Runes of Magic US / AU

Quoted from "spacehistory"

I've enjoyed this thread but I have to say, I would like to run some of the old content and am seeing I'll have to a lot of stuff alone. My guild does help with runs I can't do on occasion and when they do a goblin run, they won't let me come even though I'd like to see what its like. They say you can't do it before level 50. Its quite frustrating to do only Tempest Heights and Siege with them, when you'd like to try other things. I keep trying and one day I won't be asking for help. As I will do everything on my own since it is so hard to get people to do much. I realize the game has changed, but there is no feeling of community like when I played from beginning to the start of the Janoost Forest.

I would say over 50% of my guild has no time to help newer players and thats fine its their choice. While maybe I should look for a new guild where can you find one? You can post till the cows come home and no one replies to you in the forum.

I'd only change guilds if I ran stuff with another guild for a week or more. Then changing guilds might make sense.

There's a lot of factors that could affect your ability to find groups. The time of day you play, what you can offer to a group, and how much you actually type lfg in the LFG channel is one of the biggest. Some people try a few times and just give up. But if you realize that doing it for hours may get a regular group going then all the time & effort may be worth it.

Again, the changes in the game makes it more difficult then it was before and it may be wishful thinking to believe it's still possible. But you never know until you try.

Also, with 80 levels now people might be more spread out as far as progress, so you may not find any groups at 35 but may find some at 40, 50 or 60, so trying really hard one time to find a group may not be enough.

If I was a new player, and knew what I know now, I think I'd just bolt it to lvl 80 as quick as possible, then do events, get some crit gear, farm some mems get some more crit gear, do my minis, sell some good stats, buy some rune slots and runes, buy puries and use cheap stats on my own gear, now i can farm mems faster, eventually solo KBNez and make gold faster selling blues and making tier stones, then I have a t10 weapon and decent crit gear, plus 16 rings and necklace, pots, food, pets, cards, titles, housemaids bam I can actually help alot in runs. My stats might "suck" and I may not have everything +16, but I have 60 runes in my gear, I'm FULLY statted, 70% crit rate, I have plusing where it counts, a t10+16 hardmode weapon, I got golden hammers, I got an angel sigh, pet food, strong stims, siege titles, I'm ready to rumble where 90% (just a guess) of the servers might be, at end game. It may not be 90% but it's where it stops so where people collect if you know what I mean.

It's soooo much work to play for free (or on a small budget) that wasting any time or getting distracted with old stuff just makes it an endless struggle to progress. Plus 80 levels of quests is alot but it does end if you bang them out quickly.

That said, if you want to play it slow and run old stuff it's your time and your choice. I'm not saying bolting to 80 and doing stuff solo is the only way to go but I do want to make you aware of the changes and your options to progress in the game with little help from others.

But I also have a personal opinion I guess. Personally I think it would be more fun to progress than waste time on stuff I didn't need to progress. I get that some people may even get elites the old way and may even do the epic weapon thing (I did it when it was useful), and that's their choice. Just realize that you may have a hard time finding elite crystals and Talamo Memories or w/e we used back in the day.

But everyone is different. Some like the road less travelled. I can respect that. I just don't want to lose people on that road. And want to explain why I don't want to join them on that road.

Old instances can be fun for sure and I have no problem with people having fun!!! Not to rehash everything or have a debate on the issue, I just want to reiterate MY OPINION about running some old content everyday. My concern is for people & guilds who get stuck in daily routines so much that their new players progress slowly and get extremely frustrated. Some guilds have run HoS/DL/ZS for years now and may not even realize that, IN MY OPINION, it actually slows down the progress of new players. Not that everyone cares about quick progress of course.

The exception might be, if a high level guildy runs a new player through the first 4 bosses quickly for some quick mems and gear. But again that doesn't need to be done every single day for months, I'm talking a few days of it, because the gear should only last that long anyways if they are progressing quickly.

What players need to understand, and this is directed more to free to play players, is that after you reach level 80, there's still months of work to do gearing your toon. That's why I try to help players get their questing done so quickly because it's just the beginning of a very long process. I try to explain to them that, once they reach level 80 (or max level, 82 now), all their options are then open. They can use any gear they can pull or buy at bargain prices.

I try to explain to new guildies, the importance of crit rate, and what they should prioritize. For most classes it's so important to have +16 necklace and rings. The only thing with a higher priority would be their weapon. HOWEVER, because that's such a huge cost they can work (pull & stat things) while they work on making or buying a good weapon.

Once I explain the costs involved, I think they really see how important it is to get the questing done quick and that getting distracted even for 1 hour of their 4 hours a day they can play might really hurt their progress. For those who don't know, I'll try to explain it real quick but please don't expect exact numbers.

Once you hit max or near max level you can start pulling gear. You can focus on doing your dailies, mini games, doing events and farming eoj. It may take about two weeks but you'll eventually have a decent set of gear with crit/patk or crit/matk on most of it. Now you can start farming more mems and doing more EoJ events to pull more stats for this new shiny crit gear. The problem is as free to play players, you also need to sell some of those stats, to buy PURIES!

Now even if you use some of the cheaper X, XI & XII stats and only use 1 or 2 decent pulled stats per piece that you farm yourself, you still need 15 x 2 stats, that's 30 stats that take about 2 hours each to farm from EoJ or Mementos or Minigame Shells (or high lvl EZ mode runs drops some useable stats but that can take just as much time, it's more fun and gets you mems, but probably not all the stats you want/need), so that's 60 hours of game time. But the real kicker is, you also need 90 puries, or more like 135 puries, since you will probably t6 gear and use an extra 3 puries each. And that's all just to start!!! You still need/want 3 t10 stones, at least rings and necklace +16, and at least 2 runes in each piece of gear (4 recommended).

If you break down all the the costs vs the stats you have to sell to cover those costs, you're looking at HUNDREDS of hours of game time. It's so long that most free to play players have a hard time keeping up with new chapters and gear really! After all the gearing, and in between gearing, there's also pets (legendary & regular), housemaids buffs/pots, titles, cards, foods & pots, wedding foods and now title tiering too. It's all about the buffs in the end. Eventually, you may even want to lvl a k/p 50/25 alt on a 2nd account to get the holy protection buff, or a p/s for an matk buff, or a warlock for a quick +5% to all attrib buff, just to name a few. But don't get distracted by alts either, make it quick when you have a max toon to power level it.

There are some people who can wiggle their way into big guilds or guild hop and play the social game to get stuff free and are just generally greedy people. Power to them I guess. But generally speaking, for the rest of us, it's a lot of work to get something comparable to a cash shop player or that will just allow you to contribute as much (or catch up) to a long time free to play player. I'd even recommend the most stubborn person to drop $150 like I have on the game, at least one time just to avoid insanity, but wait till near max level to insure you want to keep playing and so you know what to spend it on. It will literally save you 6 months of pure farming/grinding at least. You may still need to farm most of your own stats, but that's almost nothing compared to farming stuff just to sell in order to buy your puries, rune slots, plussing and charges.

However, without perfect jewels in cash shop except +6 ones, I would STAY AWAY from jewels or wait, and I wouldn't spend your wad on jewels, maybe +11 stuff for now, it's borderline scamming players in my opinion, and GAMEFORGE needs to fix it! Shameful IMO. Personally, I spent most of my money on runes, which costed more at the time. But it allowed me to recover some gold when I needed it for a deal for example.

Anyways, just my opinions and advice, hope they help.