Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
How is solo questing these days?
ceto
Member UncommonPosts: 21
Hiya folks,
I played Vanguard a couple of years ago but ended up leaving because I found that after level 20 the quests were mostly consisting of group quests. Groups were hard to come by back then so I got frustrated and left becuase I didn't want to get stuck just grinding on mobs to level.
How is the game today? Is questing after 20 still mostly a group thing or did they tone down alot of the group quests to solo ones?
Thanks!
Comments
There are plenty of solo quests. It depends on the class you play as to how easy they are to accomplish. The group quests remain the chain ones for the nice equipment and weapons (Trengal Keep, CIS etc.) so you will be expected to group up if you want to do them.
Population is low though, so the only solution that seems to work is to be proactive and start your own groups as opposed to just putting the /lfg flag on and hoping for an invite. It's amazing how quickly things snowball once you get a couple of people on board.
The game has a great community, so grouping up with strangers is usually a better experience than in other games.
Nothing has changed. If it was too frustrating for you when you played last, it will be too frustrating for you now. The population continues to decline in spite of the server merge. Teams do exist but they are few and far between so expect to spend most of your time soloing.
All classes can solo well, just some can do it faster and with less down time. IMO the Rangers and Dreadknights do it the best. It's been the same since you last played I'm sure. You just need to find some tricks to making your play time more enjoyable and not feel grindy.
Difficult.
--John Ruskin
Nope Rangers and Dread Knights don't do it the best. Dread Knights are the best soloist out of the tank classes but as for the best soloist of all the classes,well it's the healers hands down.
Best = Disciple=Turrgin Shaman(other Shamans as well)=Cleric=Bloodmage
Rangers can kite good but put him in some deep dungeon or small area and it's all over same with Bard and Necro.
I'm talking bout solo grinding exp. Get a phoenix shaman and othe classes to buff your with mana regen, and all you do is side strafe running and using split arrow. Kiting as much as you can while the mana allows. Piece of cake. Once you get the split arrow skill you can kite as much as 20 mobs, take it a step further and use crafted bows with the mudslide effect on it to slow their movement speed. Once I got to level 50 I was kiting well over 25 mobs at a time.
As far as Dreadknight goes, I can kill multiple (usually 6) 4 dot mobs at a time and not die, that would be pretty tough even for disc and the other healing classes. DK's can also stealth inside dungeons, its not a problem for em. DK's can be the same as rangers to I can tank up to 20 mobs with 2 dots and not die as long if you know how to conserve your mana.
OP, still the same problem sadly. I too quit every time I retry Vanguard and I hit the mid 20s and it bogs down to a slow boring crawl. It truly needs a ton of solo quests added to make it through those levels the same pace getting to the 20s had us going.
This is my ONLY complaint about Vanguard too. Well...that and lack of development, but that's outside the game.
So for me, Vanguard has the best 1-20 game I've ever played. Too bad I can't level past it without tearing my eyes out grinding mobs over and over and over, which I'll never do. I'm too quest hub programmed to do the old mob grind.
Fight the quest hub machine!
VG does have a bit of a grind...as do all old school games. Best PVE game out there. The grind does get old though, I'll admit. BUT, threre are three different ways to lvl...now crafting in this game...talk about a grind:) Still, very rewarding in the end.
I've just activated my Station Account and have been playing for 5 hours. I've only met 1 player with my 27 lvl char. I've tryed to find some solo quest but nothing new. For me it's impossible to progress in the game for two reasons:
No people
No solo quests.
Sony, it's time to close this game ... or give our money back
27 is a tough lvl with VG. I was able to solo with my druid to 45 (with help here and there for various quest from the guild I was in at the time, Fabled)...but certain classes were built to shine while grouped. Without developers, this won't ever change. I think Rogues still have abilities that are broken/can't be used. I have a 22 DK and a 30 something necro I can group with Friday's or Saturdays. Just let me know:) Also, think about joining a guild. With VG, it truly would make a difference.
THIS. A hundred times THIS^. I really hope this is addressed, is it that hard to throw in some solo quests to make leveling ot endgame, where 90% of the pop is? Even with only 1 dev? I know, I know, wishful thinking, but it is definitely what will bring me back to the game for an extended period.
If they ever intended to do any work on VG again, I would have like to see a mercenary system, similar to what they have in EQ. It would allow you to hire an NPC of an archetype (tank/healer etc.) that you can use to help you level. An easy fix for those having problems finding groups.
But obviously they need to start working on the game again for this this happen.
Interesting! Are you sure that you guys were playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes when you experienced all of these soloist issues? I also can't understand how it was possible to never see or hear another person in-game unless you were playing offline somehow.
With all of the Rift hype being spewed forth these days I decided to reactivate my VG account and give the game another try in the beginning of January, after playing through Beta and for about a month after release. I logged into the game expecting to be disappointed and was completely blown away.
The game has changed A LOT since release and the biggest difference that I noticed was that you COULD solo effectively and efficiently on any class. However of course, as with any game, some classes do that better than others.
In addition, full group content can easily be completed by 2 or 3 players and every single class in Vanguard can perform multiple roles in a group.
There are very few quest lines that require a full group until you reach levels 40 and above. The ones that do require a bit of effort and teamwork are the ones with amazing rewards at the end that usually have many newbies, lowbies, and alts working on the same questline.
I don't know what game you all were playing. Solo questing from level 1 to 50 is very possible with the occasional small group here and there if you want. There's about 6 different quest lines to follow all the way up if you want, and you can always switch from one continent to the next in order to experience fresh content.
Vanguard is still a very community driven game though. If you feel lonely or lost, just ask for help in general chat. I've never seen a newbie's call for help go unanswered.
To sum up an answer for the OP, they toned down almost every single quest to be soloable or at the most small groupable. Give or take a few legendary quest lines that require a 4+ man group and have plenty of other players doing them to group with.
You can receive free "bodyguards" quite often as random rewards for doing Diplomacy (Which is a game in and of itself!). If you don't do diplomacy then you can easily find them on the auction house for very cheap.
Basically it's just a clicky item (contract) that summons a warrior or mage and the like to your side to keep you company.
Err ... ?
Not really.
Try a Warrior and then try a Dread Knight.
Then try to claim again "all classes can solo well" ....
Psionicist if you're good at micro-managing you can solo most anything.
Dread Knight, Disciple and Necromancer are the best solists.
I've seen Dread Knights tank 6-dots solo. Impossible on a Cleric. You will be OOM in no time and then you'll be dead.
One CAN kill a 5-dot on a Cleric. But it takes about half an hour and very serious efficiency with the mana useage. And dont expect to stand any chance if the mob in question has any way to heal themselves. You will reach a stalemate.
Disciple might manage 6-dots, I dont know. Thanks to their Jin based healing, they are insanely good single target healers. Thanks to their Fake Death, they arent too bad pullers. And they have a lot of dps, too.
Necromancers might have a problem if its too many mobs, but otherwise their dps of course outshines the Dread Knight and the Disciple by far, making soloing much faster, while they still have their tanking pet or snare/fear as options available, and Fake Death if nothing else helps any more.
An important thing to note is that at higher levels Necromancers don't really kite much. That's where the Sorcs and Rangers shine. Sorcs moreso as they can kite 20+ 5 dots at once.
Instead, a higher level Necromancer can let his abomination and all of his minions do the dirty work while he stacks on dots and keeps the battle under control with Feign Death. My 55 Necro has absolutely no problem soloing 6 dot bosses in tight spaces (Where most are) whereas a Sorc who can kite entire armies at once with enough room just gets flattened in seconds.
All classes can in fact solo well. Casters and ranged fighters are just more able to solo 3+ dots of their level. The trade off here is that one mistake usually nets the softies a mana free evac back to the lifestone (death!).
I'd also like to add that my Paladin has been doing perfectly fine soloing 3 dots up to 3 levels above him and 4 dots of his own level. The trick is just trying out different tactics with each mob and seeing what works best, although you have to understand that everything has it's limit.
My first ever character was a Blood Mage. I died so often the first few weeks that I played that I honestly thought I was doing something wrong. I finally talked to someone else about it and was told that I was dying so much because I had rolled a squishy class. "Ok," I thought, "Let's roll something tough", and I rolled a Warrior. The warrior did great until I left the Isle of Dawn, then I ran into a wall with it. Every single fight was taking me down to only a few HPs and that was when fighting a single mob. Fighting multiple mobs at once was guaranteed death. Once again I thought I was doing wrong so I asked about it over channels and was told that Warriors were not a good solo class. By this time I had also figured out that I wasn't doing something wrong, the game was /supposed/ to be this hard. I ended up rolling a Disciple, which was indeed much, much better at soloing. Since then I have soloed every class to at least 30. Except warriors. I refuse to ever play another warrior.
Well I've plodded through the mid 20s, hit 28 today on my Druid. Once I realized I could use Nature's Calm on more than one target at a time, pulling from a group of mobs has become much easier. The game drastically needs some dev love but it definitely is soloable, I just had to go to really far out of the way places to find some hidden quests and mobs. It's made me love the game even more funny enough.
Grats on hitting 28
Vanguard is a MMO that will never get any love I fear... my best swag from watching the whole affair is that Vanguard is a MMO that SOE wishes never existed, a MMO that SOE considers a bastard child, yet SOE lacks the brass kahonies to get rid of it... for if they did they would have to answer in some way for the situation. All SOE had to do was to sell it off years ago and then they would have been rid of it and VG and it's Players would have had a much increased chance of a better outcome.
Sony Online Entertainment just wants Vanguard to slowly sink below the waves and SOE doesn't care who gets dragged down with it. SOE honestly believes that their customers will go play another MMO that is offered in the Station Pass system. SOE will never learn.
***HINT SOE... If my impression of what you want is not correct, then it's your OWN FAULT... for your day to day treatment of VG spells out what I wrote above... so if you do care FIX the problem and start investing in Vanguard***
So sad a fate for perhaps potentially the best MMO ever created, the best *IF* it had ever gotten the maintenance that any other MMO would have gotten that is.
I will be joining ya'll on VG again soon and plan on going under with VG. I look forward to enjoying the wide open world of Vanguard.... just don't look upon me as a pezz dispenser (a Druid I was born to be, a grumpy one anyways lol).
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
There wont be any further "love" for Vanguard. Last change, a hotfix, was in Jan 2010, last actual patch in Dec 2009, mostly just installing the flying xmas mount. The servers will keep running and thats it.
Damn, you guys almost had me back in VG yet again. I am definitely a "VG floater" - I play for a bit, get bored/fed up/depressed and quit, then a few months later I remember how awesome it is and come back, only for the cycle to repeat.
Personally I never had too much trouble finding solo content. Hell I even pretty much soloed a warrior up to 34. I seem to remember the trick being to do the URT questline, swap zones often to do little quests here and there and then to do the shadowhound and/or unicorn mount questline (tons of xp in those and a lot is soloable). Of course just 1 other person makes a world of difference when attempting a lot of the content.
I will add my voice to the list of those who sorely wish this game could see some investment. What finally pissed me off was the promised server merge of the euro server (Halgar) into the US one so that all VG players would be together at least, which SOE then backed off from, with no real reason or excuse. For me that showed they really don't give a toss about the VG community at all.
Actually I'm happy Halgar didnt got merged ... that way I still will have my house if I log back on (I paid 2 years in advance for it when I quit).
Also I wouldnt log back in if they moved Halgar to America. Too bad ping.
Sadly Vanguard is a very ping dependent game.