Is Blackthorn's Dungeon still droping minor arties?

[Lug]

I got bored of Doom and tried Blackthorn's Dungeon for a few hours. I hunted Hell hounds, Rotting Corpse, Dragons and Drakes, and finally the golden eleys (room was empty!)

I spent a few hours, the fel version, with 1200 luck and used honor to kill the monsters, but I didn't get a single minor artie. Does it really take hours of hunting for just one minor artie? If so, that just evil! lol

Is there a quest that I must start to get the arties to drop in the dungeon?

 

[Dot_Warner]

No quest needed, the drop rate of the Minax artifacts is just exceedingly low. Painful for the non-scripter, in fact.

 

[Lug]

Thanks Dot. You are right about it being painful for non-scripter.

It's painful for warrior characters as well. I spent a few hours down there and my gloves 78/78 durability needed repairs by the time I left. It seems items are losing durability quicker at times. Armor pieces will wear out normally then BOOM one piece will lose 40 durability quicker then my other armor pieces. This happened to my new cloak and boots from doom. Needless to say I quit wearing the cloak and boots after finding out they cant be powdered with fort.

Anyhow, looks like Ill have to get the old lug bot out if I want any of the Blackthorn Arties. Thanks Dev Team!

 

[drcossack]

Yes. I've gone down a couple times since Publish 86 "fixed" it & gotten a few. But, for the most part, it's not worth your time going down there now. With 2200 luck, my tamer could get 2-3 an hour before p86.

If you're interested in the minor arti drops, just go kill Captains.

 

[Lug]

I'm fighting the capts solo with a sampire. Tons of spawn and tons of capts. Once I get two of the capts together I can momentum strike the crap out of them until the necro shows up....

 

[BeaIank]

Captains are sadly the only way to get a decent of drops down at Blackthorn.
At the golden elemental room, I used to get an average of 1.5 drops per hour with 1800 luck. Now with the random teleporting that happens there, this number is even lower, and it became far more annoying to gather golden ingots.

 

[Lug]

Well just soloed a capt took an hour got two minor arties. The loot on the captains corpse: 3964 gold. 12 rubies, diamonds, tourmalines, sapphires - No Items what so ever. Disappointing to say the lest.

Seriously these things should be dropping the turn in rewards not minor arties. Why spent all this time and effort into designing content no one wants to play? The rewards do not justify the time required to get even one turnin reward. Especially since most of the rewards are re-badged artwork of items that most of us already have! I don't get it.

Bealank I spent over an hour in the golden eley room I didn't get teleported once. Anyway, I think I'm done with that dungeon until its recoded.

 

[BeaIank]

I keep moving around the room, but I always get teleported at least twice per hour there.
And the captains have way too many hit points as it is now. Takes a long while to take them down. I "solo" them with my bushido paladin and my bard running peace mastery. Usually takes 15 to 30 minutes to kill them, depending on the captain. Dexxer and teleporting ones are the most annoying ones, as they hit too hard, parry too much and the 160 weapon skill makes you miss way too often.

The others tend to be fairly squishy, even the necro one with a high hll weapon. You somehow leech more life than the tainted aura of his damages you from leeching life off him. It is weird.

 

[Lug]

While fighting these captains the thought did cross my mind to activate another account and use my bard to disco them to make it easier. But I wasn't sure if the captains were even susceptible to barding. I decided to tuff it out solo with my sampire. The main problem I had with the captains is when they teleported back to there area with low health they started running deeper into town which was covered by other captains. I'd run in and attack the captain with low health, but the others would follow which turned into a crazy mess for a few minutes until I could get the low health captain isolated.

Anyway, sounds like you have the captains figured out. If you want, you can have the two minor arties that I have. I have no use for them.

 

[BeaIank]

They are sadly not discoable, so my bard is just there, being part of the background while running peace mastery for the extra DCI and damage reduction.
I am considering to make a new bard on another account of mine to have her run provocation masteries as well so that the fight might drag a bit less.

And while I appreciate the offer, you keep or sell those. They might still be worth half a mil or more each, specially now with the teleporter thingy they put on that hinders scripts just slightly.

 

[Obsidian]

The captains are just a bit too challenging for the single player to defeat. I wish they could be discorded. The drop rate in the rest of the dungeon is also pitiful. The Devs need to turn up the drop rate to make it a viable use for players to earn useful artifacts. The Doom drop rate is right for a short duration event, but Blackthorn's Dungeon should be about half of what Doom is. Right now it is far less and it is disappointing. The grind to artifact ratio is too long.

 

[BeaIank]

I find that the main problem with fighting the captains is their spawn, which is pretty thick for such small area, and the fact that they are yellow until you kill all the spawn. Add that some of them keep teleporting around, and you just have to give up on that fight because odds are very high that he or she ended in the middle of the spawn of yet another captain.
You have very little room for manoeuvre in those city pockets, and way too many captains and spawn active at the same time.

And the drop rate at Blackthorn is painfully low, yes. Half of Doom, or heck, even a quarter, would be so much better than what it is now and make one's time down there be worth it.

 

[Obsidian]

Maybe they should change it to make the captains discord able and have one captain spawn at a time. It could be scalable with more adventurers and have additional captains spawn for every 3 adventurers.

 

[Smoot]

its already alot easier than it was, bards used to be impossible and are actually one of the easier mobs now. Its hard, but drop rate is 100 perecent. It goes very quickly with a small group, the arties are actually worth something now that its less afk scriptable, and is actually a nice challenge. Take advantage of the new gear, have fun figuring out a higherer damage output template. Its very doable and a nice challenge. Not for a player fresh out of haven tho. Its also nice to see areas that stuff like refinements are actually useful / needed.

Too time consuming for me, but then again i dont farm anything expecting to get a drop, its all time consuming. easier to just buy it. See it as a challenge to improve your template / gear to kill those captains fast.

Im very happy to see something was done about the script farming. Much more likely to go there now that the stuff isnt dirt cheap.

 

[drcossack]

I find that the main problem with fighting the captains is their spawn, which is pretty thick for such small area, and the fact that they are yellow until you kill all the spawn. Add that some of them keep teleporting around, and you just have to give up on that fight because odds are very high that he or she ended in the middle of the spawn of yet another captain.
You have very little room for manoeuvre in those city pockets, and way too many captains and spawn active at the same time.

And the drop rate at Blackthorn is painfully low, yes. Half of Doom, or heck, even a quarter, would be so much better than what it is now and make one's time down there be worth it.

Pretty much. If I can get captains alone, they're easy (well, the non-dexer captains, though even they're manageable), but still takes time to kill one; when I killed a Fencer (HP bumped), I was on my mystic using the summon Colossus/hide/repeat method, and it took me a half hour. Had other people been there, it would've taken me less than 10 minutes. When a guildmate and I were doing the Captains, we worked it out pretty well - kill ALL spawn so we'd get every Captain vulnerable, isolate them so it'd be 3v1, then move on to the next when it died. Between afk'ing the Mages in Fel & doing the Captains, I got 20+ drops that day (most of which were from the Captains)

Other Captains? I can just go on my thrower, honor them, then snipe from a ledge. Which is the same exact way I kill Exodus; if the game didn't require at least two people to enter it, I'd just solo him all day (well, technically, I *can* solo him once inside, but yeah)

 

[Lug]

Some good ideas. Glad I didn't reactivate another account just for my bard...

I never used a thrower or a mystic much. They seem like they way to go for these captains and Exodus!

 

[drcossack]

Some good ideas. Glad I didn't reactivate another account just for my bard...

I never used a thrower or a mystic much. They seem like they way to go for these captains and Exodus!

I love both. My Mystic is almost always in an SDI suit - I don't even need to use a Colossus most of the time, especially if I have a slayer book. If I do fight something that needs summons, I wear a suit with 60+ in all resists. I made my thrower over the summer to deal with Rikktor, but I put it off because I devised a better method (that didn't involve running all over the back of Destard): having my greater tank it while a guildmate was on an archer (though a thrower would also work) & whacking away. Now I can't STOP using my thrower - if I honor Exodus, I get a max of 222 damage on Lightning Strike crits, though I imagine the damage will go up; Phillies Suck is currently GM Tactics (haven't eaten a scroll), and 116-ish Anatomy.

 

[BeaIank]

For Exodus I prefer my archer, but for the captains, my Bushido/Paladin is the way to go for me. I can dish a lot of damage with her with EoO and full honour.

 

[Yadd of Legends]

I did a hundred or so captains with a bushido archer, no problem but can get tiring kiting them, but as has been said, at least it's a guaranteed drop. The town invasions were a lot more fun, both group and solo, where there was a lot more room to maneuver and hide behind buildings. As far as I'm concerned the town invasions were a smashing success, with groups forming and moving through the towns like marauding ants every night it was going on.