No Plans to Implement Some concerns with the dreadfort

[Zor95]

I've spent the past couple days exploring and farming the dreadfort and I have two concerns that, in my opinion, make the fort far more annoying than fun.

1) The rate of wither skeletons spawning

It took about 10 hours combined between Landroiel and I to obtain 2 skulls and then the 3rd skull was given to us by another Lokan. Of course luck varies greatly, but we weren't that far from the average of 18 skeletons per skull. There's just not enough skeletons to kill. There's also many corridors in the fortress that I have never seen a wither skeleton spawn in. Wouldn't it be better to add more and spread them out to encourage the exploration of the entire fortress instead of grinding hours and hours in just a small area?

2) The wither boss fight

The first half of the fight seems to be balanced well, but as soon as the boss reaches half health and begins to descend to the melee phase it summons a wave of wither skeleton minions which need to be killed before continuing the fight. This would be fine if it only happened once, but the boss heals very quickly and only needs a small amount of health to return to the 50% threshold. Once it crosses that threshold and you damage it again the melee phase starts over and the boss summons more minions. There is no limit to the amount of times this can happen, but there needs to be.

Myself, Land, and Hip cleared at least six waves of melee phase minions in an attempt to keep the boss below half health before we ran out of supplies and gave up. We now look forward to another 10+ hour grind for skulls to make another attempt. Even as maxed Runescape players known for grinding obscene amounts of hours on various tasks we don't know if we want to do this again.

Does the rest of Loka agree? How many of you have even ventured into the dreadfort? Who has fought the wither boss? Are we just exceptionally bad at this slightly modified wither boss fight?

 

[DeceitfulPear]

I personally had no problem with a group that was myself and two others. I also know people who did the fight simply as a duo, unsure if we're better than I'm assuming or not but from my perspective it is fairly balanced if you know what you're doing.

In regards to the spawn rates and everything, I can't really form an opinion. I never grinded for the skulls myself I've just done the fights with people and have been given a good amount of wither skulls as trade for other things. Considering how much you guys enjoy grinding and even you think its too much then maybe its something to be looked into.

 

[Aggressive_Gibon]

Beacons are the endiest of endgame so they should be hard to get. I could see there being alternative ways of getting wither skulls in the future to make it less rng driven but the fight itself was built to be faced by at least 4 decent people, so you not being able to kill it with 3 non pvpers show we did and ok job.

 

[Zor95]

Beacons are the endiest of endgame so they should be hard to get. I could see there being alternative ways of getting wither skulls in the future to make it less rng driven but the fight itself was built to be faced by at least 4 decent people, so you not being able to kill it with 3 non pvpers show we did and ok job.

A boss does not need to be frustrating to be challenging. I'm not entirely sure that the wither boss summoning its melee phase minions over and over isn't a bug which in my mind places it into the mostly frustrating category. Despite this server being heavily saturated with plugins, it's still vanilla Minecraft and I don't think that the dreadfort in its current state fits very well into vanilla gameplay. I'm obviously willing to invest time into the game, but I don't want to feel like I'm wasting that time.

Also, PvE/PvM and PvP in almost every game are entirely different. Minecraft may be rather basic in all of its mechanics but you cannot compare the two.

 

[Skuhoo]

The Wither King was the first of many planned custom MythicMobs and he is intentionally difficult with an arsenal of 6 custom skills. The minion summoning happens at all stages and is in no way linked to health. Perhaps you need to come more prepared and spend more time learning his mechanics.

 

[Zor95]

The Wither King was the first of many planned custom MythicMobs and he is intentionally difficult with an arsenal of 6 custom skills. The minion summoning happens at all stages and is in no way linked to health. Perhaps you need to come more prepared and spend more time learning his mechanics.

Yes the minions are summoned at several times during the fight, but they are especially important at the 50% health threshold. Perhaps it is a mechanic we missed, pure coincidence that it happened every single time it crossed that threshold, or maybe we experienced a bug. Regardless, it's too much to ask someone to grind a high intensity dungeon for a dozen hours per attempt.

 

[Jammin_Mas]

Bring 4 people
Use Smite
Use full pot load outs
You get a nether star in 3-5 minutes

Doesn’t seem to bad to me...

 

[Zor95]

Something I forgot to mention:

3) Blazes create lag

When wandering around the fortress, blazes can target you through the floors and so many blazes shooting fireballs at you creates a lot of lag for the average computer. The targeting mechanics of blazes have changed so much over the years that I don't know if this is a vanilla mechanic, but how it is now you need multiple people in the dreadfort clearing the blazes as they spawn.

 

[Jammin_Mas]

Personally Zor I don’t feel the lag is bad. I used to grind the fort for 3-4 hours at a time with my chromebook (50 FPS max) and made it fine. Just turn your particles off and render distance down while your in the fort. I don’t think it needs to be a server issue/change.

 

[Jammin_Mas]

If lags an issue with your computer there’s a lot you can do texture pack wise and setting wise to get the most out of your computer!

 

[Zor95]

Personally Zor I don’t feel the lag is bad. I used to grind the fort for 3-4 hours at a time with my chromebook (50 FPS max) and made it fine. Just turn your particles off and render distance down while your in the fort. I don’t think it needs to be a server issue/change.

You're right, there are several things you can do and I'm personally fine if I turn my render distance down quite a bit. If there's a way to stop blazes from targeting you through floors I think it would be worth doing though.

 

[Magpieman]

You're right, there are several things you can do and I'm personally fine if I turn my render distance down quite a bit. If there's a way to stop blazes from targeting you through floors I think it would be worth doing though.

Yes I agree this is a problem and something we tried to prevent. Annoyingly in vanilla minecraft blazes shoot without needing line of sight, which is something I couldn't find a way to change. (if you do know a way to make them require los to attack please let me know)

1) The rate of wither skeletons spawning

It took about 10 hours combined between Landroiel and I to obtain 2 skulls and then the 3rd skull was given to us by another Lokan. Of course luck varies greatly, but we weren't that far from the average of 18 skeletons per skull. There's just not enough skeletons to kill. There's also many corridors in the fortress that I have never seen a wither skeleton spawn in. Wouldn't it be better to add more and spread them out to encourage the exploration of the entire fortress instead of grinding hours and hours in just a small area?

The wither skeleton spawns are found throughout the dreadfort, both along the correct path to the boss room and the numerous incorrect ones. This doesn't mean they will be found in every corridor due to the tether range preventing them drifting too far from their spawn point. We have upped the number of wither skeleton spawns since releasing the dreadfort and it is something I could see us upping again. Something important to consider is they have a fairly long time before they respawn once killed, to prevent easy farming, its possible this was the bigger issue you were running into rather than the spawn locations.

2) The wither boss fight

The first half of the fight seems to be balanced well, but as soon as the boss reaches half health and begins to descend to the melee phase it summons a wave of wither skeleton minions which need to be killed before continuing the fight. This would be fine if it only happened once, but the boss heals very quickly and only needs a small amount of health to return to the 50% threshold. Once it crosses that threshold and you damage it again the melee phase starts over and the boss summons more minions. There is no limit to the amount of times this can happen, but there needs to be.

Myself, Land, and Hip cleared at least six waves of melee phase minions in an attempt to keep the boss below half health before we ran out of supplies and gave up. We now look forward to another 10+ hour grind for skulls to make another attempt. Even as maxed Runescape players known for grinding obscene amounts of hours on various tasks we don't know if we want to do this again.

Does the rest of Loka agree? How many of you have even ventured into the dreadfort? Who has fought the wither boss? Are we just exceptionally bad at this slightly modified wither boss fight?

This is the only point I personally disagree with. The boss is really hard and deliberately so. When fighting it I found it fun and challenging, not frustrating at all. It's possible we could add some kind of warning before players start the fight with a recommended party number. From what I have seen it takes 4 experienced pvpers to beat it reasonably comfortably. So maybe the recommended players to fight it should be at least 5.

 

[Zor95]

The wither skeleton spawns are found throughout the dreadfort, both along the correct path to the boss room and the numerous incorrect ones. This doesn't mean they will be found in every corridor due to the tether range preventing them drifting too far from their spawn point. We have upped the number of wither skeleton spawns since releasing the dreadfort and it is something I could see us upping again. Something important to consider is they have a fairly long time before they respawn once killed, to prevent easy farming, its possible this was the bigger issue you were running into rather than the spawn locations.

The respawn timer is definitely very long. For a while we weren't sure if spawn locations were random or if we really just had to wait that long. Despite having some skeletons outside of the path to the boss, several areas of the fortress feel empty though. The largest of these empty areas would be the hallways connecting the towers accessible from the roof. Perhaps there's some secret down there that I'm yet aware of, but it wouldn't hurt to put a couple skeletons there. I think it would also be fun to put some skeleton spawns near the traps to bait people into activating them (assuming the skeletons themselves could avoid the traps).

Also, what do you think of removing all wither skulls currently being used for decoration within the fort and placing 3 that can be collected by players once or twice a day? It would encourage regular exploration of the fortress and allow at least one person each day a chance to avoid the skeleton grind.

As Gibon mentioned earlier in the thread, there is an argument to be made that beacons are end game items so they should be difficult to acquire. I agree that they should be more difficult to acquire than most items, but I wouldn't argue that they are end game. In multiplayer Minecraft, building a successful town is the end game and in Loka's case you could consider Capital to be the end game as well. Beacons are useful tools to reach that end game. Powerful tools, but not worthy of hours upon hours of grinding. If you think back to earlier in this world when wither skeletons spawned outside the Dreadfort and we were able to kill wither bosses in complete safety by trapping them, there were still not that many beacons. Now with wither skeletons roaming around a dangerous dungeon and a definitely not safe custom boss fight that's on a 3 hour cooldown they are even more uncommon. I think that by itself, without the struggle to find enough wither skeletons, is good enough. In my ideal world I see myself working 3-6 hours for a set of 3 skulls and then teaming up with 3-4 other people to take on the boss.

This is the only point I personally disagree with. The boss is really hard and deliberately so. When fighting it I found it fun and challenging, not frustrating at all. It's possible we could add some kind of warning before players start the fight with a recommended party number. From what I have seen it takes 4 experienced pvpers to beat it reasonably comfortably. So maybe the recommended players to fight it should be at least 5.

The general feedback from everyone so far does seem to be that we just need practice at the boss which is something we're willing to accept. We can't be too sure about anything with a sample size of just one and we have thought of some different strategies based on everyone's feedback. I'm sure we'll go back eventually and when we do and we feel we're more comfortable with the fight I'll post an updated opinion.

 

[Magpieman]

Perhaps there's some secret down there that I'm yet aware of, but it wouldn't hurt to put a couple skeletons there.

There are many secrets that people aren't aware of

 

[Mrp]

@sheep get good kid

 

[BuscoNombre]

You can kill the wither boss alone, i did it a few times,u just need to use ur brain a bit and think. Its really easy once you realize how to kill it.

 

[Galaxy219]

Pinky, Threea, and Myself were able to kill the wither boss without too much trouble. (Threea sat in the corner most the time also)