Post-event Comments: Shrouded Sails
With Shrouded Sails behind us, this thread is to discuss the pros and cons of the event as well as to make requests for the next (or future) event(s). In your initial post please list how much you played the event, where you played the event, and what modes you played. Then give your thoughts on that worked, and what could be improved. I'll start.
I played on:
Origin for roughly 5 hours doing Void Pool at event start.
Lake Austin for roughly 50-60 hours doing plunderbeacons, treasure maps, SOS fishing, and the Void Pool.
Siege Perilous for 50-60 hours doing Corgul, plunderbeacons, treasure maps, and SOS fishing.
Atlantic for roughly 6 hours doing Void Pool at event end.
What I liked
-- Multiple ways to participate. This event was my favorite because it offered SEVERAL ways to collect hats. These included single player modes (SOS fishing, treasure hunts, Plunderbeacons) to small group (Corgul) to large group (Void Pool). This was a big win.
-- A new triton skin. Folks have asked for this a long time. While I wish it had been cheaper to get, and it had a color further from the original, it was still great to get something that had been requested for so long. I ended up getting 2 on LA, 2 on Siege, and 1 on ATL. I love the way he wiggles 
-- Spellbook and talisman rewards keyed towards the event. Both seemed reasonably costed, and it has become fun to try and collect the uniquely named and colored spellbooks from each event. And these are always useful.
What I didn't like
-- There was no deco reward options. A friend of mine hardly bothered with the event because the unique deco pieces are their big draw. These are easy to add, involve no balancing considerations like equipment, and often provide small point total goals to get multiples of the item. Housing pays the bills here folks, give us things for housing!
-- Hat drop rates seemed heavily imbalanced. I do A LOT of t-maps. I solo cache and hoards without issue. But my fisher could get 4-6 times MORE hats in the time it takes to do a hoard map. For the next event I would like to see the time sink / difficulty of point drops be more equal.
-- No new pets / taming options. The triton skin was the closest thing to something like this, but I would love to see more things like the Wildfire Ostard. Re-skin a dread mare! Give us a silver steed!
Overall
I enjoyed the event. I actually re-subbed a second account for one month to participate in the fishing aspect. The event felt like only Kyronix worked on it. No new art, no book pages, no notable story events. For the next event please give us new arts, new hues, new pets!
My personal grade for the event: B+
Comments
99 percent of hats came from just afking void pool. thats not fun gameplay at all.
a slight anti-bot fix would be to change the looting rights / drop formulas.
think Blackthorn's dungeon with the minax drops.
When it first came out, each mob had like 1-3 artifacts on it. so if 10 people attacked the same mob, only 1-3 out of that 10 would get drops.
When it was changed to if you got looting rights you were guaranteed a drop, it increased the drop rate to the number of characters attacking. so from 1-3, always, could be 10 drops, 20 drop, 30 drops per mob. this change to drop distribution encourages attacking with multiple accounts / bots.
Ideally, if the drop system were reverted to how it was originally, it would drastically decrease the effectiveness of botting. the pro botters easily run 10-20 accounts at a time. theres little point to compete with that on 1 character. yes, you could play "for fun" killing the same mob over and over for 3 months isnt exactly fun.
items were also much too powerful considering how easy they were to obtain. this causes power creep and de-values regular, day to day content.
id grade it a D.
With them lasting for 3 months and are complete mindless grind-fests make it extremely exhausting and seem like a huge repetitive distraction for actual content. Sad when they start because you know for the next 3-6 months there will for sure be nothing really new content-wise.
For the Shrouded Sales, The 'alternative methods' of getting hats was a great idea and change, especially with the love for the black market, but the void pool I think we can all agree was awful. This extends beyond this though, I would like to see something different than your typical dungeon ToT. Although, I would say it being outdoors last time made it 2% more tolerable.
Years ago, as most of you remember, we would typically have a live story every year, be it Magincia/rubble, Virtue Bane, Exodus, Town Invasions, Titans, ie very unique global that led to permanent content. It was really cool because some EMs would also play along and do RP/events in the story that paralleled these global ones. Perhaps if they wrap up NL by the fall, we could get a new story line for the winter. This could also give players more time to do the typical Halloween/Holiday content.
Please, something different. The ""ToTs"" were exciting at first but they're played out and once a year is plenty.
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Starting off, the different ways to earn points was great and a very welcome addition to this event cycle. I did everything: the Void Pool, treasure hunting, SOS fishing, Beacons, Pirate ships, Corgul, Scalis, and Charybdis. I did well over 1000 points across the three shards and did not feel stressed to grind to get what I wanted during the allotted time. A welcome pace for someone who has work and family commitments.
By far my favorite was treasure hunting as, despite some of its issues after the revamp, it remains one of my favorite activities in the game across a ton of different builds. I have treasure hunters that are every flavor of spell caster and tamer. The team delivered here, as we've asked them many times in previous events to include treasure hunters and/or dungeon thieves into the events. I hope this event was proof positive that it works and will work again. I lump SOS fishing in here as well, cause the event gave me reason to dust off the fishers and work through my MiB hoard. I'm not sure how common knowledge it was but with the right condensed area of SOS locations a fisher could absolutely outpace a sampire in the Void Pool in the same amount of time, so thank you for that.
I think including the Void Pool was really brilliant. Not every shard has Atlantic crowds or bot problems, but watching my shards come together and try and beat records was fun. Folks were still meeting up to play the Void Pool into the last weeks of this event, that's kind of amazing. Again, this event was really different in execution than our previous dungeon-based treasures events; I liked the change.
Putting named hats on the dread pirates was great. I spent most of my time on the event treasure hunting, fighting beacons, and dread pirate hunting. A lot of us had a great time finding the name combinations and trading out what we wanted with others. Up the thread people were commenting on the lack of deco items as rewards, and that is unfortunate, but the named hats did fill a similar role.
Not sure where the complaints are really coming from about the rewards. Everyone who fights can use the Balron pieces and the Insignia at some point. Everyone who casts can use the Bulwark and the Libram. And anyone who dislikes the green slug look on the Triton has another option. Even the Baubles addresses player-complaints about the lack of earring slot options for the gargoyles.
My one major complaint is the lack of story scrolls. The game's global story has stagnated since Black Gate, and it's not even clear how the end of that story has changed anything as characters who died in that story are still present in the game as integral parts of some quests. For the next event I'd love to see something akin to the size and structure of the Yukio Quest that is more lore-focused on the state of the realm overall.
When the city invasions came back in 2020 during the Pandemic it became clear really fast that if you didn't deal major damage to those generals before the hoard of people arrived, you were not getting a spell book reward. Some people, through skill or exploit, absolutely dominated that event. We should remember that these treasures style events were what we begged for from the team then: a more equitable way to receive rewards during big events. I still think they are a success.
Lack of deco items was bad.
Players were trading for balron armor a few days ago.
I hope all that complain, got extra sets. Because they will trade well for a long time.