LDoN raidsFollow

First off, the difficulty is totally static. Nothing in the zones change based on number of people you have, their levels, or anything. It's exactly as hard for 18 level 60s that request it as it is for 36 level 65s with 500 AA each with casters of around 10k buffed hps. So if you are kind of in the mid range of raiders, I'd stick to the easier raids.

It's 36 raiders. Minimum is something like 18, but again, for intents and purposes most wouldn't be winnable with that even under exceptional conditions.

There's Vex-tuned ones, Elemental-tuned ones, and Time-tuned ones. Vex and Elemental are both 'normal' difficulty, Time ones are high. Spread is like this:

Rujark: 1 Vex, 2 Time.
Butcherblock: 1 Elemental, 1 time
Miragul: 1 Elemental, 1 time
Takish: 1 Vex, 1 Time
Guk: 1 Time (and 2 unknown. Totally bugged when I tried months ago).

That said, with the exception of the butcherblock elemental one (kind of), ALL are very hard for that intended group (vex, elemental, and Time). To give you an idea of how hard, the vast majority of servers have -never- had their Time level raids beaten at all. In fact, I think only 2 servers have beaten all of them. In fact, I've already asked them to be tuned down for that reason, but the devs are gonna have a lot on their plate and all.

That said, you could do well trying the vex ones, and working your way up to the elemental butcherblock one, and some time maybe the miragul elemental one.

Vex ones are decent for a guild trying- no augments drop, it's all vex/ssra type loot. Not shabby, not great, but not shabby. A lot have decent right clicks, enough where I did these pretty routinely for my Time+ guild during the long lull before GoD came out (one of the vex one has a nice 100/100 cloak with right click SoW, for example).

Here's what you need to know about the 3 raids you could really try, if you don't like spoilers, just don't read below:

Rujark Warlord Raid: Basically, there's 2 mechanics added to this raid you need to deal with.

-The first is goblin run code, something truly annoying. Basically, when goblins detect that they have less than 2 other goblins supporting them, they run until they find another goblin to bring back. This never turns 'off'. It loops infinitely unless you find ways to kill the running goblins. This can be a serious pain. Fortunately, unlike the Time level rujark, these goblins are basically snareable and you can nuke them out. But it's still a huge pain. You can tank them down and get them low and kill them all simultaneously, or try desperately to root/snare/nuke them out, or best yet, pacify/invis past them (virtually nothing in rujark normal sees invis).

-The second mechanic is arguably more dangerous. There's 3 captains, and a warlord. The captains need to be killed first. Every one of the captains and warlords guards are named after him. Like Instead of A Rujarkian Vindicator, they'll be An Omal Vindicator or whatever. There's going to be around 12 or so in each room. Now here's what happens- after about a minute of being aggro, each one of those will do a cry for help. This summons every other thing by that name for help. In the warlords case, it summons the captains too. So pretty much, any guard type mob for a room HAS to be killed quickly. This is going to be a true ***** for a lower guild with avengers (who are kind of like Eom difficulty from vex) since they have a lot of health. On the plus side, virtually everything can be pacified. Pull avengers last, clear out as much trash as you can, then if you get captain+tons of stuff from a call just tank captain and avengers, mez everything else, and clear it out. Warlord works virtually identically to the captain, just moreso, with a weirdly hard to resist AE fear.

Takish- this is more straight forward, but probably harder. You clear out all sorts of traps and trash and have 3 different empty rooms. When you enter these ring-rooms, they start to spawn trash. They spawn based on time, not how much you kill. After X number of waves, a boss spawns. When all bosses are dead, you win. Split up the raid. If you take the time to run between the rings, you will get overwhelmed. On the downside, these rings are going to be very, very hard for 12 people (36/3) in pre-vex gear. It'll be a lot like 12 people taking on a particularly tough pull in vex. Workable for sure, but uh, you might wanna do Rujark one first unless you are highly confidant in your people.

Butcherblock- This is another split up the raid one. First, you clear through tons of trash (ignore the red con scions, they do nothing, and are not required to win the raid), kill all the summoners, and are eventually left with 3 named bosses alone in their rooms. They are leashed, it's easy to pull around them. Basically, they have a few different detects- one is if the others aren't engaged, and then they'll start to full heal around 70%. The other is if the fight just goes on too long, and then they'll heal. The shadow boss reflects and summons adds. THe werewolf boss flurries (but is slowable), the mummy boss sometimes (rarely, don't know why he does or doesn't) casts Valdoon's ae which is brutal for a lower guild (curse counters). I'd probably not split up evenly, but do something like 3 groups with shadow, 2 groups with werewolf, 1 with mummy. But really whatever works for you. Technically, this raid has a death limit, but I've never hit it.

Miragul- this is a puzzle one. Every event almost is a puzzle. It'd take forever to explain, but I'll just say some of the lose conditions are unfortunately far too easy to blow, so I'd avoid it. This is the raid that has given me the most actual losses without wiping.

If you have any specific questions about the raids, I'd be happy to help.

This changed a few times, so I'm not sure what it wound up as. Currently I THINK it is 10 wins in every theme in order to do any ldon raid. This could be wrong or dated.



Not precisely. Basically, that's the categorization I've given them because the rewards for the vex difficulty ones are exactly in line with all dropds in Luclin and the mob difficulty is nearly identical to luclin mobs. THe elemental raids drop quality is nearly identical to elemental mobs, and trash/nameds hit roughly identical to elemental mobs. And so on. Time is actually more post-time, as some of the mobs are much more difficult than would reasonably be attempted by a guild that hasn't been in Time for long (like 1 million hit point bosses with significant AEs that quad hit for 4.5k). At any rate, it isn't hard to see what each one was roughly tuned for.



30 points for win, nada on loss. Some can be completed for the loot after you get a Failed, some can't be.



GoD expeditions would fit that well, since you can have partial wins, but LDoN raids aren't set up well to support that. Basically, currently when you complete an objective inside an LDoN raid, a chest spawns that can't be opened yet. When you complete all objectives of the LDoN raid, you are given the win, get the 30 points, given a win credit as an adventure in that theme (identical in effect to a regular adventure), and the chests can then be opened or broken for that loot.

In effect, unless you win, you get nothing for the attempt at all since you can't touch the chests yet. Also, the lockout and not being able to request the adventure again applies regardless whether you win or not. In fact, it applies whether or not you even enter the adventure. The system overall is extremely unforgiving, and was made a lot kinder in GoD expeditions versus ldon adventures.



I think a family guild that can manage to get another 3 groups or so for a full raid has a decent shot at the vex tuned one, Rujark in particular. I'd try that first. If you have a fair amount of elemental geared raiders looking for something to do, you could try the butcherblock elemental one for significantly better rewards. In terms of actual execution, I'd say those two are the easiest, and you can guage from there.

The actual mechanics of the raids can be VERY interesting. Both miragul raids have some brillant design to them, and I think the Time level Takish one was, for it's time period, probably the most difficult encounter in the game in a good way. I like them a lot. I think you really don't lose anything by trying except your time, and possible people being annoyed. Trying the vex level rujark one, you could potentially come up with a nice solid target to clear for 6 seru/vex style drops each week.



I'm not as big a critic of them as most. I think the actual design of most of the raids were good, except for 2 major problems: They were too difficult for their rewards (not that the rewards were necessarily bad, just they require so much force that most people successfully doing them could do better elsewhere), and that the mechanics are too unforgiving- no partial success, no adding in people late, etc.



Happy to help,
Apostate

Oh. Whoops!

You can only select the vex/elemental ones at normal difficulty, and the Time ones at hard, and there's a different recruiter for each raid. So if you go up to the Time level recruiter and ask for it at normal, he'll tell you to bugger off. That's one easy way to tell if you are at the right recruiter.

If you wanna go by descriptions, it's like this:

Rujark Vex: Stop warlord and his army.
Rujark Time: Investigate the flora and fauna (this is one of the hardest, no joke)
Rujark Time: Rescue prisoners

Miragul Elemental: Retrieve bodies of lost adventurers
Miragul Time: Investigate the magical nature of miragul

Guk Time: Stop first witness (as the working one)

Takish Vex: Stop the jeweled guard
Takish Time: Stop the beast of sand

Butcherblock Elemental: Fight the scions/their summoners
Butcherblock Time: Kill Valdoon Kel'Novar

Good post, and I think that really bears repeating. In some regards, I actually consider the Mistmoore elemental level raid easier than the Takish vex level one. You can tell they are tuned for those guilds- the mobs in mistmoore hit like elemental level mobs, the ones in takish hit like ones on the high end of luclin. The loot is the same. But the actual design of the raids makes Takish extermely challenging, probably too much so for the people it was made for. Those last rooms are tough, and I think it'd be a big mistake to underestimate them.

Oh, one very important note. Orcs in the Rujark Vex level raid are charmable. Considering how critical DPS in the raid is (if you take too long to kill an orc he'll yell for help, and you'll probably wipe as a result), I strongly encourage it.