Monster Mash

DODH opened up on the Combine yesterday, and among other things, some
friends and I went and did some monster missions. I hadn't done any of
these before, but some time ago on another server I had done a mission
from a later expansion, one of the Dain missions, so I had an idea of
how it works, if poorly remembered.

Basically, you pull a mission, and everyone in the group picks from a
list of available characters for this mission. In game terms the idea
seems to be that you're participating in a dream about a historical
event. Anyway, there will be a few choices, usually everyone can't pick
the same character, but you have some lattitude about your party
composition.

The character that you choose will not have anything to do with you; not
your race, class, level, faction, gear, nothing. Only the abilities of
the player remain.

When you're ready, you enter an instance, where you can set up your new
character, making new hotbars with your new combat and non combat
abilities, opening up the AA window to first allocate your additional
points and then make hotkeys as needed for your abilities, which work
sort of like disciplines and spells, using mana or endurance.

After you're set (or in some cases, after a short time, maybe too short)
you then try to follow the mission script to accomplish your task goals.
At some point you'll be able to loot a chest which has wisdom shards
in it; each person needs to take one. This shard is how your main gets
experience for the mission, if you don't loot one, you get no exp at all
no matter how well or poorly you did in the mission. There is also
usually a reward item in the chest; random selection which may or may
not be usable by any of your mains, and which seems to always be no trade.

First mission I went on started in Nektulos. Go in thru the SW, and
you're in Fairy form. I was a ranger, not sure what if any other
classes were available as all were taken when I arrived at the last
minute. FLying thru an area full of will o wisps that can't be killed
but which eventually forget about you if you keep moving, looted a chest
then moved back to various positions where we killed some shrines and a
rat. I'm not really sure overall what the details were, just went where
I was told to and did what I was told to do. But IMO this mission was a
loser, no real fun to it, and I'm not eager to repeat it.

Then we went to Butcherblock and got a pirate mission. Here, I picked a
troll warrior, and had as companions a cleric, enchanter, and two
rogues. Got all our abilities set up, no time limit, until we engaged,
which was handy. Repeating a character, once you've done it, is a
simple matter of loading from a previous save, but setting one up
intitially can be time consuming, particularly when you aren't really
familiar with the process yet. The pirat mission is a great one, you're
in the old map of East Freeport, pre-POR. You're a pirate crew, raiding
the city. Just about every mob there is targetable and killable; you
slaughter as many as you can and loot off each a plundered treasure;
also found in some unlocked chests hidden randomly around the zone.
Must get at least 30 treasures in 45 minutes, and be back at the dock in
time for the ship to pick you up (which really means in time for the
chest to spawn). First time we did this we barely made 50 plunders.
Later, with some different players but with some of us having at least
one run under our belts, we made 70. 100 is the apparant limit, and it
seems doable perhaps, but you'd really need to know the layout in
advance so you're sure to hit every one in an efficient way, and still
check under every bed and behind every bar for chests. No repops, so
its a question of hide and seek as well as figuring an efficient route.

The other mission we tried was one in Lavastorm... tons of fun this one.
One player becomes Nafalgen, and the rest become fire giants. You're
given 3 minutes to set up in the lair, and then a raid force of 25
adventurers comes in and attacks. With the other events, death was just
a matter of a delay while you wait to respawn on the docks, or even a
faster way to travel, dying as a fairy ranger to ranger gate back to the
entrance instead of taking the tedious slow flight with wisps on your
tail. Here, the fire giants can die and respawn, but if the Dragon one
of your party is playing dies, you lose the mission. Get thru the 25
attackers, you get a short respite to med and heal back up, and there's
a second wave, with a different class mix. Four or perhaps 5 waves like
this, live thru them all and you get the chest to spawn with shard and
reward item.

Exp for these missions is good but not astounding, a substantial portion
of an AA point each. I guess if you find one where there's a shortcut
to a rapid win this would be a fast exp deal, but as it stands I'd been
getting better exp and cash grouped in Plane of Fire.

At the end of the day, these were fun toys, great comic relief, and a
way to play another toon while still benefitting the main. Since
everyone is assigned to a specific level, there's also the possibility
of grouping say my 70 Sk with my son's 36 mage and having both benefit.
I love how much more unique and exciting these are compared to
LDoN's... but I think LDoN's actually have more replayability to them.
Didn't see anything resembling random spawn names, just one random item
reward per mission, to be rolled for by up to 6 people IF its even
usable by any of them, or for that matter an upgrade to them.

If they had taken some pages from the LDoN book, with point rewards and
with random augments dropping and random spawn names, I'd be much more
interested but it seems to me these missions won't survive much repeated
visiting

Berg, 55 troll warrior pirate, Combine
Berg, 49 fire giant cleric, Combine
Berg, 15 fairy ranger, Combine