Here's my full Belfry review since the changes...

Alright, I decided to quit whining and give Belfry a 100% legit attempt to complete. I play late night always due to work, kids, and being a college student. When I am online, usually general chat is empty, and I play a server other than Atlantic. So doing the cute hold hands with 15 people to do everything in this game is out of the question for me. So as a result of that, I have a 3 monitor setup, and pay for three accounts to legally multiclient some encounters (not multibox).
Now previously, I did the roof with a simple setup of a sampire, a bard and a tamer. Took me about a hour and a half to complete all rooms and the roof.

So let's begin.... doing the Belfry "as intended" minus having the ability to do it with other functioning players.
Attempt number one.
-I begin as I previously did, sampire whirlwinds the drakes, bard disco's belfry, I get the feather, I port up and start smacking her around. After about 8-10 swings my sampire freezes and falls off the roof. 
-Again I go back up, start swinging away, I get frozen right at 20% health and since I can no longer swing my character dies mid air while falling off. Well that was "fun". 
-Res up, kill drakes, hop back up, sampire misses 50% of the swings and died after the second para tick.
-OK, now this is getting annoying. 
-Res up, kill drakes, get feather, go back up and do this until Belfry is at around 40%. Now I notice that when I fall off he start spam healing himself. 
-Fall off at 40%, by the time I get back up hes at 42%, fall off at 32%, get back up and hes 40%. I die at 35%, res and get back up and hes 45%... 
-Ok really??? and now I get the "this encounter will end in 5 minutes" message. 

After a bit of a rage clean my house break, I attempt Belfry again, this time I use my tamer to go up.

-Going up with a tamer is much easier, no deaths, just say "all kill" and hide.
-Belfry gets to around 40% and starts spam healing.
-Get knocked off, kill drakes, get feather go back up.
-I will save everyone from the wonderful percentage spam, and just say that I ran out the full 30 minutes timer attempting to kill him having him spam heal almost all of the damage done before I was thrown off the roof.

So unless there is another "easier" way to do it that hasn't been fixed yet, I honestly have no idea how people are doing this in time "as intended". Regardless, this is how I have completed this encounter for over 3 years, and now I have to consider rebuilding my setup and characters to try to do this again. As it stands right now, this is a dead encounter for me, which honestly really makes me upset because it was one of the things I enjoyed doing outside of pvp.

My recommendations:
 
* If you guys are going to leave the encounter like this you need to remove Belfry's ability to self heal... Honestly...
*If the encounter stays like this, multiple feathers need to drop off the drakes and not just 1 per spawn of them, and increase the timers on them.
*Allow more damage to be done before Belfry begins the knock off.
* Make belfry "weakened" when he reaches 40% health and remove the knock off mechanic at that point. 

Other than that, I won't be attempting the roof again anytime soon. I hope you listen to my voice and the voice of several others. Making content more difficult after its already been out for over 3 years is not the best way to do it. Thank you.

Giggles said:

So unless there is another "easier" way to do it that hasn't been fixed yet, I honestly have no idea how people are doing this in time "as intended". Regardless, this is how I have completed this encounter for over 3 years, and now I have to consider rebuilding my setup and characters to try to do this again. As it stands right now, this is a dead encounter for me, which honestly really makes me upset because it was one of the things I enjoyed doing outside of pvp.

drcossack said:

Giggles said:

So unless there is another "easier" way to do it that hasn't been fixed yet, I honestly have no idea how people are doing this in time "as intended". Regardless, this is how I have completed this encounter for over 3 years, and now I have to consider rebuilding my setup and characters to try to do this again. As it stands right now, this is a dead encounter for me, which honestly really makes me upset because it was one of the things I enjoyed doing outside of pvp.

For tamers, there is one, although it's still a bit of a pain.  Staying on ground level and sending a flying pet up to the dragon.  I use 2-3 tamers and I finish in 5-7 minutes without discord.  You do have to keep doing it (go to the side opposite your pet to send it back up, and move around a bit once there), but it's the easiest (legal) way to get it done.

Yeah, I have heard of that method. I didn't test to see if it still works, and had just assumed it was fixed as well. But I'm pretty sure that is something they will fix next, because that is another example of how they did not intend for this encounter to be done.

That is why I went through the effort to document doing it the "proper" way without any corners being cut, to show how difficult the encounter is when players aren't finding a work around for it. I would rather them fix these key elements before we get to a case where no one can do it. As it stands now, only tamers with flying pets can. 

What pet are you using? Best pet i've found for the Belfry, is a 100% Cold Damage Platinum/Crimson Drake that has Chiv+AI. Chiv+AI gives it very high damage output, it always hits the Belfry GD's weakest Resist (Cold), and can fly up. I haven't tried it yet though since Pub 100 hit.

Wait... So the only part about the belfry that needed to be fixed was the ability to use flying pets to fight without ringing the bells, and that DIDN'T Get fixed. Classic

The way the belfry works now is flat out retarded. Ignore TastyTreats, he's clearly trolling.

As you say, the healing must be taken out.

The bells shouldn't spawn 2 drakes per person, they should just spawn 2 drakes period, for the person ringing the bell. One of them should drop the wings.

Failing that, the bells should at least not spawn drakes on people up in the freaking belfry, and should drop more wings.

The pointless cooldown on the bells should be removed as well.

The pointless duration on the wings should be removed as well. Or at least, increased 10x.

While they are at it, they should also increase the pointlessly short timer at the end of the roof that prevents you from looting even a fraction of the gold when you're up there.


Just to add my own experience, we do it as two tamers, and we can barely finish it in 30 minutes if we're lucky. And that's thanks to word of death. The last 30% usually goes: kill drakes, go up, cast word twice, get kicked off, then dragon heals 50-60% of the damage I did before I get back up.

We don't have any flying pets yet, we're waiting for them to bond, but I'll feel zero shame in exploting the hell out of them since the encounter designer clearly had no idea what he was doing here.

You know there is a serious problem with the design when the belfry is harder than the roof.

PlayerSkillFTW said:

What pet are you using? Best pet i've found for the Belfry, is a 100% Cold Damage Platinum/Crimson Drake that has Chiv+AI. Chiv+AI gives it very high damage output, it always hits the Belfry GD's weakest Resist (Cold), and can fly up. I haven't tried it yet though since Pub 100 hit.

King_Greg said:

Wait... So the only part about the belfry that needed to be fixed was the ability to use flying pets to fight without ringing the bells, and that DIDN'T Get fixed. Classic

And other than Mervyn, who had a issue with the way it was before?
geeez

 Uriah_Heep said:

And other than Mervyn, who had a issue with the way it was before?
geeez

Me.

I was unable to complete any of this on my pure mage - and I still am.

So in a way, I'm glad to see it being made harder for other classes, it is re-balancing them to the level of my class.

Cookie said:

 Uriah_Heep said:

And other than Mervyn, who had a issue with the way it was before?
geeez

Me.

I was unable to complete any of this on my pure mage - and I still am.

So in a way, I'm glad to see it being made harder for other classes, it is re-balancing them to the level of my class.

But it's not rebalancing around a specific class.  It's fixing what isn't broken in the first place - if you're using a pure mage for the Belfry, it sounds like a personal problem that shouldn't be factored into how "imbalanced" the encounter is.

drcossack said:

But it's not rebalancing around a specific class.  It's fixing what isn't broken in the first place - if you're using a pure mage for the Belfry, it sounds like a personal problem that shouldn't be factored into how "imbalanced" the encounter is.

I thought pure mages were a part of the game, my mistake.

CovenantX said:

the only reasonable methods are "exploits" to complete the belfry anymore... the intended method takes more than the allotted time, nor is it worth that time for the average end result.

King_Greg said:

Wait... So the only part about the belfry that needed to be fixed was the ability to use flying pets to fight without ringing the bells, and that DIDN'T Get fixed. Classic

 

 @ Kyronix expects us to ring the bell, kill drakes, feather up, deal ~1k damage to the dragon (1khp = ~10% of the dragon's max HP), get pushed off, and repeat it... 11 times at minimum, because the dragons HPR & healing is not factored whatsoever. - typical for UO.

People want Bug Fixes, not more bugs that were even worse than the unfixed bugs we had before.

Exactly!!

Sure, I can run in with some flying pets and get this done, but why should players be literally forced to exploit encounters in order to complete them? I would much prefer doing things the proper way, even if it is a little more difficult. But to be completely unable to do this the proper way is just ridiculous. 

I guess that leaves my pure crafter out then.

Cookie said:

drcossack said:

But it's not rebalancing around a specific class.  It's fixing what isn't broken in the first place - if you're using a pure mage for the Belfry, it sounds like a personal problem that shouldn't be factored into how "imbalanced" the encounter is.

I thought pure mages were a part of the game, my mistake.

Mages can tag along and do the floors.  (until now)   They just couldn't cast EVs or certain spells on the roof.  A more inclusive fix would have been to eliminate the spawn from all followers or summons.  Then left the belfry alone.   

But they want fewer returning players to be able to do the fun stuff.

I did Belfry twice on my Sampire last night. I brought along a bard to discord the Dragon (otherwise the miss rate is extremely high against the dragon).

First run
I wasn't moving as fast as I could, but I wasn't going slow either. Got into Belfry, took a minute or two to get situated with where I wanted to fight at, then started with the bells.

Even with only 2 people, the drakes have pretty high wrestling. But kill all 4, find the wing, go up on the ledge and do ~1k damage and get pushed off.

Rise and repeat pretty steadily for several minutes until the Greater Dragon gets around 40%. At this point you can see his AI is prioritizing casting heal, as he is healing himself a lot. By the time I get a new wing and get back up there, the dragon has usually gained 4% life (in EC, don't know actual health value).

Rise and repeat, with the Dragon healing often, but eventually get the dragon down to 8% health. This is where it really becomes tiresome. It seems around 8-12% the Greater Dragon AI will mana dump on nothing but heals.

I get a wing, get up on the ledge, take dragon from 8% to 0%, but get pushed off before it dies.

By the time the bell timer reset, and I can kill the drakes and find the wing, the dragon was always back up to 8% health (one time it got up to 12% because I was a bit slow).

This goes on for about 10 minutes. 8% to 0%, knocked off, Dragon spam heals itself while I find wing, 8% to 0%, repeat.

I made some mistakes, I'll admit. At one point I missed like 5 swings in a row (even with it discorded) and had to run off the ledge without doing the 1k damage, otherwise I was going to die. This led to an interesting discovery, the damage threshold doesn't reset with each wing use. So I get a new wing after running off, and only did about ~400 damage before getting knocked off (since I had done around 600 the prior attempt). This small mistake became a hug timesink and setback.

At this point in the fight I was not going slow, everytime I got pushed off the ledge I had to wait for the bells to reset, it could not have been done faster.

Could not kill the dragon this attempt. It simply healed itself too much. I got kicked out at the 30 minute timer.

Second Run
This run I went in much more focused and with a plan of attack. I sped through everything as fast as I could, bells as soon as they were up, fighting the Dragon at the edge to get knocked down as fast as possible (though this didn't matter much, as I was often waiting up to 15s for the bells to reset after getting knocked off).

I take the Dragon down pretty quick to the 8-12% mark, where it again begins spam healing. I would estimate I spent about 5 minutes in this "phase" of the fight, before I actually managed to kill the dragon with my last swing as I simultaneously started getting pushed off the ledge. I consider this pretty lucky, as I was worried I would get stuck in another 0% to 8% loop due to it's spam healing.

I ended up successfully killing the Greater Dragon in just under 16 minutes.

Thoughts On The Encounter
Some people's arguments for a more difficult roof encounter are that "this is an MMO" and you should "Find a Group". However, the Belfry encounter is actually designed in the exact opposite way. The Belfry becomes harder with more people:

• Timer on ringing the Bells
• 2 Drakes per person
• The Drake's Wrestling scale with how many people are in the encounter
• 1 Wing drops per bell "ring"
• 120s timer on the wing

So the more people you bring, the more drakes you have to kill, and the tougher they are. It will also take longer to find the corpse with the wing on it.

So yes, I was able to do it on my second attempt in under 16 minutes, but it wasn't a cakewalk. It needed basically perfect execution and the encounter itself was very frustrating.

Suggested Improvements

• Make 1 wing drop per "pair" of Drakes. This way a bell ring allows the entire group to go up there and make progress.
• Or change the AI of this Greater Dragon so that it does not spam heal itself when low health

Either of the above changes would go a long way in making the encounter less frustrating for people.

I'm not looking for easy mode, and do enjoy challenging encounters. I appreciate encounters that have thought behind them and require you to pay attention. The problem with this encounter right now, is no matter how technically skilled you are, you can still end up failing it due to the RNG of the Dragon spam healing itself.

Now, if the Dragon emoted before it started pushing you off, and you had 2 seconds to side-step the "wind" from it flapping its wings and avoid being pushed off altogether, that would be awesome. A technical encounter with some skill involved around timing and positioning.

Cookie said:

 Uriah_Heep said:

And other than Mervyn, who had a issue with the way it was before?
geeez

Me.

I was unable to complete any of this on my pure mage - and I still am.

So in a way, I'm glad to see it being made harder for other classes, it is re-balancing them to the level of my class.

There was nothing wrong with the way Belfry was so it shouldn't have been changed in the first place.  Its just damn key fight!  What the hell were they thinking?  They promised us a bug fix publish and we got added bugs.  

The way i used to do it was with two tamers.  After getting the wings both pets would attack Belfry(usually 2 Cu's or 1 CU and  beetle).  The tamers would stand in the middle of the platform and when one pet would start getting pushed tell it to follow you so it would walk around the push.  Never had to use the log out / log in trick to get the pets back up there either.  The downside for not getting pushed off the platform is the whole push cycle you're not doing damage. 

We can complain all we want on the forums.  I prefer a more direct approach.  I'll be cleaning out a couple houses and closing those accounts.  If they dont want to listen to us here thats fine.  I'll hit em in the pocket book.

If it wasn't working as intended almost 3 years ago then they should have fixed it back then. Fixing it after all this time just seems silly if it didn't matter to them at all for 3 years. Talk about the horse and the stable door...did we really need to add more grind to a subscription game? Grind is for free games to offset the fact that you don't pay!

Uriah_Heep said:

And other than Mervyn, who had a issue with the way it was before?
geeez

I had an issue with the way it worked before however this was not my proposed solution that had been implemented. I also take issue with the way it currently is.

I complained about any specific belfry change when it was proposed to me in May.

Also, since when can we re-open closed threads?

Mervyn said:

Uriah_Heep said:

And other than Mervyn, who had a issue with the way it was before?
geeez

I had an issue with the way it worked before however this was not my proposed solution that had been implemented. I also take issue with the way it currently is.

I complained about any specific belfry change when it was proposed to me in May.

Also, since when can we re-open closed threads?

If you also have an issue with it, why are you upset this thread has been opened and it is being discussed? Wouldn't that be the goal? To show there is a problem with valid reasons, and propose reasonable solutions? 
I don't recall writing a full review with proposed real issues and solutions in another thread that has already been locked.
Regardless, the Stratics rules do not apply over here. Two different forums and what-not.

Mervyn said:

Who said I’m upset about the thread being reopened? I just think it’s odd that other threads that were closed and get reopened get auto closed again.

And actually I think I DID propose a solution to exploiting the belfry (Several times). And many other things: 

https://forum.uo.com/discussion/227/16-bugs-to-be-fixed-for-publish-100-please#latest)

TLDR: MY proposed solution was:

leave the belfry alone


Mainly: have the pet remain in game defending you when you log out until you’re fully logged out. 

Not quite sure how that constitutes “unreasonable” 

Well this thread doesn't have much to do with previous exploits and how to fix them. This regarding the fact that the attempt to fix them has made the encounter unreasonably difficult and unachievable by a large amount of players.

Who said what, or complained about what way back in March is completely irrelevant now, and has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
We have a new problem, and people should be allowed to express new reasonable solutions and ideas to fix it so we can all get back to enjoying the game.

Yeah, revert it back to how it was before?

And have pets remain in game until full log out.

Mervyn said:

Yeah, revert it back to how it was before?

When has that ever happened?
It's clear they wish for the encounter to be done "this way". Now we just need to show that some of the features of "this way" make it too difficult and they need to be toned down. Leaving it alone or reverting it at this point is a unreasonable solution.

Mervyn said:

And have pets remain in game until full log out.

The auto pet logout is a feature and mechanic of the game that has been around for over a decade. It affects all areas of gameplay for tamers, and will not be a change specific to just THIS encounter, without affecting them everywhere else. Something that massive will need to go through extensive testing to make sure it doesn't break something else, or cause people to start losing their pets.  Again... unreasonable solution in dealing with the current issues of this one specific encounter.

Okay so please can you advise what areas of gameplay a tamer legitimately uses auto pet log out where having the pet remain in game for the length of time the character remains in game would be affected?  

Why are you requesting a specific change for belfry? Why not fix every part of the game?

Mervyn said:

Okay so please can you advise what areas of gameplay a tamer legitimately uses auto pet log out where having the pet remain in game for the length of time the character remains in game would be affected?  

Why are you requesting a specific change for belfry? Why not fix every part of the game?

Yes, I will have that discussion with you in a thread specific to that debate. This thread is specific to Belfry, and the current issues at hand. I would rather not convolute it with other debates which are not specifically related to this current problem.

AMEN @Giggles You go girl

Mervyn said:

What is the current issue at hand? I was under the impression that the specific change to the belfry was an attempt to address the abuse of auto pet log out on the belfry, or do you know something i don’t? 

Just because the proposed fix HAPPENS to fix every aspect of the game, doesn’t discount its specific fix for the belfry also. 

Here is is how I read your response, but call me sceptical:

sounds like you want a specific change to belfry but want to continue abusing auto pet log out to your advantage in other areas of the game. Call me sceptical. 

Any belfry specific change they make to combat auto pet log out exploitation, will be unsatisfactory to me. 

The current issue at hand is the changes have made the encounter almost impossible. WHY they made the changes is completely irrelevant. However, the majority of people upset now are the ones like me who used a dexxor build to complete Belfry. So to answer your roundabout question, no I do not usually use a tamer in my normal daily gameplay. 

But guess who isn't complaining right now? Tamers. Why? because they are still using the work around that they have been using, which is flying their pet right on up there, negating all elements of the encounter. Who would go through the effort of logging in and out 20 times when you can just fly your pet right on up there? 

You have been on a crusade against pets auto stabling since like 2012. Call me sceptical, but it seems to me that you came up with a theory, or perhaps heard of a handful of people logging in and out for this encounter, and you decided that this will be your solid and amazing reason to be against auto stabling. But ironically, it never was the real problem, and tamers haven't missed a beat after these changes, and it has absolutely nothing to do with logging in and out.

So again, your arguments and proposed solutions have absolutely nothing to do with the current problem or topic at hand.

The lady hit the nail on the head. 
There was never a reason to use the log out/in pet trick for the Belfry key room.
This was accomplished in one of two ways.  1-  Use Flying pets to completely bypass drakes or 2- Stand in the middle and tell the pet to follow you when it starts getting pushed.
I never had to log in/out to summon my pet here.

Sure woulda been nice to have ghost mobs at spawns fixed...no one would have compalined about that fix

LIKE ^^^^^^

So tonight I had a little extra time to try belfry again (I get mildly obsessed when I CAN'T do something lol). I gave it three full attempts. The first two, the timer ran out when Belfry was under 5%.... (Surprisingly my keyboard is still intact... I know right?)

Anyways, I busted out my video recorder on the third attempt to show just how ridiculous it was... and as luck or bad karma would have it, I killed him in right around 18 minutes.
Now keep in mind when watching this, there were no oops moments or bad RNG at all, the EC saves me time in finding the feather, time that anyone on 2D would lose a significant amount of. This would be completely impossible without the bard.... And, also keep in mind (not tooting my own horn), but I consider myself to be more of a hard-core, obsessive, perfectionist type gamer. Your average player probably wouldn't get this far. 

And finally, nothing about this was fun.. It took like 15 or 16 teleports up to finally kill him. Extremely redundant, and it takes more focus and effort than fighting the final bosses does. So here it is.. Belfry "as intended" to be completed.....       https://youtu.be/S_LVjOVy7x8

I have cleaned this thread up a bit. please discuss the topic, not each other.

Giggles said:

 And finally, nothing about this was fun.. It took like 15 or 16 teleports up to finally kill him. Extremely redundant, and it takes more focus and effort than fighting the final bosses does. So here it is.. Belfry "as intended" to be completed.....       https://youtu.be/S_LVjOVy7x8

Just delete shadowguard, it isn't worth the time invested.  Or leave it and add some cobweb deco showing how little people will ever go there.   The encounter took too long when it was full of bugs, reward vs time there is just worth it.

Giggles said:

So tonight I had a little extra time to try belfry again (I get mildly obsessed when I CAN'T do something lol). I gave it three full attempts. The first two, the timer ran out when Belfry was under 5%.... (Surprisingly my keyboard is still intact... I know right?)

Anyways, I busted out my video recorder on the third attempt to show just how ridiculous it was... and as luck or bad karma would have it, I killed him in right around 18 minutes.
Now keep in mind when watching this, there were no oops moments or bad RNG at all, the EC saves me time in finding the feather, time that anyone on 2D would lose a significant amount of. This would be completely impossible without the bard.... And, also keep in mind (not tooting my own horn), but I consider myself to be more of a hard-core, obsessive, perfectionist type gamer. Your average player probably wouldn't get this far. 

And finally, nothing about this was fun.. It took like 15 or 16 teleports up to finally kill him. Extremely redundant, and it takes more focus and effort than fighting the final bosses does. So here it is.. Belfry "as intended" to be completed.....       https://youtu.be/S_LVjOVy7x8

My experience was pretty similar. Failed my first attempt and went to record the next attempt and ended up succeeding. The real issue with the fight is that spam healing at ~8% health. Uploaded my video here:

Did Belfry, took flying pets, didnt summon any drakes.  Killed it in a matter of minutes, not really challenging.  As easy as before.

Pinkerton said:

Did Belfry, took flying pets, didnt summon any drakes.  Killed it in a matter of minutes, not really challenging.  As easy as before.

And you circumvented the mechanics of the encounter to do so.  This is not what people are talking about.  People are discussing the intended way the encounter was designed to be done.

Violet said:

Pinkerton said:

Did Belfry, took flying pets, didnt summon any drakes.  Killed it in a matter of minutes, not really challenging.  As easy as before.

And you circumvented the mechanics of the encounter to do so.  This is not what people are talking about.  People are discussing the intended way the encounter was designed to be done.

Well, i could quote the designer:
"The core loop with the belfry is drakes -> feather -> dragon, repeat"

Let me quote myself "It took too long before the bug fixes, now it wont be done at all".  Dead content is up to 99% now.  Congrats

"The core loop with the belfry is drakes -> feather -> dragon, repeat"

I don't eat apple cores.

Mervyn said:

Well, i could quote the designer:
"The core loop with the belfry is drakes -> feather -> dragon, repeat"

And that's a message to all of us that we can't use the legal abilities of our pets?  Where was that posted?  Nice try, I don't think so.

I would never ever ever blame a player for doing ANYTHING, if the game allows a player to do something, EG dupe the roof bosses, it’s never the player’s fault. So I would not say players should not fly their dragons on the belfry platform without ringing the bell, but rather players should not be able to. (If that’s how they intend it to be done) 


Same as I do not say that players should not log out and in to move their pet from A to B without using a pet ball summoning charge. But rather players should not be able to.

players will do anything they can, we are like robots. If they introduced a weapon that hit for 150 damage in pvp, everyone would use that weapon. People are very predictable.

Mervyn said:

I would never ever ever blame a player for doing ANYTHING, if the game allows a player to do something

BULL-DOOKY You owe me a key board, now get off your high horse about auto stabling BECAUSE THE GAME ALLOWS IT

Well I am hoping we can get some official word on this, and if they plan on toning down these mechanics "soon", and/or fixing the ability to bypass mechanics via flying pets.. If not, I guess it's just time to get some flying pets trained up like everyone else... 

Seems like the team might be on vacation this week as there has been not a single reply to anything on this subject.  Maybe next week we will see something, at least a flat "no, deal with it".

I think it’s unacceptable that the change was not even listed on the publish notes. So nobody was even given an opportunity to comment on the proposed changes or test it. 

Let us talk about how they slipped in the vanity pets being resurrectable without veterinary into a bug fixing patch. At first, there was no caveat about it only being possible to do so in trammel, could you imagine how much they would’ve ruined the game if they just added a stealth update without allowing people the opportunity to point out the obvious flaw that it should not be possible to do so in fel. We dodged a bullet there however this is why they need to tell us about proposed changes. 

@Bleak @Kyronix PLEASE fix the bug that causes pets to get "stuck" at the belfry. It is unacceptable that we should have to spend the time doing the rooms, AND THEN wait 15-30 minutes for a GM to come "unstick" the pet/pets that can no longer move, EVERY TIME we do the belfry. 

I dont understand the developers logic either. They just ran an EJ program to get new players in, but made it extremely  restrictive, not even bank storage,  and kept the price "high", you can get modern mmos at that price. So that diddnt work  so well and right now except on atlantic population is on low. On Europa you can count people online on  your fingers.I know its summer, there's soccer, but that's quite worrying really.

Population never been so low, what do they do ? they make the ONLY high end content harder more tedious.Thats all there was to do to get good gear really!
Doom ? no one wants to do it anymore cause artefact drop is so low you'll never get what you want. The shadowlord in sunken ship ? it requires a wow raid setup someone tanking and others healing, quite not compatible with uo mentality, rewards arent there anyway .Time of legend encounters ? they are fun once, but require to redo many steps each time and again, oh  rewards aren't there either.
   
  I returned with EJ and thanks to the guys in wraith , i could get up to shape. Thanks to them for  many gifts, equipment ,  and scrolls , those are absolutely unattainable for a new player without veteran help. Champion spawns are camped by soullesss  PVPERs with years of experience billion worth of gears and scripts who will take  the boss and everything in the end then drink your tears....Probably selling their loot on RMT sites too.Oh yes the game is plagued with RMT advertisement too on general chat.

That doesnt leave many things to do in the end ,they should have planned better to bring more new players, that's sorely needed.

very well said

On the "Publish 100 Hotfix" patch notes, there are these two points:

• Fixed issue where pets participating in the Belfry Shadowguard Encounter could become frozen.
• Adjusted Belfry Dragon’s AI based on player feedback.

Can anyone comment on whether these have improved the experience? Does the dragon not spam-heal anymore? Or has he stopped paralyzing players? I haven't been back to the belfry yet so I can't comment.

Obuw said:

On the "Publish 100 Hotfix" patch notes, there are these two points:

• Fixed issue where pets participating in the Belfry Shadowguard Encounter could become frozen.
• Adjusted Belfry Dragon’s AI based on player feedback.

Can anyone comment on whether these have improved the experience? Does the dragon not spam-heal anymore? Or has he stopped paralyzing players? I haven't been back to the belfry yet so I can't comment.

Feels just like prepatch belfry again for me, smooth ride.