Beta first thoughts

[GLERMZ]

So far, after 8 hours of BETA i've been enjoying everything (except the warg but more on that later)


First and most important the loot:
I dont think the current way to optain the new loot from the 3 bosses is plausible or should stay this way at all. Having to kill 3 bosses to make one of the items, and having to wait an entire year to make a second, and then a 3rd year to make  the 3rd item it's not only already bad as a solo player but is going to feel even worse as multiplayer when more people will want those items as-well.

In the dev stream, devs showed individual artwork of the drops of each boss and i think this would be perfect:

Every Bearger kill -> Special Fur + Wagstaff appears to give Spark Ark (adding bearger to the hostile flare would also be really good for this, to farm mutiple if the players want) -> Can craft Polar Bearger Bin
Every Deerclops kill -> Special Eye + Wagstaff appears to give Spark Ark -> Can craft Ice Crystaleyezer
Every Warg kill -> Special Tusk + Wagstaff appears to give Spark Ark -> Can craft blowpipe

This way we don't have to wait 3 years for ONE player to get the 3 items. Players will be able to farm as much as they want at the speed that they want. After that we will still have the challenge of constantly having to kill these abominations because they will constantly appear.
Keep in mind that a DST year is 9 hours of gameplay resulting in 27 hours for one player to get all 3 items. That is more than what an average player invests in a game, let alone for 3 items. All this after going through all the previous game content,  that for most will take 100-200 days.


As for the Warg, i think there is a bug, i'm pretty sure once hounds are killed and transform into undead hounds, the Warg no longer considers those hounds his and instantly calls more, making you have an absolutely, enormous ammount of hounds, which are FAST creatures, that push eachother making it even harder for you to run and kite, and making it absolutely impossible to properly hit the Warg. Not only that but the hounds tend to always be running on the back of the WARG making it really hard to use his breath to kill the hounds with the AoE, which would be a nice extra way to handle the situation. I know you can burn the hound bodies, but it still is completely overwhelming and one mistake is instantly punishable with a thousand hounds more. Not only that, compared to Bearger and Deerclops this is a 10/10 difficulty and the others 1/10.
As a suggestion i think maybe have the Warg with more health, but make it take a lot more time before he spawns more hounds, giving you time to actually kite, hit, dodge fire, stun and then deal with possible hounds. I think that would be a much better experience than what we currently have, that clearly the majority of the players will not be able to handle.

Best Regards, continue the awesome work, i will for sure have more input in the next days but wanted to get this already out of the way.
So far, awesome patch! Kudos.

[Cliffford W.]

I approve this thread, i saw how it works and it should get change slightly more

[ButterStuffed]

I get the impression Klei intends to add more mutated creatures for us to hunt down, so the waiting time probably won't be as long in the future.

[Jakepeng99]

I found the Varg ok honestly, i like it the way it is since it encourages more strategy even if it might be bugged

 

6 unarmoured Pig men and brightshade staff is enough to kill it without much issue. You keep the hounds under control and the pigmen distract the big wolf itself. The staff and pigs will be enough dps to kill the Wolf. I only had 2 pigmen die.

Pigmen are the worst followers so that sets the bar. Wormwood's saladmanders are really good at distracting the varg. I imagine however this will be a problem with Wortox who only has access to spider's to kill it using the spider hat (Still would work really well though since they are the best followers at tanking).

 

I reccomend trying it this way it was really fun for me since i never found another scenario where followers are used this strategically. 

 

(Also yes i did do the regular varg phase aswell when testing to make it realistic)

[lakhnish]

1 hour ago, GLERMZ said:

As for the Warg, i think there is a bug, i'm pretty sure once hounds are killed and transform into undead hounds, the Warg no longer considers those hounds his and instantly calls more, making you have an absolutely, enormous ammount of hounds,

I've noticed this too.

I also agree that having to wait 1 year just so you can only farm 1 Spark Ark or whatever it's called in it's current iteration is pretty bad, even with the understanding that there are more mutated mobs coming.

I personally think that for now, it should just be any 3 mutated mobs (even the same one 3 times in a row) and once Klei has added enough mutated creatures, then revert back to the original model.

[Fufuji]

And for unknown reason the undead hounds will sometimes attack the Varg.

[Jakepeng99]

5 minutes ago, Fufuji said:

And for unknown reason the undead hounds will sometimes attack the Varg.

The varg's fire breath has friendly fire.

[Fufuji]

5 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

The varg's fire breath has friendly fire.

the undead is immune to the fire in theories… and the live ones won't target Varg even if get hit. I don't understand why the undead betray their owner.

[daymarish]

I do agree the Warg should have fewer max summons at a time and the timer for summoning more should be longer, and higher HP on the boss itself. It'd make the fight more fun because you can focus on actually dealing with the Warg rather than its million hounds.

Also thinking that the acquisition of the Spark Ark should be improved while these are the only 3 mobs available for Wagstaff's quest.

[Jakepeng99]

23 minutes ago, daymarish said:

I do agree the Warg should have fewer max summons at a time and the timer for summoning more should be longer, and higher HP on the boss itself. It'd make the fight more fun because you can focus on actually dealing with the Warg rather than its million hounds.

Also thinking that the acquisition of the Spark Ark should be improved while these are the only 3 mobs available for Wagstaff's quest.

You are meant to use followers.

[GLERMZ]

5 minutes ago, Jakepeng99 said:

You are meant to use followers.

Warg, as per the devs, the Warg is not supose to be harder than bearger which it is by a mile.
And no boss in this game should be design by forcing you do use minions. None. If anything minions make everything easy and pointless. Klei knows how to design boss fights, the Warg is currently underperforming in what they normally deliver. It can be a lot more fun, both as solo or as with minions, without having to pander just for one.

[Valase]

When I fought varg, I thought that when he called his hounds back to kill them (and make lunar hounds) was a normal attack!

that dog is MinMaxing himself.