Thread: The new and improved Fornost

I finally finished the new Fornost instance and after seeing all of the complaining in these forums, I want to give the devs a little bit of love. It's a meat-grinder and it's long, but it's totally worth it. Far more challenging than the Great Barrow, it also has a lot more character to it and some great boss battles.

I did have two problems with it, though.

It's scalable down to level 30, but all that does is eliminate experience gain - it's still wickedly hard. I did the first three parts of it at level 42 (I'm a level 57 Hunter) with a level 42 Guardian and a level 75 Warden and we had our hands full. We brought in a level 72 Champion for the final leg of it and still had two tough boss battles. Granted, it wasn't a full fellowship but considering the over-leveled characters we had, I would have expected it to be easier.

Particularly since they tie so many outside quests into the instance, it would be nice if you could tackle the four instances out of order. I got through the first three and then our warden had to leave. We recruited a couple of people willing to join in, but since they hadn't done the previous one (Wraith of Fire), we'd have to go back and start over.

I did old version of Fornost (level 39-42) solo on both L75 Champ and a Guard. Recently I ran them through new Fornost to get all wings unlocked and I have to say, even at level 40 new Fornost is MUCH harder indeed.

I first ran through all the new Fornost instances at lower levels with one or two fellow 75 kinmates, just so we'd have them unlocked. No problem. Enjoyable, good loot, no complaints.

Then we decided to make a kin run at level 75 tonight. The first two wings were fine (although it took some doing to avoid wiping in the very first battle royale of the Earth instance). We got about 3/4 through the Fire instance and wow. The boss (whose name starts with a Z, sorry, can't remember his whole name) and his wave after wave of adds did us in. We wiped several times before figuring we needed to tank the boss man as far away from his minions as possible - we opted for our warden to do this so that I, on my guardian, could shield wall our mini and tank the adds.

This worked. Well, almost. I think it would have worked but we were one person short in our fellowship and could have used some good AOE dps (champ, even a LM or something). Also, our minstrel is not quite level 75 (I think he's 73?).

So, we plan to try it again with a full group. I don't have a problem with it, per se, but it occurred to me that wow, we were wiping at TIER ONE on this boss. That almost never happens (I frequently duo the Isen 3 man instances, for example). I was kind of hoping to find some info on what other people have tried that's worked. I do think we're on the right track, but wow, if T1 is that hard for that particular instance, I'd hate to see Tier 2.

Just my two cents. Curious what others think.

How is the seal count from Fornost 2.0?

My thoughts regarding Fornost 2.0

• Instance(s) is fun to run, some challenge but not that hard over all (75)
• Good to be able to do wings as the old way needed much time.
• Loot is utter #### (why i am done with it after 1st run)
• Marks not good enough either, better ways available.

We've had a lot of fun with the new fornost instances. Didn't have the right group to do the shadow challenge, but otherwise got everything down. Some of the challenge modes are quite interesting, in my opinion.

Originally Posted by CaptainSweden

My thoughts regarding Fornost 2.0

• Instance(s) is fun to run, some challenge but not that hard over all (75)
• Good to be able to do wings as the old way needed much time.
• Loot is utter #### (why i am done with it after 1st run)
• Marks not good enough either, better ways available.

Yep. It's harder than GB and Annuminas and challenging in places but the payoff for going is not enough for it to get run a lot.

The Water boss fight is really annoying and we now fight him at range with the Guardian Fraying the Edge to keep aggro. We kept losing the challenge to somebody lagging at a bad time and winding up in the water. Loot was horrible for what was an interesting fight.

The waves fight in Fire was insane but ultimately doable with a Warden kiting many adds and the group just powering down the boss as opportunity presented.

I wish the loot was good enough for this to get run more often because it is very challenging on T2.

At the moment there is absolutley no reason for lvl75 characters to run Fornost.

4 Seals per Section ?
Loot ? no teal items, loot that does drop (purple) is way below lvl75 standard (quest drops in Great River region are better).

Unfort. this is dead birth. Yes Fornost is a fun instance - but why go in there more than once ??

The revamp was nicely done. The instance always was great and the new version is true to the original while adding some nice fights.

Like most people though, I ran it once for deeds and just to see it again and now I'm never going back. Nor has anyone I know been back more than once.

Unless Turbine get a handle on itemisation then further efforts such as that put into scaling Fornost are a waste of developer time. The rewards here are utterly inadequate for the time required and the difficulty of the encounters.

I have little hope that the itemisation issue will ever be solved. It's been a problem pretty much since Moria, if not before, and seems to be a blind spot in Turbine's development process.