Lost: Dungeon. Last Seen On Endtable In Foyer

Well, Lost Dungeons of Norrath, the latest EverQuest expansion, is out and it seems to be a smash hit. Among most people, anyway. I’m not so sure yet…

Some background: The world in EQ is made up of ‘zones’ which are separate maps, but connected together. Within each zone there are usually a number of different areas where different types of monsters hang around, and at certain spots ‘named’ versions of those monsters can appear and drop good items when killed. (E.g., in the Crushbone zone most of the monsters are generic orcs who don’t drop anything special, but there is an orc named Emperor Crush that drops the better items.) Players tend to congregate at these special named spots and kill all of the nearby monsters as well for xp, and call the area their ‘camp’.

Unfortunately there are a finite number of these camps in the world, since it is of finite size after all, and not all camps are equal. A lot of camps drop fairly average or useless items, and a few drop the really good stuff. Thus, demand for the good spots is always high and it’s hard to get control over them since there’s often a group of other people there already. It’s rude to try and take over someone else’s camp and your reputation matters a lot so you just have to keep checking out different camps until you find one that’s not taken. You often wind up wasting a lot of time running around from camp to camp, or settling for a camp that’s crummy for xp or items.

What LDoN has done is let you create your own private dungeon. You first get your group of four to six people together and talk to an NPC to get a mission, which could involve assassinating a certain named monster, rescuing a prisoner, collecting a certain number of items, or just slaughtering a certain number of critters. Once you’ve got your mission, you run to the mission location and go through the dungeon entrance there, and then your group is in its own little dungeon. Nobody else can enter this dungeon, so all the monsters and loot in it is all for your group and your group alone.

The actual dungeon you get is randomly selected from a group of possible dungeons, with five different themes to choose from. If you talk to one NPC you get an ice-themed dungeon, another is a sandy tunnel theme, etc., with 48 possible dungeons in total. More than one group can actually be doing the same dungeon layout at the same time, but each group gets their own separate ‘copy’ of it.

When you successfully complete an adventure you earn Adventure Points, which can be saved up and used to purchase items from certain vendors. Some of the high-cost items are really nice — certainly better than what I’d be able to get without having to sell my soul to the raiding guilds.

They’ve also introduced ‘augmentations’, which are special items which can be added to other pieces of equipment to improve its stats. It’s kind of like Diablo II’s sockets, with certain limitations. Most of the augmentations are found in the LDoN dungeons or bought with adventure points and can be added into older gear to improve your character without having to get all new gear.

This is all fantastic — it solves the problems of fighting over camp spots, wandering around trying to find an unoccupied one, and gets you access to better loot without the raiding hassle. This expansion is the biggest boost to the non-uber player in ages. So what’s wrong then?

Well, it has more to do with our guild than the actual expansion. There are so few people left in it now that there usually isn’t a full group’s worth of people on at any given time, and you really do need a full group for the difficulty level of the LDoN dungeons. Even when there are enough people on, they’re not necessarily of the right type. There’s a time limit on the dungeons so you need enough damage dealers to get through it in time — three clerics, a shaman, and two bards wouldn’t do enough damage to make a baby cry, let alone complete the dungeon. And even when the right people are on, they’re not necessarily available. They may already be off doing something else or in a mission.

The alternative then is to take part in a ‘pickup group’, where you group up with other random strangers who are also looking to form a group. There are usually a number of such people looking to form groups and there’s even an in-game tool for finding people of the appropriate level and classes. The problem there is that, by and large, pickup groups tend to suck. They’re complete strangers, so you don’t know if they’re trustworthy, if they’re any good at their class (a lot of people are accelerated through their levels and don’t really know how to play well), or if their level of literacy is any higher than “lol u got pwned d00d”. Arguments break out over looting rights, their incompetence gets you killed far too often, and there’s often not much worthwhile to chat about. I’d rather stab myself with a rusty fork than have to deal with a bad pickup group.

Loot might be a bit too hard to get, too. Although you can save up points, the best items cost around 1600 points and at 51 points per successful mission, it’ll take 32 missions just to get one of those items. At around one and a half to two hours per mission, that’s 48-64 hours spent getting it. And that’s assuming a 100% success rate. That’s more time than you spend on most entire single-player games…

Overall I would say that it is a great expansion for most players, but I’ve still got my own issues to work out before I can really enjoy it.