2.1 On PTS - Fae Yule Test Today! 11/30 Starting @ 3PM Pacific

[Caitie]

Oh, and this isn't really Fae Yule related other than that a player on PTS called it out as a suggestion before I logged off from Friday's organized play test:



It was a good idea, so I made it happen before I left the office Friday night! Should be in 2.1.

I do occasionally have good ideas. You could maybe even extend it to end of adventure bosses because certain bosses seem impossible to down without Fury of the Ascended in certain specs or soloing.

Anyway, this latest build seems to suffer from a teleport bug. I mentored down to 15 and joined the FM IA and it made a raid group (with just me) and I didn't get the teleport. This also did happen when I selected the silverwood IA to. When you enter the zone you do get asked if you want to teleport there.

Another rift spawn bug: where the Fae Yule village/vendors are there's a level 18 rift spawn there.

PS what's a river vampire, do they dehydrate you?

[Caitie]

I spent an hour or three doing IAs and came across some issues/bugs.


End bosses had 3k health and that seemed fine but their damage was too much. Yulelogon did Wild Explosive growth, an aoe attack, that did 466 damage when my health is 950. I used my faerie Seer to attack him and he never chased after it but stayed put.Bosses with Aoe attacks seem to do them to players that are around 25 m from them even while not in combat.The damage of other bosses might be too big but I did manage to kill them rather easily without dying. In IAs currently on live I find it near impossible to kill some bosses unless I use Fury of the Acended but on these bosses it failed to work and the damage taken was the same with it on.

There were a few issues with the Winter's Chill quests: in Storm legion and Rimetaloned Gustriders they did too little damage even with their special attacks. Both Rimetaloned Gustriders and Frosted Windlasher spawns were too quick when they died sometimes within seconds of death.


Winter wassail: there seems to be too many winterglory spawns and too few Nutleaf. Also when it's hard to find herbs it's made worse when the npc demands a herb and decriments what you have collected. Not fun when soloing.

Rudy's Roundup while cute suffers from a low respawn rate. One attempt the corgis were spread far away and on another only a few spawned to strt with. Nine seems to high for a simgle player considering they have to travel far 9 times and the (five minute) buff fell off while doing this too. A reduction or a speed buff would be nice.


In Little helpers, the buff still says Rudy's Way in the tooltip also the buff would only last what seemed a random number of charges ranging from 1-6.


Dance for Snow would be much better, in my opinion, if we had an NPC to dance beside rather just where we stand once accepting the quest.


I don't know how the snow patches affect anyone but I dip from 30fps to around 20fps when I do that quest on my own with 8 patches.

I'd agree with the above poster that a few unique snowflakes is rather low considering that items cost in the hundreds to buy. Don't be a Fae Yule scrooge.


Oh, can we get an achivment for the IAs or maybe just a couple since from what I see they all seem to be PvP achievents atm.

I didn't come across an invasion event while doing the IAs for a few hours. Have they been disabled by mistake or was I very unlucky?

[Salvatrix]

I'll try to get to some of these before sleep (1am here).

Whenever there's an IA for fighting mobs ... a mob will spawn and charge you if you're remotely near the village.

That is correct. Since they are supposed to be spawning in and "attacking", I placed a mostly "static" mobs but also a few "aggressor" mobs. The aggressors pick a random person in the IA raid to aggro on. The number of aggressor spawns scales with the raid size. Being the only player, you are just the only recipient to catch the aggro.

The corgi one is beyond adorable and I wish it'd come up more, I'm sure they're random but I've only encountered it once!

Yep, random. It is one of 3 quests that can pop up for that round.

I completely understand the idea behind the merchant availability, not sure how that'll work out on live servers though if people are blowing through these IAs. Will he remain at the end of the chain and maybe the only reason I'm seeing him poof is because it's looping FY chains currently?

Your last question is exactly right. The built up village will remain after the the IA there is done. It resets back down to its unbuilt state in 1 hour or if a new arc begins at the village. Since I disabled all the other zone adventures to allow testing to focus on the FY ones, you are seeing it constantly reset immediately.

Only seem to be getting 3-4 snowflakes per IA quest (level based?)... maybe give more for the fighting ones? They seem to take more effort.

Not level based. Not set in stone either, and am already considering bumping it up from Friday's feedback as well.

When you pick up the gifts for "Little Helpers" the tooltip for the buff (called Rudy's Way) incorrectly states "Take the form of an adorable Fae Yule Corgi." Also seems to only have 4 uses each, maybe show uses remaining instead of a time limit of 15 minutes?

Yeah, I need to update the text - copy and paste error. :P It isn't a set number of charges - it has an increasing chance to run out each time it is used. The net result is 1-6 "charges"

Xharlion was hitting me with Chain Lightning before engaging (and before he was in aggro range, of course). Had to run a fair distance away to avoid getting hit by it.

Hmmm... I will take a look. I think he might have a damage aura on him as well.

Hopping over to Silverwood for a bit to try it out there a bit. I'm sure it's not intended for Defiants to go over there for it, but first thing I noticed is that I was immediately flagged for PvP when I teleported to the Fae Yule Village.
...
I think the reason it's flagging me as PvP is because it tells me I'm entering Sanctum every time I walk up to the village.

Yeah, found out that today just before I ran into you on the PTS. The next PTS build should have that partly fixed, and the build after that completely fixed.

Same thing that happened in Freemarch happened in Silverwood for the combat mobs. One specific mob is immediately locking and charging if you're within range. Looks like it spawns around 7088 868 3123.
...
I figured I had gotten all of the quests in the rotation with all my FM runs and just got "O Yule Tree" in Silverwood--is that zone specific or was I just unlucky in Freemarch?

The yule villages in each zone should be roughly the same in functionality, barring bugs I may introduce from not updating all the data for each new location.

I was at the village when the IA quest changed and it asked if I wanted to teleport to my adventure. edit: This happened for *every* IA quest!

Eek. I know what is causing that - I shall need to look at the best way to address it. >.<

[Medenor]

I think it would be interesting to experience the winter atmosphere of the capitals most strongly through a snowy ground or snow on the sets of capitals.

Are you commenting on it or suggesting it? If the latter, it's already visibly snowing in Sanctum (or Meridian) as well as having patches of snow on the ground. Perhaps you need to turn up some of your video settings if they are too low to display it .

I play with high video settings, but i've made a mistake in my post :

through a snowy ground on the sets of capitals.

I see snow falling from the sky but I don't see patches of snow on the ground :/ bug ?

[Cyliena]

I play with high video settings, but i've made a mistake in my post :



I see snow falling from the sky but I don't see patches of snow on the ground :/ bug ?

I don't see any on the ground either, cranked up to Ultra video setting. I seem to recall snowy patches in the cities last year. Maybe it only happens occasionally?

[Cyliena]

That is correct. Since they are supposed to be spawning in and "attacking", I placed a mostly "static" mobs but also a few "aggressor" mobs. The aggressors pick a random person in the IA raid to aggro on. The number of aggressor spawns scales with the raid size. Being the only player, you are just the only recipient to catch the aggro.

My only problem with this is that you get "locked" into combat even when you're not within their range to charge at you, so you can't regen (using drinks) or can't safely go AFK briefly unless you're a really good distance away. It wasn't a big deal for me in Freemarch but it may be for higher level zones. I completely understand the concept but the combat lock seems to be not exactly the best path for achieving the effect. However I could be wrong--if lots of people are running these IAs on live shards then this may be a moot point. (you can also tell me I'm worrying over a non-issue... my feelings won't be hurt! ;) )

There only seems to be one aggressor spawn point out of the entire bunch too, does that seem right?

[Salvatrix]

There only seems to be one aggressor spawn point out of the entire bunch too, does that seem right?

Yes, that is right for when the raid size is 1-2 players. More will spawn as the raid size gets bigger.

[Cyliena]

Yes, that is right for when the raid size is 1-2 players. More will spawn as the raid size gets bigger.

Ah, okay, that makes sense. I honestly just ended up standing at one spot and waited for them to come to me. Figured might as well if they were going to do that anyway! ;)

[Cyliena]

Going through my screenshots from yesterday now and realized I never gave feedback on the sledding quests.

Sled Slalom - Absolutely love this one! I did learn not to toss my own jumps in while flying down the slope as that tended to make me go off-course! ;) Only suggestion would be to have some sort of "path" back to the Merry after going off the ramp... maybe a candy cane trail or something? Mostly just to make sure that lower levels don't venture too far from the correct route (though I guess they'd figure it out quickly if they do).

The sled that we grab (Defiant or Guardian) is red, yet the ones on the rack are blue. Not really a big deal just sticks out a bit.

Snowmen Snowpocalypse - I'm a bit torn on this one. Love the quest name, very fitting. My problem was that I found I had to hit the snowmen precisely to get the update, which caused me to backtrack a lot. I'm sure it's not intended to get all 25 in one run but you know people will be trying to since it's repeatable. I did try two runs where I did not purposefully go out of my way to hit the snowmen and I only hit 2 on the first run and 1 on the second run. My suggestions:
- Make this quest daily and give a snowflake and/or jingle bell reward instead of simply XP. Then people will be enticed to repeat the sledding one and not as pressed to hit every snowman on the slope every single run.
- If it stays repeatable: reduce the number of snowmen you need to hit to maybe 10. It seemed 25 was close to, if not exactly, the number on the slope.
- Increase the radius of "hitting" the snowmen slightly. It doesn't need to be huge, but it seemed there were several times I would pass a snowman right next to it, instead of through it, and have to turn around and go back.
- If you're airborne when you go through a snowman you don't destroy it.
- The sound effect for hitting the snowmen is perfect, but would love to see a particle effect of snowman parts and snow flying everywhere after hitting one. ;)

Is Mr. Gold a nod to the character on "Once Upon a Time"? Not seeing the FY warfront on PTS either, hmmm.


Anyone know if Phase 2 will be turned on soon? Or when the event is going to live?

[Cyliena]

A level 17 death rift opened up on top of the yule village in Freemarch this evening. (6331 861 5033) It completely covers the snow piles for the Spread the Joy quest. Going to unmentor and take it out.

[Riane]

I play with high video settings, but i've made a mistake in my post :



I see snow falling from the sky but I don't see patches of snow on the ground :/ bug ?

Attachment 8557Attachment 8558

I'm not a Defiant so I can't speak for anything in Meridian but in Sanctum, there were patches of snow on the ground in various locations (pvp tents/test dummies, in front of sanctum, near the snowball pit and in the back of sanctum.)

It wasn't infrequent either as it was constantly all over Sanctum.

Random screenshots: http://i.imgur.com/xorr0.jpg http://i.imgur.com/r9vhq.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Jlt9A.jpg

[Cyliena]

I'm not a Defiant so I can't speak for anything in Meridian but in Sanctum, there were patches of snow on the ground in various locations (pvp tents/test dummies, in front of sanctum, near the snowball pit and in the back of sanctum.)

It wasn't infrequent either as it was constantly all over Sanctum.

Random screenshots: http://i.imgur.com/xorr0.jpg http://i.imgur.com/r9vhq.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Jlt9A.jpg

I only saw it in Meridian around Grandfather Frost, the snowball arena and the IPP sledding portal. I had thought there were occasional piles elsewhere last year in the city but could be misremembering.

edit: I'm wrong, there's none by the snowman arena. Will link pics in a few.

http://i46.tinypic.com/28uqx3s.jpg
http://i49.tinypic.com/2exv8dx.jpg
http://i47.tinypic.com/23r1eko.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/5jtgsy.jpg

I guess it's a decent amount of coverage, but I figured there'd be more by the snowman arena.

[Cyliena]

I'm not getting a teleport option at all now for either the Freemarch or Silverwood IAs.


The "Oval Mound of Snow" is blindingly white. The "Pile of Snow" is somewhat better at least, one side of it is a nice subdued white. The oval mound simply looks like I put a huge white hole on my dimension ground. Can this be toned down some to look more like the pile of snow please? (edit: Went back later and the oval mound was not blindingly white.. I think it depends on the time of day because when I went back it was dawn, so sun wasn't shining directly on it. Any way to regulate how white it becomes in sunlight?)

Wow, the default size of the pine tree is HUGE! :O It's so tall that it actually breaks the zone ceiling of the Warden's Point dimension. I know we can size things down but.. wow.

I'd try out more of the dimension items but I don't have enough snowflakes to buy them all.. might grab a few more in a bit here though, still have about 120 to spend.

Okay bought a few more:
Candle and gift boxes are perfect. I did notice that items don't sit on top of the Oval Mound of Snow (tried putting a gift box on it, went "in" it and disappeared instead) but they do sit on top of the Pile of Snow.

Strings of lights look fine as well, nice that we can walk through them.


Now I'm honestly too low on snowflakes for now.. next I'll have to save up for a Yule tree! I really can't fathom anyone wanting to buy the statue with its price.. I think 500 would be more reasonable. If anyone wants to peek I think my dimension should be public on PTS (not that it's anything fantastic but aside from the strings of lights I left everything at its default size).


edit: Oh if anyone is curious about the default pine tree size, took a couple of screenshots since it made me giggle:
http://i46.tinypic.com/oh5vtv.jpg
http://i46.tinypic.com/ma9v0x.jpg

[Cyliena]

Three days worth of dailies now on my Guardian and Defiant, and I've gotten the same daily (Light the Way & Gifts of the Yulemother) every time. Weren't there other dailies during Phase 1 from a second npc last year?

Just spotted an earth rift open in the FY IA area of Silverwood (6972 883 3076), but it is appropriate level range for the IAs at least. Not sure how it would affect interaction IA quests though since that death rift in Freemarch did mess them up.


Mr. Gold's tent in Sanctum at (7420 863 3104) overlaps with a snowman from the arena. Looks a bit awkward. The food/beverage vendor hut does the same around (7411 863 3143).


Checking out Talleen's tavern and the only item in it I don't recognize from the two event dimension vendors is the stack of presents... anyone know where that came from? Did I just overlook it? Love the stalagmite jumping Talleen has setup in that tavern too.. someone give him a high five for me. ;) About halfway up it right now! (edit: almost made it to the end.. that small stalagmite was my downfall)

[Riane]

Light The Way & Gifts of the Yulemother were two of the dailies that were available during phase 1 of Fae Yule last year. There was also Stormproofing the Wardstones and The Safest Way but I'm fairly positive all four were available to do every day.