Mystikal

No one knows the exact number, but you can always take a tank and go to Abandon Coal Mine to test it out.

This is commendable. But... You wouldn't need to put scammers on blast if people simply accepted the fact that you can't trust anyone outside of their own interests. My view on this is that far too many people have a 24/7 fatal common sense debuff. They are entering into a transaction that leaves them exposed. If you willingly do that in THIS game, you deserve what happens next. As sad as it sounds, TRUST NO ONE is the only safe policy. Don't loan other players adena, mats or equipment, unless you don't expect to get it back. Don't hand over your +15 Cloak to a "friend" who promises that they can make it +18 for you, unless you are willing to walk by a sale shop and see your cloak being sold on a toon that you never saw before. Don't hand over Dragon claws to a friendly clan mate as an IOU -- not even the clan leader -- just because you want to show that you're a good soldier contributing to "the cause." Just. Don't. Do. It. This is L2, not a Nike commercial.

The reality is that there is a limit to how much Ncoin a person can buy. So right off the bat trading Ncoin is going to be seen by the GMs as something that may have been done to side-step policy. There may be a legitimate reason for it, but GMs don't have that luxury. It's a gray area for players, but screaming red for GMs. Whenever players come up with work-arounds, scammers see a huge opportunity to take advantage. The job of the GM, like it or not, isn't to chase scammers. It's to police the EULA and make sure that everyone is in compliance. It's pointless to ask them to do something that furthers the gray area.

Have to side with the other guy. I have played archer and nuker since C1. I don't know any melee class my level, not even a dagger, grand khav or evis that kills faster than me. Order of magnitude? Maybe not 1000x, but I wipe out 2-3 groups of mobs now in seconds while they are still trying to finish their 3rd or 4th mob in the first group. I have to be patient when hunting near melee fighters, because I know that I could clear out the entire area by myself. If I was a greedy player, I would. But I'm not. Is it right? Should it be this way? Only L2 Devs can answer that question for you. This is what they wanted and only they can change that. In the past measures were taken to slow down archers and nukers. I won't be surprised when they do it again. Maybe for now take comfort that Tyrs are getting some love this update.

When event is over everyone is going to have 610,052,161,663,513,321 anniversary coins and lots of pots and cake. This is what happens when L2 hosts a "free" event.

Sorry, I don't want an event that drops any of these items. They NEED to figure out a way to input these items in game so that players can regularly work towards them without needing mana to drop from Heaven. Be it a quest, Fishing game, a special Exalted store, add it to Mammon store, Mentor store, Luxury shop, something. Events should be reserved for really cool and truly special and rare items to drop. If you ask for an event that drops this stuff, believe me, all you're going to get is a series of events that do nothing but drop this crap and not the top items. Be careful what you wish for.

I laugh so hard now when I beat the boss and all I get is buff or xp/sp items that I don't need. And I already know that when the "event" is over I'm going to have tons of coins that aren't used. The least they could do is have a separate Anniversary store where you could use the coins to buy armor, weapons, jewels, artifacts, brooch, cloaks, dragon/cursed weapon fragments, claws, blood, etc., etc. Not saying that everyone would win enough to be able to buy the top items with the anniversary coins, but give us something to shoot for.

Anyone know the drop rate for these? On some days I never get any, then on a day like today I get 2 after farming all day. Not sure how we're supposed to have an event based on these extremely low drop rate/quantity. Also, are the servers still operating under a "peak drop time" schedule, or did they finally get rid of that ridiculous mechanism?

Somehow I just knew the drop rate would be pretty bad.

If we're talking about faming XP and adena, yes, archers are fine. They can be expensive to build. Having so many people play archers keeps the price of even lower grade equipment pretty high compared to melee fighter equipment. If we're talking about farming drops, though, keep in mind that archers are ranged attackers. Most of us complain because we kill mobs from miles away and then have to go run waaaaaay over to where the dead mob is to collect the drops. It gets really annoying if you're in the open field, because the Pick Up command and auto macro both have a very limited radius. Melee fighters don't have that problem, because the mob drops dead at their feet. It's not a major deal breaker, but just something to consider, if you expect to leave your toon logged in AFK overnight expecting that when you wake in the morning you'll have thousands of mats or event drops. No, more than likely you'll miss out on more drops than you pick up.

You just have to be careful not to make your dwarf a Maestro, because then you can't use the Race Change service. But that's not to say that you can't have a Maestro main and pick Feoh as your dual class.

Maybe think of it this way. Imagine you want to knock down a wall. M. Skill Power means you're going to hit that wall 3% harder every time no matter what. M. Skill Critical Damage means that on the occasional times that you hit the wall EXTRA ,EXTRA hard (i.e., a magic crit), you're going to do more damage by 3%. But it doesn't mean that you will always hit the wall extra extra hard, just that when you do -- and if the wall is still standing -- it will be really, really hurt. In most cases the wall will be obliterated or very near to it. Most people pick Skill Crit Damage because hitting a little harder every time is still less damage over time usually than a Crit + Extra Damage. But in the end, it's all up to how you want to build your character. There are a few ways to increase Power and Crit Damage now in game. How you prioritize that is up to you. One last thing to consider -- it wont be that easy to enchant up the Homunculus. You will have plenty of time to figure out what works best. PS: Defense won't save you. There's really not much you can get from Homunculus, Agathion or whatever that will keep you upright if Raid Boss or other stacked character targets you. So best to boost what you're already good at, which is dealing damage.

What are YOU smoking? Hope it's in a state where it's legal. I re-read those posts and no is complaining about the conversion rate of Ncoin. When someone mentions "opportunity costs" they are referring precisely to other things that they could buy/do with their Ncoins and resources that would earn more money. I think you totally missed their points.

It's hard to exploit what appears to be "normal." It's not like adena drop rates are officially published anywhere by NCSoft. Even if they were, who knows the adena drop tables by rote? I suspect the adena boost has been in place for many weeks, if not months. Anyone who went to IOS would have benefited without even knowing it. Just because players make a conscious decision to maximize their profits by going there with alts doesn't make it an exploit. That's no different than doing a repeatable quest as many times as you can in order to earn enough income to buy equipment. The simple fact is, you can do that now with the other instances. Anyone with an alt of the appropriate level can. (It's not a coincidence that so many Atlas earrings are now +12. There really aren't that many new people in the game who were mentees. ) No, the fault isn't with the players. It's with NCSoft and whomever is responsible for oversight. As evinced by today's conflagration of issues, the GMs, the poor souls, are overwhelmed. They can't check every aspect of the game to ensure that content and performance is progressing as intended. If no one had ever mentioned it, IOS would probably still have the higher boosted adena drop rate. But they finally caught it and the matter should be closed. Let's just hope there aren't any other IOS-type issues out there.

Are you solo, or in party? If you have 2-3 buffbots in party with you that are just standing around, that probably explains the drain. I personally didn't see any change in my MP, hunting in IOS (solo) this morning, and Imperial Tomb (solo) and other places after the unexpected server maintenance with OOP Dominator.

I figured it would be bad. IIRC, for me before the nerf (call it correction if you like) with Prestige it was ~400 - 490K; Prestige + buff was ~800 - 980K per mob. Or something like that. Not that logic has anything to do with it, but higher levels generally entail higher overhead as weapons, armor and ancillary items cost drastically more. Higher level instance drops should reflect that increase in scale, not less. The original adena drop settings for IOS were perfectly aligned with helping players meet the financial challenges at those higher levels. Reducing the drops to R95 levels serves no one. Does anyone know for how long the increased adena drop was in place? It has to be more than just this week if @Massacre sounded the alarm back on April 10th. Obviously the GMs didn't monitor this at all. Is there any chance the higher adena drop rate was in place at the very beginning of the previous update??? I'm really curious to know the answer. It's one thing to have one wild stallion bolt the barn, but it sounds like the entire stable of horses broke out and they're now punishing the newcomers for it.

Clearly the complaint struck a chord with them. Have you ever seen anything get patched this quickly with this game? Ever???? I can't stop laughing. Luckily, I did my full day's worth of IOS early this morning. I'll go back tomorrow just to compare how badly the adena drop is. I'm guessing it will be similar to other places, or worse. No point in buying any more recharges from the store or players.

It looks like they're "drastically reducing" the adena drop amount now on Isle of Souls. I sure hope for your sake that none of the "top players" that you referenced knows the names of any of your in-game characters. You just drew a HUGE bullseye on all of them.

Sounds to me like you fixed something that the community didn't think needed fixing. (And why did you prioritize that over some of the more severe issues???) I feel badly for people that bought all of those recharge tokens and Prestige packs.

They also need to ditch the idea of making all of the XP scrolls Level III, which is their way of making them unstackable.

7 Day Vit Runes should be handed out either way. Cats Balls and GM buffs alone won't do it.

They screwed the pooch when they decided to make ether not tradeable AND to require so much of it to craft anything. That is all compounded by the fact that the drop rate for ether is also ridiculously low. No, not worth it to level a crafter at this point. Takes too long to earn a profit.

Yes, you will see a noticeable difference in your damage output and XP rate DE vs. Human. With some classes balance is good. But Feoh is one of the top damage dealers in the game. I would want to maximize that, not curtail it. Besides, usually people equate "balance" with survivability. When a stacked archer hits you for 1M damage crit, you're going to drop no matter which race of mage you play. The last thing you'll want is balance in that moment. You'll want the ability to hit them back just as hard, if not harder. But in the end it comes down to what YOU like. I don't want to influence your decision. If you like Human Feoh, then definitely go that route. Nothing worse than playing a game for months and years when you hate how your toon looks.

Your class remains the same. Only your race changes and you get the stats from the race that you are changing to. You must tell them which race and model (by model I mean appearance, i.e., fighter look or mage look). With humans, the fighter model looks different from the mage model appearance. Keep in mind that Dark Elf has the most INT stat of all of the classes, so changing from a DE to any of the other races means that you will have less m. atk. Depending on your equipment and playstyle that may or may not factor into your decision.

Getting back to this topic. I agree. Do not change Isle of Souls drop rates/amount, or special adena boost skill. If anything, give us more mobs there and make other instances as lucrative, perhaps through drops of rare items. Anyway, I finally decided to test out IOS to see what I could earn. I bought max IOS Recharges. I already had drop rate/amount runes in my inventory. Unfortunately, I only have one character that is high enough level to enter the zone. I entered with only 1M adena in my pocket, leaving most of my adena in WH. Results? After full max recharge time was expended I was able to make 4.8B adena. I probably could have earned more if I picked a different spot where more mobs spawned. It goes without saying, if I had other characters that were 107, I would send them there, too, to maximize earnings. I'm not greedy. I'm already "rich". I'd be ok with making just ~5B a day in IOS. But if I was like other diehard gamers with squads of well-geared toons over 107, yeah, I could easily see them earning 20B a day or more. Some say having a few players with that kind of income ruins the market. I disagree. What ruins the market is rarity of items combined with very greedy market players. Surpluses usually drive prices down, curtailing demand...except when you factor in L2 sellers, who usually overprice things from the beginning. L2 players are the worst. Many of them would probably find themselves in court for unfair business practices, if not in jail.