So, what are your initial impressions of I22?

Ok so the big day has come. We have an incarnate zone! And darkness control! and a non-DFB, Non-Itrial new trial! And a new iTrial! oh and some flying disc thing.

Anyhow, what do you guys think?

Personally, I'm in love with Dark Astoria. The intro arc is suitably creepy as all hell and gives a pretty cinematic introduction to Mot and the area. The zone looks flat out amazing, I love that it's night all the time, the red war walls are gorgeous and the music just adds so much to the atmosphere. Plus, it's awesome being in a zone and having all my level shifts active.

I ran through heather's arc and mu'vorkan's arc. Is the timer set like the SSAs? I've been reading everything was on a 20 hour timer from the get go, but after finishing both arcs I got to pick a component each time. Is it like the SSAs where each initial completion gets a 'free pick' then they're all linked? Will have to experiment! I really enjoyed the writing on all the arcs so far, though the initial ones seem kind of.. short? I really see why folks on beta were talking about speeding Heather's, there's just not much meat in terms of activity. We'll see how the rest of them go! Also thread drops seemed pretty plentiful, already leagues above shard rates.

I did a number of the repeatables. As expected, they kept the 2 thread reward, with a 20 hour cooldown that drops it to 1 thread in the meantime. The 5 reward merits and super inspiration, on the other hand, seem to have no cooldown of any kind. Looking forward to what tweak they've got planned.

The new mobs are all pretty neat and varied. I was kind of hoping for some updates to everyone, but it seems the Circle have their same behemoths and ice thorn mages carried over from Peregrine. But the new Banished Pantheon, the new Knives of Vengeance, all pretty wicked

I also managed to get an Adamastor ritual drop, so immediately hopped out to go test that out. With a team of 4 50s we took him down in just a few minutes. Not bad, it's just 500 inf for the recipes and you take it to a lil spot just by the old Dark Astoria entrance. The ritual temp is kind of long, think the normal auctionhouse Teleporter. The reward was 10 merits and 5 threads (And the badge, presumably, if you haven't taken him down before) with an hour cooldown on when he could be summoned again. Managed to snag another copy of the ritual before I finished playing, so it seems to drop semi-frequently from any BP critter.

Also ran the new Drowning in Blood trial. It's... okay? It's about as 'complicated' as DFB. You get dumped into a spot, charge forward tearing through mobs to the end. This one actually has folks you can talk to, chiefly certain NPCs to transport you to the next area (which some folks were a little lost since they didn't pay attention to the text prompts) and some of the rescued NPCs have dialogue. The trial felt a little slower than DFB and didn't feel like it was throwing as many mobs at me. It -definitely- doesn't have the same number of archvillains, only the Devstator at the end that splits, so I guess 2? It's a bit hard to compare how it goes XP wise because I ran it on my 50, but we had a non-50 pop up a level while running it.

The badges on it are pretty easy, but slightly obtuse. There's just the completion badge, killing both AVs within 30 seconds of each other, and then 'claiming' all 4 meteors. The AV one is pretty easy, but people need to be aware that the Devastator splits into 2 when he hits 50% hp, the clone spawns right on top of the original so they clip together, it's easy to not see both of them when you're up close with it. As for the meteors, I'm not sure if they were bugged or the trial simply doesn't tell you, but you have to interact with the meteors -before- completing that segments objective. If you try to after the meteors are unresponsive and you can't interact with them in any way. Nothing in the trial tells you this. Still it was easy and it exemps you down to 20 if you're over. It'll be something different to toss in when you get tired of DFB.

We also got together and ran Dilemma Diabolique. If it weren't for the level shifted enemies, I actually would assume this was intended to be a beginner trial. The mechanics are pretty dead simple and stupid easy to accomplish. Of course, it was a whole league of maxed out incarnates, but really, there wasn't a single hiccup in the trial. No one died at any point and we managed to snag the badge for both ignoring Diaboliques helpers at the end and making sure she didn't consume any essences. It's definitely going to be farmed repeatedly, it has no 'easy grief' button like TPN with civvies/cameras and there's no choke point phases like MoM where you might hit problems.

Zwillinger also hopped on to toss flying discs at people in Atlas. Ran down and got someone to toss one at me. It's cute. Completely not worth 250 pts.

Anyway, those're my initial impressions. I still have the rest of DA's arcs to get through, but I'm -really- loving the zone so far. I'll definitely be tempted to take some turns on it once I hit some more characters to 50. I'm quite tempted to try some dark/* */dark characters, and I still want to check out my stalker and my plant dominator for their respective buffs. Still, I'm pretty jazzed by the new issue so far, I think it's an amazing addition the game sorely needed.

It's totally awesome - it's got something for everyone in it.

Hoping they fix the known issues associated with it soon...like SOON SOON.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Good issue, and the olympian guard costume pieces are amazing. Like almost as versatile as the barbarian costume pieces. Kudos to the art team!

Was very unimpressed with the DD trial. Too short, too easy, pretty boring.

The Dark Astoria missions are actually alot of fun, way cooler than I thought they would be, and that's saying alot for someone who loathes doing normal missions and loathes soloing. That includes the maps (although some have lighting issues), story, and enemy groups. Especially the Talons of Vengeance have wicked cool powers.

In a related note, I think we need the difficulty settings to have a higher cap somehow. If you're lvl 50+3 that means the highest difficulty you can do the new content on is +1 to your effective level unless you unslot your incarnate abilities.

New base porters are an epic win. Just be upgrading to the new hacked TPers I netted about 500,000 excess prestige, not to mention simply being alot better in design.

Haven't done the bloody bay trial yet.

Now to spend the next 2 month in DA farming for catalysts -_-

It feels like it's lacking something *coughSTAFFFIGHTING*cough*

^_^

Agent White summed it up quite nicely except...

...You will not be introduced to any of the new Incarnate contacts until the Alpha slot is opened. Kinda of a bummer because the new DA is not setup to give a quick opening to the Alpha. You can street hunt (or team with someone who can get the missions), but it will take an awfully long time to get the 1,000,000 incarnate exp needed to unlock it. Get the Alpha slot unlocked before exploring DA and then everything is cool.

(BTW: we could not test this on VIP Beta since every 50 had the Alpha automatically unlocked by default.)

Otherwise, I concur with Agent White's analysis.

I really liked the final mission of the intro arc, where you have to defeat all the bosses in two minutes. I beat them with only seconds to spare, which made for an exciting finish.

I also got a Catalyst drop just two missions in, which was pretty sweet. Considering I only have one ATO slotted right now anyway (the Tanker proc), there's no rush for the rest.

So far, so good. I look forward to playing more missions this week.

The Stalker changes are Love. Sweet, stabby Love.

Love I22.
But the patch with the latest fixes and adds Dink did for the pieces like jackets ported to female and Imperial dinasty cant come soon enough.

Very dark. The zone is dark astoria..but still. A lot of the missions there..maps are veeery gloomy.

Also think DD trial is a bit too easy. Comparing it to how MoM and Tpn were the first week..DD is cake. I was saying to a friend it could be cause of the mob type changes? The preatorians are pretty much all round nasty, to most builds. Psi damage, mezzes, bosses with huge melees, vickys with crits. Drain psy on minions. I have not done DD as a melee yet..but I have a feeling, even at +2, it will be much easier.

A few annoying bugs. Sadly..I think I can live with them for now. Not because they are not annoying..but more because I have just resigned myself to numerous new issue bugs.

Really enjoying the DA arcs so far. Love teh zone and the baddies. The solo missions add an extra dimension of backstory and give better understand of the characters. One think I didnt like..in Max's solo arc, you open a CRATE (yes, a lil box) and pull BM's halberd out. Um..wtf..is it a special fold away halberd? The midget version?

Overall..my view of i22 is..Nom Nom. You will see why as you do the arcs..everything gets Nom Nom'd on.

Update..
Just did the two new low level Villain arcs..really enjoyed them. Great fun, good plots. Loved seeing all the destined ones go mad.
But..
TWO reward merits? After all those bosses? Is this another case of the 'placeholder' reward amounts from Test not being updated when the arcs went Live?

Another 'bug'? Just went to DA and thought I would search how many people are in the zone. So..I open search, the zone tab and guess what...DA is not there! Um..yeah..ok? Apparently it is as a hero, according to a friend..as a villain..no sign of it.

I haven't been able to test Dark Astoria yet. Unfortunately, I'm having far too much fun with my level 29 Stalker to worry about end game content right now. I really, REALLY wanted to try it when it came out, I even specced Crash in Set Inventions (Uncommon only) in preparation, but the Issue took so long to come out I lost patience and played a Stalker. All of a sudden, I remember why I made so many Stalkers. Then the next day the Assassin's Strike change hits and I can't tear myself away.

Oh, well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Dark Astoria arcs are amazing, just like First Ward's.

The DD trial is on the same level as TPN, it's okay, but doesn't really compare to MM. At least it's not a slogfest like UG or a broken encounter like Keyes.

Changes to the LFG queue system are very welcomed.