10:10AM, August 5, 2008
Gerald: I had a much more rewarding experience with the second Public Quest in the zone of Norsca. This quest was just a hop and a quick sprint away from a decent-sized quest hub with plenty of foot traffic passing through, making it very accessible and quite popular with the locals. This PQ takes place at the scene of a Chaos ambush on an Empire supply caravan. There are overturned carts providing cover for gunners, and a makeshift bunker where the bosses hang out. At any given point, I'd see anywhere from three to upwards of a dozen players working on the PQ together.
This one starts out like the last one, challenging you to spill the blood of about fifty Empire soldiers stationed near a besieged wagon train. The next step is to handle a dozen champion-level Duelists, a tougher breed of soldier that patrol in packs of three. You definitely need a tank here, or enough healers to handle DPS classes taking the damage. We were able to complete this stage and the next with only three -- me, a magus and a tank. It was tough, but manageable. The last stage is to kill off three leader types, a Witch Hunter, a Soldier and a caster type by the look of them. They went down after putting up a good fight, but they can be pulled individually, making it bearable.
I did pretty well on my last run winning first place on the leaderboards and earning myself a golden "massive loot bag." There was a purple axe in this bag, as well as some nifty blue boots to choose from, easily better loot than anything I've seen thus far in my career. Being the top contributor doesn't guarantee you the top loot, it only gives you a bonus to your random die roll. First place will get +400 to the roll, second place +150, and so on. It helps, but very often it's the third and fourth place contributors with lucky rolls that end up winning the best loot. The second and third place guys can still get something, though, like the green and white loot sacks that often have a nice green item in them, or some coin. Each loot sack has a variety of different spoils to choose from, and there's always something in there tailored for your class or for your crafting specialty.
10:15AM, August 5, 2008
Delsyn: You got a gold bag? What the Hell? I've killed those stupid Empire guys a half-dozen times now and never got anything better than a green bag! Not that green bags are anything to sneeze at, mind you. Even if you don't want the item you can also choose from good crafting materials or some coin, plus you get area influence so effort in a PQ is never wasted. Still, a gold bag? I've found exactly one purple item since I've been playing, a pair of shoulders... for a dwarf. Memo to the itemization crew -- Order items should not drop for Destruction players and vice-versa. Vendoring an unbound set of purple shoulders makes Baby Nurgle cry.
Even if you're uninterested in the bag, Public Quests are always worthwhile because of the Tome of Knowledge. There are so many Achievements to unlock in the Tome that are either dependent upon PQs or that PQs can help with -- particularly the kill deeds. If you want to unlock the Achievements for killing 1,000 of something, it's well worth your time to find a really low PQ with that involves that particular creature and just get to killing. Believe me, the lowbies will be glad to have you even if you do win a big chunk of the loot rolls. First, your presence makes the stages cycle faster because you can kill faster than they can -- more loot in less time. If there aren't that many players in the PQ area, you may make it possible to complete a PQ that they'd have trouble with (less competition in a loot roll).
I first noticed this effect with the Book of Deeds in The Lord of Rings Online. Having all of these things to work toward vastly increases the "ding" moments when you complete something and really helps to mask the grinding. It's OK to get attacked on the way to a quest because no fight is worthless. The Tome of Knowledge seems to well exceed LotRO's Book of Deeds, though. There's an Achievement for seemingly everything in this game. I got an achievement, some xp and a title just for adding five people to my "Friends" list.
