[Trexmaster]

Many people are not fond of what it presently takes to finish a character in terms of getting their EXP and items.

Korvara is in a state where grinding is not much different than g6, where it is simply a means to an end. It is the barrier between you and playing your character the way you want to play them. It is especially important you finish your character if you ever want to participate in events involving PvE, or you will be an active detriment both ICly and OOCly bar EM intervention.

The Grind is not something people enjoy. It is a hurdle to be stepped over as quickly as possible, and yet Korvara is designed in a way as to make this hurdle an arduous one if you lack the support to overcome it without wanting to spoon your eyes out of your skull, lest you be blessed with not a single soul trying to grind anything you are.

Minimizing how much time is spent grinding for the sake of The Grind means more time for people to devote to more productive things. Like roleplaying on this roleplay mandatory game. Very few people enjoy roleplaying during the The Grind. The Grind is the time for getting your character to the point you want your character to be.

I believe we can both minimize The Grind and also make it more enjoyable for the time that IS spent having to get your character up to snuff with the rest of the crowd.


To minimize The Grind:

There are multiple issues making The Grind take far longer than it really should.

PROBLEM: Spawns are timegated, heavily. This becomes an issue if any more than one party of players are attempting to level at a time, and is generally frustrating to deal with. Forcing players to artificially extend the amount of time they're forced to farm EXP or items, rather than roleplay with their characters.

SOLUTION: Higher spawn rate, more mob spawns. A simple band-aid solution if nothing else. There are a plethora of other things that could be done, but this seems the most feasible fix without any drastic changes required to make things feel at least a little bit better.

PROBLEM: Some crafting materials and many equipment pieces are pure RNG to get, thus further delaying the character building process. The amount of RNG involved is simply egregious, the projected odds of getting a 9* item in particular being in the ball park of 1/40,000~ nowadays per eligible mob killed. And you can get maybe like, 30-40 or so attempts every 15 minutes.

SOLUTION: More consistent, reliable means of attaining items and craft materials. Such as the casino once more offering the craft materials it does on G6. It'd give more purpose to murai. Treasure maps and diving were G6s answers to some items. Korvara could use its own system for such, part of which may be covered in another proposed solution.

To make The Grind more enjoyable:

Currently The Grind boils down to farming whatever mobs are easiest, or whichever ones you're hunting a 10* from. It detracts from roleplay when the path to progress is always the same: watch someone hose down mobs for a few in-game days. Or do it yourself when you're searching for items.

PROBLEM: Reward is not commensurate to the difficulty presented by some dungeons. Obvious examples being the Minotaur Labyrinth and the Dual Colored Star.

SOLUTION: This one isn't an easy, binary fix. It would require tuning the rewards for dungeons specifically taking into account how overall difficult they are to clear. There are many ways you could go about doing this. A potential idea I had would be to introduce unique rewards to each dungeon, something like Worxas/Esthel/Sothis/Nephel fragments, which could be then used in new crafting recipes to make specific otherwise uncraftable items, to enchant items with boss only enchants, etc. A universally desirable currency item, essentially. Some dungeons like Minotaur Labyrinth might require something even more so it isn't left to rot still, but this solution is already dragging on.

PROBLEM: It's weird needing to have all your characters grind in a dungeon to see character progression.

SOLUTION: More ways to earn Legend Ink than simply grinding repeatedly. Item acquisition that doesn't depend on farming firebloods. The first thing that comes to mind is implementing something akin to Mabinogi's Commerce. Delivering trade goods between nations and getting EXP and money for the time spent walking back and forth, while also providing an RP opportunity in the process. Systems like this that encourage doing things aside from monster culling that contribute to the livelihood of the world.


TL;DR

We want more time to RP and less time spent needing to slave away at The Grind in ways that are not conducive to enjoyable roleplay.

Honestly. Who here really enjoys a riveting RP in Lava Lake as you grind once more for items, or to level a new character the 3rd+ time through. Characters are forced into that position if they want to ding level 60, unless they're really, really committed to the training dummy grind.

In an ideal world we would have content such as the Clinics in G6 to supplement EXP gains, but such things take time. For now just amping mob spawn rates and the number available at any given time should be enough while better ways of progressing characters are introduced.

[Autumn]

One thing I miss from G6 were the dungeon modifiers that usually added increased EXP, especially Crazy dungeon modifiers which REALLY boosted the exp you gained by an insane load, maybe I could see dungeons gaining random modifiers that change out daily in-game, which could likely make grinding spots change up a lot, suddenly you'd see less people grinding lava lake over and over if say the Sea of Clouds or Ice Palace had a crazy modifier on them instead.

[Rendar]

If areas had modifiers like that, I could even see it being 'reported' to the two closest towns by NPCs.

"Rumours in the Field" or something. So you dont have to run around yourself.

Conversely. Some discord integration couldddd be kind of cool......

[Poruku]

Seriously, we got lategame dungeons but they don't even give more loot. Instead it's nearly the same amount of loot as just grinding 55-60 mobs. Where's the big xp drops, the chests, the core openings? The rare red chests with rare things in them? Where's the crazy battles? The grind experience in korvara is so sad man. I just wish at least the difficult dungeons offered a reason to even go. There's no point in having difficult content that isn't rewarding.

[Entropy]

Probably the biggest limiter to me Doing Things in Korvara is the sisyphean effort it requires to grind up equipment, resources, and EXP.

Things get old fast, there's zero point to going to any dungeon that isn't Lava Lake except for mining rocks in the other dungeons. There's absolutely nothing to spice things up or add any variation whatsoever.

I rarely ever LE because of how much I can't stand the grind.

Quick Edit:

There is no RP in grinding. Half the classes in the game serve zero actual function in 'normal' PvE due to how 90% of the time you just want to clear the mobs as fast as possible because you're on the GRIND.

[Poruku]

Yes exactly. This is a huge problem with the core gameplay loop of SL2: when grinding you just want to go as fast as possible so most things are just a waste of time. This would not be the case if difficult fights were worth doing because then support builds and setup and strategy would help. If the minotaur maze gave 4x more xp and loot than lava lake, you would definitely be inclined to bring a solid group there to grind, including healers and stuff

[Asellia]

I'm in a similar boat here. It takes a lot to get motivated to grind knowing howl ong it'll take, especially with some rarer items/LEing if nessecary. I only spend so much time on the game, and ot make matters worse, it makes me just want to RP -- but not a ton happens in RP without events, which I can't do without grinding first.

To boot, the loot rates are so low it's not fun to grind for items -- I do miss the cores, and other things too. It feels similar to G6, just slightly less satisfying to grind for things -- and it takes longer. For someone with limited time, that's not really an improvement for me- - the sentiment was more grind was needed to make the journey more enjoyable, but its not long enough to be a journey, and nobody is designing events for the low level characters (or at least, I assume not -- I could be wrong). So it's a tough place.

[Snake]

More cool feat EXP multipliers please.

One involving fighting in specific dungeons would be nice too, like Minotaur Maze and that old temple in the desert.

[ThatOneHop]

How about something where there's a lucky wind blowing at X location, which oocly people can take as an opportunity to grind there for possibly better XP? Maybe have an off chance of a rare mob spawning there too.

[Mewni]

I particularly hope one day that we EMs can give legend inks for events.

Of course, there would need to have a set amount of time, even if in a spam of a couple events, for such.

If you are REALLY focused on just grind-grind-grind, you can likely legend extend and get to 60 in about 4 hours, less if you are absolutely doinked out of your mind and min-maxed with it while watching a iceberg video on the side.

Being able to give a single ink to someone that was engaged in your event for 4+ hours sounds like a exciting thing to do, sure, its only one ink while you could be grinding instead and get two, but that will make way more people roleplay in the roleplaying game and still get progress with their characters, you'd grind once and then just worry about engaging in content created by others to get a few inks as you go, using your time and energy to co-write stories with other players.


At least that is one suggestion I would have, I see no issues in giving a little crumb of progress to those that did stop their grinding marathon to come see how hard I can botch myself in running a event. I truly believe it would only help the community as a whole and a lot of good things would come out of it that would otherwise be wasted just speedruning the most optimal way until its nerfed and a new one is found.