Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Epilogue

In my previous posts, I have explored the world of those players (like myself) who used the mentoring mechanic in EverQuest 2 to complete the void shard missions in The Shadow Odyssey instances with mobs set 13 – 29 levels lower than themselves. I have provided my justification and motivation for doing grey shard runs. I also explained how the execution of performing shard runs took me a bit more effort than a lot of critics of the practice will credit. But the big question still remains: was it worth it?

If the purpose was just to get the void shard gear, the answer is yes. That said, I really don’t like the fact that SOE came out and basically announced to non-raiders that you must get this gear in The Shadow Odyssey or you are a n00b. In the Rise of Kunark expansion, I liked the fact that there were a couple of good pieces of gear for each slot I could shoot for and people would run around in different gear. In fact, people could debate which pieces you should wear based on other pieces of gear you can wear. Not in TSO. All I can say is I am glad that EverQuest 2 has appearance slots or I would get sick of looking at everyone running around in tier 2 gear. In RoK, I enjoyed the journey looking for and acquiring gear. In TSO, you are a rat in a maze trying to find the lever to get a piece of cheese.

Are doing grey shard runs fun? At first, yes. I found doing the missions interesting as we tried to figure out all the tricks the devs put into the content. But after the 10th time running doing a mission, I got bored. I enjoyed the company, but besides that, grey shard runs really are not fun.
Would I recommend to a player that they should do grey shard runs? No, because SOE has announced they are an exploit. But even if they were not an exploit, I would answer no. I have another path I recommend you follow.

If you are just reaching the Kylong Plains in the Rise of Kunark expansion, I would highly recommend doing all of the non-raid content you can, concentrating on earning as much alternate achievement experience you can. When you get to level 76, start doing the Moors of Ykesha content at the same time for a little variety. As you level, pay attention to anything that you will need to do your epic weapon quest. If you get the chance to join a group going into someplace like Deep Forge every once in a while once you hit level 75, do it. Just having a piece or two of shard gear waiting for you will make things so much sweeter when you hit 79 or 80. Aim to get the best gear you can. Some of the class forums have sticky posts that help a lot. This is advice I followed when I leveled from 64 to 80.

(Note: Yes, I started the Kylong Plains content at level 64. I was already a master alchemist, so no level restriction. Remember I wrote earlier about going to places a few levels lower than I should be? Plus, Kylong Plains really was made for rangers and my main is a wood elf ranger.)

Once you’ve hit level 80, start trying to acquire your class’ fabled weapon. You don’t have to make it your main focus. Just be ready for when a chance to do another step comes along. And then do the easy TSO shard missions. The librarian quest in Deep Forge is the easiest, although it looks like our guild is going to do whatever shard quest is in that instance. Yes, we are still going to do the TSO instances. We have guildies to equip and we took a new level 75 necromancer in for his first 2 shards Monday night. Taking on the mobs with the instance set at level 80 is much more fun. We were gimped by only having 5 members and no plate tank, but like my grey shard run partner said, “we’re going to do the run the big boy way.”

Update: On July 9, 2009, Kiara posted the following on the EQ2 forums...

Whilst grey shard runs are technically an exploit (in that we did not intend for the content to be used in this way) it's been part of gameplay for long enough that changing things now would simply be punishing to our players and a major buzz kill.

Going forward we're going to do our best to ensure that we prevent stuff like this, but we won't be "breaking" the current dynamic.

* puts the topic to bed *

Thanks all!

Previous post: Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Implimentation

Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Implementation

One of the more amusing memes that circulated through the official EverQuest 2 forums is that players doing grey shard runs are expending no effort and taking no risk to get their tier 1 and tier 2 shard armor. I will grant that players with good gear and have kept up their combat arts and spells will experience little risk in doing the missions with the zones set so the mobs are grey (level 69 and below if you’re party consists of level 80 toons). During the time I was gearing up, I only died in combat 5 times. But no effort?

I performed 3 major tasks to get my shard gear. The first task involved getting all 4 of the Far Seas Strategic Pricing Guides to get the recipes I wanted. The recipe books are only found as chest drops when completing a trade skill instance. My guild found through experimentation that 3 member parties are the optimum size to do the instances, when comparing drop rates vs. time spent in the instances. The instances can also be soloed, although you really need to be good or you’ll be in the instances for hours. My first time soloing a trade skill instance took me over 3 hours. My fastest time to solo a trade skill instance is 2 hours 6 minutes while two members of the guild were able to do the instances under 1 hour 45 minutes. I’m estimating that I spent 15-20 hours doing the trade skill instances.

The next step in the process was to run the shard missions with the instances set to level 50-66. To do this requires what my guild calls a mentor bot. A mentor bot is a character that stays in either The Commonlands or Everfrost and is available to join a group to set the zone to a low level and is usually an alt of someone in the party doing the grey shard run. The mechanics of using the mentor bot run something like this. The party goes to the quest giver and gets the shard missions. The player with the mentor bot logs onto the mentor bot while the other party members go to the entrance of the instance. The mentor bot is then invited to the group, mentored and the party then enters the zone, setting the zone to the level of the mentor bot. The player with the mentor bot then logs into the adventuring character and the shard run can begin. We only had one problem: no level 50 mentor bots.

Do you remember in an earlier post that I mentioned that I am in a crafting guild? Well, when players were allowed into the beta for The Shadow Odyssey, all of our attention was on all the cool crafting content coming out. So the guild didn’t have a level 50 alt we could mentor to. I did have a level 31 character that we discovered could set the Befallen instances to level 50, but the instances in Everfrost required characters that actually were 50. For a while we mentored someone who was nice enough to stay logged in with his level 60-something character, but that ended once he turned 66 or 67. So while most people were fighting level 52-53 mobs, a good portion of the time my guildie and I were duo’ing level 63-67 level mobs. Let me tell you, those mobs were severely under conned! We finally stopped when we fought the named beholder in Anathema when it was green. We beat it after only wiping once (and neither of us with a full set of tier one gear or epic weapons!), but that was the end of mentoring our kind-hearted tier 7 guildie.

So that led to the third task: creating a level 50 alt. Remember how we were using a level 31 character to set the zones in Befallen? He was my paladin, and I wasn’t about to try leveling him without betraying him to Freeport to become a shadowknight. So I started to work on a level 22 necromancer that I liked. Notice I said I liked the character. That meant not power-leveling my necromancer and trying to get a good amount of alternate achievement experience. After 28 days and probably 30 - 35 hours played I finally had a level 50 mentor bot. Once we had our mentor bot, we were able to do 2-4 shard runs a night instead of 1-2 shard runs. Also, the shard runs went a lot faster, since we were fighting toons 12-15 levels lower than before. Believe it or not, even though the mobs were still grey, it mattered, and we noticed the difference.

So how much effort did I put into obtaining my shard gear? Well, first I spent 15-20 hours of the effort obtaining the recipes to make the shard armor. And I spent 30-35 hours leveling a mentor bot. The big question is how long did it take to do an average shard mission? Well, right before Kiara made the announcement of grey shard runs being an exploit, our group had grown to 5 people and with two of us with fabled epics and three of us in tier 2 armor we averaged 10 minutes a mission. That time includes travel between the instances and doing the mentor bot dance. I’ll use that average for the period when I was duo’ing (and occasionally trio’ing near the end) the content to get my void shards for the gear. So let’s see. To craft all 6 pieces of the tier 2 armor took 150 shards. 150 x 10 minutes = 25 hours. Add in the full set of Trueshot jewelry, the Gem of Farseeing, and a minor piece of jewelry I made and that time goes up to 35 hours. So what was my total time acquiring my shard gear? I’m estimating 80-90 hours. Did someone say I spent no effort obtaining my gear? I’m not claiming to have faced a lot of risk, but I expended no effort? I supposed you have some ocean-front property in Arizona you’d like to sell me too.

Previous posts:
Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Justification
Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Motivation

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Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Epilogue

Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Motivation

Up until Kiara’s April 1st announcement on the official EverQuest 2 forums concerning the use of the mentoring mechanic to set a zone to level 50-60 characters so void shard missions could be done easier (a.k.a. a “grey shard run”), I honestly believed that the practice, while cheesy, was not an exploit. But as a guild mate pointed out to me, just because the devs allow a practice doesn’t mean you should do it. True. Also, if you’ve read the first post on The Nosy Gamer back in February, you know I stopped playing World of Warcraft partially because of the end game grind. So why would I engage in a practice that not only is cheesy but is the gaming equivalent of a rat running through a maze to poke a lever and receive a piece of cheese? After all, I play a wood elf, not a ratonga.

The first reason was simple. I had completed most of my crafting goals on my main and only had one more to accomplish: shard armor. While most of the server swarmed the Moors of Ykesha and The Shadow Odyssey instances scattered throughout Norrath, I, along with my guildies and a lot of crafters, swarmed over the new trade skill instances. This task was made a bit tougher due to bugs with the system that kept a lot of players (including myself) from entering the instances 2-3 days after the launch of the expansion. Eventually I did manage to acquire enough Far Seas Trading tokens to buy the limited use recipe books for alchemists, a complete set of crafting armor (although not the crafting jewelry), and the unicorn with the great harvesting bonuses. During this time I also completed the quest to get the Cloak of the Harvester, a cloak that not only gives harvesting bonuses but grants the wearer feather fall. But more importantly, at least as far as this post is concerned, is I acquired all four of the Far Seas Strategic Pricing Guides. The Far Seas Strategic Pricing Guides are the recipe books crafters use to make the tier 1 and tier 2 shard armor as well as jewelry, weapons, and charms. Once I discovered I could make my own armor, I determined that I wanted to run around in well-crafted armor with my name on it. In EQ2, the crafter’s name is displayed on armor, weapons, and jewelry. Cool!

The second reason is a bit more complex and goes to the differences in itemization between the Rise of Kunark and The Shadow Odyessy expansions. In RoK, I determined that once I stepped foot in the Kylong Plains that I would seek out and acquire the best non-raid equipment I could as I leveled up. I researched the various faction armor I could wear while progressing and found the sticky in the Ranger forums on the best non-raid tier 8 gear a Ranger could own. I was really pleased with that choice, not only because of the places I wound up visiting at a bit lower level than I should have, but with my performance. I didn’t realize how well I was doing until my guild joined into a raiding alliance with 2 other guilds and while level 75-77 was regularly outparsing the level 80 rangers in the raid and staying within shouting distance of a level 80 assassin’s dps. By the time TSO was released last November, the only piece of gear I wore that was not listed in the equipment list on the forums were my boots. Even though I could never get the Trooper Scale Boots to drop, I was really proud of what I achieved. Because of the hodge-podge of equipment I wore, I didn’t look like anything special, but an experienced player would know I packed a wallop.

The Shadow Odyssey is a whole different ballgame. Having the Far Seas Strategic Pricing Guides allowed me to see just how much better the shard armor was than my hard won RoK gear. The best non-raid gear was going to be found in the group instances. And the gear to get was the shard armor, which I knew would cost 38 shards to acquire the tier 1 set if I made it and an additional 112 shards to craft the tier 2 set. I also saw the writing on the wall for this expansion. In order to get into groups I was going to need to have at least a set of tier 1 armor and probably tier 2. Even those players who didn’t realize the importance of upgrading their spells and combat arts from apprentice 4s to adept 3s were going know enough about the expansion to know that shard armor is some of the best gear. While I’m a crafter, I do like to adventure on occasion and if I wanted to be able to get into groups six months after the launch of the expansion, I needed to get the shard armor.

I was already starting a month behind in the quest for the armor since I concentrated on my crafting. So how was I going to catch up, especially since I only had 60-90 minutes a night to play during the week? Simple, really. Since the devs had not declared doing the shard missions an exploit, I jumped at the chance to do grey shard runs when I was first invited about a month after the expansion launched.

I know I could have tried to get groups, but with so little available play time I figured the only groups I could get were guild groups and quite frankly, our small guild of tradeskillers and merchant adventurers didn’t have enough people to tackle the TSO instances at level. Back in November, we had 3 players with level 80 toons and no one had their fabled weapons. And at the time I started doing the grey shard runs, the guild’s level 80 healer left the game to play WoW because the launch went so poorly for the crafter content she bought the expansion to experience. Duo’ing the instances with the other level 80 in the guild just seemed the thing to do.

Before anyone tells me I should have left my guild for a bigger guild that would meet my needs better, I just want to say one thing. I’m in a high-end CRAFTING guild I have been a part of for almost 2 years filled with great people. A guild to which I have contributed almost 2 million guild status points to help level the guild to 76. And did I mention we have a tier 3 guild hall with all the amenities? If you think I’m going to leave my guild and the great people that make up my guild in order to play EverQuest 2 the way you think I should, you have another thing coming!

So why did I do grey shard runs? To make the best crafted gear I could make. To make gear not only for the joy of creating it, but to have cool gear I could wear that has my name on it. Cool gear that is amongst the best non-raid gear in the game that will help me find and join groups outside my guild when the feeling to plunge into an instance overtakes me. And to play the game in a way to allow me to stay in the guild where all of my on-line game friends reside.

Previous post: Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Justification
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Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Justification

The reaction on the official EverQuest 2 forums to Kiara’s statement that running the shard missions in The Shadow Odyssey instances with the mobs grey is an exploit has been interesting. Instead of adding to the storm, I’ll post my comments here.

My first comment is I really don’t like the way SOE has handled the whole grey shard issue. I’m not talking about Kiara’s statement or the decision to declare using the mentoring mechanic to make mobs grey in the TSO instances to make getting shard easy an exploit. My problem is the statement was not made four months ago. If the devs didn’t know about the situation before TSO launched in November, that means they weren’t listening to their beta testers. Seeing the s***storm that has erupted on the forums the past few days, I think I can fairly say, “Epic fail, SOE, epic fail!” I really want to see how SOE will clean up the mess.

Why would I be upset with the developers waiting over 4 months to declare grey shard runs an exploit? Because I did them. Why would I engage in an exploit? Back in December a really good argument could be made that the developers wanted casual players and players in small guilds to do grey shard runs. The argument runs something like this. The devs did not want to keep casual players or players from small guilds from being able to get the really good non-raid loot. Heck, the devs wanted to give those players the ability to someday be able to do the instances. But at the same time they wanted to provide challenging content to the not-so-casual to hardcore players. The TSO instances are designed to be challenging to full (6-toon) parties of well-geared players with up-to-date spells. To give an idea of the difficulty levels involved, Runny-Eye 2 was considered to be a moderately difficult zone. The question was: how were the devs going to allow the casual player to get phat lewt while providing the challenging content the other players demanded? After all, if casuals and small guild members could get the gear over a long period of time, they would stay subscribed to the game longer and SOE would rake in the bucks. And quite frankly, casual players outnumber the hard-core raiders.

The answer seemed to be to allow players to form groups with level 75-80 players and then allow them to group with a level 50-65 character, mentor that lower level character to set the zone to level 50-65, then unmentor the lowbie and do the shard mission. A dev apparently even suggested players do this mentoring trick on the beta forums for the expansion. I didn’t actually see the post in question, and apparently all the beta forum posts have been destroyed. But I heard of the post, and the post coincided with some things I had heard on blogs and on the official forums from casual players lamenting the fact that SOE made the instances too hard and their only recourse was to do grey shard runs to get the phat lewt.

The concept of allowing players to do grey shard runs also made sense in another way. The only rewards for players doing grey shard runs are the shard, 15 gold pieces, a few percent of an AA level plus whatever silver drops from the mobs. Players doing the missions at level 80 can get a second shard from a chest, have the ability to see and gather shinies (collectables), get chest drops, and win more money from mobs. Not only that, but the alternate achievement gain is greater as well. So players doing grey shard runs could eventually get the nice shiny shard armor, but not gain nearly as much as players running the instances as designed. In my mind SOE, or perhaps just the developers who coded the expansion, actually intended for casual players to do the shard missions with the mobs 20 levels lower than themselves.

So while grey shard runs were cheesy, by themselves, they were not an exploit. However, grey shard runs were part of a really big exploit involving the selling of the otherwise no-trade (or bind on pickup) void shards. The scam worked like this. The exploiter, a level 75 to 80 adventurer and a level 79 or 80 tradeskiller who has all 4 Far Seas Strategic Pricing Manuals, would do a number of instances grey and be able to collect 6-8 shards in 60 – 90 minutes each day. That’s 40-50 void shards per week. The exploiter would then offer to make shard items using the commission system. The catch in the system is that instead of shards being an ingredient in the receipe, shards are considered fuel. That meant that the exploiter could actually sell the no-trade shards to the buyer of the armor, usually at 5 platinum pieces (500 gold pieces) per shard. Can you see how a person could become very rich, very quickly using this exploit? And since doing grey void shard runs makes the scam work better, I can understand the rationale for opposing the runs.

Did you notice I wrote “were a part of a really big exploit”? That is because in Game Update 51 the devs fixed the commission system so the shards cannot be sold. So there goes that rationale. But I still won’t do any more grey shard runs. They are an exploit; SOE in the form of Kiara have told us so.

Next post: Confessions of a Grey Shard Runner: Motivation