Leave the ponds alone

[Ibid49]

i.e., get rid of or otherwise swap out the "Cleanse the Ponds" Daily Quest.

I have seen other posts suggesting the whole Daily Quest area could use some love, and while I do agree with that, I also recognize that it's not a small thing in terms of production time.

So until a full overhaul of the Daily Quest feature can be done, maybe a much simpler balancing effort could be achieved by just swapping the Toads out with another monster and changing the Daily Quest copy. The Toads are never in Trials, and they are likewise absent for large swaths of the Story. So to accomplish that Daily, it means you're running Marcus's Village 2 or 3 times every day (or at least every day you get that particular quest). This makes for tedious, repetitive gameplay, which no one likes.

So, until there's time in the production schedule for a Daily Quest overhaul, I'd suggest replacing the toads with another monster that is prevalent throughout the game, like the Lich. You could call it Rat Infestation or something (that's what they look like to me, anyway).

[fanficplea]

+1
With the new randomized starting point, I dislike this particular quest even more. It throws the monster count off. If we could leave this quest out of the rotation, it would make the daily quests work much better for me.

[Jose Sarmento]

Or meanwhile, just run Oasis map in act 3?

[d99mlu]

I tend to agree, the daily grind should be made up by stuff you can kill in trials.

[Ibid49]

+1
With the new randomized starting point, I dislike this particular quest even more. It throws the monster count off. If we could leave this quest out of the rotation, it would make the daily quests work much better for me.

Yeah, I didn't understand the random starting point either. Don't know if it happens the first time through or only on subsequent passes, but it really doesn't make sense for the story narrative. Before, it made sense, starting by the village gate. Now it's like "I need to find my friend Marcus. Why am I in some random person's house? Or halfway to the Black Gate?" Makes me wonder if it's a bug of some sort.

[DawgBisquet]

Not really a bug. It messes up the cheaters who run with bots.

[osoviejo]

It's by design--it's just not a very good one. Significantly diminishing the story experience for 50,000 players in order to thwart a few cheaters is a poor trade-off in my view.

[DawgBisquet]

It's by design--it's just not a very good one. Significantly diminishing the story experience for 50,000 players in order to thwart a few cheaters is a poor trade-off in my view.

Maybe some code that requires one to walk through the correct door or stand on a circle to launch story? Just barnstorming now.

[RandomNonsense]

I have thought the random starting point was a bug as well. I have been playing a couple of months now but it only started happening recently. Odd to be doing Gorgona zone and have it start halfway through the zone. The toad one in Marcus village is really annoying though as you have to go back and forth to get all the frogs or do the zone an extra time for the daily quest.

[Jose Sarmento]

Or meanwhile, just run Oasis map in act 3?

[Travis | Support Mgr.]

Randomized starting points only kick in after a certain number of runs. It's a first pass at scripting prevention. I've been told that it will get better.

[adjacentengels]

Randomized starting points only kick in after a certain number of runs.

If this is the intended behavior then there may be an actual bug; I've gotten random starting location before I've completed all stars on a map with a given hero. I didn't make notes on it, but I noticed it while I was working on getting more stars with a secondary hero a week or two ago. If I notice it happening again I'll note which map and how many stars I already had on the hero.

[hades0505]

If this is the intended behavior then there may be an actual bug; I've gotten random starting location before I've completed all stars on a map with a given hero. I didn't make notes on it, but I noticed it while I was working on getting more stars with a secondary hero a week or two ago. If I notice it happening again I'll note which map and how many stars I already had on the hero.

The count is not based on the amount of completions in a map, alas on the number of times it has been entered.

[fanficplea]

Or meanwhile, just run Oasis map in act 3?

Thank you very much for this suggestion! I ran heroic Oasis twice this morning and got all the toads, sisters and archers I needed for my quests, plus some gemstones.

[Jose Sarmento]

Thank you very much for this suggestion! I ran heroic Oasis twice this morning and got all the toads, sisters and archers I needed for my quests, plus some gemstones.

Indeed, it's a great map, fulfilling all quest types (Archers I'm not sure?). And as far as I can tell from recent runs, the randomized starting point "range" doesn't affect the Merloks count.

Longer than Village, though. But much better drops given the high nr of Elites.