Quests are very.... different

On the advice of others I'm trying to complete the Truth, Courage, Love quest lines, however, there are lots of problems.

- the in-game map in scenes are utterly horrible.. when trying to find quest npcs to talk to sometimes the npc is not where the white dot on the map is showing...
- are the quests meant to be completed as a solo player and/or a low level player? I'm level 24 and already 'stuck' on both Courage and Truth quests because the mobs are too powerful for me. For example, the Courage quest i'm at the part where i have to free someone in a cage, and to do that I have to fight in an arena but it's hardly a fair fight. I managed to barely survive the first fight because the npc was orange and had almost double my health. Then after barely surviving this fight, 2 more npcs spawned and well, thanks for coming out. Oh well. I'm just too low/noob for this quest. So I decided to do the Truth quest where I read it was supposed to be the 'easiest' of the 3 quests. I progressed to the Etceter step where I have to talk to some npc in the Etceter mine... well, the red mob at the entrance and throughout the first level of this mine made sure i didn't speak to anybody.

So, i'm stuck again and in terms of XP rewards I haven't gotten much at all. I was level 23 before starting these quests and now I'm level 24. And frankly, I'm not even going to try the Love quest because I'm sure after a few steps into it with hardly any XP i'm going to be stuck again.

And here I thought that because I adventured on my own for a bit (instead of starting the quests immediately upon creating my avatar) that I would be much stronger to handle the quests and that I could easily finish them all in one day, then resume my random adventuring.

I just want to say that, this was obviously not what I was expecting. Maybe this is by design. That SoTA quests are hard, don't do any hand-holding, and are not meant to be completed step by step in one afternoon (like all the other quests in all other MMOs).

Am I experiencing this all correctly? Or is it just me and I suck and/or not playing this game correctly and I had the wrong impression/expectation about these quests because others are telling me I should finish them first in order to help me get stronger so that I could adventure on my own. (but I haven't gotten any stronger since the quests only allow me to do a few steps and then I'm stuck, with hardly any substantial XP at all)

 

I think the theory is that you would work on the main quest a bit, then maybe some sidequests, maybe some hunting, maybe back to main quest, maybe get some friends to help with a harder bit. A little here, a little there. But most people seem to just plow through them in one go, which is really tough at low levels. Especially courage. Better to work on them until they get hard, then go do other stuff until you're stronger. Or get friends to help.

There is a method to the truth quest that gets the bandits in the Etceter mine to leave you alone so long as you're on the quest. Getting to the mine is the hard part. Overall, the truth quest can get completed with out the need to actually fight anything, except incidentally.

 

Thanks for the confirmation. That makes more sense. I had gotten a completely wrong impression of these quests.

 

I think part of it is that a lot of people did them early when they were barely fleshed out, or avoided them until they were more substantial. The early questers then did them again later with the quest reset. Either way, by the time they got to them (or back to them) they were high enough level that the difficulty was not much of a concern. Not everyone, of course, but many.

The final path (Oracle) is especially difficult at lower levels. I would point out that while it appears you have to go through PvP areas to complete it, it is possible to do so without. But when I last did it, the non-PvP path was not spelled out explicitly, so it takes some searching to find the alternate routes.

 

Thanks Cora!!

 

The in-game map was originally an external web site, and the dots are from a separate database that is not synced with the game data. Some NPCs have been moved since then, and some will go home to bed for a few minutes at night time. Devs know the ways in which the map sucks, and it's on The List to do something about it, but it's still better than no map at all.

They are not meant to be done sequentially, they are meant to be done in parallel, and with time in between for leveling. Also, some of these hard spots have ways around them that will cause virtue loss. The Truth one is easy enough to find the NPC to start the bypass quest, the name was given to you when you were asked to go to the mine.

The Courage fight is harder, but I will only say that there is a more direct way to get the key. In my case, not yet knowing of this way, I worked to get a mid-level alt (45-50ish) to the point where I could win the fight. It was hard, but it made me a better player. Then I did it again on two more alts and got a little better each time, and even found the game behaving in unexpected ways that made it less hard. Because this fight is successive waves of multiple enemies with no rest breaks in between (not exactly true, you just have to figure out how to rest), it would even be hard on my main character.

The "speed bump" fight in the Love quest is much easier, and I never had a problem with it. I would say that is actually the easiest of the three to finish. I also don't know if there is a virtue hit bypass to this one.

If it was like all other MMOs, what would be the point? There is plenty of Processed MMO Product out there already, to hold your hands and give you a Shiny Thing for a lot of walking around and clicking Continue.

You shouldn't depend strictly on the main quests for XP. You do need to grind a bit, but that will also help you get money. But yeah, they are a lot of work. On my fourth character, I did the entirety of the quests in one day, after spending 2-3 days skilling up. It took me from early morning to late night, and that was with my notes about where to go and what to do and say.

 

@Woodchuck there's other things to do try lfg to get help or join one to build your character more. Check if you're training too many things at once. Get some advice on your build.

Are you eating 2 types of food and getting your 2 devotional blessings every day? I never leave town without them. Are you using buffs like ice shield, celestial blessing, dodge, glancing blow, douse etc to survive?

Well at level 24 you are pretty low level. But at least getting in a group a few times will make a huge difference. I am out of town for 8 weeks but I'm always happy to help as are many others in this game.

Perhaps you wanted to do it all alone but it can be difficult at times and learning what works to build your character is really important in this game to do things and have more freedom to solo if that is your choice.

Best wishes and don't forget we have a music system in the game which is a wonderful break from the action to sync songs with others.

Wizards Rest is quite a music oriented town of players. Located in hidden vale behind owlshead on the cliff. I'm not there atm but the town is very friendly. There are instructions for playing music and other game tips throughout the town. Point at signs to read and at the books and flyers on the bulletin board.

 

You are in a minority that haven't complained about it all being too easy (since the hilt Nerf)

I have 2 pieces of advice:

Unlike many games you can totally take on multiple orange and red mobs with good tactics and equipment. If you are in starter equipment, i know of new player vendors that sell 500g equip (under material cost) in aerie, britmart, and welcome center.

Yes 24 is too low, but you could probably be 50 in less time than this thread is taking. Use LFG and join an upper tears group.

Do you really want a game that you can walk through without any additional effort, learning, or player interaction?

 

The 3 Virtue quests are low level quests until you get the banner for each one of the Virtues. The quests after you get the banners are all Tier 5 areas, mostly.

Just finish the ones where you haven’t gotten the 3 Love, Courage and Truth banners.

Of note, there’s more than those 3 banners in the game.

 

As far as I know, the banner quests (from the Outskirts areas) are not blockers to the main quest. While they are related to the main quests, they are still side quests as far as quest progression goes. But they are still an opportunity to get a bit more XP without grinding.

 

No wonder. The game is now tweaked to be much more difficult for players now joining like myself.

It would take me hours to peruse those towns and every player vendor to find affordable items. Every town is choppy especially when you enter the main/middle areas, and when clicking on each player vendor, there's yet more waiting for the items to load. I'm beginning to realize how bad the performance of this game is, it's totally killing the experience.

Like i said, all the other MMO's designed their quests to be done in succession and this was designed as a viable, if not only, way to develop your character. Most of the time, giving you enough XP and even items/armor to proceed sequentially. I assumed the same but assumed wrong with SoTA. Now I know.

 

Yeah, the quests (main in particular) are more like single player RPGs. Especially old school RPGs where just because you can get to the content doesn't mean you're able to do it.

 

It would be nice if the quests written in the journal would have some indication of which quest line it pertains to. Right now every 'entry' in the journal is mixed in with each other with no semblance of which ones are related and which are not. I don't consider this to be on par with the game not hand-holding players, but I think if the game is going to automatically write things in your journal for you in this manner, it should at least allow us to pick where in the journal it should write this information and allow us to augment the journal with our own notes so that information is organized and useful. Right now it's just a mess because it's just ordered chronologically as i randomly explore the world.

What are considered 'banner' quests? What are the 'main' quests?

 

That Courage fight and Truth mine thing? Those were added after persistence, and I had already gotten the Shroud before them.

You do realize that the Hilt thing is toward the very end of the quest progression, right? Oh, and that was also something I didn't have to do the first time through. Actually, I'm not sure what you mean by "nerf". Do you mean making it so it was even bleeping possible solo by not having mobs constantly respawn? That was the plan all along for solo-only areas, it just took a long time for them to implement it. And it may still be possible to do in the group version of Hilt, but the group has to go into the regular version of Hilt, and I'm not sure that anyone really wants to do it that way.

 

I'm not a big on grouping. I'm fine soloing. I might have too many things training, in fact everything is training (green triangle). Mostly because I have no plan. I don't really know what I should train in and so I haven't stopped anything from training after I unlock/learn the skill.

Are we supposed to eat? O_O In my town I did see the devotional blessings, but I tried double-clicking on them and they didn't do anything. I'm not advanced enough and certainly can't afford to have those options for ice shield, blessing, dodge, glancing, douse... I find the game extremely stingy on gold, yet it has no problem encumbering me with trash loot that sells for nothing. I don't even want to spend money on recall scrolls at 140g each because that's expensive to me right now.

Thanks, I haven't looked into how to play music yet, but i did notice some vendors selling things that seem to be songs. Right now, there's many other systems things in the game I think I need to learn and become better at. (still not using decks yet, just my noob permanent action bar)

I do read the bulletin boards. Is there a way for me to leave notes on them? I came across a bulletin board with empty flyers, I wrote on them but when it came time to save, I got an error and it couldn't save. I've tried on several different boards and it's the same. I even bought blank paper, wrote on it, and thought that I could put it on the bulletin board but it didn't allow me.

 

Not specifically those steps, but just in general overall. My impression is that they are constantly changing, tweaking, "refining" things. And this impression is reinforced when I follow the quest walkthoughs made by other players back in 2017 which have steps that don't work or make any sense any more because they've since changed and the npc doesn't even exist anymore. -_-

 

Right, and only two months ago did they declare it "released". There was a lot of work being done in that time. It's been in an unfinished state for much longer than its current finished state.

 

Jump in the water to get the 10 hour buffs from devotionals. Click on the town name to see who has devotionals up. We have 2 in wizards rest and you can have both. Eating 2 different foods gives up to 4 hours of buffs for higher tier foods. Take advantage of all you can get to help yourself. Go in fire enough to work fire proof up .Go in moon enough to get celestial blessing. Train skills you want to 40 then set to maintain and train only one or two. Maintain skills to work other skills. If you are low on adventuring pool which you can see in the lower right hand of the k key. Y is to set up deck if you want. I lock heals and and rotate a few slots with all main hits and a healing to rotate if needed. O is our emotes. You can /wave or /bow. Sheath your weapon after battles to recover faster with z key. Ask here then. We will help you.

 

Thanks.. it's just there's too many things to learn at the beginning that it feels overwhelming and not fun so i'm consciously not worrying about learning every detail as yet.

People here have been playing for years, this is my third weekend at it.

 

If you were suddenly transported to another world (the basic common premise of Ultima games), of course you would be overwhelmed.