Goblin Squad Member
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Theodum looked up from the map. He was still waiting for more information but everything Thod had supplied so far didn't look good. Three times now they had dispatched the leader of the Bonedancers in the last 6 weeks - but every time a new leader had stepped up.
And when it happened just yesterday it seemed the goblins had truly become restless and had started to overrun previously cleared areas.
The Bonedancers hadn't yet reached the Spire - but it was only a matter of time when the magics there would twist a goblin who might become a new leader - and if he would take over the Bonedancers then Emerald Lodge would be surrounded. They even had managed to form some Beachheads on Zombie Kitten Mountain - the most western part of the mountain now fully under there control.
At the moment the lands east of the Emerald Lodge was still free of Bonedancers - but to the west you could walk for a full hour and never leave Bonedancer territory.
They reached as far as South of Hammerforge.
Some magic seemed to keep them away from the former side of Ossian's Crossing and the surrounding lands. South of these lands it seemed they had lost control over their undead minions. A skeletal upraising now fought against the Bonedancers and seemed slowly to advance towards Canis Castrum.
Doomhammer seemed fully surrounded - but it seems to the Northwest of that settlement that again the Bonedancers had lost control over their undead minions and Ghouls roamed the lands and a different goblin clan called them their minions.
SOuthwest of Doomhammer was an area of scroched earth - no goblins anywhere in sight. It seemed the Razmirians fought a winning battle on that side. CLose to High Road the Ripping Chains fought a losing battle against the Bonedancers. They had been reduced to a single small area.
So what had he learned? Most settlements seemed to have capitulated against the Bonedancers. Some areas around Canis Castrum was only lightly populated - and the Emerald Lodge fought a losing battle. But even Golgotha had Bonedancers at their doorstep.
The only forces seemingly able to stop them where magic areas that kept them at bay or other groups strong enough to keep them out - like the Skeletal Uprising and the Razmirians.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I did earlier visit around 100 hexes trying to establish the outer reach of the Bonedancers - and I still haven't mapped them completely.
But it was a very valuable exercise as I learnt a few things
1) What stops an escalation from growing further
2) If you don't want to be overrun or want to actually have free hexes to place a PoI then you might want to start acting now
3) There are other old escalations lurking and gathering strengths - luckily they are still far enough away from Emerald Lodge
4) What is all the fuss about harvesting T2? I went through 6 hexes with 100% Razmirian escalations. Just go to -20/16 and surrounding areas. There are enough Razmirians to last every single settlement on this server. And I'm sure Doomhammer as closest settlement won't mind if you farm them.
5) Killing escalations in Monster Hexes is a bad strategy - at least killing the wrong escalations.
6) A new escalations - even if it is T2 - is unable to leave the starting hex if surrounded by a fully grown T1 escalation (like the Bonedancers). The Ustalavians haven't managed to get out North in over a week - and actually were driven back again when the Bonedancers had a new leader
7) You need a regular check of Monster hexes to keep a large escalation in check. Bonedancers right now can reinforce the current escalation from 10 different monster hexes.
Well - server back up again - time to carry on my scouting - filling in more gaps - and then find a strategy to keep the Bonedancers away from Emerald Lodge.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the big problem for me personally is that cleaning up some of the T1 stuff that got out of hand is just not that rewarding and really time consuming. If I can spend my 4-6 gaming hours a day farming Usties instead of Bonedancers...I'm gonna do the Usties right now, I get more bang for my buck. Unfortunately when the patch drops next week Lion Hexes are gonna be even more ideal targets due to the crafting item we need from the bosses for holdings. We're gonna be farming those hard before we even need to go clean out the normal hexes for our eventual holdings.
Personally I think escalations are too annoying to kill off right now for some of the daily maintenance stuff. But that could just be a side effect of us letting them go too long and not being able to handle the more difficult ones early on or having a lower population in some parts of the map that are heavily infested.
I guess the question is should it take 5-6 hours to wipe out the source hex for bonedancers or should it be faster with a concentrated effort? I'm of the mind that a Tier 1 home escalation at 100% shouldn't take more than an hour or two to kill off, making it an easy nightly task. But a Tier 2 should take longer but not regenerate as fast, and so on. It's also weird because while it's faster to kill a escalation with a few groups going hard, only 1 group can actually claim the rewards from each engagement and finally the boss. That seems kinda at odds with the idea of a team effort to wipe out hexes. It requires larger concentrated groups doing a careful rotation as they clean hexes. Not sure how I feel about that.
If they are worried about there being no source hexes for people to clear if they are 'too easy', how is that different from my group working on one for a day only for some other group to come clean it out before I can log back in again tomorrow? The effect is the same, I didn't finish the escalation and didn't reap the ultimate reward. Seems to encourage us to 'tend' the better escalations and keep them around to be farmed.
...Well that got ranty quick.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think a good way to clear areas that we need cleared is to offer a bounty per hex. In exchange for proof that an area has been cleared (ie, screenshot with map open when a group starts working on an escalation, screenshot when they reach 0), we can offer a set of fine weaponry to a band of six adventurers. I can provide staves and twine for a set of bows.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the most important point I found as settlement leader today was - you have to treat escalations in a strategic way. They are both a resource but also a problem.
A T2 escalation that everyone wants is not necessarily good news. In the wrong place - or getting too big and you are really having a problem.
Another issue is - unchecked escalations really cause an issue. The Bonedancer are in at least 50 hexes with 100%. Assuming 1 player manages 5% per hour this means 1000 hours of play to get them down.
Fun to organize all the escalations around ...
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Goblin Squad Member
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2 hexes next to EL Bonedancer free again. 2 more making progress. Lets see if they are cleared before the Bonedancers have a new leader.
The Aragonian "Sentinels of Echo Wood" are chipping in at driving the Bone Dancer hordes out of our region.
If any want to join in, especially PFU students, these escalations are fairly doable with low experienced characters.
Contact: Tvy Blodvaerd, Taklin Holderheck or Kentin Stone if you wish to join us.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The escalations north of Iron Gauntlet have been eradicated. The Bone Dancers and their Death Squads around Dead Man's was challenging for our group of three, but we managed to kill the 10 Leaders and 40 Death Squad members, before we moved on.
Traveling way to the north, our gatherers encountered Bone Dances and Death Squads completely cutting off the northern approach of the settlement of Freevale. Consider this a travel advisory.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I tried some numbers yesterday - a full blown escalation is 35000
Goblin or Skeleton = 8.25 points
Goblin dogs, shamans, wolfs, sergeants, bombers = 9.75 points
Undead Squat = 0 points !!!!
Numbers could be wrong by as much as 0.1. I tried to kill a single monster, then run away in a hex that seemed not to have any activity from someone else. I noticed rounding - that is why I display the numbers as .x5.
I needed to wait between 10-60 seconds for an update of the strength in which time I tried not to kill anything else. If needed I ran away (even from normal goblins) to ensure single kills.
Killing a complete Undead Squat yielded 0 reduction. No reduction after each single kill - no reduction when the whole group was defeated. I did not try to kill the whole escalation. This was suprising and pretty discouraging as you would think killing the toughest monsters would help you most.
I'm not sure if this is actually a bug related to orphaned bonedancer hexes and you might reduce numbers in an active escalation. But I'm not interested in the escalation to become active to check this one out.
So if you want to get to rank 10 in a weapon - go kill 2 Bonedancer escalations. That more or less gets you the 8000 kills needed. It also means the fastest way is actually killing lots of weak monsters (skeletons, goblins) as the tougher monsters are not worth the added risk.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A couple of clarifications
Bone Dancer maximum strength is 34,500
Several (If not all) monsters that are only related to quests will not provide a strength reduction. Completion of the quest will result in a strength reduction and prevent an infected hex connected to an escalation from gaining strength from failure of the quest.
Bob has stated this is not design intent, however it does not look like this has been addressed yet.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Undead Squat = 0 points !!!!
...
Killing a complete Undead Squat yielded 0 reduction. No reduction after each single kill - no reduction when the whole group was defeated. I did not try to kill the whole escalation. This was suprising and pretty discouraging as you would think killing the toughest monsters would help you most.
Like Vadaryl says, escalation kill quests typically cause a lump reduction when the quest is successfully completed. For example, there is an Ustulavian quest that requires killing 100 strike force members. When that quest is successfully completed, the escalation strength is reduced by 1150 points; effectively 11.5 points for each mob named as a strike force member.
BUT if the quest expires before you can kill all of the required targets, then you failed and get nothing. So the clearing team gets to weigh the lump reduction against the reduction for killing other mobs and their chances of completing the quest in time.
(There are also quests, like Usti drill sergeants, where the named drill sergeants give this lump sum when the quest is successfully finished. The drill sergeants are surrounded by other mobs who give normal escalation strength reduction when killed.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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3 new war chiefs killed by EL in the last 24 hours. The last one was killed by me - yes - Theodum - himself. If you don't believe it - there are members from our lodge who have seen it.
So now that they have seen Theodum himself fighting them they seem to slowly go back to their caves. I hear orphaned ones are leaving in droves.
