I'll start. Please add your own to save us from worthless quests.
3 Part Quest
1) Pavel the Giant - The only one worth doing. Blacksmith in Stuttgart gives. One port to Pavel Ruins nets you 10k exp. She points you to a quest from the dorf next to you. That one is worth doing. STOP HERE! I'm warning you.
2) Resurrection of an Old Manager - Don't do this. No rewards. Leads to the 3rd quest. You run back and forth between NPCs. I will admit that the history behind Archaic Lab is interesting but that's it.
3) Pavel's Research - OMG. Not worth it. This quest is solo, ranked levels 52-58. Rewards (I don't want to spoil the suspense-read below) Unless you have silent walk skill this is not a solo quest. Read on if you have the stomach.
I tried this portion initially with my 57 BH and 60 SE in tow. You are instructed to go to the center of Archaic Lab and speak to the Weathermaster there. The mobs here are no problem. This part is easy.
Next you must speak to the Weathermaster in the eastern and western portion of the Lab. This is NOT soloable at this level. Bleed debuffs and Patk debuffs. All mobs are aggro and extremely social. Although the NPC gives you a path to take where the debuffs don't apply, it is impossibly narrow. I pulled mobs out of the room to a safe zone, but they take forever to beat down, even though they are blunt weak.
At this point, my clan leader logs on and graciously offers to help out. He brings along his 55 Warlock, 55 Prophet and 55 SE. We head to the eastern portion first. To make a long story short, we eventually end up with one dead Warlock, one dead Prophet, one BSOE SE, and a huge train of mobs following my BH out of the lab. Apologies to my assistants!
Now my clan leader is quite upset and determines its time to bring out the big guns. Along comes a 67 SpS (retired, Sleep nerf FTW!) and a 65 BD. We gear up and try again. Despite the mobs being deep blue to him the SpS is spamming 3-4 nukes plus Surrender to Water per mob. No exp, but we eventually fight our way through to the Weathermaster. Takes at least 30 seconds to click through all the menus on the Weathermaster, and that's if you know exactly what to do.
At this point we got VERY lucky. I don't know if this is a bug or intended feature. We were resting up in the center of the lab when the 65 BD notices that an invisible weathermaster is floating down one of the corriders. You can see its name but not the NPC. I ran over and clicked on it and lo and behold it was the Weathermaster from the Western side. I was able to complete this portion of the quest in complete safety. I didn't look forward to attempting to fight our way through another side of the Lab.
Here I figure we are going to get something really great for this one. I mean any quest for solos level 52-58 that requires you to bring some high level A graders has got to give out something awesome right? I go back to Yumi at the Pavel Ruins port point. I'm already rubbing my hands together in anticipation! I click through to find my reward!
Collecting Fairy Breath, if you only turn in 5-10 items the reward is decent but the more you turn in, the lower the reward per item (goes from 180 down to 50 adena) and the mobs sleep, silence, slow, windshackle and are generally a huge PITA even though they claim to be weak to archery.
Seriously, the quests in this game are so poorly done that it is not possible for me to stop ranting about them.
It's not that the stories that are told are horrendous. It seems to be that they just aren't efficient, I feel the text is too close together, you never know what you are going to get and many of them involve running around. And aroun and around.
Essentially it seems like busy work.
I just started the quest that allows you to see Baium (can't recall the title at the moment) so I can continue this whole subclass thing.
I did the first part a while a go. Can't even remember. But I am determined not to actually do these quests unless I'm in the mood to just run around. so it will take a while.
Anywho, last night I do the part where I am supposed to go to the cemetary, click on some Ark that is sitting out in the middle of nowhere and kill an Angel.
Ok, I'm geared up for this, bsoe just in case since I am soloing it. Run out there, find the ark that for some reason no one takes since it is sitting out there. Click on it and the angel appears.
Nothing seems to happen so I go to click on it to see if I need to speak with it. Instead it initiates a melee attack (mage melee is just fun to watch for the hilarity). So I freak as I think this thing is going to start wailing on me. Until I realize it is dark blue. I then cast a spell on it and nearly one shot the thing.
I essentially built up a challenge that just wasn't there.
At least if it was a challenge I could feel that I did something of merit.
Now I need to run around and find the other arks or whatever. Probably will be more of the same.
If the rewards are made constant, then most of the repeatable quests are fine. They are designed to supplement regular hunting and do well at that. Greater rewards would be welcomed though. :D
My problem is with the one-time only quests. Most of the earlier ones are worth doing, but that number drops after attaining D grade. Who wants to do a lv60 quest that takes a lot of runnings around through dangerous territory for .1% experience and a hand full of adena? The ones that really tick me off are the new pet ones where the quest involves you paying the NPC 500k- even considering the pet you get, having to pay for a reward? What the hell?
those 5 quests at FoD that are linked together and tell u the background story of it .... they are lvl63-66 if i remember right; reward: *drum roll* 2 or 3 low b grade jewelry pieces :eek: .... 'uber' reward for running around between mobs who are up to 10 lvls higher then u and mostly aggro :mad:
those 5 quests at FoD that are linked together and tell u the background story of it .... they are lvl63-66 if i remember right; reward: *drum roll* 2 or 3 low b grade jewelry pieces :eek: .... 'uber' reward for running around between mobs who are up to 10 lvls higher then u and mostly aggro :mad:
Depends daytime or night (you will need to be there during both), but daytime travel has low aggro.
Quests are all about the journey, not just the reward! Quest writers are needed more than ever to help wary adventurers reach the end of the journey. :)
We appreciate all the hard work the writers put into creating quest guides!
Quests are all about the journey, not just the reward! Quest writers are needed more than ever to help wary adventurers reach the end of the journey. :)
We appreciate all the hard work the writers put into creating quest guides!
Quests are all about the journey, not just the reward!
Ok, but these journeys will take me to gludio, then to Gludin then back to Gludio to speak with the original quest giver, Lloyd, who will realize he made a mistake and I actually need to speak with his cousin Floyd in Dion.
Floyd will help me but only if I do him a favor. Travel to Giran and a book of his that he left with his Uncle Thaddeus.
Thaddeus, however, doesn't have it. It was accidentally crated up and sent to Aden to be sold at auction with some other items. Unfortunatley for Thaddeus (and indirectly, US) is that a clan of Lizad Men attacked that merchant train and took the crate.
Thaddeus will then ask us if we would be so kind to retrieve that book by killing anwhere from 50 to 4000 Lizardmen. Luckily, after a long and glorious struggle we get the book. However, we can't take it directly to Floyd but have to go back to Thaddeus who thanks us and gives us some echo crystals that play "he works hard for the money".
After we get the book back to Floyd then Floyd is thankful, helps us out and we go back to Lloyd. Lloyd is thankful too but wonders why it took us so long. Obviously we weren't really interested in helping him since it took us too long.
He tells us that he doens't have our reward but if we go across the room and speak with Paulette she will give us our reward.
We go speak with Paulette and she rolls her eyes because Lloyd is always asking for her help. But since we seem honest and have helped Lloyd, she will reward us with:
those 5 quests at FoD that are linked together and tell u the background story of it .... they are lvl63-66 if i remember right; reward: *drum roll* 2 or 3 low b grade jewelry pieces :eek: .... 'uber' reward for running around between mobs who are up to 10 lvls higher then u and mostly aggro :mad:
Um hello you **** ... the jewelry is secondary to the 1.8 million experience points you get for finishng the quest in FoD and you also get Blessing jewelry that is only attainable through this quest ...
and that makes me wonder how much xp that quest gave him in the Archaic Lab.
They really screwed up FT after C2 I think it was, the mobs are HARD and given the same or less exp than ones just outside, at least for a nuker (due to the amount of nukes they take to bring down).
I would accept the statement "its about the adventure, not the reward" if there was a quest that actually had even an ounce of adventure.
Taken from wikipedia:
An adventure is an activity that is comprised of risky or uncertain experiences that are undertaken at least in part for the sake of physical or emotional excitement
risky or uncertain experiences. Im sure one could argue that you are never certain what NPC and what 1000 mobs we will have to kill on a given quest. But from the early lvls to the cap we can easily begin to predict the basic elements that L2 quests implore.
Although the text suggests a bit of excitement, or hints at some grander experience, the things we do and see during a quest are quite routine.
As many OFTEN point out quests are something you pick up in an area where you were gonna grind already. So it often doesn't diverge from your day to day activities at all.
And the quests that have you run around and play NPC tag, have potential to break away from that and put you up against out of the ordinary mobs, and send you to new exciting places, or put you in unconventional situations. But often you just port from town to town and occasionaly kill a few boring mobs.
This all wouldn't be so bad if in turn for being painfully boring, quests were somewhat rewarding. But usually (unless you are an archer or nuker) you end up spending more money than you get out of your questing.
And Im sorry but quests should be a sure thing. Throw me as many curvballs as you want during the quests, Make it as hard as you want, but once I finaly make it through all the trials and tribulations, I should get something. Maybe not the thing I wanted, but nothing is as disheartening as putting in a LOT of effort only to be told to try again.
Quests are all about the journey, not just the reward! Quest writers are needed more than ever to help wary adventurers reach the end of the journey. :)
We appreciate all the hard work the writers put into creating quest guides!
IDK about the rest of you.
But when I read this all I could see was: blah blah blah....blah blah blah.
Mystril I know you have a acc....I know you play this game too.
How can you tell us that the rewords are worth doing the quest just for us to see the lure?
Alot of quest have you run around the glowb, and or collecte houndrads of items that don't drop 100%, and useally don't pay you more then what you spend in Gear or port fees.(90% of quest in L2, hunter lision, WH coins, second class change...list goes on)
while at the same time, you out lvl them so you do it once, and boom your done, even if it's repetable.(sea of spores lvl 48 quest)
And then you have like 4 or 5 repetable types usally not in the same area, and they are only argo type not passive type, which yeld the worst XP.(coin member in Cem...and all over the place)
The other issue is the lvl at which you gain the quest for some is way too late for it's XP and the type of mob that you have to kill.( A/g items on falibi and theifs in seal of shilen) :confused:
I actually like the gambling-with-quest-items type quests, but I think on a whole there should just be a lot more of them. The quests are incredibly simple in their structure, so why not make more available so every player can do the kind he enjoys? Just mix and match from...
Types:
<ul type="square"> Collect (tradable and infinite), e.g. coin quest
Collect (fill up), e.g. Ghost of Batur/FT quest
Gamble after Collection - e.g. Infernium Ore quest
Gamble Items - e.g. Blueprints quest
Deliveries - e.q. hot springs quests
Rewards:
<ul type="square"> EXP
SP
Base Mats
Keymats (I'm still against this being in, but since it is... )
Recipes
Cash
Enchants
Full Items (by chance)
And then make a few quests available per area, some more worthwhile than others, so that everyone can choose a quest they like to pass the time.
Quests are all about the journey, not just the reward! Quest writers are needed more than ever to help wary adventurers reach the end of the journey. :)
We appreciate all the hard work the writers put into creating quest guides!
I totally agree with you, i love it when quests are well-written and connected to the lore (i loved my class-change quests), BUT... what would be wrong with also gaining a real reward ?
You have to admit that quests rewards in this game are laughable, right ?
What about, i dont know, some exclusive non-tradable weapons that you could only acquire from completing a quest ? Instead of only gaining Adena that you will end up spending to some bot selling the weapon you want ?
Frankly, I'd rather have the quests being mostly their own reward.
In a multiplayer game this means multiplayer quests, too. The finishing of a long and involving quest with a good story with my team mates would be a big enough reward for me that, as long as I'm not actually losing money on the quest, I'd be content with a badge of honour for completing the quest, really.
... and "mutliplayer quests" means neither "hunting mobs in a group to maximise the amount of quest items dropped" nor "having mobs as opponents which can only be beaten by a group", nor "needing help from an escort to get to the quest destination", by the way. It means utilising concepts like "having actions to perform at two places at the same time", "trying to beat an opposing player or player team" and so on.
The clan quests are great examples (both the clan level rising quests and the one for the Clan Oath armour). The "battle" for the Rainbow Springs Chateau is great fun. But that's pretty much all there is ...
But when I read this all I could see was: blah blah blah....blah blah blah.
English comprehension doesn't seem to be your strong point. No one likes the second class change quests, that's a given, but most quests give you something to do while you're exping anyway. So even if it sucks it's better than getting nothing.
When I complete a long quest, I want to feel as if I rocked the world. I want cheering villagers and little kids handing me flowers. I want a medal ceremony with a wookie. :p
Then what ever you do do NOT do the Dwarven Kinship quest from Collette in DEV. The only reward you get is the equivelant adena that the quest cost you if you ported back and forth.
Then what ever you do do NOT do the Dwarven Kinship quest from Collette in DEV. The only reward you get is the equivelant adena that the quest cost you if you ported back and forth.
this is a great quest reward.
You get 22000a for nothing.
Every one walks sooner or later to Gludio and Gludin. Just wait until you have to do the 1. class quest. And walk or use the escape scroll or /unstuck.
Actually a really cool feature would be something that kept tabs of the quests you completed, like a long quest list in your adventurers guide that checkmarked when you had done a quest and a number for repeatable quests according to how many times you've done it.
What maline lists seems to be the fornat of most quests in L2 and most other MMOs for that matter. Longer, more involved quests simply consist of combinations of these elements.
The question remains how to make quests more interesting for the average player, as most games seem to have failed in this aspect. In many cases for most people the "fun" factor of a quest will be directly proportional to the reward they get, a cool story in the background being simply icing on the cake.
A few things are clear when designing a quest, that some times are not observed in L2. A clear example is the fact no quest should have a cost that outweights the reward.
Quests should no be something we look forwards to instead of dreading, for that you will need first and foremost a really cool reward and also an interesting story that will keep you interested while completing it.
Non reapeatable quests should have much higher rewards than those we can repeat, particularly high level ones!
Some of the quests we see in L2 are a step in the right direction, the problem is these are few and far in between.
Example: When I first started L2 I didnt have a clue how to make money, some quests were extremely helpful such as the spore quest and my personal favorite of that time the red sunset sword quest, I wish there were more weapon quests like these, it would go a long way to help new players earn some much needed cash.
A great example of an awesome quest entirely ruined by the messed up market is Fates Whisper. Back in C2 this was the only way (besides defeating antharas) someone could get their hands on an A grade weapon, now that is a reward.
Currently this quest is at a stage where the cost of doing it is greater than buying the resulting item in the open market for most cases.
Coin of magic has always been a great quest, sadly it stops being good about level 60 when most mobs that give coins become blue. Kalils isnt a worthy successor since its limited to one small area unlike coin of magic.
I do think with some tweaks the quests could be a lot more interesting, but the designers have really messed up some quests. Example: Legacy of insolence.
This quest could be interesting, but it has many flaws, for starters like all quests of its kind sufferes from the "rare" part issue. This is a common theme for NC soft, some quest tokens drop like candy and arent worth the inv space they take, some are so rare people will pay several million for it.
That does *not* work.
Here is an example of how I would re design legacy of insolence.
Each mob of every ToI floor has a chance to drop a blueprint, the blueprint droped by the mob will always be the blueprint for the floor that mob is in.
Reward for the quest: entirely random (equal chance for every part) to get an A grade armour recipe.
Aditionally, players can complete a follow up quest to defeat cherub galaxia, every member of a raid team that defeats the boss will get a 13F blueprint. Turning the 13f blueprint along with the original 12 allows you to chose wich armour set the random recipe belongs to.
ToI part 3: Players belonging to a raid team that defeats baium and have this quest will get the final ToI blueprint, turning it in along with the original 12 blueprints allow the player to chose which recipe they get as reward.
Similar re works could be done to most quest to be more interesting and rewarding and would not be too hard at all.
Actually a really cool feature would be something that kept tabs of the quests you completed, like a long quest list in your adventurers guide that checkmarked when you had done a quest and a number for repeatable quests according to how many times you've done it.
Some attempt of this existed as far back as C1, the hunter village quest where you will get 1 laurel pin in addition to the reward each time you completed it.
I have no clue what the purpouse of the extra pins were, some said the more you had the higher the chance to get a better list (more rewarding) of mobs to kill, I didnt found it to make a great difference :/
It would be a good idea to implement a function to increase rewards if you complete the quest multiple times though.
A completed quest journal is also a good idea, I also wis they would separate the journal from that tiny box its in at the character stats screen and gave them a better interface to read easier.
Also quest items should NOT count towards the max items you can carry as they do now ><
Well, the other issue I have with the quests, besides some stilly semantics, is excess running.
So, this morning I decided to further my progress in "An Arrogant Search" (Quest that helps you gain audience with Baium).
So, I went to the Arks killed the guardian monsters and went back to Aden to complete it. She of course yells at me:
"You moron, you haven't found the arks yet".
HUH! :eek:
So I look up the quest on Stratics. Apparently, it's not enough to click on the ark once and defeat the monster, I need to do it again. So, I went back to all the arks and reclicked on every one of them.
Apparently I had to run back to one of the people in the quest, Martienne. Don't know why. Just had to do it.
What I would like is this:
Give me the quest. I would prefer to know what I will get once it is over but if people are against that fine.
If I have to go to several places for the quest I want to see incremental xp rewards for that leg of the quest.
I don't want to be give part of a quest and then told to speak with someone else for a little bit of info.
I have to admit, I'm tired of this 80% rule where if you have a little over 80% in your inventory you can't furth along in the quest. Having an extra slot for the quest item should be enough. I missed the first Cabrio Raid boss because of this.
I would LOVE to have some "flare" for some of these quests.
Take the arrogant search quest. Was very much a let down to just walk up to these "treasure chest" looking boxes (which are actually labeled "arks") that are supposed to be specially hidden so that people don't find them. Except, they are just placed in remote places out in the wilderness.
I want each ark to be in it's own dungeon. I want it to be difficult to fight my way through this dungeon. Once the final boss is destroyed (oh yeah, I could practically "one shot" the first two ark guardians. The last one was harder, and I was actually enjoying myself when suddently it just vanishes around half hit points. I want them to be a challenge at least) The you can go up to the Ark (which is not a reused treasure chest mesh and have some sort of glowing little light show as the lid is opened.
I want to be able to go back to only one quest giver. Not several.
I would like a reward that is decent. Say, the same amount of xp it would take me to grind however many mobs in the space of time it took me to do the quest.
I would like the text to be redone. The quest givers are saying things like "hey guys". That is very contemporary layperson speak.
Aragorn never said "hey guys... let's get moving."
For the Arrogant search quest I tried to go back to my quest log to see what was missing but there was no information whatsover except that I had "chosen to work alone".
So, as someone else pointed out, a better quest log would be nice. In some quest you do see that they lay out the milestones that you have completed. But it should not just be the larger nodes of the quest but each important moment of the quest.
The challenge of that quest, IMO is giants cave and the TOI part that takes forever to bloody the cloth.
Well, I soloed the giants cave part but I do remember enjoying that.
I just helped a clan member do the bloody fabrics part and I think that did take a bit. But that part is just grinding. Nothing special there.
Going to find these lost arks and coming across their specific guardians: That "could" have been cool. Maybe because it would have been a little different.
Oh, and after I found the Arks, sending me to the store to get one healing potion and five poison antidotes? Priceless.
Seriously, I want to meet the person who came up with that part. I would rather have the quest giver tell me to come back "tomorrow' (and I don't really mind coming back in several hours or whatever some timer indicates - that at least would seem a bit more real and plausible. Though much of the game's quest systems would have to work in that way in order to make it consistent).
and that makes me wonder how much xp that quest gave him in the Archaic Lab.
I went and did this quest today. You only get the 10K exp at the start, plus whatever you get from killing the golems while inside. Plus an Earring of Binding (not just any earring, a gift for Yumi from Toma ;)), which isn't so bad in my opinion. It was a bit annoying to solo even with my 72 EE though.
I think one problem is the designation of the quests, solo for me (a healer :p) just means you need last hit to get the item. Being a solo quest doesn't at all mean that it should be able to be soloed (I can't solo most quests anyway). I guess the fact that you never actually have to kill a mob for this quest, means the devs decided it may as well be a "solo" quest.
I think even the writers of the quest thought you should be in a group while doing it. You'll notice that Yumi quite often says adventurers, rather than adventurer. I'm sure it would have been quite possible in a group of 9 level 52+ people, and you get 9 rewards that way too.
There was a little too much running back and forwards in this quest, but that's about it. The background story was actually good in this case (I like most quest backgrounds actually), except for the name Dr. Chaos..
I would say quests in general need better rewards. Although I like doing most 1 time quests, just because the story for those is usually better than the repeatable ones. But I hardly do them because the reward is so great. I'm not really a fan of reading that white text though, I wish they were presented in a little better manner.
IDK, maybe it's just me. But I seem to have a problem with a B-Grade+ quest that gives a mid C-grade reward! Granted I can probably sell the earing and buy a nice chunck of shots, but still.........