I just completed the story board through Normal level. I set up a new account and ran one new hero, Warrior, from new born through level 70. I mostly ran the story board straight through, except for the quests that had me loop back to a completed map. I am now at CL43, and I just completed Trial 25 without a scratch in only 2:06, so there is a lot of gas left in that tank. But the transition from everything is a quest, to "you're on your own kid" feels like too abrupt of a change for a true newbie player.
I liked the new additional quest challenges and that quests now give gems, gold, XP, and good quality gear awards. I thought that the tavern menu items, like ginger beer, coffee, and mushroom soup were also a nice touch. Though Aliaron offered an Ephemeral Tea quest that turned out to be a one off (i.e., never saw ingredients to make another tea), so maybe that should be on the tavern menu as well. At first, the tavern items seemed to be priced out of reach, but I purchased several ginger beers when I started running trials to get the CR boost.
I liked that the quests got the hero almost completely through level 70 (mine finished at level 68). My warrior has a full set of gear (6-pc. Adventurer) from the quest awards, but most of that is level 60-65 epic gear that is now grayed out and needs to be replaced. Also, every piece of gear was from Adventurer gear set, so the player would have no idea about the different set gear bonuses. It is good that the player has a chance to run a full gear set, but it would be better to give them a couple of non-Adventurer pieces as well to try out.
My problem after finishing Normal story mode is that I do not have any warrior set gear recipes, and my hero hasn't crafted anything since the initial crafting quest. It would be better to set up recipes so that a Warrior only choses from Warrior recipes. As a new player, I would feel let down that after getting such nice gear and jewelry through quest rewards, now I am completely on my own to create an entirely new set of gear and jewelry. I am thinking that there should be a few additional quests after the player hits Heroic level to reacquaint them with crafting gear and jewelry again. Maybe these quests could be moved out of Normal story mode (where they are not really needed due to solid quest gear rewards) and into the transition to Heroic level play.
I liked the new additional quest challenges and that quests now give gems, gold, XP, and good quality gear awards. I thought that the tavern menu items, like ginger beer, coffee, and mushroom soup were also a nice touch. Though Aliaron offered an Ephemeral Tea quest that turned out to be a one off (i.e., never saw ingredients to make another tea), so maybe that should be on the tavern menu as well. At first, the tavern items seemed to be priced out of reach, but I purchased several ginger beers when I started running trials to get the CR boost.
I liked that the quests got the hero almost completely through level 70 (mine finished at level 68). My warrior has a full set of gear (6-pc. Adventurer) from the quest awards, but most of that is level 60-65 epic gear that is now grayed out and needs to be replaced. Also, every piece of gear was from Adventurer gear set, so the player would have no idea about the different set gear bonuses. It is good that the player has a chance to run a full gear set, but it would be better to give them a couple of non-Adventurer pieces as well to try out.
My problem after finishing Normal story mode is that I do not have any warrior set gear recipes, and my hero hasn't crafted anything since the initial crafting quest. It would be better to set up recipes so that a Warrior only choses from Warrior recipes. As a new player, I would feel let down that after getting such nice gear and jewelry through quest rewards, now I am completely on my own to create an entirely new set of gear and jewelry. I am thinking that there should be a few additional quests after the player hits Heroic level to reacquaint them with crafting gear and jewelry again. Maybe these quests could be moved out of Normal story mode (where they are not really needed due to solid quest gear rewards) and into the transition to Heroic level play.