New AD quests in 1.11

[Loriel]

OK, so 1.11 is out - and personally I am pretty excited about the new repeatable token quests for the Argent Dawn - i.e. the Armaments of the Dawn quests. Some of the quest rewards are pretty tasty, especially the epic ones, and I particularly like the fact the the number of tokens (insignias) you have to hand in scales with your AD rep. So this quest system is similar to the Field Duty->Tasks system in Silithus, yet it's not quite the same - the reputation is a bonus, not a strict requirement.

As the rewards are so good, I'm very curious as to what you actually have to do to get the insignias. Has anyone tried these quests on the PTR (or live today) and can tell me what they are about? I'm also wondering if these are tuned for solo players or if they need 2, 3, ... 5 players to complete.

[WingedNazgul]

I'm also wondering if these are tuned for solo players or if they need 2, 3, ... 5 players to complete.

They are actually tuned for both, if you can believe it. The drops can be found on soloable mobs in the overworld and also in mobs in instances. Like, for instance, bone fragments can be found on regular skeleton mobs in EPL and WPL or in instances like Strat and Scholo. Of course, the drop rates for instance mobs will be better than overworld mobs similar to the mechanic found with previous Dungeon 2 quests.

Also, for gatherers and crafters, there are quests to turn in crafted and gathered materials.

[Hunter Noventa]

I was actually severely diappointed that there was next to nothing for those of us not at 55+. A dinky little quest for each capital for anyone around 10, and nothing between tehre and 60.

Pretty lame IMHO.

[OverKill]

I think it's pretty stupid actually.

I have to turn in 20 Major Health Pots for one token? I have to buy 1 insanely expensive potion for one token? I have to buy 4 runic leather pants for one token?

Nothing but another crap timesink. I wanted REAL quests. Not collection quests and "how rich are you 'cause you're going to need to buy a lot of AH stuff" quests.

[KalziEast]

Overkill, that's not really how it is =/... You're seeing it in too bad of a point of view.

[Loriel]

I've had a chance to check out the new quests live, and I now understand more about how they work. You need to collect 30 Dark Iron Scraps, 30 Savage Fronds, 30 Core of Elements etc - all drops from selected mobs - in order to get an insignia, of which you need X to get a reward. Personally I wouldn't turn these in until I'm at Revered with the Argent Dawn, in which case the number of insignias needed is 14 for the Rare items and 54 for the Epic ones.

The crafter quests are alternatives to getting insignias, and the type and amount of mats required is not exactly trivial - like 20 Major Healing Potions. Which is what, 10g at the AH? Maybe more. Or you can craft them yourself, thereby losing out on selling the herbs on the AH.

I'm not complaining about it, but for my sake I think the crafter quests are a bit too demanding and expensive, so I will focus on the collection quests - turning in the insignias after both my characters are at Revered. 14 tokens seems doable, and even 54 tokens should be ok - given enough time. So yes, it is yet another time sink, but then again this is an MMO - which is a timesink in itself.

At least the rewards are very nice :)

[Krollin]

Handing in Valor tokens for the Crafters Writ quests gets you the same AD Rep as if you used them, 25 so you don't lose out there.
Some of the Crafters Writ quests are -really- easy to do, some are stupid like the 3 Volcanic Hammers one (60g per Hammer and rising on our Realm).
The thing is that completing -each- one the first time gets you 100 or 200 Rep which is nice.
I made 2k AD Rep and ~600g last night (due to a World Epic dropping) + I got a pot load of Demonic Runes.

Handing in the runes gets you the UD set bracers, the other items in the set drop as part of the other quests. Those items give simply massive amounts of AP or +dmg to Undead and make runs in Scholomance/Strat a lot easier as do the new weapon stones or Wizard Oils you get as rewards.
Not to mention they will help in Naxx as well.
Because you are grinding UD all the time the number of 'stones you get for Valor Tokens is silly, I ground 12 Valor Tokens in the space of 2 hours when grouped with 3 others.
Most of the collection quests are soloable for lvl 60's, the rewards for solo players are easily attainable and well worth the effort.
Compared to the CC rep and CC Quest items these are -not- as tiresome nor do they require groups in the main. Aside from the Crafters Writ quests these also make you a handsome profit too.

[Havoc Jack]

I had a great night for rep. I was slightly more than two thousand short of revered when I started. The invasion scourge give five rep each even when you are honored. Like the elites in Stratholme or Scholomance, but soloable. After getting up to 11999/12000, I went to light's hope chapel to turn in, including the scourgestones I had been saving from instance runs.

When exchanging a valor token for a Crafter's writ quest I only got 10 rep, while using the token gave 25. This is at revered. I also had 5 [A smudged note] [A bloodstained letter] and somesuch, which gave 2g from the quest reward and (I think) 50 rep each. I turned in 30 necrotic runes for the +damage to undead gloves, which gave me no rep at all. Ten valor tokens for the shoulder enchantments, and the rest used or turned in for a crafting quest.

I ended just short of 1000 towards exalted, which is pretty good for one night.

As far as the set goes, I got the gloves from turning in the necrotic runes, the bracers from killing a rare spawn creep in one of the invasion spots (y'know, the ones with the silver dragon) and the chestpiece from one of the shadows.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to start with the "thirty core of elements" type quests, I've got three or four of those items on my wish list. Ok, at least 5.

[Tarnop]

The crafter quests are alternatives to getting insignias, and the type and amount of mats required is not exactly trivial - like 20 Major Healing Potions. Which is what, 10g at the AH? Maybe more. Or you can craft them yourself, thereby losing out on selling the herbs on the AH.

The nice thing about these is that my priest (who's disc/holy and mainly +mp5 geared so couldn't hurt a fly) can get the nice healer and caster items by farming herbs and making pots rather than having to kill stuff at > 40 seconds per mob. I'm sure if your main is a mage or a rogue then the kill and collect quests are far easier, but some of us play characters not so well suited to that.

[Morollan]

What's the score with the Invasion quests? I couldn't find anything to kill. The only Necropolis I found was outside SW and it was spawning level 7 mobs.

[DotComm]

Look at your map and the little skulls will tell you where the invasions are. Apart from that, you're on yer own. Had a mage in my group last night, we just picked them all up then the mage did her stuff and we looted. That was ace.

Just a little question, why are undead dropping armor of undead slaying? Why would undead want to slay undead?

[Loriel]

The nice thing about these is that my priest (who's disc/holy and mainly +mp5 geared so couldn't hurt a fly) can get the nice healer and caster items by farming herbs and making pots rather than having to kill stuff at > 40 seconds per mob. I'm sure if your main is a mage or a rogue then the kill and collect quests are far easier, but some of us play characters not so well suited to that.As it happens, my main is also a disc/holy priest with a lot of mana/5 equipment. However, I do have some +dmg and +crit gear as well, and also a decent wand - so I can actually kill stuff. Mana efficiency for Holy dps is somewhat crappy, so there is a fair bit of downtime. For the kill/collection quests I will probably group up with my gf's warrior, in which case the dps is ample and the downtime is slim to none. I rarely solo anything with my priest anymore, as she's built for endgame raiding.

I do have a lvl 60 Mage alt, though, who naturally nukes stuff for a living, and for whom the collection quests should be pretty easy, albeit time consuming. The AD quest rewards are indeed very nice for casters, and both my 60s could probably benefit from 1-2 rares and 2-3 epics each.

A bit more on topic, though, I'd say that it's nice that crafters have an alternate means of getting the insignias, but I would think it's a major time and money sink to get all your insignias this way. 20 Major Healing Potions x (14-90) = a lot of herbs.. IMHO it would be more time efficient to group up with someone to do the collection quests - even though you have to share the drops it would still be faster than crafting, I think.

It's also nice that the items you need to collect can be found in the endgame-ish instances that you will probably be running anyway, like Strat, Scholo, Dire Maul and UBRS.

BTW, can anybody confirm or deny that you need to have the quest to see the drops? If so, does that mean that you can't collect more than 30 at a time?

[Morollan]

Look at your map and the little skulls will tell you where the invasions are. Apart from that, you're on yer own. I read the quest log and it said to check my map but when I did (dozens of times) I never once saw any skulls. Was I just unlucky?

Any idea how long these quests will go on for? Is there a time limit or a set number of victories that will end it?

[Naolin]

the skulls dissapear when the players win the battle, how this is done I don't know (probably kill all mobs) so you can be unlucky and see no skulls.

[DotComm]

As you kill the mobs, the health of the crystal in the middle goes down. I dunno what happens when you kill it tho, whether it just disappears or something else spawns. I got bored before I got close to killing a crystal.

[Krollin]

When you kill enough of the mobs to get the Crystal health low enough 4 Scourge Engineers turn up and starting performing a ritual to keep the Crystal alive. If you have 8 Necrotic Runes you can talk to one of them, he then turns into a Dark Shadow, Elite mob, who will then do its best to kill you. We were killing these with 3 in the group, 2 Rogues and a Warlock (all with tier 1/2 Epics) with few problems.
You get the set Chest items from these mobs.

[Shellar]

BTW, can anybody confirm or deny that you need to have the quest to see the drops? If so, does that mean that you can't collect more than 30 at a time?
You can get the drops without having the relevant quest.

[Havoc Jack]

I did an entire Scholomance run just a little bit ago, and got a total of 5 skeleton fragments. It's slightly annoying, but only skeletons will drop skeleton fragments, so all those humanoids, or ghouls, or zombies, or ghosts, none of them drop.

Oh yeah, and my one attempt to solo a shadow went badly. very badly.

[Aerath]

The resource quests given are a money dump though.

8 Runecloth Robes... that's 20g on Runecloth easily at the very least, and that's for one mark...