Northeast Road

I think I read on one of the posts that the road near the vale was getting experimental spawning upgrades. Has that gone into effect? I was running a lvl 3 character in the area and got annihilated by 3 fireball throwing goblins. Was abit painful. Or was that just another higher level person running through to trigger them?

My guess is the random spawns are in, because goblin shamans haven't been using fireballs for over a year. The gnomes, upgraded bandits with garbage loot, downgraded ant xp, and other minor balance tweaks are adding up to a much more frustrating lowbie experience. I don't doubt we have lost some players die to it being so rough at low level with no money to speak of. I think it may be high time to re-evaluate and rebalance the starting areas for lowbies based on the assumption of sub optimal builds and inexperienced players. If we balance for these things, then it will properly reward strong builds and skilled players without penalizing others. My 2 cents

I completely agree, dave! Dara-erez is damn near 40th level, and I don't take her to the gnome's caravan after the NW road, because they killl her quickly ... I have a lower level PC who has fought her way through the same area, but it was difficult and I used the one unkillable gnome as a distraction, while I pelted the viva guys with arrows from a safe distance. I agree, the starting areas should be retooled for a more friendly low-level experience. If I didn't love the place so much, those damned viva guys would've chased me out...

If it weren't for my curiosity to see all of the new interesting spells that I wanted to see (my first PC was a sorc), that'd probably have chased me out too. I can't tell you how deadly the cursed pair of springing/stepping boots I put on was. Fortunately, someone was kind enough to replace them and fund the destruction of the cursed pair.

I will say though, the 'challenge' of the lower levels largely changes from challenge to cakewalk in most places, even with sun-optimal builds. The gold balance wouldn't be as much as an issue if it weren't for this, but the gold issue, sadly, does largely contribute to this, especially in the low levels. That's an issue not just restricted to Aenea mind you...

Gave my two cents already.. .but heres another two.... or ten (sorry, once i get ranting, i just need to exhaust the fuel)

I would consider myself a decent player. Maybe not the 1337est of the 1337, but decent at least.

If I don't make a strong, near-optimized build for my new lowbies, I get steamrolled even in the basic areas.

Not so much by the giant ants anymore because their random stat boosts were taken out, but their XP was drastically nerfed on top of it.... so its no longer worth trying to level in those tunnels anymore. Just do the quest, and thats that.

Goblins arent too bad outside the cave, but once you go inside, random stat boosts can screw you pretty badly if you arent near optimized. The tougher encounters deeper inside can smoke even an optimized build repeatedly if luck is not with you. And this assumes a decently experienced player pulling out what few stops they might have at their disposal, as they cant afford much at all.

For all this effort, the loot from the goblins is somewhat.... meager. A single run through may yield a few +1 weapons if you are fortunate. If you can afford identification or have good Lore, you can make a meager profit. Usually enough to replace whatever consumables you burned to get through. To make more, you are relegated to the boring and tedious practice of carting tons of mundane gear back to town for the mere pittance. If you arent a strwength based build, you are getting an Ox if you can afford it, or trying to manage a floating disc just to make it workable. I dunno, maybe some folks enjoy hauling loads of nearly worthless items to town repeatedly just to be able to afford potions and maybe a +1 ring. To me, I can stomach it a few times and then I want to move the heck on to bigger and better things.

If you feel adventurous, you can take on drow. The negative damage traps suck pretty bad. They eat up your healing consumables even if your battles go entirely in your favor. At worst, the traps leave you weak and the encounters destroy you. Over and over. And your supplies get used up for no benefit. In fact, you end up suffering net losses of gold and XP from the deaths. Dont have to go down there, sure. But the drow loot is one of the first places where you can actually start making a tidy cash flow.... otherwise you are relegated to the afore mentioned goblin crossbow/shortbow hauling marathons... ugh.

The graveyard might be decent XP... until you get high enough to spawn skeleton warriors. Then, if you arent a stong melee build you will end up a fine red mist over and over.

The vale cave has some pretty good encounters... and one or two that are overpowering. The problem with the bad ones is there is little to no warning. New players are almost assuredly going to die at least once from each of those.... and god forbid they are perseverent and stubborn, or think 'hey, it wouldnt be in a lowbie area if i had no chance to kill it'.... they will rack up a nice XP debt learning how wrong they are.

The fishead's oil quest used to be a good one for lowbies. Learn to find macedone, maybe even get a good weapon out of it with the right dialogue choices. The problem now is two things, used to be just one. The bandits outright murder lowbies. Once you are high enough to spawn a mage, if you havent made enough money to purchase the right protectives (assuming you were even able to find the right protectives, and this assumed you know what the bandits attack with and what is needed to fend it off) you are a pile of smoking ash. Now the gnomes simply aggravate the situation. Simply put, without help, most lowbies cant make it into macedone anymore unless they suffer a couple deaths trying to fight their way past, and then resign themselves to being forced to bypass those enemies somehow(which while sometimes can be an acceptable situation, it is always a frustrating and not-fun situation).

To put it simply, if you can't survive the trek to macedone, you aint got a prayer of making it all the way to tradeholm, let alone calithia.

The above opinions may not reflect the experience of others. I remember once, on the old bioware boards a guy posting under the username IceSerpent criticized Aenea as too difficult for new characters... and I defended the vision and content of the world rather vigorously. There have been numerous changes to the introductory content since that time... and if the same opinions were voiced now... I would no longer in good conscience be able to defend the content and vision involved. I feel it is simply too fragging dificult to build momentum, financial or experience-wise, as a lowbie in aenea now.... at least without outside help. And I would like to think that outside help should never be a requirement.

I've started on a few balance changes for areas more likely to be frequented by new characters out in the open, and those changes should start showing up in the next few server resets.

Keep providing the feedback, folks!

Ah yes. the random stats on the golbins in the cave is a nightmare. Was making a slow paced 6 xp a kill on the non-caster types. Then to get all the way to the end to have 2 shammans completly evade every swing i had. Had a +8 attack bonus and missed even with 17's on the dice rolls..they were hitting me with +2's. and my ac was 23 with plate a shield and shield of faith spell going. They did get alot of 20's which is understandable. But what kind of stats are these goblins packing to evade 90% of every swing without discplacement or a concealed modifier. Needless to say the debt penalty killed the hour of goblin xp building that was done.

I dont mind a challenge. But to work for an hour or two to get put in your place that badly and not have anything to show for it is aggrivating.

Still love Aenea though

I have found it pretty tough to start as well, but I figured it was due to my not so great character building. Fortunately I met a few nice people who helped me with gifts and suggestions. Using a helm of teleportation and some ship travel, I was able to do the quests that involved going to other cities. I found that the ant and goblin quests were about right for my level. Doing the golden statue quest was quite fun until I met the guy in the black cloak, who was much too tough for my level 4 bard. After a few deaths and being chased around Calithia, I got away as he got stuck between an npc and a fence. Using a wand of magic missles I was able to kill him. The kobold cave on top of the hill, wasn't too hard until I got to the second level, where a bear hit me once and left me with 2 hit points.

Now I am still at level 6, and I only have the level 10 quests left, so I am just exploring the areas and either getting some xp or dying to a stronger enemy. I tried the graveyard, and I was able to kill a few undeads, but life is tough when a crit leaves me with one or two hitpoints.

On a side note. I did see that monsters that run away are supposed to give some sort of xp. But I have not seen any from them running away. Bandits rogues and mages are still pretty tough when they spawn together. the problem is when you inflict enough damage to a rogue he gets scared and runs off. This kills any xp or loot you may possibly get and makes the encounter more worthwhile to simply avoid or have npcs kill them off faster.

I miss the northeast road mice... when I had a newbie having a hard time at low levels, I could always go on a mouse hunt

eeriegeek wrote:I miss the northeast road mice... when I had a newbie having a hard time at low levels, I could always go on a mouse hunt

They'll be making a reappearance in the near future as I implement the newer encounter spawning stuff.

1) I miss the rabid mice too (I dunno why, but perhaps it is because they were the first thing I could reliably kill)
2) I was afraid to say that the goblins KEPT kicken my tail. I figured I was doin it wrong, because the one that dies the most is my brand new shiney sorcerer that I have only a vague idea how to run. The only clues I do have are down to everyone I bump into giving me pointers, (thanks everyone), or I would be in even worse shape.
I have had xp debt magically disappear (alot of it, in the last week or so). That was nice.
Now , I go up against the gnomies, and they kick my derrier, and the xp debt just keeps piling up.
I hope that someday I get something for this, like gold or a good spell, (what is the waterbringer using that is a cold spell. I cant see it before it kills me lol), and I have been going up against them because I have lost so much xp to them, that I figure they are the only way to win it back.
Typical gamblers theology

The gnomes will be ending their rampage very soon.

Some of you might remember my Valkyrie. It was an awesome build, a great concept, and I was really excited at trying to make it work.

I gave up on it because it's a shaky build at low level, and there's nearly no way to level a build that doesn't start off with at least one trick fully realized.

The Valkyrie at full level will have 9th level spells, Dev Crit, flight, speed, and a huge crit range and modifier with the Impaler. A real monster. But right now, she's a fragile little 4th level Bard with extremely low HP due to her Constitution.

So yes, I'd agree that low-level characters could use a little bit of extra help getting started.

I want to note - any lowbie PC that can survive the trip to Macedone can go grab an Emerald once per reset.(not really that hard honestly, a level 2 can probably do it now that the Viva gnomes aren't rampaging) That sells for around 3000 gold and easily pays for the basic equipment that can ensure your survival. Once I found it, my lowbie PCs have had a much easier time leveling.

That's fine for alts of experienced characters, but new -players- are extremely unlikely to find a hidden object that can only be found by turning on a seldom-used and very obscure little toggle.

If I had never played Aenea before, it would probably take me a good, long time before I ever found anything like that.

In fact, I have never found anything like that. In all my time playing. So maybe I'm an idiot, or maybe we shouldn't expect lowbies to depend on surprises like that for basic survival.

YMMV.

Finding that emerald doesn't rely on toggling on the small item collecting. It's just there if you succeed at a search check when moving through a certain open area.

Yeah, I don't remember ever turning on small item collecting and I stumbled upon said Emerald, but by that point (somewhere between levels 8 and 10 I think) I had already been clearing out the goblin caves with an ox and had found the umber hulks of Mountainholm. Once I had enough saved from running through the goblin caves (a fully loaded ox with the more valuable items brought in around 5000gp, while the only consumables I used were food and whatever I looted), I was able to find a helm of mind shielding and go after the umber hulks. After that point, gold was much less of an issue for survival purposes.

Of course, getting to that point was a very difficult process (the first 5 levels as a monk with no equipment were the roughest) of trial and error in finding what I should be hunting.

Those first 5 or 6 levels are my main gripes. If you dont have a solid build for low level, you are going to struggle more than is reasonable in my opinion. For instance, low level bards, or archer builds, or low AC low hp builds (other than spellcasters) are going to die a lot in the low levels, whereas builds with moderate stats in those areas will fare waaaay better.

The disconnect is my main issue. The weaker builds should not suffer so drastically compared to others at lower levels.

Being a new player, I didn't even know about the emerald until I read it here. lol

For me it is pretty tough at low levels to make some gold to start. My bard survived because of the gifts she recieved.

My monk hasn't been so lucky. Not being able to reach Macedone, she has no gloves to fight with.
Having to fight with her bare fists usually means lots of ouchies and no potions to heal with.

Pleads to Amethyst Dragon for some monk gloves in the Vale.