Lvl 17-19 quests and why no one runs them

Crenith Longreach

Active member
kind of funny, cause theres some with good xp's like Amrath or Cannith ...but those can be done after you hit 20 and grab your epic destinies.
There is no longer a Reaper lockout at level 20+. Not sure when it was removed because they did not note it in any updates.

Now if they would just remove the stupid no reaper xp when you hit level 30 if you are in an epic quest.
 

rabidfox

The People's Champion

Fizban

Founder, Feb. 2006
When in range I never shy away from running quests in the level 17-19 range. There are a lot of them to choose from in my opinion. I generally will run the level 17 quests in Forgotten Realms (i.e., druids, Whellon, etc..) as the have pretty good XP.
 

Ahpuch

Well-known member
The responses have correctly identified the issue as the poor XP of heroic quests vs epic quests but (IMO) this is just a symptom of the real issue. The hard discontinuity of leveling from heroic to epic is the source of the problem.

In the last few heroic levels the XP needed is increasing for each at a modest 10K* (considering TR+2 only) capping off at requiring 360K (again TR+2) to get from 19 to 20. At 19 you can no longer overlevel so once you get the XP to get to 20 it makes no sense to play until you level to 20. You are hard forced into epic and you hit the epic XP curves. That next jumps to 21 requires 600K which is a 240K XP increase from what it took to go from 19 to to 20. That is a significant shift in XP and the requirements continue to go up by 50K more each level - 5x more of an increase than level 15 to 20.

With that extra XP requirements the quests have to give far better XP than they were in heroic. So the discontinuity in leveling forces a discontinuity in XP given out. It has forced two paradigms and it is no wonder that people don't want to play in the less rewarding one once they have access to the more rewarding one.

So give more XP to the 18s! They can't. They can't bring the Epic XP curve down to heroics. If they do it just moves the problem. Right now the problem is where it is because heroic characters cannot play on the Epic XP curve. If they allowed heroic characters into epic quests people would play them sooner and it wouldn't just be the level 17 to 19s that were not being played. If they gave 18s XP to match the Epic curve that would be the same thing.

SSG doesn't have many good options as I see it. They could:

1) Stop making any quest greater than level 16. Admit that the current XP curve between heroic and epic make them pointless and stop making them. The fact that they just released a level 18 pack makes one wonder.
2) Revise the XP curves and make them increase consistently as characters shift from heroic to epic (and legendary). Of course that will require a significant shift in XP for quests so it is unlikely to ever happen. But until they do, see 1).
3) I guess they could come up with an alternate benefit to XP that might make running 18 and 19s attractive, significantly better loot, put RXP on a different level for 18 and 19 (like they do for legendary) but that is really working around the issue rather than addressing it.






* Oddly enough that is a slower increase than at level 9 or 10 where it is jumping 30K or 20K from level to level
 

YeeboF

Well-known member
The new mini-expansion is set there, and the quests are a lot of fun.

On Hardcore specifically, by the time I run Sharn, Cogs, and Sharn Docs I am ready to hit 20 and start in on epic KotB. Maybe or third life they would make it into a rotation. However I honestly don't reincarnate enough to have a good sense for it, and I have had no 3+ lifers anywhere near that level range since the expansion launched. My very few multi-life characters are mostly in Epics, with one coming up through low heroics now.
 

FVSHasBeenEvenMoreGutted

Well-known member
heres my problem: sharn is a bad adventure pack, and the devs should be ashamed of it because mobs have 2-3k hp when previous quests only 1500 max. 18+ the mobs have 3k minimum, 4k on 19. its such a slog that no amount of xp would make me want to do it. too much hp isn't fun
 

RTN

Active member
It's just an awkward spot in game design. If you're on the TR train, you can pretty easily cap out after Sharn and then take the sagas you've accumulated. If you're going to cap, people are conditioned to avoid L18-19 due to the old restrictions...and the transfer quests to Eveningstar are pretty fast and useful to get through L20. With the restrictions gone a few updates ago (even if not widely known), maybe more of us will run L18-L20 since you can toss on epic gear and do them. But that's working against patterns we've built up over years, plus if you're trying to maximize speed, you'd need to slow down for a handful of lives to really learn those quests. It all works against them being run unless the xp is really good.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DBZ

rabidfox

The People's Champion
Maybe next they should remove XP hardline between capping 20 and gaining epic XP. Not that it would be "good xp" to park 19 and bank epic XP off heroic quests, but it would let people stick to their same leveling methods if they wanted to.
 

l_remmie

Well-known member
There are plenty of people that don't run on autopilot and don't use XPpots and do know that the lvl20 Reaper thing was fixed. But they still rarely do those quests because there is just so little to get there. No sagas, no worthwhile favor reward, outdated loot and no ingredients/resources you want to collect. Combine that together with poor xp and slow paced quests due to hitpoints and tedious quest mechanics. And i almost forgot an LFG never filling so you are probably flying solo.
There may be a few good things but they are just not worth getting for the vast majority of players. These quests neer overhauls.
 

Fhrek

One Badge of Honor achieved
remove XP hardline between capping 20
I think saw somewhere that they can't do that because of internal Heroic flag. It serves as a roadblock restriction to Heroic players do not enter Epic content.

Too much spagethi code to undo.
 

rabidfox

The People's Champion
I think saw somewhere that they can't do that because of internal Heroic flag. It serves as a roadblock restriction to Heroic players do not enter Epic content.

Too much spagethi code to undo.
Yeah, that makes sense. The hard line design also made sense when EDs were frontloaded with the old system. Probably too much effort to fix it but it still such an awkward thing.
 

Uppsy

Well-known member
Personally I absolutely love Shavarath, unfortunately I am already capped before I can head to it.
I did go through a phase of doing Sharn1/2/cogs and Reavers Refuge (even soloing SoS on Hard due to the huge hp bags) but with the release of Vecna Unleashed (which I absolutely love) I have completely cut out cogs and Reavers Refuge. I am sure I will go back at some point when I am in the mood to run them but it is extremely unlikely due to the vast amount of xp available and hitting the levels before even having a chance to do them. Inspired Quarter I also appear to see myself running if I need Coin Lord favor on an iconic, the xp however is dire.
 

Amorais

Well-known member
I don't do Shavarath because the place is a depressing dump and I prefer somewhere a bit brighter. Hence I go to Eveningstar instead. I stopped playing Fallout 3 for the same reason. It felt like I was playing a manic depressive's fever dream. Sharn is ok I guess but I find it a bit too vertigo inducing for my lack of appreciation for heights. They need to hire more health and safety guys.
 

kmoustakas

Scourge of Xaos
The xp per minute is really really bad and then there is the loot issue. Most of those quests have old, outdated, bad or no loot at all. It doesn't matter if a quest gives 40k-50k (schemes or genesis) if it takes enough time to do the entire druids chain or almost all the cogs quests.

With the new changes, I actually do them for favour/fun at some point during the ETR cycle. Initially I set up wilds and sagas for a few ETRs and then at some point I just throw those in.
 

Jomee

Active member
Aloha everyone. I'm currently working on a video that looks at why quests in the level 17-19 range don't get run. As some of you may know, I've done a few streams doing quest chains like Reaver's Reach, Dreaming Dark, the Madness chains, and Shavarath that I've called Forgotten Quests of DDO. I've seen some discussion on the forums about why quests in this range get skipped over but wanted to seek further insights and ideas as to why.

This topic, I think, has become even more pertinent since the newest mini-expansion dropped with Heroic content at level 18. Please either respond on this post with reasons you don't run level 17-19 content or you can send me a message here on the forums.

I find it hard to catch most of the 18-19 quests because I've already hit level 20 by then and a level 19 quest on elite or reaper still won't give you epic xp even if the level difficulty is technically at 21.
 

fiwabar

Old-timer, mostly an observer
1) Stop making any quest greater than level 16. Admit that the current XP curve between heroic and epic make them pointless and stop making them. The fact that they just released a level 18 pack makes one wonder.
2) Revise the XP curves and make them increase consistently as characters shift from heroic to epic (and legendary). Of course that will require a significant shift in XP for quests so it is unlikely to ever happen. But until they do, see 1).
3) I guess they could come up with an alternate benefit to XP that might make running 18 and 19s attractive, significantly better loot, put RXP on a different level for 18 and 19 (like they do for legendary) but that is really working around the issue rather than addressing it.



* Oddly enough that is a slower increase than at level 9 or 10 where it is jumping 30K or 20K from level to level
I think this can be easily solved. You don't need to raise XP for quests, it would be enough to slightly increase the final heroic xp - because heroic quests are discussed - and, thus, increase xp/rank. For some unknown reason, from 15lvl it grows the fastest and is the least needed for the next rank - only 2k xp/rank. According to what you yourself noticed at levels 9-10 and even earlier because from 7 is needed as much as 6k xp/rank. Only between 1 and 2lvl is less needed than from 15lvl upwards. Which is a bit absurd because for these levels quests are really quite a lot. I recalculated quite a bit in Excel, made two simple diagrams each, aligned the data so that it was more linear. The result is that the final xp is higher by only 200k xp, although some players will probably eat me for this idea, I raised the xp for rank from 15lv upwards. Well, and I leveled up a bit on the low levels from 4 to 7, because there are a lot of quests in that range as well. Of course, I refer all the time to the xp table for TR 2+ and this is just a confident suggestion

An additional plus would be the lack of penalties for entering a 20, 21lvl character on heroic 18-19 elites. In the past when from 20lvl you got full ED maybe it made sense. Now when from 20lvl we have barely a few points in the ED tree which won't give us much - core = hp/sp, power + some skill or feat/spell DC it's actually not much different from heroic enhancements. So saying that a 20lvl character is OP for heroic elites is an absurdity of supernova power. Especially since these heroic elites from 18+Q can be much harder than epic-hard quests from a base level of 20.

Also, I think that the outdated loot in these quests is also a bit of a problem, but I wrote about that here in point 6.
Personally, I like these quests because they can be quite challenging for their level, they are not so straightforwardly linear on the principle of enter, kill the boss and leave, and they are a bit reminiscent of the old DDO rally so they are also done sometimes out of sentiment. Then you don't just look at rewards and xp. But it is obvious to me that a good portion of players are discouraged by this.
 

Driaza

Well-known member
I am one of those people who tends to run quests on Reaper, two levels over the base. I dont purposefully avoid 17-19 quests but it just normally end up being the case.

It all begins with banking xp stones throughout a life (especially gold rolls and if they are daily for VIPs even better).

So when i roll up a new life on a character i tend to cash in enough xp stones to start fresh on level 3. I like level 3 as i get a few enhancement points under my belt (plus all the racial points) and i am only 1 level away from unlocking my reaper enhancements at 4. I may even spend some shards on gold rolls to make it to the 32,000 XP mark if i dont have enough stones stored up. XP Stones to level 4 is just too much. I'd rather go to level 3 two times then once to 4.

So off the bat i am doing level 1 quests and im level 3. I may skip over some level 1s with low xp and get going on level 2's and 3's. For me its about gettng to level 4 asap and unlocking reaper points. Sometimes i do all the level 1s plus some wilderness stuff in Korthos and Borderlans then i can hit lvl 4 before even touching a level 2 quest. Add in some monster manual stuff, run xp pots, guild buff etc this is not far fetched.

The trend then pretty much continues throughout. If you consider lower level sagas and cash them in i find myself often in a position that when i start to do level 15 quests i am level 17 with just 1 xp away from 18!!

Its not that i chose not to run level 17-19 content its that level 15 content takes me to essentially to 1 xp point away from level 19 while im still level 17.

I then take level 18 and start on 16 content (sprinkling in some higher quests with better xp) and soon enough gets me to 20.

Not to mention that when i am on an Iconic Life or on a Otto Box run i start at 15 plus some exp (otto) so i start workign on level 13s ... GH Saga and end up pretty much in the same place.
 

Ahpuch

Well-known member
I think this can be easily solved. You don't need to raise XP for quests, it would be enough to slightly increase the final heroic xp - because heroic quests are discussed - and, thus, increase xp/rank. For some unknown reason, from 15lvl it grows the fastest and is the least needed for the next rank - only 2k xp/rank. According to what you yourself noticed at levels 9-10 and even earlier because from 7 is needed as much as 6k xp/rank. Only between 1 and 2lvl is less needed than from 15lvl upwards. Which is a bit absurd because for these levels quests are really quite a lot. I recalculated quite a bit in Excel, made two simple diagrams each, aligned the data so that it was more linear. The result is that the final xp is higher by only 200k xp, although some players will probably eat me for this idea, I raised the xp for rank from 15lv upwards. Well, and I leveled up a bit on the low levels from 4 to 7, because there are a lot of quests in that range as well. Of course, I refer all the time to the xp table for TR 2+ and this is just a confident suggestion

An additional plus would be the lack of penalties for entering a 20, 21lvl character on heroic 18-19 elites. In the past when from 20lvl you got full ED maybe it made sense. Now when from 20lvl we have barely a few points in the ED tree which won't give us much - core = hp/sp, power + some skill or feat/spell DC it's actually not much different from heroic enhancements. So saying that a 20lvl character is OP for heroic elites is an absurdity of supernova power. Especially since these heroic elites from 18+Q can be much harder than epic-hard quests from a base level of 20.
I don't think it is as easy as this. Adding 200k more XP to get to 20 makes 18s attractive only by raising the bar to require them to be run. As you mention, it would not be taken well by the vast majority of players.

And it doesn't address the problem which is the transition between 19 and 20. The difference in heroic XP curve and epic XP curve and the XP in the quests is where the change would need to be made to smooth it out. But that would require a rebalancing of the XP for both the epic leveling and the quests in that range and likely all the way into Legendary. If the curve is too great then players skip lower level quests for the higher levels with more XP so the problem just moves up the chain if not balanced appropriately. You can see this same problem play out at the legendary level as well where 28 and 29s skip the level 28 and 29 quests and grab the better XP from Sharn or Ravenloft.

There has never been a penalty for a 21 running a 19 on elite so maybe I missed your point on that. The reaper lockout was removed back in '59. But even without a penalty, the XP to run a 20 is better than running an 18 on elite so the removal of the reaper restriction was fairly moot.
 

Cmecu

Well-known member
Aloha everyone. I'm currently working on a video that looks at why quests in the level 17-19 range don't get run. As some of you may know, I've done a few streams doing quest chains like Reaver's Reach, Dreaming Dark, the Madness chains, and Shavarath that I've called Forgotten Quests of DDO. I've seen some discussion on the forums about why quests in this range get skipped over but wanted to seek further insights and ideas as to why.

This topic, I think, has become even more pertinent since the newest mini-expansion dropped with Heroic content at level 18. Please either respond on this post with reasons you don't run level 17-19 content or you can send me a message here on the forums.

I try to incorporate ways to gain first time XP when doing Epic TR. There are enough quests and Saga, and slayers to do ETR atleast 3 times before you burn everything up from first time runs. What I started to do is when I Epic TR, I do the the level 19 quests on Reaper and even though I am 20, or 21.. I can still do heroic reaper with Epic Character. Now the Epic XP isnt spectacular, but its something and I get reaper XP on top of that. I just did an Epic TR and then did the new vecna heroic quests at level 20. I did the whole chain, so I got all that xp, and the saga xp

Coming back to your point and how this could tie together. It would be nice if the XP was worthy enough to do those quests you mentioned. Being like level 18 or 19 doing those quests on Reaper which makes them 20 or 21 kind be a little rough.
It would be nice to see some xp increase to entice people to want to go do those quests.

Sometimes the issue with those quests too is the complexity of them, or difficulty to complete them. The items that drop from them are out of date, and if there are no items that people want, and the XP is subpar, then there is no incentive to do them.

At least the Shavrath Quests. I forget all of them Genesis Point etc that gives you the Yugolth Favor so you can stock on on Yugo potions. But once you buys stacks and stacks of them , no reason to do those quests. No good gear, xp is meh, they are complex quests.

I highly doubt that SSG would spend time working with those quests to make tweak things. Kind of like those places that just die off in the game.
 
Top