Well, that changes the math a lot. Tig's info suggests
40 manhours a day would keep it stable
425 manhours would be required to defeat it tomorrow
and if it gets to 100% it would take about 1250 manhours to defeat it in a single day.
If we want to kill the escalation tomorrow, to get that 425 manhours all we need is to keep about 17 players killing them around the clock for the 23 hours of uptime. :-)
uhh yeah, that will happen... NOT.
Goblin Squad Member
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Also, every time we died during the escalation we lost 2 durability from all our gear pieces. This was reported to Ryan.
Not sure if this is related to the other bug where you dc and lose your character on the minimap if you change hexes when you die, because we changed hexes every time we died, lost the 2 dur, then had to relog. Very annoying.
Of course, *if* completing the quest is *supposed* to reduce the Mordant Spire escalation by the ~20% that completing the quest does in the Charred Goblin escalation, then we'd have been able to beat the escalation in a single evening. So a really important question is whether THAT mechanic is working properly.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, every time we died during the escalation we lost 2 durability from all our gear pieces. This was reported to Ryan.
Not sure if this is related to the other bug where you dc and lose your character on the minimap if you change hexes when you die, because we changed hexes every time we died, lost the 2 dur, then had to relog. Very annoying.
When you died and were transported to the Shrine one hex over, did you come back with 0 hp? And had to relog?
If so, take your gear off before you quit and relog - this will keep you from losing that second point of durability.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I took part in an impromptu clear of a Bandit raid escalation, group of 2 players that eventually grew to 6. Started around 21%, climbed to 24% while we got going. We whittled away at it, bit under 2 hrs I think, each group of mobs tended to take ~0.6% or so off. When we finally completed the Escapees quest, it dropped by ~18% leaving it at 0.6% and the next mob clear wiped it out completely. The escalation icon disappeared from the minimap, but event flags remained. The score was higher than 500 before completing the quest, then 0 - we don't know whether a boss spawned or not. It was fun. It was challenging for 2 characters of low level and intro gear. It was simple for group of 6 with wide spectrum abilities. If it was a mini escalation as I suspect, I'm not sure if they even have bosses....
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Goblin Squad Member
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Of course, *if* completing the quest is *supposed* to reduce the Mordant Spire escalation by the ~20% that completing the quest does in the Charred Goblin escalation, then we'd have been able to beat the escalation in a single evening. So a really important question is whether THAT mechanic is working properly.
I believe the Quest Completions reduce the Escalation Strength by an amount, not a percentage. I've seen Escalations where 10% was only 500 points, and others where 10% was 5,000 points.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The score was higher than 500 before completing the quest, then 0 - we don't know whether a boss spawned or not.
Were you in a Monster (Lion) or Monster Home (castle) hex? If you were fighting an Escalation in another hex type, it's expected that there would be no boss.
It's actually expected that there should be no Escalations in Monster Home hexes as well, but it's known that some Monster Home hexes currently are spawning Escalations. I believe this will be fixed as the devs find the time to wrangle the data.
If you reread this whole thread it becomes apparent that escalations were MEANT to be in, i.e. the Bob Settles dev posts regarding which escalations they allowed and how many hexes they limited the escalations to expand.
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At this time, are there any real downsides to NOT killing an escalation? Besides having to occasionally go around groups more often than normal with a regular monster population?
I have yet to see signifigantly better loot from finishing an escalation as opposed to farming/milking one.
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Goblin Squad Member
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At this time, are there any real downsides to NOT killing an escalation? Besides having to occasionally go around groups more often than normal with a regular monster population?
I have yet to see signifigantly better loot from finishing an escalation as opposed to farming/milking one.
My feeling right now is that the only bonus of Escalation over goblin and bandits is that they produce higher level monsters!
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Goblin Squad Member
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At this time, are there any real downsides to NOT killing an escalation?
The primary benefit to clearing an Escalation is keeping it from spreading.
Having learned the lesson in Alpha, we really don't want to let a Goblin Ghouls Escalation cover the entire southeast of the map again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thank you Bob for replies. We found out the timer was in synch with the server up time. Quest reset at 6:07 pm Pacific Time. We also learned that working on non quest camps helps in regards to getting your quest related camps to respawn. My theory is that there is a formula with variables that include how many quest objectives are in hex versus location to determine chance.
A couple of questions in regards to Mordant Spire
1. Would the max strength value for Mordant Spire escalation (100%) be around 72,000?
2. When we completed killing of Stormcallers percentage drop was aprox .9% So my math estimates that around a 500-750 (650) strength drop. Is that the value intended for dropping the strength?
3. Do escalations grow in strength by a certain percentage per hour of no activity or is it a baseline value? My estimate showed the mordant spire growing a little over .1% point per hour. My theory is that it is a base value
Other theories I want to try is determining strength decrease by mob\type.
For us we are also challenged by the terrain of the monster hex having multiple elevations and the passes being in inconvenient places to change to. Along with some locations needing a sprint jump to get out of. The other factor we noticed is on death our players were taking a 2 point durability hit on all equipped gear upon respawning in the northern hex.
Right now I think our problem is perception that difficulty of challenge we are encountering is not proportional with drop in strength percentage wise. I am wondering if strength value drops for killing mobs and completing quests is non scalar to maximum strength value. Certainly there are areas we as players can improve in gear, abilities, tactics and strategy to take down the escalation. Otherwise if we do not change anything and continue with what we did last night we will be dropping it down cumulatively by aprox. 1,000 strength with 15 players for 3 hours. Which means it will take over 3 weeks.
What I am learning is that strength value has to be observed by us players more than the actual percentage.
Looking forward to when Golgotha gets world first Mordant Spire EE escalation clear.
At this time, are there any real downsides to NOT killing an escalation? Besides having to occasionally go around groups more often than normal with a regular monster population?
I have yet to see signifigantly better loot from finishing an escalation as opposed to farming/milking one.
Ignoring or farming escalations is a perfectly valid choice if they're not causing many problems and if you don't mind them spreading a bit. It really just depends on what's important to you and your settlement.
Later, we plan to add more incentives for destroying escalations, but even then we'll want there to be strategic choices about when and how to best deal with them.
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We also learned that working on non quest camps helps in regards to getting your quest related camps to respawn. My theory is that there is a formula with variables that include how many quest objectives are in hex versus location to determine chance.
Basically, the events try to keep a certain number of each of their encounters spawned at all times. However, they need to find available (correct size, unused, and far enough away from any players) encounter sites to spawn in. For now, that tends to mean that players need to be regularly killing off a variety of other encounter sites to clear up spaces. In the future, we plan to add a system that will boot less important encounters in favor of event encounters, but will still do so far enough away from players not to be noticed.
1. Would the max strength value for Mordant Spire escalation (100%) be around 72,000?
Max strength is 70,000. Only the Ustalav Invaders have a higher max at 80,000. In general, higher strength (value, not percentage) escalations are better at displacing other escalations, and take longer to eliminate.
2. When we completed killing of Stormcallers percentage drop was aprox .9% So my math estimates that around a 500-750 (650) strength drop. Is that the value intended for dropping the strength?
To be exact, the value is currently 695. And if the event isn't completed in time, strength goes up by 150.
There is currently a bug where you're not getting the standard strength reduction for killing the individual Stormcallers, but the overall event value should be higher anyway. Hopefully will get that fixed soon, otherwise I'll have to manually increase the event values to temporarily account for those kills.
3. Do escalations grow in strength by a certain percentage per hour of no activity or is it a baseline value? My estimate showed the mordant spire growing a little over .1% point per hour. My theory is that it is a base value
Escalations grow in strength in a few different ways. Once an hour, source hexes grow by a fixed value (for Mordant Spire, that's 72).
Also on the hour, each hex (source or infected) will get reinforced by any neighboring allied hex that currently has a higher strength. Each such hex sends a percentage of its current strength (.1% for Mordant Spire). Neighboring enemy hexes will also attack and lower the strength by the same percentage.
Finally, each time an event times out, it may raise the strength of the escalation in that hex by a fixed value. That's 150 for the only current Mordant Spire event, but is set per event.
Other theories I want to try is determining strength decrease by mob\type.
Those values are set per mob type and per escalation, based on challenge rating and on how much I want an appropriately-leveled party to reduce the strength by each hour just for killing monsters. There are a lot of assumptions that go into those calculations, but so far they've held up pretty well. For Mordant Spire, you'll get as little as 6 points for each Soldier, and 18 points for each Sage.
Right now I think our problem is perception that difficulty of challenge we are encountering is not proportional with drop in strength percentage wise. I am wondering if strength value drops for killing mobs and completing quests is non scalar to maximum strength value. Certainly there are areas we as players can improve in gear, abilities, tactics and strategy to take down the escalation. Otherwise if we do not change anything and continue with what we did last night we will be dropping it down cumulatively by aprox. 1,000 strength with 15 players for 3 hours. Which means it will take over 3 weeks.
Yeah, the numbers get a little weird when comparing between escalations. The best way to think about it is that an appropriately-leveled party for Mordant Spire should find itself having a slightly more challenging experience than an appropriately-leveled party for Skull-Bashers has fighting the Skull-Bashers. Right now, tackling the Stormcallers feels incredibly challenging compared to dealing with a similar event in Broken Men, a much more appropriate escalation, so it feels like the strength value rewards should be significantly higher. However, in a couple weeks, dealing with the Stormcallers will be about as difficult as a Broken Men event is for you now, and the strength value rewards will feel similar. However, the personal loot rewards will be significantly better.
We think what happend is that the # reduction for completing the quest is the same as the mini escalations. But since the total stg is so much higher it was a drop in the bucket.
The mini-escalations are designed to be defeated pretty quickly, so they provide somewhat outsized strength drops for everything.
so working as intended then?
Assuming the strength drop percentage for the Stormcallers event was .9% rather than .3%, then yes, working as intended.
Of course, we can always get into whether my intentions were good, but that will be easier to judge in coming weeks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Of course, we can always get into whether my intentions were good...
Can't fight these Bad Intentions.
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All D.M.s have a secret desire to have their monstrous creations take over the world.
I said it before and I'll say it again...
I welcome our new Mordant Spire overlords. :-)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thank you Bob,
Bummer news in regards to the Storm Caller mobs death not resulting in strength drop currently. We may verify next time. The positive is knowing more on the mechanics in strengthening and reduction and that increase is not percentage based. From one of your earlier posts projecting it getting up to 50-60% had me worried. Bad News is if nothing is done it will be at around 60% in a week versus a couple of days if we did nothing.
I am sure you are looking forward to our emergent game play. I would have desired a slightly higher value on quest completion or possibly multiple quests available (which may be the case if the strength of escalation was higher). Prior to any numbers on what I would like to see having more appropriate gear (multiple keywords and being able to use) versus challenge needs to be seen.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is currently a bug where you're not getting the standard strength reduction for killing the individual Stormcallers, but the overall event value should be higher anyway. Hopefully will get that fixed soon, otherwise I'll have to manually increase the event values to temporarily account for those kills.
OK- so this tells me that we should have been getting significant ongoing strength reductions as we killed Stormcallers, which we were not getting, and that the quest completion reward is meant as the icing rather than the whole cake.
Can you share about how much strength we would have taken off by killing 80-ish stormcallers yesterday, if not for this bug? Or, put another way, about how many times should we have to successfully complete a batch of 50 stormcallers to take 25000 strength down far enough to spawn the boss?
Can you share about how much strength we would have taken off by killing 80-ish stormcallers yesterday, if not for this bug? Or, put another way, about how many times should we have to successfully complete a batch of 50 stormcallers to take 25000 strength down far enough to spawn the boss?
If not for the bug, you probably would have received another 500-600 points each time you completed the event, so you would have needed to complete the event roughly 20 times. I'll be adding more events soon, so there will be more variety here, but you'd still need to complete roughly 20 events to finish up.
The goal is to set things up so that a succession of parties operating over the course of hours or days is the most efficient way to take out an escalation. Send too many people, or too highly powered people, and the monsters aren't regenerating fast enough to fully take advantage of such a powerful attack. Send too few or underpowered characters and the natural growth of the escalation counterbalances the damage being done to it. One party operating for 2-3 hours should always be able to do significant damage to an escalation, but not necessarily be able to shut down anything but the weakest escalation.
The Mordant Spire is a long way from the River Kingdoms. Do the escalation stage descriptions explain what brings the Spire elves to our neck of the woods?
Yup. It's all about Nhur Athemon.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The score was higher than 500 before completing the quest, then 0 - we don't know whether a boss spawned or not.Were you in a Monster (Lion) or Monster Home (castle) hex? If you were fighting an Escalation in another hex type, it's expected that there would be no boss.
It's actually expected that there should be no Escalations in Monster Home hexes as well, but it's known that some Monster Home hexes currently are spawning Escalations. I believe this will be fixed as the devs find the time to wrangle the data.
Not a Monster hex. Just a regular hex, the one NE of Guardheim.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or a blog? Something to help make sense of the disparate information?@Bob,
Sine your following this thread closely, there is info on escalations it multiple threads here and on the Alpha forums. If you can consolidate the info into one place please? :)
@All,
An open bounty of 500 coal to any player, company or settlement that provides a clean, extensive and comprehensive detailed summary of PFO Escalations (what they are, how they work, known escalation types, mobs strengths, how to fight them, future feature requests and known bugs, and similar material); offer valid till Bob creates an equivalent BLOG someday. :)