If you've been living under a rock these past few days here are the changes that were made to manon in the Halloween patch: These changes for the most part addressed the common complaints about manon and made killing it much more consistent than before. You're guaranteed a reward every time you kill it, it's less frustrating to both help and kill manon as a bishop especially if it's your first time, and in theory it should reduce the amount of ksing which was the biggest issue from what I could tell. The best part about this change is the consistency, you'll now be able to 100% complete the quest by finding a manon as opposed to before where you had to pray to rng it drops a cry after camping it for hours. Of course there's a compromise to this, you get less elixirs upon completing the quest otherwise it'd be too good a change. While it was possible in the past for a manon to drop more than 1 cry at a time, it usually never happened so on average 1 manon = 5 elixirs. Now 1 manon could potentially yield 12 elixirs if maximized correctly by killing it in a full party of 6. The last part about this change is the quest cooldown being increased from 1 hour to 4 hours. This means you could only turn in the quest a maximum of 6 times per day equaling to 12 elixirs per individual, but that's likely never going to happen (unless this game is literally your life) so just going by an estimate I'm gonna assume most people will only be able to complete the quest a maximum of 2-3 times per day so that's 4 or 6 elixirs, which is around the same as before the change (5). If anything this makes manons even more competitive than before since players will have to kill more manons to make up for the less elixirs. I'm 50/50 on the change, while it does make it less frustrating to hunt manons it's also less rewarding and you have to kill more manons compared to before to make up for the less elixirs. These changes mostly make hunting manons easier after a server reset. As you know manons don't spawn on a set time after being killed, well it does in a way but the spawn timer for manon is anytime between 4-6 hours. There's a 2 hour gap between the possible spawn times and that can really mess things up. The reason I say this change make hunting manons easier after a server reset is simple, because they all spawn after one so the spawn timer isn't an issue here. The second spawn for manon is also relatively easy, as every manon gets killed after a server reset you can just use ~uptime to get a sense of when the next one will spawn based on how long the server's been up for. But for every manon killed after the second spawn it gets more trickier and trickier to track down. The third manon could spawn anytime between 8-12 hours after the first one, the fourth manon could spawn anytime between 12-16 hours and so on and so forth. There's no way to 100% track down when it'll spawn due to this 2 hour gap spawn times. The spawn timer remains the same as before which imo was the biggest problem with manon before and still is. If you're someone like me who checks manon casually with no internal clock keeping track of the timers, these changes are only hurting us since it's just as difficult as before to find 1 and now the quest gives less elixirs. You might be thinking, "then go camp it yourself, you have no one to blame but yourself as it rewards players that try harder" which is true but let's put it this way. If you have a timer for a specific channel you're obviously going to camp the channel before the 4 hour spawn timer hits, because why wouldn't you? You know it's going to spawn soon so not camping it is the same as giving it away for free, and because now you only get 2 elixirs as opposed to 5 you're going to want to kill as many manons as possible to make up for the loss. All this is doing is encouraging players to camp more. Going by what I said earlier, it makes killing manon more consistent sure but you need to put in more work, and is that really what we want? These changes aim at making killing manons more consistent but the randomness of the spawn timers contradicts that. Ksing can still be a problem despite the attempts at fixing it. Common sense says it's the most profitable to kill manon in a party with as many people as possible and most people like you and me are totally fine with sharing manons with strangers as there're no downsides to it but not everyone is like this. There'll always be people who aren't willing to share, and there'll always be people who'll ks you. Whether that's due to their lack of understanding of the ToS, a misunderstanding on who got there first, or language barrier, these people will always exist. Hopefully we'll see less reports in the long run but I'm skeptical. Something else to keep in mind is that manons are mostly killed by people who run horntail. People who run horntail aren't your level 110 chief bandits or 130 f/p mages, they're your high level players. This server's been on-going for 3 years now so the average range is relatively high. If you compare our average range to manon's 3.7mil hp you'll see that it's a really easy boss. Depending on your class and range, some people are able to kill it in 1-3 minutes, way too fast for people to get a chance to party up. We currently have 14 channels, so if I for example start channel surfing from 5 onward and a manon spawns in ch4 right as I begin, I won't get to it for at least a good minute. If another player finds that manon in ch4 and is strong enough they'll be able to down it before I make it to his channel, eliminating the possibility of partying up with that person. Overall these changes are a step in the right direction, consistency is something I highly value, although I'm a bit unsure whether this is a buff or a nerf. I do think the quest currently gives too little elixirs for how much extra work you have to put in, buffing it to 3 seems reasonable and would be great. Before 1 manon could keep you stocked for a few days but now it'll only be enough for 2 runs. Given that horntail is ran almost daily like zakum, 2 elixirs doesn't seem enough. Yes you can complete the quest on multiple people at the same time but that doesn't change the fact that you can only get 2 yourself per quest. Personally I would've much liked if: Manon always dropped at least 1 cry Reduce the spawn timer by half Put a limit on how many elixirs you can hold at a time to 10 so people can't hoard them = less incentive to hunt manons unless it was necessary Increase the cooldown of the quest to 24 hours This post might've been too early as it hasn't even been a week since the update but I just wanted to get my initial thoughts out. Thanks for reading.
Just wanted to mention that it counts as a kill as long as you do damage to it, if you're not in the party. Partying is still definitely encouraged though since many people have mules that can't attack it top! Someone told me in game that they tested this already. I already think getting only 2 elixirs every 4 hours is a pretty significant nerf.
I wouldn't say so. The mapowner function is still in play. If the mapowner requests you to leave, you'd have to comply.
This may be obvious, but I assume that people are allowed to hog the map with manon spawned until they decide to kill it (their party arrives)? Edit: Question: if you do 51% of damage, and someone else comes in to try to ks and does a portion of damage to manon, do they get a kill count?
Well, according to Jeen, seems like as long as damage is done, they will get a kill count. Hence, IF everyone can be nice to one another, it means that the number of people being able to clear their kill count is potentially infinite. However, given that human beings are selfish by nature, I presume it will not be surprising to see people requesting others to leave just because they are map owners. You know, the thinking that "I spent hours camping for this manon, why should someone who just walk in get a share of the reward?"
Oops, I didn't read her comment carefully, thanks for pointing that out. But I guess there could be mapowners who would want others to leave in fear that they'd kill manon before the mapowner's friends arrive. Like you said, if people can be nice to one other, there won't be any problem at all.
I'm not sure if you've hunted manon since the patch besides after a server check, but from my experience, there have been no campers and I've been able to find a manon within a few minutes off channel surfing. People are generally nicer there, and everyone is willing to party or allow you to get a hit on a manon. I've hunted them at various times of the day and at most I've seen one or two people surfing around as well. I think that the changes have removed some of the toxicity, and there have even been situations where one person finds a manon and over 10 people come to get the kill for the quest. As for damage done I'm pretty sure you only have to do 1 damage or be in the party and do no damage (personal experience). Overall I'd say that the change has removed one of the most common sources of ks reports (0 ks reports from manon since the patch), and has made it easier for new bishops and everyone in general to complete the transformation medicine quest.
As mentioned above, yes the mapowner is still in effect. Some reasons are that they are trying to wait for their friends (as mentioned before) or they might be hunting it for nx/skill books (I really hope not) and are worried that someone will do more damage and get the drops. Overall, I feel like this has definitely cut down on manon ksing and it has made the community nicer overall! Still salty about only 2 elixirs every 4 hours tho.
First of all, I can confirm that you only need to receive exp upon Manon’s death to get the kill for the quest. This means you only need to deal 1 damage to the Manon or to be in a party with someone who deals damage to the Manon. Of course, you must also be in the map when Manon dies. This means that the number of people who can get the Manon kill for their quest is infinite per Manon. I camped Manon a lot before the change and I’ve gone to check Manon quite a few times since the change. After the change, like Mikey, I also have never run into campers and I also have found a Manon after less than ten minutes of surfing channels. I can’t speak to the attitude of fellow Manon hunters since I haven’t run into them, but from my own experience and those of people who I know, Manon toxicity that was once so prevalent before is actually gone. There’s several reasons for this. But to start, your point about Manons being more competitive because more players have to kill more Manons is untrue. Before the change, people would camp maps for hours, and often only to kill the Manon when it finally spawned and have it drop zero cries. Then they had to camp again and hope that a cry dropped. More often than not, a Manon would drop only one cry. Manon’s Cry was a character-bound item, so if a player was at the level where they multicliented at HT, they had to camp Manon multiple times for their other characters. This was why Manon was so toxic. The cry drop rate was very low (out of six Manons I found one day, only three of them dropped a cry and it was always one). It was so bad that the HT prequest took longer than the boss itself. The stress of getting elixirs was so high that there would be looters who would see you had a Manon, wait outside until it died and hoped to steal and loot an extra cry if any dropped, effectively taking from the mapowner’s other characters or friends who they wanted to help out. Yes, there are less elixirs per Manon kill now, from five to two. The reduction in elixirs per quest completion does increase the incentive to kill Manon more often. However, it’s the second nerf, the quest cooldown, that prevents this from happening. In the past, people could farm elixirs because the quest CD was a mere one hour. By repeating the quest and therefore repeat killing Manon so often, they could hoard an absurd number of elixirs. But with the four hour CD now in place, there’s absolutely no reason to search and kill Manon more often than that. Combined with the fact that per every Manon spawn, an unlimited number of people can complete their quest with that Manon’s death, they all have four hours to wait out before they would go back to Manon. This is why Manon maps are so scarce and why Manons are so easy to find now. There’s both less people searching and they’re searching far less often. Your point about the spawn timers and camping is true. If you don’t know when a channel was last killed, you could be camping for up to six hours. And yes, it makes sense to camp a channel that you know the last kill time for. This was the norm before the change. But it simply doesn’t happen now. Manon is easy to find on a whim and I haven’t seen any campers. The mechanics that were the problem remain. But the problem doesn’t exist anymore. It all goes back to unlimited people per Manon and the four hour quest CD. As far as people ksing you, you’ll get your Manon kill fulfilled as long as you hit the Manon at least once or are in a party with someone who did and you remain in the map when it dies. Whoever whites (does the most DPS) will get loot ownership for the drops of course, but if we’re only talking about the quest, ksing isn’t an issue. I agree that there are people who can kill Manon in less than a minute. They may kill your Manon before you get your other characters and friends to the map. I haven’t run into this issue personally, but I expect it to happen every now and then. Your last two bullet points I disagree with. When I heard about the Manon changes, I had only one concern: that people would have a difficult time farming elixirs. I know of several people who run HT twice, three, four times a day, every day. They have at least three characters each to get elixirs on (attacker, bishop, SE/SI mule usually). The change has allowed them to stock up on elixirs while maintaining a daily two runs per character, only needing two Manons to keep a surplus. If there was an elixir limit imposed, this would increase stress of getting elixirs to maintain their run frequency since not everyone will be around to search for or be present for a friend’s finding of a Manon. The 200+ elixir cap eliminates the stress of running HT as far as running low or out of elixirs. Increasing the quest CD to 24 hours would mean everyone who runs HT regularly would be part of a kill for Manon every single day (or a bit more, since 24 hours and all). Like the elixir limit, this needlessly increases stress. All in all, these two points would reintroduce the fundamental problem before the change: the HT prequest being more difficult than the boss. Which is bad game design and was changed to a system that transformed the most toxic part of the game into a place that genuinely fosters community. Because ever since I heard about the mechanic about the Manon kill being infinite and not just six people in a party, I’ve been super excited to smega Manon party at channel so and so. Finally, we can be done with spawning Manon, recording our screens, telling everyone obsessively all the red tape to make a report abuse thread, and stressing out our friends who would come to watch or help because it was obvious how much of a ridiculous struggle it all was. And now we can invite everyone to come for Manon. It encourages people to show kindness and help out strangers, and hey, make new friends! I recognize some problems remain but by far, the Manon change has fundamentally changed the game for the better. I’m incredibly happy with it and I’m sincerely grateful to the people involved in making it happen.
From my experience manon hunting hasn't been made any easier, I've yet to find a manon since the patch but then again I don't dedicate more than 3 minutes when I look for them, I just do a quick sweep of all the channels then log off if there aren't any. Perhaps it got better but personally I haven't noticed a difference. Being able to finish the elixir quest on multiple characters is something I missed cause I only run horntail on 1 character but yes, that's a rather big buff to people who have multiple characters, the more you have the more beneficial this change becomes. As far as ksing goes if all you have to do is hit manon a couple times without even needing to be in a party to trigger the quest then that changes everything regarding ksing. I sure as hell wouldn't care if someone came into my map and started attacking (and I hope others feel the same way), as long as I get what I came for then there's no complaint. Off topic but it's funny how there's been SO many reports in the past over manon ksing (ksing in general really) yet during my 2 years on this server I've never encountered a situation where I've been ksed or seriously had to tell someone to cc. It sucks cause I love interacting with toxic people and pissing them off.
I reccomend you afk and tell to a friend/guildie yours tell you when he finds a manon if its so problematic for you to find one.
Doing that without changing anything to what manon drops or the droprate, it would make manon the most farmed boss there is. So changing the respawn time alone wouldn't fix anything.
