Exploring adoulin is such a chore

[Catmato]

I actually enjoyed the mini access quests for SOA areas, especially the watercrafting!

The best part was that everyone was calling it "waterboarding".

[Kincard]

Let me first say I agree that these quests should probably be simplified at this point. That being said, I don't think these were intended specifically to be annoying timesinks (well, I'm sure that was part of the thought process, this being an MMO and everything).

I think when you consider that the key word for Adoulin was "Colonization", it puts things into perspective a bit. (Though if they enable Mounts in these areas it'll further diminish that motif)

The idea was that Ulbuka is a harsh land, left unexplored for many generations after colonization was closed off 200 years ago. So you needing to learn how to chop through logs, climb vines, endure toxic fumes or destroy certain kinds of rocks was supposed to play to that motif. In gameplay terms if all you're thinking is, "I want to beat the game/I want to see the plot" you'll only see making your character learn these skills as meaningless busywork. Doesn't really help that the teleporters are already everywhere- when Adoulin first came out, those weren't there, so that feeling was a bit more significant- that and ilevel wasn't a thing yet so areas actually felt a lot more dangerous. So I guess in some ways, the way the game has changed gameplay-wise since the release of Adoulin has kinda killed the original motif for it, so I can't really say I'm against them changing these quests up somehow.

Kind of interesting to think about though- CoP's strict level caps was what allowed SE to "control" the difficulty of encounters. They didn't do this with any of the expansions after that, so people usually just rushed their characters to level cap ASAP and then steamrolled all the story by overleveling it. I guess these days people would frown upon CoP's style being used again. I'll agree before level sync existed the tedium of keeping lots of level-appropriate armor was ridiculous but I think it after that was introduced, it's an interesting compromise between allowing players of all levels to progress the story and keeping the difficulty "static" for all players. Wonder how things would've played out if Adoulin had ilevel sync or something.

[Rydal]

Why not look up the quest requirements beforehand and bring them with you? Adoulin is definitely more forgiving exploration-wise than CoP. The quests are easy. Get them over with and don't look back.

[OmnysValefor]

A friend returned to the game two months ago and I helped him get all of this done in a matter of a few hours. We bought the things off the AH and ran out.

Unsure of where all apex mobs are in these zones, I used sneak and invisible too. It's been two years since I did the quests so I really didn't recall any of the details, we looked it up and went.

Asking for these quests to be made easier is crazy. They're fine the way they are.

If you really went through all the old mission lines when they were remotely difficult, you should appreciate that Adoulin just has some run-around quests.

[AoiX]

I'm still amazed that some people enter a whole new expansion expecting everything to be linear and easy. Seekers of Adoulin is not just a quest, it's a whole story on its own.

[Jin_Uzuki]

I disagree. Exploring Adoulin and gradually opening the zones via quests was one of the most fun I had in the game.

[Pixela]

Doing Adoulin and getting all the KI made me wish they would remove a lot of the padding now, the missions are disgracefully terrible in terms of time wasting.

Was understandable at the time of adding them due to the delays between but not now.