Boreas/Sequanna Colossus feedback

I just did both Boreas and Sequanna Colossus for the first time.


Boreas Colossus:

• How is anyone supposed to find the scene if it doesn't show on the compass when traveling the overworld? It doesn't show on the compass because it's too far away from regular Novia traffic. You either search for it on the website or search endlessly/aimlessly on the in-game GPS map.
• There's no clear path to the scene. I eventually found a way around a mountain but it feels like I'm taking advantage of poor collision on the overworld map. There should be a small bridge and a dirt path of some kind... or not have a river that blocks the path.
• Spoiler

  the first puzzle was clever and nicely sets the tone for the rest of the scene.
• Spoiler

  the 2nd puzzle was fun, quick and easy to solve but was ultimately annoying as it's the only puzzle that resets when you fail.
• The combat sequences felt out of place and can be avoided by simply running past them.
  Spoiler

  I was sneaking past the Ghost Corpion and it was fun at first (although he's hard to spot and no player would ever see him before it attacks)... but when you fail a puzzle, running past them was the more sensible thing to do.
• Spoiler

  The labyrinth was neat but I was confused as to why the symbol of "love" was shown on one of the paths that lead to its solution.
• Spoiler

  The puzzle with the two heads and the pit was neat... I'm a bit disappointed that they couldn't talk and that the solution could be seen just by looking down the pit. The puzzle at the very bottom felt unnecessary but it's at least coherent with the general idea of having players be aware of their surroundings so it's not bad.
• Spoiler

  The chess sequence was interesting but was the cause of many, many failures as you cannot control the pieces as you would in a normal game of chess... so it didn't feel like I was failing on my own accord but failing because I was subject of another's untold arbitrary rules.
• By that point, after failing a few times, I was getting annoyed and just wanted to get it over with.
• Spoiler

  The dragon doesn't have anything on the HUD to communicate that I could talk to it; the cursor doesn't change colour when you mouse-over him. I normally love riddles but I didn't like these ones that much... mainly because of how the riddles are set up. By themselves, they're fine, but in the context of a fantasy (ie: medieval and magical) world, they're not. For example, one of the riddles I had was "There is a house. One enters it blind and leaves it seeing." or some such but the game doesn't present itself being a world where academic institutions are a thing, so "school", although a rather simple answer, becomes nearly improbable of an answer...
• I like the set decoration when it came to foliage but the artificial structures are very bare and looked very much like a "prototype" in comparison to what's typical of the game; particularly in comparison to Sequanna Collossus' scene.

Overall, I liked the (multiple) challenges in Boreas Collosus a lot more than the super obscure one of Sequanna Collosus.

Sequanna Colossus:

• A much prettier scene than Boreas by a long shot and has plenty of different enemy encounters to engage with... so, in general, it has more to offer than Boreas' "one off".
• Spoiler

  Once you figure out the path to get above, there's very little mystery aside from the stupid obscure "puzzle" that forces players to 1) wait and/or 2) wreck their brains out trying to figure out that you need to wait... good luck to anyone who doesn't play with shadows turned on. At first, I thought that the Sequanna's statue was facing a ruin on the horizon to which there's a sort of riddle/text written on some door... but 1) the statue isn't facing the ruin and 2) the text would (assuming it's part of the puzzle) way too cryptic even AFTER you solved the puzzle. I "solved it" because I spent WAY too much time standing in front of the shrine and it eventually became "available" to me.
  ... so that's not fun.
• There's an elevator near the bandits that doesn't have a switch. I'm not sure if it's intended or not but, considering how every other elevator in the game works, it felt very out of place.

 

My third time doing the story, my avatar was adventurer level 53 when I did Boreas Colossus and I didn't get reset even once. I died several times in Grannus Colossus though.

 

Grannus is by far the toughest one. I basically decided for the first area to be a war of attrition... try to take down one or two of the attackers before I died until the gate opened. The second one I bypassed by sprinting through before the gate could close entirely. The final area round the colossus itself was a bit of a stealth game figuring out where I needed to go to get the lens.

Oracle Colossus was one of my favorites with a decent balance of puzzle to fighting.

 

That's about all you can do in that area - try to kill as many as you can before you die then respawn and repeat.

 

I've yet to complete either Grannus or Oracle. I don't like bashing my head against a wall and, as far as I'm concerned, Grannus is incompletable. I figured I'd do the Oracle last (assuming I have a choice).

Judging by the encounters, it seems as if Grannus and Sequanna were both designed for group play which is odd considering the quest; it doesn't seem like it LENS itself for multi-player. "Hey! Let's all get lens for the Oracle as a group!"

... you'd think that it'd be a solo endeavour and leave the group play for boss-killing or any other activity/quest where it'd make sense for multiple Avatars to gather a number of the same items.

 

You can do everything solo, but you do have to change your tactics from one colossus to the next accordingly. Grannus you HAVE to accept that you will probably die several times and lose XP in the process. From a combat/death perspective, Grannus is the hardest part of the entire storyline. Oracle can be intimidating but it is not nearly as difficult. Consider Grannus more an exercise in stubbornness than Courage.

 

If you're adventurer level 70 or above then you can probably make it through without dying. There's really only one place where you're essentially locked in until you defeat all the enemies. That's the hardest part of Grannus.

 

The hardest part for Sequanna is clearing out the area around the elevator and also not getting stuck trying to get there with jumping.

Regarding Boreas, the ghost corpion is very annoying. Even if you invest in Safefall and survive the fall, the poison can kill you anyway.

For Grannus, I just take my time clearing out the mobs there. That first gate can be hard to bypass with Dash, Sprint, Wolf Speed Potion, etc.

It was much easier in offline mode with the companions helping out there.

 

You don't have to. There's an outcropping of rock to the side that you can jump from.

Have some water buckets on your utility bar to put out the fire. Run past the corpion to the farthest corridor and there are vines that you can double click on.

 

I have not tried the buckets, but if it works that's fine. I prefer using Douse and building up Fire Proof/fire magic tree.

I also prefer jumping down since trying to find some vines with that corpion after you can be rough.

There is an ankh down there so dying is not that bad anyway.

 

Douse is better if you have it.

 

Well, since it was capped at 20 fire resist, it should be combined with Ice Shield, Fire Proof, etc.

Cure Poison potions or Purify might work on that poison.