Runics are outdated and unrewarding.

[AstralUniverse]

I really dislike how this thread derailed like this. No moderation what so ever, no respect for the OP's feedback.
Seriously, I'll find your feedback threads in the future and derail them on purpose.

[Xerah]

I don't see how talking about sailing is derailing the thread. You can't talk about one without the other since they are the main two ways to gather wealth and are significantly unbalanced. There should be efforts made to close that gap but is that to have dungeons meet sailing? Or meet in the middle?

It really doesn't seem to be derailed at all.

Obviously, the people saying that rewards as is are fine and balanced between the two are objectively wrong, and I assume any reasonable person who reads those posts understands that a really silly view point.

[PowerWord Rage]

The thread has been derailed quite terribly, TBH.
What ought to be in this thread should be ideas or suggestions on what can be done to make Runic dungeons more worthwhile and not expanding the OP's one simple question feedback into multiple ones and worse, it's not like anything can yet be done about the latter.

Stick to OP's original question is the right way to go.
Any others that come close to it as comparison, ought to be in another thread and not this thread.

Writ award is fine i guess? Personally, i don't find what's so interesting to keep raiding the same dungeon gazillion times over a period of 3 hours, solo or otherwise.
It's good if you can get epic rewards ( sizable one ) once per day and perhaps include Adamantine into epic rewards rather than the existing ores mining. Not that they can't exist but up for discussion perhaps?

It's cool if you can find addy in runic chest for a change or maybe a selection choice?
Like...
choose among
Flawed Chardalyn x ?
Flawed Theurglass x ?
Adamantine Ores x ?

And this selection choice is similarly based on rng, perhaps in 3 or more odds?
20% you choose among the perfects
35% among the Normals
45% the yucks.

And then...probably, Theurglass won't worth 1 million coins anymore. All runics will finally be at the same price or close to?

[AstralUniverse]

I don't see how talking about sailing is derailing the thread. You can't talk about one without the other since they are the main two ways to gather wealth and are significantly unbalanced. There should be efforts made to close that gap but is that to have dungeons meet sailing? Or meet in the middle?

It really doesn't seem to be derailed at all.

Obviously, the people saying that rewards as is are fine and balanced between the two are objectively wrong, and I assume any reasonable person who reads those posts understands that a really silly view point.

How does balancing rewards between sailing and runic on land dungeons have anything to do with making the latter more social, with less rng, more fun? There can be an argument that if sailing is nerfed, then there will be more contest over the on-land dungeons but I really cant see correlation other than that. Happy to be corrected.

[-XXX-]

It's comparing apples and oranges, really. We're pretty much talking about balancing loot between open dungeons that people can enter on a whim for however long they want and between what's basically a clever way of masking dungeon instancing very much intended for adventuring parties:

• land dungeons need to have loot balanced around people SOLOING them - and we're talking up to ad nauseam 24/7 circlegrind here - currently the only limitations put in place to impede their progress are the 3 hrs runic cooldown and the rate at which ores and regular treasure chests respawn (which is like... every 12-15 min).

• sailing content assumes GROUP action - while the loot can often seem awsome when compared to what a single person picks up during soloing a land dungeon, we're kinda omiting the fact that it still needs to be split between multiple people. Furthermore the progress is also being impeded by factors outside of the player's control - ship spawn rate and RNG (it's a fairly common occurrence to sail 30+ min without encountering any NPC ships).

The basic complaint I'm reading here is that "The loot I get from a 20 min solo dungeon run isn't on par with what 3+ people get out of 4-5 hours of sailing."

[AnselHoenheim]

Best course of action in my honest opinion for actually balance terms between sailing content and dungeon content for looting are:

Option A) Remove the runic cooldown in dungeons per player and reduce the 12-15 min from runic chests, reduce the lockpicking/disable trap from them and make them more accessible for solo-ing

Option B) (The less popular one) Add a cooldown for hunting pve ships, or add a cooldown for elegant chests/Sink chests similar to the one that dungeons have

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I do think that comparing the two is relative, even if astral is right and it's a bit off topic for the thread. I also think that some of the take's on said comparison are a bit off, so I too shall now be a bit off topic and join the fray.  

If you compare large group sails to soloing dungeons, its actually pretty balanced. I would even go as far to say that you are a good bit better off soloing dungeons if the sole desire is gold, because 30k per dungeon (before runics) alone at 45 minutes per dungeon equals 120k in three hours. Thats probably more than you would make in three hours sailing with a group of three, though its close, and any group larger than that you are almost definitely making a good bit less. And 30k per dungeon is a conservative number for soloing.

The problems come in when you factor in both group dungeoning and solo sailing, since we now have a one-man ship that can take down galleons. Whether or not the new change to the combat system fixes that or not, I'm not sure, but you don't have to kill tier 4s to get very rich very fast solo sailing so even if it did, I'm not sure it's going to change that dynamic all that much.

Now, I think the solution to solo sailing is easy, just remove the rental ship that can shoot other ships as a one man. Maybe you can up the map piece count to make a full map slightly, but that would also require a little less rng creating awful pulls from said chests.

The best solution to balancing out group dungeoning is probably going to take some work though, because it would involve new content. Essentially, you want to have dungeons that are super challenging for a group and impossible to solo*, preferably designed in tiers so you can do part of it easy in a group (hard to solo), the next part is a bit harder and more rewarding, and the last leg being the party wiper with the reward being a "treasure chest" type thing. Each tier should have an exit ramp if the group wants to call it a day. A faster fix (but still work) would be to just add a super challenging optional tier to some of the runic dungeons that already exist. For example, after you beat the boss at castle mourne you have the choice to take what's there and go home or go to that boss's home plane and fight a fortress to get a treasure chest adjacent prize at the end.

• Making things impossible to solo requires two things. One, you need the ai baddies to attack on all fronts, high ab, high ac, and magic. And two, you need to spawn larger groups. As long as its groups of 3-6 baddies, I will find a way to take them down one group at a time eventually on builds that are optimized against what they are going to do. If you send 30-40 at me at a time, even if it's just in one or two parts of the map and don't give me choke points, as long as they are powerful enough to kill me, I'm going to need a group, and we are going to need to use teamwork to win. If you like the idea, I suggest starting with one, and adjusting that to the perfect spot first before making more to ensure it actually does what is desired.

[Peacewhisper]

It's comparing apples and oranges, really. We're pretty much talking about balancing loot between open dungeons that people can enter on a whim for however long they want and between what's basically a clever way of masking dungeon instancing very much intended for adventuring parties:

• land dungeons need to have loot balanced around people SOLOING them - and we're talking up to ad nauseam 24/7 circlegrind here - currently the only limitations put in place to impede their progress are the 3 hrs runic cooldown and the rate at which ores and regular treasure chests respawn (which is like... every 12-15 min).

• sailing content assumes GROUP action - while the loot can often seem awsome when compared to what a single person picks up during soloing a land dungeon, we're kinda omiting the fact that it still needs to be split between multiple people. Furthermore the progress is also being impeded by factors outside of the player's control - ship spawn rate and RNG (it's a fairly common occurrence to sail 30+ min without encountering any NPC ships).

The basic complaint I'm reading here is that "The loot I get from a 20 min solo dungeon run isn't on par with what 3+ people get out of 4-5 hours of sailing."

I'm going to push back a little bit here.

We are not allowed to circle-grind dungeons. In fact you can have the inventories of your entire character vault wiped as punishment for doing that. Meanwhile you are allowed to sail in circles for hours, finding BETTER loot than you would in dungeons, without having to worry about any of the chests being empty due to a cooldown or bashed. And while sailing might be done as a group, in my experience (this will probably get the thread locked because I'm about to truth-post on the forums) the good loot from pirate chests is rarely shared amongst the whole group. In fact there are in-game mechanics that require you to go get a different ship with a submersible and talk to FOIG NPC to buy FOIG item so the whole system is actually cleverly designed to give the captain a very convenient excuse to exclude most of the crew from loot rolls from chests and to gatekeep other players or groups of players from being able to do it themselves.

I really dislike how this thread derailed like this. No moderation what so ever, no respect for the OP's feedback.
Seriously, I'll find your feedback threads in the future and derail them on purpose.

You guys already do that which is why I did not hold back whatsoever in my last one. It won't change anyone's opinions though.

Unsurprising that sailing players are coming out in droves to defend their gold mine.

Anyone who argues sailing is okay as-is or balanced is either delulu or this.

[Cnaym]

Sailing OP. Solo Dungeons OP.

My suggestion is to go for a mix of RNG and the Gatcha industry. Gimme a writ to go to a dungeon, heck make it random per day so I don't even get to pick the dungeon (I can skip it if I really don't like it).

Gimme the usually chance and loot at the end of the dungeon. Some go solo it in 20 minutes, others go with a big group and struggle for an hour. As long as people are having fun in their own speed it's all good for me.

Here is where I'd slam in the Gatcha mechanic, if I do the funny random dungeon of the day the writ agent send me to, let me have a "PAPERSHEET ITEM OF APPROVAL", no clue what to name it, just a -you did a thing- token.

Lemme trade those for the runic I want, say I want 1x adamantine Ingot, lemme pay with 3 Approval papersheets. In gatcha games they usually go for 50 - 70 fails you get a guaranteed "totally epic and worthwhile thing you wanted"
We could skip the randomness of the last bit by just having it a shop.

Problems I see with it:
Me and my 4 friends all get different dungeons, we now either play through them all together or look for others that have the same dungeon and split the party for an hour or so. It might even encourage working with random people that I usually do not get to interact with, on the other hand if you only got an hour to play today you might prefer to spend it with the friends instead of grabing the daily paperhseet.

That -insert big faction name- can just generate a silly amount of those per day just by having a big number of players. Just uuuuuhhhh... make them not tradeable, only the rewards? Not sure if that helps. Other games also limit the type of reward you can grab in a timeframe, so you can not go for 200 addy ingots because the merchant will go "Nuh uh" after taking ten out already.

Too easy / too hard dungeons. Its probably easier to run Vipers than Bastille, on the other hand if you get an unlucky dungeon just wait for the next one tomorrow?

---

Hope this was more in the OPs mind when making this post. Maybe you all hate this idea, maybe its a good one. I cannot say for sure but it do be an idea

[Dedman1234]

I understand that bringing up sailing in a thread focused on runic dungeons might seem like a tangent, or even like hijacking the discussion, but there's a very good reason why so many people keep returning to the topic.

Let’s step back and ask: what makes a runic dungeon different from a regular one?

The answer is simple: runes and addy. That’s it. Without those, there's little reason to prioritize them over more efficient gold-making methods.

Barring exceptional RNG, there are areas that offer far better returns for less effort. If your build excels at killing undead, you can make serious coin farming the Endless Battlefield at night. Some normal dungeons are extremely loot-efficient: take the Sibayad tombs, for example. In just five minutes, you can grab five chests and a weapon stand, often with better rewards than epic dungeon chests, and at a fraction of the effort.

Runic dungeons, then, only stand out because they used to be the only reliable source for runes and addy.

Right now, farming those materials in runic dungeons isn’t rewarding. In fact, it's usually less profitable than doing easier, faster content.

You could blame the low drop rates, the high difficulty, or the long cooldowns, and you'd have a point. But here’s the real issue: sailing exists.

Why is sailing the problem? Let’s run a thought experiment.

Imagine a version of the game where sailing doesn’t exist or where pirate chests never drop runes, and instead contain only large piles of gold (say, 300k–1.5m per chest). Now, imagine Irongron decides that he (rightfully) hates us, and pushes an update that makes runic shrine rewards require a natural 20 on a d20 roll. Just a 5% chance to get anything.

Would that be a good idea, balance-wise? No. But would it make runic dungeons unrewarding? Also no. Why? Because rune prices would skyrocket. Scarcity increases value. So while you'd get fewer runes, each one would be worth much more. The content would be more RNG-reliant, but not fundamentally unrewarding.

That’s the key point: runic dungeon difficulty and drop rates don’t inherently make them bad. In fact, those things would naturally balance themselves through supply and demand, as long as runes and addy are exclusive to runic content.

That exclusivity used to exist. Epic dungeons were allowed to be hard and quirky because they held a monopoly on rune supply.

That monopoly was shattered when sailing introduced a massive influx of T3 runes. You can run epic dungeons for a week and maybe get one decent T3. But sailing for a week (solo or in a small group) can net you several. That breaks the reward structure of epic dungeons entirely.

So yes, sailing keeps coming up because it’s the root of the problem. If runic dungeons were the only source of runes and addy again, they’d become self-balancing. Scarcity would drive prices, and the challenge would feel meaningful.

In conclusion, the issue isn’t that dungeons are too hard or that drop rates are too low. It’s that sailing flooded the market with runes and addy, making the intended challenge and reward loop of epic runic dungeons irrelevant.

The solution to that is quite simple.

1. Remove runes from sailing completely. There’s no lore justification for them anyway. Did the ancient pirates use to run epic dungeons every day instead of sailing? How did those things end up buried in some chests in the first place? Replace runes in pirate chests with high-value, low-RNG drops like raw gold or gems. For example, stacks of 100k–500k gold in place of runes. So, instead of getting 3 runes in a chest, you'd find 3 extra gold stacks that could be worth from 300k-1.5m. That would also make loot distribution fairer in group sailing, since everyone could get a share of the total value, instead of rolling for the stuff.

2. Buff rune and addy drops in runic dungeons. Tie drop rates and quantities to dungeon difficulty. Once sailing no longer floods the market, rune prices will rise again, but we don’t want them to spike to extreme levels (2m for zardazik made it fun to find, but kinda screwed anyone who needed it). Increased dungeon drops would keep the supply reasonable and make the effort worthwhile again.

Both of those would also 'disconnect' the two systems, so a buff/nerf to either would never accidentally shadow buff/nerf the other.

Also, please, please do not get personal in this thread. We know how that ends.

[Peacewhisper]

So, instead of getting 3 runes in a chest, you'd find 3 extra gold stacks that could be worth from 300k-1.5m. That would also make loot distribution fairer in group sailing, since everyone could get a share of the total value, instead of rolling for the stuff.

I agree with 99.9% of your post and think it is a brilliant post that the devs should consider everything you typed. But I want to pick apart this one statement just so everyone is made aware. Long as there are FOIG methods of opening the pirate chests, and these methods are gatekept by the player base, then these gold sums would still only be shared by the captain and 1-2 of his closest buddies, and the rest of the crew would still most likely be excluded from their rewards. Maybe there would be exceptions but most people are greedy and if you give them an excuse to keep 99% of the loot for themselves most of them will.

Pirate chests should always be openable by the crew that finds them, when they find them, and on top of that whatever's inside should be displayed in the combat log when it is opened so there is no chance for ninja looting or scamming the crew out of most of their share. Long as pirate chests require you to go to FOIG location and have FOIG item bought from FOIG NPC then captains and their first mates will continue to reap the majority of the rewards while the rest of the crewmates putting in the work to board those ships get left out. If you want to keep these obscure methods of opening pirate chests in-game then there should be a dedicated wiki page to it or maybe an in-game book I can find so I don't have to be part of a certain discord group or friends OOC with a dev in order to even learn how to do the content on my own.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Real Thoughts

I don't hate where your head is at here, it actually makes a lot of sense on several different levels. It really depends on what the desired pace of going from 0 to 30 with a full set of gear is, which only irongron and the admins can really answer, but I think that the runic dungeons would have to become substantially more generous or people will be priced out of the high end runes again rather swiftly....and probably by sailors >_>

Anyways, I don't think it's perfect, but there's definitely enough merit to what you are saying that anyone who makes these decisions should probably explore it a little at least.

[Cnaym]

Long as pirate chests require you to go to FOIG location and have FOIG item bought from FOIG NPC then captains and their first mates will continue to reap the majority of the rewards while the rest of the crewmates putting in the work to board those ships get left out. If you want to keep these obscure methods of opening pirate chests in-game then there should be a dedicated wiki page to it or maybe an in-game book I can find so I don't have to be part of a certain discord group or friends OOC with a dev in order to even learn how to do the content on my own.

I did a long think and the only FOIG item I came up with is a shovel? Is the shovel gatekeeping your treasure chests?
This honestly reads like you sailed with terrible people. I haven't encountered anything like this in four years of playing sailors and either sailing with or being captain for almost all of the available player owned ships.

As for the book. Not exactly a bad idea. I know of a captain who put up stone pillars in public detailing how these chests work and holding lectures. You can write a book and have it added to the loot matrix by reaching out to the DMs, this way everyone can find your book in the random bookshelves and chests.

Between underdark, pirates, Cordor and Guldorand / Myon sailors, whenever I had sailing related questions IC or OOC they have been answered to the best of their abilities and I seriously appreciate how friendly the sailing community is with these information things, from the simple stuff to the most obscure things like the rituals.

[Peacewhisper]

I did a long think and the only FOIG item I came up with is a shovel? Is the shovel gatekeeping your treasure chests?
This honestly reads like you sailed with terrible people. I haven't encountered anything like this in four years of playing sailors and either sailing with or being captain for almost all of the available player owned ships.

As for the book. Not exactly a bad idea. I know of a captain who put up stone pillars in public detailing how these chests work and holding lectures. You can write a book and have it added to the loot matrix by reaching out to the DMs, this way everyone can find your book in the random bookshelves and chests.

Between underdark, pirates, Cordor and Guldorand / Myon sailors, whenever I had sailing related questions IC or OOC they have been answered to the best of their abilities and I seriously appreciate how friendly the sailing community is with these information things, from the simple stuff to the most obscure things like the rituals.

I'm not sure how much I am even allowed to say in this thread but to put it simply some of the chests require you to go to FOIG location or have FOIG item from FOIG NPC to even open. So you might find 4 chests in a sail and not be able to open a single one because of the FOIG requirements, which only the captain and his besty knows, and they'll be sure to go open it without you and never say another word to you about it again. I won't say anything about the most recent people I sailed with, you can come to your own conclusions on that. And yeah, obviously there are some good crews, I've been fortunate enough to be part of them which is the only reason I am smart enough to know when I'm getting scammed.

But yeah, anything FOIG related to loot, should have a book found in bookshelves, it shouldn't be curated by select groups of players.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

I did a long think and the only FOIG item I came up with is a shovel? Is the shovel gatekeeping your treasure chests?
This honestly reads like you sailed with terrible people. I haven't encountered anything like this in four years of playing sailors and either sailing with or being captain for almost all of the available player owned ships.

As for the book. Not exactly a bad idea. I know of a captain who put up stone pillars in public detailing how these chests work and holding lectures. You can write a book and have it added to the loot matrix by reaching out to the DMs, this way everyone can find your book in the random bookshelves and chests.

Between underdark, pirates, Cordor and Guldorand / Myon sailors, whenever I had sailing related questions IC or OOC they have been answered to the best of their abilities and I seriously appreciate how friendly the sailing community is with these information things, from the simple stuff to the most obscure things like the rituals.

I'm not sure how much I am even allowed to say in this thread but to put it simply some of the chests require you to go to FOIG location or have FOIG item from FOIG NPC to even open. So you might find 4 chests in a sail and not be able to open a single one because of the FOIG requirements, which only the captain and his besty knows, and they'll be sure to go open it without you and never say another word to you about it again. I won't say anything about the most recent people I sailed with, you can come to your own conclusions on that. And yeah, obviously there are some good crews, I've been fortunate enough to be part of them which is the only reason I am smart enough to know when I'm getting scammed.

But yeah, anything FOIG related to loot, should have a book found in bookshelves, it shouldn't be curated by select groups of players.

My man, you are like the energizer bunny when it comes to talking about the perceived slights on your person imposed upon you by the entire sailing community.

If you are referring to the puzzle part of opening the chest, there is no foig gatekeeping, its right there on the chest for you to figure it out. They aren't that hard, as I can figure them out and I hate puzzles.

And if everyone you have ever sailed with hates you, I can assure you it's not some giant conspiracy. There's something like 1500-2000 Arelith players, we don't all share a hive mind. It sounds like maybe you need to do some self-reflecting on what you are doing that puts you in the same position more than once. And if you are just harping on one situation and overblowing it, like I said there are 1500-2000 Arelith players.

[Peacewhisper]

My man, you are like the energizer bunny when it comes to talking about the perceived slights on your person imposed upon you by the entire sailing community.

If you are referring to the puzzle part of opening the chest, there is no foig gatekeeping, its right there on the chest for you to figure it out. They aren't that hard, as I can figure them out and I hate puzzles.

And if everyone you have ever sailed with hates you, I can assure you it's not some giant conspiracy. There's something like 1500-2000 Arelith players, we don't all share a hive mind. It sounds like maybe you need to do some self-reflecting on what you are doing that puts you in the same position more than once. And if you are just harping on one situation and overblowing it, like I said there are 1500-2000 Arelith players.

I literally said there are some good crews in my post so you are misrepresenting me when you say the entire sailing community.

The issue of opening the chest is not solved upon finding out, it often involves literally having to end the voyage, go talk to a specific NPC in another settlement, get an entirely different vessel, etc.

How many of those 1500-2000 Arelith players have access to long lease ships which enable them to form long lasting crews? If I'm playing a specific character concept confined to a specific settlement, how many of those crews do I have access to? And again, not all crews I've been part of have treated me unfairly, but the one(s) that did left enough of a bad impression on me to shelf all my characters and quit playing for a while.

I am sorry for any further derailment of this thread, I just wanted to make it clear that its a very small minority making the majority of profit from sailing, it's no where near as accessible as dungeons, and the rewards are not always shared equitably so even if you do make a character with 100 sail chances are you'll just get to help make someone else very rich.

[-XXX-]

We are not allowed to circle-grind dungeons. In fact you can have the inventories of your entire character vault wiped as punishment for doing that.

This is a disingenuous claim - it's perfectly possible to entertain seamless PvE grind for as long as people mix it up a little - hit several DISTINCT dungeons in a sequence & I doubt anybody's going to mind. Where things get awkward is when somebody's repeatedly running loops within the SAME dungeon - this functionally cuts off other players from the content and tends to play out the same way as resource camping/logging (an issue that's absent in sailing btw).

Meanwhile you are allowed to sail in circles for hours

We're allowed to sail in circles for hours because the pace of PvE is being regulated by the system - players have no say in how many/frequently/what tier of NPC ships they encounter. That makes impossible to chew through the PvE content at an unintended rate.

FOIG item

ALL the captains I dealt with during the past 3 years have been stockpiling these items before sails in advance so that they could crack the chest open on the spot and share the loot right away. Never have I ever seen/heard of anybody treating this as some kind of carefully guarded secret not meant for the unitiated.

[Kythana]

We are not allowed to circle-grind dungeons. In fact you can have the inventories of your entire character vault wiped as punishment for doing that.

This is absolutely not true. Across the past few years, over all my Arelith characters, I have done many hours of degenerate circlegrinds. Between moneymaking or just leveling, I have never once been talked to in regards to this, or even heard of anything like it. Nor have any of my degenerate solo grinder friends been spoken to about it.

Maybe years ago, this was true, but it isn't anymore.

---

In regards to the gatekeeping: Arelith has a culture almost built around keeping information hidden, and only known by select few parties. Moneymaking strategies, class combinations, builds, rituals, ect. I, personally, used to share a lot of information, when I first started, and learned things that could be taught to players that didn't know.

And then all the things got nerfed, usually overtly harshly. So now I don't talk about this anymore.

I can very easily see the same thing done ingame, in regards to sail. After all, there isn't any desire to have a gold mine effectively killed off.

Buff rune and addy drops in runic dungeons. Tie drop rates and quantities to dungeon difficulty. Once sailing no longer floods the market, rune prices will rise again, but we don’t want them to spike to extreme levels (2m for zardazik made it fun to find, but kinda screwed anyone who needed it). Increased dungeon drops would keep the supply reasonable and make the effort worthwhile again.

A point of clarification here. Adamantine drops used to be better. Previously, the way resource nodes worked, is that they would persist after a server reset.

Meaning, for example, if Red Dragon Isle had adamantine at the end, it would always have adamantine, until the server reset again it. I think eventually you could mine it out during that reset, but it took a long time.

Now, for whatever reason, a bug was introduced maybe... a year ago? Now instead of resourcing persisting, they're random. They spawn from whatever vein they are(common, rich, nobble, grandoise) at the time of entering the area.

But!

They only do this if the previous node was destroyed, or on first initialization. So if someone just never mines the arjale/mithral at the end of certain dungeons, nobody will see Adamantine.

What this meant is that previously, you could find someone ingame that would 'scout' Adamantine, and then have a guaranteed reward if you ran that particular dungeon.

Lastly, I'll remark about something that I wasn't thinking of initially.

Rune price for me, never really seemed to matter, because of hard 5%. There was a gold sink independent of the player-driven economy, that essentially served as an 'alternative' to runes. (Arguably better, for many combinations.) When I first came back a couple of years ago, I barely needed to rune anything I was using, because hard 5%, was on average, cheaper and better.

Now, everyone is forced to use runes. And with the new dweomer system having no release in sight, and hard 5% disabled for almost two years now, it's rough.

[Xerah]

I don't see how talking about sailing is derailing the thread. You can't talk about one without the other since they are the main two ways to gather wealth and are significantly unbalanced. There should be efforts made to close that gap but is that to have dungeons meet sailing? Or meet in the middle?

It really doesn't seem to be derailed at all.

Obviously, the people saying that rewards as is are fine and balanced between the two are objectively wrong, and I assume any reasonable person who reads those posts understands that a really silly view point.

How does balancing rewards between sailing and runic on land dungeons have anything to do with making the latter more social, with less rng, more fun? There can be an argument that if sailing is nerfed, then there will be more contest over the on-land dungeons but I really cant see correlation other than that. Happy to be corrected.

Because whatever gets done will be compared to sailing then judged weather it’s “worth it” or not.

[AstralUniverse]

If there's no longer per-player internal cooldown for runics, replaced with another timer elsewhere that doesnt punish partying, how does it at all compare to sailing? Why would I compare it to sailing?

[Peacewhisper]

This is a disingenuous claim - it's perfectly possible to entertain seamless PvE grind for as long as people mix it up a little - hit several DISTINCT dungeons in a sequence & I doubt anybody's going to mind. Where things get awkward is when somebody's repeatedly running loops within the SAME dungeon - this functionally cuts off other players from the content and tends to play out the same way as resource camping/logging (an issue that's absent in sailing btw).

I am specifically referring to circle-grinding the same dungeon over and over again.

This is absolutely not true. Across the past few years, over all my Arelith characters, I have done many hours of degenerate circlegrinds. Between moneymaking or just leveling, I have never once been talked to in regards to this, or even heard of anything like it. Nor have any of my degenerate solo grinder friends been spoken to about it.

Maybe years ago, this was true, but it isn't anymore.

I was warned over it a year or two ago so I'd really love to get some clarification on whether you are correct or not.

In regards to the gatekeeping: Arelith has a culture almost built around keeping information hidden, and only known by select few parties. Moneymaking strategies, class combinations, builds, rituals, ect. I, personally, used to share a lot of information, when I first started, and learned things that could be taught to players that didn't know.

And then all the things got nerfed, usually overtly harshly. So now I don't talk about this anymore.

I can very easily see the same thing done ingame, in regards to sail. After all, there isn't any desire to have a gold mine effectively killed off.

This is probably 100% correct.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

My man, you are like the energizer bunny when it comes to talking about the perceived slights on your person imposed upon you by the entire sailing community.

If you are referring to the puzzle part of opening the chest, there is no foig gatekeeping, its right there on the chest for you to figure it out. They aren't that hard, as I can figure them out and I hate puzzles.

And if everyone you have ever sailed with hates you, I can assure you it's not some giant conspiracy. There's something like 1500-2000 Arelith players, we don't all share a hive mind. It sounds like maybe you need to do some self-reflecting on what you are doing that puts you in the same position more than once. And if you are just harping on one situation and overblowing it, like I said there are 1500-2000 Arelith players.

I literally said there are some good crews in my post so you are misrepresenting me when you say the entire sailing community.

The issue of opening the chest is not solved upon finding out, it often involves literally having to end the voyage, go talk to a specific NPC in another settlement, get an entirely different vessel, etc.

How many of those 1500-2000 Arelith players have access to long lease ships which enable them to form long lasting crews? If I'm playing a specific character concept confined to a specific settlement, how many of those crews do I have access to? And again, not all crews I've been part of have treated me unfairly, but the one(s) that did left enough of a bad impression on me to shelf all my characters and quit playing for a while.

I am sorry for any further derailment of this thread, I just wanted to make it clear that its a very small minority making the majority of profit from sailing, it's no where near as accessible as dungeons, and the rewards are not always shared equitably so even if you do make a character with 100 sail chances are you'll just get to help make someone else very rich.

Sorry if you feel I misrepresented your viewpoint, it's possible I got confused at how small your issue was with the 20 posts across six or seven threads.

Look, I don't know you, and I don't know what your experiences have been. But if I had to take an educated guess, it sounds like you are obsessing too much over loot. Which is always silly, but it's especially true on Arelith because of how easy it is to get here. You went out sailing with a group that didn't offer you a piece of fancy loot? So what? If it bothers you, don't go out with them again and go get your own loot. Or form your own crew and take out a rental, it's a bit more work moving the ship weapons on and off but not that much and you get to make your own rules about loot.

Like, seriously, you are making too much of whatever it was that got you so riled up about it.

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

If there's no longer per-player internal cooldown for runics, replaced with another timer elsewhere that doesnt punish partying, how does it at all compare to sailing? Why would I compare it to sailing?

Because sailing doesn't have a timer at all, doesn't really punish partying as much as dungeons do, and as a result you get a lot more runes. I agree with you that it's not in the spirit of the op, but it's also easy to see how it naturally went here because you have a clear example of what it could be without the timer and if it were more rewarding in sailing.

[AstralUniverse]

I hugely disagree with the entire comparison to sailing. I dont sail, even if/when sailing is op, even if 100 players told me that sailing is much more profitable, I still would rather not have anything to do with the sailing system, and I play anti-sailing characters with a good RP reason not to sail. I just want to see normal dungeoning more fun, even if the reward would still be much lower than sailing's reward, so I have no point looking at sailing becuase it's so vastly different in the adventure dynamics, the party, the requirement (or lack of) of party etc etc. I also cant find any correlation between the OP's feedback and sailing rewards. We're looking at the how the reward is obtained, not how big the reward is.

[Ork]

The fact that runics are a slot-machine time waster has always irked me. It serves to benefit, similar to sailing, those with more time than sense to dedicate to this game.