I haven't quite reached level 60 (43) and when my friend and I get done leveling for the night, I like to spend a little time on the forums and see if there's any information which might be beneficial.

Lately, I see a lot of complains about end game. Either it's about the dungeon queue, which I can't say anything about, personally, or it's about the level 60 instances.

From my understanding, the level 60 instances are too hard to do if you don't have the gear from the level 60 instances.

My question is..... how did the first level 60's on the server's get the gear from the instances if the instances are too hard to do without the gear from the instance :(?

Simple, they were much more organized and knew what to do in the instances via looking on youtube. You will not have a problem if you have the following:

1.) Tank can hold aggro
2.) Slayers, Warriors, etc know when to stun bosses
3.) Everyone has read up on the fight and know what to expect
4.) Everyone is sober and not drunk
5.) Everyone brings the correct consumables and crux/conarch/pentant with them during the run.

Trial and error, sure you may wipe once or twice (or 30 on the Balder Temple's Final boss), but with a little effort you will go a long way. Enjoy running the instances.

I'm well aware that it's a learn to play the game properly sort of issue, I just don't understand all the logical fallacies about not being able to do an instance without gear that drops from the instance.

I'm sure more questions could spawn about how they knew which crystals are the right ones, unless there's some detailed video guide detailing this information, but this was mostly rhetorical anyway.

Assuming a player and his friends start during head start, go through open beta, and then down Fane of Kaprima Hard Mode on the 11th of May, it seems to me like there might be a slight exaggeration of the difficulty of the end game content.

Thanks for the positive response, Hom :D.

You can do Fane of Kaprima in the level 59 quest gear you get. Farm FoK until you have a full set of 60 gear, enchant that gear, then start on Baldur's. Get a nice 60 weapon from Balduer's, enchant it, and move on to FoK hard mode.

Thanks for the response HiFi.

Did you experience a lot of difficulty moving from regular instances to Fane of Kaprima when you hit 60 or did you find a natural progression curve (despite the obvious repetition needed for getting your items/etc) that led you to FoK hard mode?

Difference in hardmode is like night and day. You won't be beating fane HM with a pugged team if u even manage to queue for at least another month. You need a full dps set with +8 or better just to down the first boss. Just one or two mistakes and you won't finish in time since the pillars don't respawn you have to down it within the four you have. The crab doesn't call spikes and you need to hide behind it to avoid them. It's so easy to get one shotted by the boss while hiding from the spikes if your a clothie.

I'm sure that gives you a bit of an idea of how hard it is. Will take at least 10 runs with a very solid team to get it fairly down pat!

really end game does not mean making things hard for the casual player, which in this case it is.....

Quote: magnaburn on 05/30/2012, 03:19 AM - view

That doesn't give me any idea of how hard the instance is. There is no mention of group composition and absolutely no way to judge the level of skill of the individual players involved in the scenario you presented. This sounds like your personal experience, which also means it's extremely subjective and will vary according to each player. The one thing I do take your word for is the mention of pick up groups being a headache, as pick up groups in all games can be massive headaches. I have no intention of stepping into hard modes with a pickup group. Thank you for your input.

@Wiznuke

Not all content in a game is designed to be completed by casual players. I'm sure it's called "Hard Mode" for a reason. End Game doesn't particularly mean anything: it is a sum of all the parts provided by the game for a character that reaches level 60. In this case, the PvE aspect of the game is a set of level 60 instances and then a hard mode version of these instances. It might not be deserving of the "hard mode" title if it can be easily completed by a casual player :). Thank you for your insight, regardless.

Well yeah... hard mode is... hard. That's a given.

As for running FoK normal mode in quest gear, it's not really any harder than any of the previous instances that you've (most likely) done on the way. Provided the group you're in isn't full of noobs. There's a few tricks you need to know here and there, but nothing you won't have any problem picking up on during your first run through.

@HiFi

I assume the progression goes like this? Reach 60. Do Fane of Kaprima. Get gear from Fane of Kaprima, enchant gear from Fane of Kaprima. Do Baldur's. Get weapon from Baldur's enchant weapon from Baldur's. Step into FoK HM?