Dragonflight added a reason to revisit a variety of Rare Spawns for the Drakewatcher Manuscripts. However, the demand for these is too low, and the Rares are not changed accordingly. Examples.
The issue with The Zaralek Caverns:
Zaralek has been dead ever since the change to make Rares a bi-weekly lockout. Some shards already had multiple rares up at a time before this, now I often see atleast half of the rares up, and only ~12 or so people /who in Zaralek on a Full Pop realm, WM OFF. That’s just sad.
The problem with The Forbidden Reach Rares:
The moment 10.1 released, the reach emptied out, and it is barely visited anymore. Sometimes you’ll still see a group for these in LFG, but not a lot. This one is especially annoying, because they all share an very rare mount drop (Ancient Salamanther).
The struggle with Dragon Isles Rares:
The health of the Rares in elite area’s (Nokhud, Brackenhide, Cobalt, Tyrhold) have been increased significantly in 10.1. In 10.0.7, rares like High Shaman Rotknuckle were easy enough to solo, though still hard enough on ungeared alts. Now? Forget killing them on alts unless you can bring a friend to help you. Killing it on a geared main is unnecessarily lengthy for a non-relevant rare.
What can be done to improve this?
Revert the Zaralek Lockout change. It was a change nobody asked for and nobody likes. What was even the purpose behind it…?
Increase the drop chance of collectibles dropped by older rares. I wouldn’t prefer this personally, but it is an option. Increasing the drop chance of collectibles like Pets, Toys and Mounts dropped by Forbidden Reach and Dragon Isles rares would atleast make them less painful to go after.
Once a zone stops being relevant, decrease the HP of Rares instead of increase them. Let them be easily soloable by average ilvl alts. (For 10.1, that could be ilvl 400).
With 10.1.5 coming out in a week, even more attention will go away from the Zaralek Caverns, and people will be busy farming Paracausal Fragments for new collectibles, leaving these rares once more forgotten.
Please do something about this. It would be an easy fix to nerf their HP and revert the lockout change.
Apart from the choices to change the Zaralek rares to a bi-weekly lockout i also think the pace of new content is too high.
This might sound weird but the Forbidden Reach got introduced on march 25th or something and Zaralek opened on may the 3rd.
Which is a mere 6 weeks to “fully grind out” or make use of a new zone.
The catch up gear from the Reach and its rares were instantly useless when Zaralek opened because the new upgrade system was even working on heroic dungeons, which drop higher ilvl than the tokens from the reach.
Dont get me wrong, i enjoy the better pace of new content although there is so much to do with each update that i feel like it might be a bit too much. (Achievements / rares / collectibles)
I geared 5 characters through Forbidden reach (And did multiple full vault runs on my main), before Zaralek caverns was added, and yesterday i finished Loamm rep on my main and most-played alt, and i play quite half-heartedly lately.
So content is being added just a tad slower than the average player can finish it, seems fine by me, the only snag is that since a lot of the content is named mob based (And as a result, group-based), the areas become useless once the big rush is over.
I’m an average player and I’m way behind with everything. I play the same amount of time per day as I always have and do the same/similar things ingame that I always have … and new patches are appearing long before I’ve finished the current one which hasn’t happened before.
It makes it really stressful and the rares thing is one of the worst. I’ve stood before a rare in zaralek that I need for the achievement or for a drop. And I’ve stood and I’ve stood and I’ve refreshed groupfinder and posted in chat and I’ve stood … and I’ve given up. I don’t have enough playing time to stand doing nothing yet how else will I (eventually maybe) get achievements finished and drops collected?
I agree with almost everything Roguinaa said in the OP, especially
I guess our difference in viewpoints is because i’m not as, um… thorough as you are, i don’t need every single achievement, i am a rep completist though, which is why i still went back to the cavern after week 2. (When most other players already decided to ignore the place)
Zaralek is quite frankly phenomenally uninteresting, a few lore quests aside (The mobs are annoying, the Djaradin-area is just a pain in the rump), that’s the big issue, and due to the WQ-nerf that went into effect in 10.0, the only thing to do there most days is kill the rares, which everybody agrees are so unrewarding as to be not worth the hassle.
I just hope Blizz takes a good look at the participation metrics for the place and doesn’t repeat the mistakes made in 10.1
Im not too bothered about most stuff but I am sad about the manuscripts that I can longer get because nobody is doing the rares anymore.
Guess I’ll have to wait til I outlevel the zone in the next expansion!
Whenever people who’ve completed massive grinds and then claim to be an average player it reminds me of when J.D. Rockefeller was asked how it felt to be so rich and he said he didn’t feel any different to an average person with only 1 or 2 million dollars.
I think the main problem with the recent content is that it is primarily about mass group activities. Rare, Researchers, Cavern Events, Group WQs.
There is little reason to be there just for doing your own thing. You’re there for hunting rares or not at all.
The only content in DF that you can log on and just go do yourself is questing. Either WQs or campaign chapters. Campaigns are one off and WQ are tedious.
Most other events are on schedules or random spawns and professions seem quite intimidating just now (I’ve not done any yet but my pally is leveling just now and will do some Blacksmithing to see how it works but I’m fearing it will be not much fun).
Missing 5 Manuscripts myself, and some of the pets/toys. On Argent Dawn EU WM OFF nobody does these rares anymore.
Yesterday for example, Skornak was up, we left for a quite a while to finish the Trading Post stuff. When we came back more than an hour later, Skornak was still up.
“Maybe it was killed and it respawned!” Yeah no. Download NPCTime. It tells you exactly how long it’s been alive there. It was the same one… The timer was nearly at 3 hours for it, so it had been up for a while even when we first got there.
The only Zaralek Rare that is still killed often is Karokta for the Cobalt Shalewing mount, and even that has died down a lot after the biweekly lockout change. When previously you had groups everyday, now unless you did all your kills on Karokta’s reset day, you could struggle to find groups for it.
How in the world is this good design? Who thought of this?
Reacted about this myself.
I can solo them as a bear druid but it takes FOREVER…
Even with my BF there as a prot pally, and me as feral druid, it takes too long to bother.
To me, it doesnt feel this way.
And i certainly would put my playtime in the “more than casual” group.
I tend to play 3 hours atleast on multiple days in the week.
Although i got 2 rep tokens from 1k rep each for Loam Niffen i wont reach Renown 20 till next reset if i push it.
Half of the WQs each bi-weekly reset are in the Djardin area where most of the time there is no interest to do them.
If we look at some achievements you will need multiple weeks (way more than the mere 6 it was open) atleast to complete them.
I am happy with a bit higher pace, although for Zaralek / Forbidden Reach it feels too quick.
I leveled 2 characters last week and even tho i am capable of sending over 8 or 9 forbidden reach tokens of any armor type, i just bought a full set of 376 items and hopped into 6 heroics. Resulting in 390ish ilvl for said alts.
Upgrading forbidden reach stuff requires items you cant farm really because of the low interest in the Reach.
The content from Forbidden Reach was just useful for a mere 6 weeks as upgrade for alts and too short around for the achievements coming from there / chances on cosmetics / mounts.
Which feels like a waste of resources to me.
Maybe the Reach and Zaralek could have been released together, giving a change of scenery from the dull caverns and keeping it relevant way longer.
Making the armor tokens from the reach a pre-heroic dungeons upgrade up to ilvl 386.
I’m gonna be honest if the paracausal fragments are anything like the weird borrowed power ring in 10.0.5 I’m likely just going to skip the content all together
I liked 10.0, 10.1 is a bit of a letdown honestly.
Story isn’t interesting and the zone while it looks neat has a lot of built in annoyances which obviously were design choices.
Edit: I had a look
They feel like boring leveling trinkets with a purple colour
I’ll think I stick to my 372 trinket that actually gives me secondary stats thanks I’m not a fan of procs