Minotaur Quest

[kantoska]

So I thought I remembered seeing that doing the minotaur quest chain was a good was to get some decent items, specifically jewels... Well I ran the quest 6-7 times yesterday and didnt get much of anything worth keeping. I guess what I'm asking is did they nerf it since i read up on this? Did i just have a bad RNG run? Does luck matter on your loot? Thanks for any help.

 

[Diomedes Artega]

So I thought I remembered seeing that doing the minotaur quest chain was a good was to get some decent items, specifically jewels... Well I ran the quest 6-7 times yesterday and didnt get much of anything worth keeping. I guess what I'm asking is did they nerf it since i read up on this? Did i just have a bad RNG run? Does luck matter on your loot? Thanks for any help.

I personally always favored the gaman quest over the minotaur one...if it's the one I am thinking of as far as the particular starting point. I always got better loot from said quest then the one you are mentioning. Additionally, while other people may have had varying experiences (i doubt it though), I haven't found luck to be a contributing factor. While it may not be something you WANT, most of the loot has been good. Either I've had a good weapon to enhance, or real good jewelry received. Not to get off-topic, but the quest I'm discussing is...hmmm, simple if you know what you are doing. If you go about it with an amateur approach, well death will occur frequently. If your quest is the one I'm thinking of, then why nerf it? It is even more difficult then the one I discussed.

 

[kantoska]

im talking about the one where you need one map frag, 20 gaman horns, and three minotaur artifacts from the back of lab... which one are you taling about??

 

[Diomedes Artega]

im talking about the one where you need one map frag, 20 gaman horns, and three minotaur artifacts from the back of lab... which one are you taling about??

Ah okay very good then. Tis the one...I remembered it by another name. Well there is a quest that is in another zone that is of greater difficulty then this quest we are discussing. However, I haven't had as good of luck getting as nice of loot. You could try the quest with another character? Sometimes I do the quest with one character and then do the turn-in with another character.

e.g. character #1 farms all the materials after picking the quest up.

character #2 also has the quest and then I just have him do the turn in.

Since for me, for whatever reason I have bad luck on some characters sometimes and better luck with that sort of thing on other characters. Superstitious I guess. Since I know what we're both discussing now, and to answer your overall question, no I have not seen any decrease in the drop rates. I still get some descent items.

 

[Farsight]

A few things to bear in mind about strong box quests:

1. the minimum intensity on any given item is 60% (fc2 instead of 3, 9 extra resists/skill points etc of a max of 15 etc). For any other source of loot (especially jewelry), the minimum intensity is 0.

2. The minimum number of properties is still 0, but in my experience, the number of mods is completely random, thus you have a 20% chance of having a 1 mod item and a 20% chance of having a 5 mod item.

3. Given the number of possible mods, finding a useful combination is very hard to do.

4. The RNG seems to be extremely streaky for me in the case of strongbox quests. I could do two quests, and if I don't find any 5 property items, I could do a dozen more and I've NEVER gotten a good item if I don't find a good one in the first couple. On the other hand, if I do find something, I usually find a lot of somethings.

5. Proven fact: luck DOES make a difference. For my chosen strongbox quest, it's hard to bring a luck suit (I do sanctuary every time I log on), but for the minotaur quest, you can get the materials for a dozen strongboxes then throw on your luck suit for a better chance at an extra mod or higher intensity or even an extra item.

 

[gmcbroom]

Finally! someone mentions Sanctuary. Okay Farsight, my question to you is who gives the strongbox quest in Sanctuary? I plan on going there for the bowyer quests though I don't think they'll be as good as Heartwood. Is a Minotaur quest started in Sanctuary too? And i do apologize if this seems off topic. I died entering Sanctuary so my character still has a long way to go.

 

[Credinus]

To back up one of Farsight's comments, I too find the RNG for the quest rewards very streaky. If you get one bad box of loot, chances are you're next few are going to be bad if you do them right away. After a couple weeks of farming this quest, I've learned to just be patient... If I get a box with terrible rewards, I'll just wait about an hour before I try again.

Weapons are usually the best items from the strongboxes. You can get pretty decent PvP weapons from the quest pretty often, and you'll also be teased a lot by a weapon that is one mod short of being perfect (like an ornate axe with 42% DI, 30% SSI, 57% ML, and then spell channeling/-1... oh why couldn't that spell channeling be stamina leech instad?!?!?!?!). Armor is usually junk, the best you're probably going to get out of armor in the boxes is meddable 18+ LRC items, which are fairly common. Jewels are hit or miss... But you can definitely get some good ones, just luck of the draw. I haven't tried the sanctuary quest yet, though, so I'm going to give it a few tries this weekend and see how it compares.




A question to some others, though: Do blue healers drop the map fragments as well? I've only ever heard that red ones do, so I've never bothered trying the blue healers; but if they do drop them, it'd make that step go by SO much faster.

 

[Farsight]

The name of the Sanctuary strong box quest is "Moug Guur must die." The giver is Dallid the Cook and for goodness sakes, don't even attempt it on a warrior. The last step of that quest is braving a room with 4 succubi in it. Going toe to toe is too difficult to make it worth while on a warrior.

The reason that armor is junk (apart from that it's mostly elf-only) is that doing the box quest, you don't get the arms lore bonus for the resists or the materials bonus.

 

[Credinus]

True, although meddable pieces with combos of LRC/MR/LMC are nice pieces to collect for training suits. Unfortunately, I don't see many pieces with those mods in the minotaur quest rewards. Usually if an armor piece in the strongbox has more than one property (not counting bonus resists), it ends up being self repair.

I know the Dallid quest chain is doable with a warrior, but not easily enough to be worth it for farming the rewards; much better for a tamer or mage. I'm assuming the strongbox loot in it carries the same property/intensity chances as the minotaur quest, which if that's the case, it's certainly a good quest if you are using a tamer/mage since it shouldn't take nearly as long to complete getting a map fragment and 20 gaman horns; plus the two extra large treasure bags might have a decent talisman in them. Another added bonus is watching the arrow trap in the middle that keeps killing the gargoyle destroyers and ratmen... That gives me great joy for some reason.

So for a warrior, the minotaur chain is the better bet, it's just tedious. It also helps to have a stealther for collecting the artifacts; if I didn't have one, I'd probably avoid this quest altogether.

As far as the jewelry goes, as Farsight mentioned, it can be hard to get the right combos on jewels simply because of all different the properties it can have. Jewels are also less common in the rewards; usually just 1-2 jewels per three quests. But I get 3-5 property rings more often than not, and with the high minimum intensities, your chances are better with the strongbox than probably just about any farmable monster.

 

[Diomedes Artega]

Finally! someone mentions Sanctuary. Okay Farsight, my question to you is who gives the strongbox quest in Sanctuary? I plan on going there for the bowyer quests though I don't think they'll be as good as Heartwood. Is a Minotaur quest started in Sanctuary too? And i do apologize if this seems off topic. I died entering Sanctuary so my character still has a long way to go.

The other quest I had discussed was the sanctuary quest. I never really mentioned it due to the fact that from my experience, it takes longer to complete and is not as justified as doing the minotaur quest. Plus, there is less of an interest for that quest than said quest in this thread. I wonder why? *already knows the answer*