and valks are actually a danger for the player. the later 2 are rather rare overall. and asksvins have no meaningful resistences vs most dmg types aside fire and poisen. so they take full dmg from nearly anything.

this biomes progression and content are really very limited compared to mistlands and on top condensed into the few fortresses on the smallest biome total size per world we have ever gotten. any change that makes the biome even easier would make it absolutly trivival unless every single enemy is overhauled to have higher stats etc. that would need a complete redesign of the progression system aswell. thats too much work by now and unrealistic.

there isnt really any good reason to build a bigger base in ashlands. as once the fortresses are plundered and the flametal pillars mined there is nothing left there thats worth farming really. plus the biomes placement on the worldmap map it super unpractical for an actual base on top.

get in. get your stuff. get out. that was the design intention according to the devs. an expedition so to speak.

grausten is trivial to farm in stupid amounts unlike marble and grausten pieces are mostly there to fill gaps in available building options clearly.

overall the only thing that needs changes is the terrible performance currently. not only in ashlands.

and the shield generator should block out fog aswell. includeing mistlands fog. it makes no sense that it blocks rain and firerain and storms etc. but doesnt block fog. its good for not haveing to farm while beeing wet on farmlands tough.

overall good biome. but after the long wait it falls a bit short on content imo. no real dungones worth exploreing and overall less reasons to build stuff that actually has had a purpose.

now all you ever need is portals everywhere. even the new tame is teleportable due to the egg mechanic.

campfires arent needed. you can use them if you wanna make it easier for yourself. its just another option to decrease the difficulty. same as world world modifiers just available ingame. you can also stuff shields everywhere to achieve the same effect aswell. they surpress spawns in thier bubble aswell. they dont seem to surpress flying spawns at all tough.

[Mineralwasser]

I can only say the same as steve the player of games said. Good Feedback. It gives good points for discussion.

Originally posted by fazil.stormhammer:

- We have this cool new boat but approaching the Ashlands with it is tedious due to the spike density. I've done it with a team and solo, and in both cases the boat was a hindrance, not a help.

I think that is the point of that boat. A tanky cruiser that can withstand a beating. But for being tanky it is hard to control and slow. You suggest to cut the density of the spikes even more? I feel like you can "almost" full sail ahead through the spikes. In ptb it was different and the reduced density now feels good for me. I dont know. Cutting it even more seems like giving no challenge at all to approach the shore.

Originally posted by fazil.stormhammer:

- Players wanting to engage in melee combat have a rough time in Ashlands due to the difficulty in getting Flametal. It is really easy to advance gear for sorcerors and archers but getting enough Flametal for melee armor and weapons is painfully difficult because Flametal is not actually available until players have advanced a significant distance into the Ashlands, while the materials required for archers and sorcerors are available immediately.

I would agree with the point of getting archergear. But for me it feels like bows and medium armor were easier to get as mage or meele stuff in pervious biomes too. On the other hand you have these small "instances" of flametal if you count dvergeroutposts. In fashion with the spawnrate; dvergers will only live there a short time. :D
I think getting flametal is dangerous for one time only if you really want to mine the nodes. In that mindset: Mining a spike to gain basic gear and advancing to fortressraids. There you get catapults to mine in a safer approach. In my playthroughs i felt like swimming in flametal through the amount you get in a fortress. (Played with the standard resource rate). I would go that far to say to reduce the amount in a fortress. To get back to the point of getting gear. You basically need to kill a few valks and have to raid a fortress as a mage to gain access to the new staffs.

Originally posted by fazil.stormhammer:

Also, suggestion: make the respawn rates in enemy fortresses a little higher than it currently is.

Just curios about the last suggestion. You really want more enemies inside a fortress?

(to the topic of spawnrates in generaI) I dont have a problem with the current spawnrates and i think there has to be an individual change in the mindset of the player. Something like be water my friend and the question one should ask. Do i need to kill everything? But that was stated many times.)

[jonnin]

Great post.
My 2 cents..
- the spikes are not the problem. The ship of the line is the problem... the longboat was already difficult to use solo due to its size, and they doubled down on that. My take on it? Why not let us upgrade all the other ships to be fire/heat proofed using a workbench and the appropriate materials. Its not a gimmie here... an upgraded karve would be a *breeze* to get through the spikes but risky vs the bonesnakes & birds as they are difficult to fight in and have reduced health (though the upgrade should buff health a little, it should still be more fragile than the bigger ones).

- my spawn rate is difficult but not insane. Not sure how to compare those.
- the smoke and fire is not unexpected, but its rough on the eyes and I am not talking attractive or look/feel but literally. It looks great, but after 30 min or so my eyes are hurting from the stark dark/bright contrast, lights that stab your eyes but illuminate nothing. Its just like being outside at night with a campfire, ok, but that too is blinding if you are trying to see and do. Is this just me? I may have to tamper with the gamma when adventuring there and put it back when out, which is clunky.

- building: the good is that the upgrades are mostly small and will fit into existing buildings. That was a big help vs gigantic upgrades of 'needs more room', so well done on that front.
the bad is ... the new materials are very plain. The grauston stuff looks about like concrete, with no patterns like the beautiful black marble or even the lumpy plain stone stuff. The basic wood walls/floor are also very plain, too dark and just straight line patterns on it. The cut out stuff is outstanding, though.. the fancy new door, ashwood windows and see through floors and all are great. Lava lamp is perfect. All in all though, there isn't much here that I feel makes my home more attractive. There are only so many cutaway pieces you can put in as they are accent look, not a spam it down thing, and the spam pieces are, to me at least, much less attractive than the older stuff.

- the unexpected: the new shield blocking rain lets me do many things with my fires and chimney etc that were not possible before due to rain putting out the fires.

So far, if the spawn spam is a bug that is being adjusted, then I give it an 'early' vote of 'very good' and like it considerably more than mistlands.

[Nerevar]

the spawn system isnt a bug. its also not beeing "adjusted" no clue who keeps shouting that nonsense. the devs havent said anything regarding the spawns since release. so anyone who claims that it is getting changed is basically just speculating or trying to push an agenda. ashlands has been available for 2 weeks nearly now on live and 5 weeks since ptb. any bigger changes would have to happen before the devs summer vacation which starts in precisely 4 weeks from now.

mistlands got next to no changes anymore past the first 6 weeks aside form the royal jelly fix and the buildable dvergr door. but for the gems they need a different type of "fix"