Dragons....a force to be reckoned with?

[imported_Traveller]

<blockquote><hr>

Well I'm going to let Jeremy clarify her post. Thanks. And... Destard is not a "high level area."

[/ QUOTE ]

Does the idea of a nest of dragons not being a "high level area" seem odd to anyone else?

Really, why am I even wasting time to reply?

 

[Guest]

Running willy nilly into a nest chock full of dragonkin should be a potentially lethal exercise.

 

[Guest]

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Does the idea of newbies training up on dragons seem odd to anyone else?

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No, BBQ Lou use to hunt dragons as a journyman. Cause thats how BBQ Lou rolls.

 

[bordegan]

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Running willy nilly into a nest chock full of dragonkin should be a potentially lethal exercise.

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Yup.

As for the paragon beefed up dragon...ready your blades men! *gulp*

 

[imported_Sarphus]

Makin dragon BBQ?

 

[imported_Hinotori]

I think this is very good even though it means my pack of tiny hellkittens won't be able to kill all dragons in under 10 seconds, without bard assist. And I'm happy to hear AW will be buffed. Give me a challenge. Currently they are 6 second (or less) kills for my disco/tamer and a pack of frenzied or hellhounds.

I'm really looking forward to the new dragons. Even went and got the stable slots ready on my stealth/tamer who is the tamer I plan to use them on.

 

[Guest]

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Running willy nilly into a nest chock full of dragonkin should be a potentially lethal exercise.

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I would agree if they like in other games gave something worth the trouble.

 

[imported_mr.blackmage]

in other games they can take 20+ minutes to kill.

 

[imported_mr.blackmage]

Wait, I just read your earlier post to me. You don't think that 20k is enough to currently kill dragons? That's your tough luck, not mine. A barbed suit with a dragon slayer is all it takes, or just a dragon slaying spell book, or even just a basic lrc suit. It doesn't even take a dragon slaying weapon, just get chiv and bushido and away you go. In a whole 10 minutes, max, you now have doubled your gold. Wow, that was hard.

And why would I *have* to get it all as loot or bought as myself? You can find stuff like that on the ground anywhere, and yes, you can easily get 50k just by asking for it from someone. Don't impose artificial restrictions, because that's exactly what they are.

 

[imported_Hinotori]

I like going into destard with my tamer/archer and killing them until I find one that's good enough to tame. I kill them without pets or healing skill. As an archer he only has 100 archery, tactics, anat and 80 chiv. 50s in his resists and uses a bow of the juka king with enemy of one. They die rather quick and he doesn't get hurt much by the spells. Just dance out of distance when you hear them start to breathe and that doesn't hit you.

I took a wrestler in there to try training on drakes. He does have healing and only a GM set of barbed leather. Spells on dragons make them to hard to wrestle to death when I'm only doing 4-6 points of damage. Despise is much, much better for all your skill training needs. Just head down.

 

[imported_GalenKnighthawke]

I am very divided on the issue of "beefed up" dragons.


One hand says this.

•Dragons should be hard.

•It's not ALL the dragons that are hard, just some of them. You can still run into Destard and farm until you run into a harder one, then withdraw if you can't handle it.

•With crafting about to be able to make better stuff more often and more consistently, doesn't it make sense that barbed leather should be a little harder to get?

•Dragons should be hard. They are dragons for the Love of God. The first tabletop RPG was named Dungeons and Dragons, and there was a reason for that.



And the other hand says this.

•I am concerned with the potential loss of "middle end" monsters, monsters that noobs can fight after they are no longer noobs. Remember when Jeremy was talking about the Virtue Artifacts being for the "post-New Haven crowd," the people who'd gotten those blessed noob artifacts and were wondering "what's next?" What is that crowd going to fight, after every middle-end creature has been made more deadly? I doubt this will stop at dragons.

•Dragons are not the only means to get barbed leather. Will we simply see those other means over-used?

•Put commensurately better loot on the "beefed up" dragons please. Why? Because, given that there are other ways to get barbed leather, I worry that soon people will treat dragons the way they now treat Dread Spiders: Something there is simply no point in fighting. Unless EA beefs up the loot on the beefed up dragons, such that the reward will be more commensurate with the risk.

-Galen's player

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

<blockquote><hr>

Running willy nilly into a nest chock full of dragonkin should be a potentially lethal exercise.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would agree if they like in other games gave something worth the trouble.

[/ QUOTE ]And yet, if I wanted dragons in UO to be like dragons in other games, I might just be better served playing other games...

 

[Sam the Scribe]

<blockquote><hr>

Wait, I just read your earlier post to me. You don't think that 20k is enough to currently kill dragons? That's your tough luck, not mine. A barbed suit with a dragon slayer is all it takes, or just a dragon slaying spell book, or even just a basic lrc suit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well I dont know what shard you are playing on... but... if you can get a Dragon Slayer spellbook and an LRC suit for 20k good for you. I mean it. You never did specify your home shard so if you can really get that kind of gear for 20k then you're all set for the changes.

On Atlantic you're probably starting at a mil easy for a Dragon Slayer spellbook. Sure, you can pick up a slayer sword or other wep as loot but most of them aren't that good. You original post said nothing about trying to beg for money or picking stuff up off the ground... you said this:

And "top level" equipment to kill a dragon takes 20k and vendor browsing.

So you oversimplified... then backed out? Sure a player could hang around town and a Legendary Tailor might make them a 70's suit for fun. Someone else might give them a nice spellbook or sword, but your statement was that the player could gear up for 20k buying the items from a vendor and that's just not gonna happen.

Any player who is trying to train from 80's level skills to GM will find Dragons very fun and challenging. Also, the reward is actually worth getting killed a couple times while they work their way around the cave learning fighting skills. A creature that gives 1000gp +gems +skill gain is worth dying to kill as you can recoup some of the losses while fighting them. Some folks just dont want to stand around in Luna all day wacking a Golem, or beating up on sheep in Yew.

My point is that by boosting dragons the players that now find them an exciting challenge may be excluded from fighting them anymore and as other posters to this thread have noted... there seems to be a diminishing range of "middle end" monsters.

I wonder if some folks like this change because that means that their mega-warrior that can take out a dragon in 3 hits will have less competition for leather and loot.

Safe Travels, Sam

 

[bordegan]

First I thought you said you were going to "retire" this thread....

Second off...did you even read my post of all the other places middle end players can hunt?

You must not play that much because there are lots of crafters on atlantic that will help newer players with barbed armor, jewels, weps, and whatever else....are you like anti social or something?

You are also overpricing items.
<blockquote><hr>

On Atlantic you're probably starting at a mil easy for a Dragon Slayer spellbook

[/ QUOTE ]

Want me to show you 7 or more dragon slayer spellbooks that are 299k and less? I would mention the search program but everyone has seen the books for it and it lists several dragon slayer spellbooks for 299k and less...easily.... You must either be ripping people off or getting ripped off....

LOL I looked again and there are even REPTILE slayer spellbooks for 400k....you sure you play atlantic?

 

[Sam the Scribe]

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First I thought you said you were going to "retire" this thread....

Second off...did you even read my post of all the other places middle end players can hunt?...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep, read you post and replied to it...

The post I was replying to was claiming 20k to set up a char to fight dragons... you claim you can get a slayer for 299k... can you explain why you think 299k is less than 20k?

I dont use any third party apps or websites that might gather information in any manner that violates EA's TOS. I also am very careful about websites I visit because of account security issues. So... I'd rather pay more for a spellbook... then get a nice cheap one... and have my account hacked.

But... I am going to retire from this thread... you can hold me to it this time. I had a relapse.

Safe Travels, Sam

 

[imported_AustinRules]

Are these new dragons going to replace all dragons? Or will they be rarer, like a few sprinkled in among the other dragons. If there are something like four in destard then middle level warriors can still train there on the drakes and weaker dragons....and get practice running when one of the Big Beasts show up.

Personally I hope they aren't as powerful as paragon dragons.

 

[imported_Lord Kynd]

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Does the idea of newbies training up on dragons seem odd to anyone else?

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yah, but alot has changed since i started playing.

 

[imported_infiniti]

Destard was once the bards playground, no one else was powerful enough to take them out and once you got good with the dragons, it was downstairs to provoke the shadow wyrms, the ultimate in gold and fun with lots of deaths.

Now any tom, **** and harry can slay what destard offers, I recently took my archer there after returning to UO, I went to the second level and found the shadow wyrms summons do nothing now apart from Revs, it was far to easy, then it was down into the ancients lair, a creature that really was a force only to find it drop with minimal effort.

So heres hopeing for more of a challenge in Destard and even more hopeing for it to spread throughout the legacy dungeons. These great dungeons need tweaking to counter all these uber items and skills we have been given that just make those poor creatures seem like mongbats.

 

[Guest]

RTLFC

I think the moral of this thread is that there is no real linear route for any player to train skills, let alone something that helps new players develop characters. And for new players the gameplay would be difficult to pick up.

People arent used to this type of game.

I'm not saying that that UO should be more like wow.

I'm saying that UO needs an ever expanding single player story to get the people involved in the game.

Quests about the undead in haven (more then the newb quest).

Quests about finding the other cities, about finding and exploring the dungeons.

Quests to help players gain skill.

It really isnt intuitive at all. Honestly I don't know anyone that wasn't completely overwhelmed at the experience of being a new player in UO, which is exactly why friends I have introduced to the game don't play it. A few said it was just to hard to find information on anything, while another said that there wasn't anything to do but whack on monsters, and they're right.

UO really does need a story to introduce the player to all the niches of UO.

Sure, we have the newb training quests, but those hardly help the mid range and later development of a character, nor do they really introduce new players to the better parts of UO.

 

[bordegan]

I never said anything about 20k....you said a dragon slayer spellbook runs 1 mil on atlantic...which you were very wrong....I have also seen dragon slayer spellbooks laying on the ground in serpent's hold and in vesper....

 

[Cogniac]

<blockquote><hr>

Also Hiryus aren't to shabby to kill for leather, they don't cast magic either.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, but that's regular leather, not barbed.

Makes me wonder what the price of barbed leather is going to jump to now. It was already 200gp per.

 

[Guest]

The thing that always concerns me when they do something to artificially beef up a critter's stats instead of just give it better AI is Ilshenar. Sometimes I think the devs completely forget it exists.

Paragon dread spiders were just ridiculous before they got toned back down, and the idea of paragon super dragons and beefed up ancients is....yuck. It already takes a fairly competent party to handle a paragon ancient. Sounds like the new ones will just one hit kill everyone and where's the fun in that?

 

[Guest]

I've run into people training skills in Doom...and not the last couple points to legendary, either.

 

[imported_Skrag]

RTLFC

Someone on the dev team got it in their head that dragons should be powerful because they're dragons, and they had time to waste on this pet issue of theirs. Period. It has nothing in particular to do with game balance.

You guys keep going on about the majesty of dragons and how this isn't just kind of a pointless vanity tweak for some dev. I'm gonna go make a chiv/bushido archer and kill balrons in three hits each for an hour.

 

[Connor_Graham]

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Jeremy...you may have answered this already...but...

What about Paragons?

Can a Beefed Up Dragon now become a Paragon Beefed Up Dragon, in Illshenar?

*Shudders*

*Smiles*

That could make an Illshenar Cold Blood Spawn a mighty sticky wicket!!!

I bet Leurocian knows that one...

[/ QUOTE ]

I haven't seen where this question has been answered yet.

While I like surprises, this is one I'd kind of like to know ahead of time so I can make sure to bring enough bandages.

 

[Surgeries]

<blockquote><hr>

Jeremy...you may have answered this already...but...

What about Paragons?

Can a Beefed Up Dragon now become a Paragon Beefed Up Dragon, in Illshenar?

*Shudders*

*Smiles*

That could make an Illshenar Cold Blood Spawn a mighty sticky wicket!!!

I bet Leurocian knows that one...




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I haven't seen where this question has been answered yet.

While I like surprises, this is one I'd kind of like to know ahead of time so I can make sure to bring enough bandages.


[/ QUOTE ]

LOL...yeah...plus the need for Rezzes that may come with the Beefing...hehehe...