Starter Quest Imbalance

Karcosa

As most of us know, the Faelindral starter quest reward is a lute with a 35% stringed modifier, whereas the Night Harbor quest reward is a bracer.

According to the wiki, the next best stringed instrument is a 24% mod, making the Faelindral starter quest far and away the bis for stringed instruments, and potentially the easiest to attain.

Even as someone who does not min/max, it feels terrible making a Human or Dwarf bard knowing that I will not have access to this item.

I assume the quests will be rebalanced at some point, but I think this is one that deserves priority attention ahead of EA. At the very least, make the quest accessible to Humans and Dwarves.

Phlyn

potentially before the starter quests get rebalanced iw ould expect more loot options soon. we just got the deep which is 100% more content that could drop new instruments.

Metamorphosis

If they have quests that reward instruments.. it shouldn't be behind racially locked starter quests.

Bards are travelers. There should be a quest in every major city hub that rewards an instrument and encourages bards to travel to all of them to collect em all.

Fanglore

Metamorphosis Interesting idea- could be done like the EQ iksar monk bracer was doable by humans with a huge faction grind and a starter quest to "earn" the initial item/note needed to start on the race's class quest.

Fidric

post deep dive patch, can confirm Lute of the Charmed is now 60% string mod, versus baseline 50% vendor

highest general instrument mod value seen so far is 95% on wyrmsbane war drum

Karcosa

Fidric Awesome, ty!

Fidric

Karcosa e.g. 90% lute

Ashebear

Fidric I've been informed that the new highest % instrument bonus is on a Lute, so that means there is an undiscovered loot out there with 100+% bonus! Probably from rothold, fallen watch, the deep, or a raid boss.

Fell

Karcosa it feels terrible making a Human or Dwarf bard knowing that I will not have access to this item.

I think you're warping the word "balance" beyond all meaning. It certainly doesn't mean that every race, every class, every starting location has a starter quest that gives a perfectly identical-strength reward.

Ashebear

Fell I think they were referring to pre-rework, where the starter quest lute was the BiS lute in the entire game, nearly a 46% (relative percent (35-24)/24 = ~ 46%) improvement over the next best lute in the game; this is an astronomical difference for a 'starter' item. If the devs didn't fix the balance of the lute, I'd 100% agree with the opinion that it is unbalanced and punishes players for choosing NH over EW.

All of this is irrelevant now as the rework fixed the lute and made it more realistic in terms of scaling.