Cheers mate.

Anyway ontopic, they have tried to fix this mode, and it is definitely easier, i can one key hard on auto now which was never happening before

But it is not gaining traction as a fun mode, what do you guys think is the single biggest issue for you that stops you wanting to run it?

Honestly? I used to hate it, and I'm much less opposed to it now. Perhaps it's because it's literally the only thing left in this game to challenge me, but I'm actually enjoying trying to find ways to build teams for it.

I think a big part of the old angst was the feeling that there was nowhere to go. Being stuck on 3-keying the lowest difficulty made the entire rest of the experience feel hopeless - like, prior to the nerf, it was hard to even see being able to one-key normal, let alone be able to do hard, without having one of a very small list of champs (hello duchess and shamael!).

Now, being able to do normal easily, and being able to do hard as well, has shown me that even before I would have been able to one-key normal, and probably would have been able to clear hard too - I just had no motivation to try before.

The problem now is that my clan can't clear hard, so I'm stuck on progression - but that's a hill that I can climb, by trying to build better and better teams and get others to follow suit once I find those teams.

If I were to make any suggestions, it'd be to just remove the head respawning randomly as a new one. That's just frustrating, and often makes for a complete waste of a run. Maybe just make it so the first 2-3 respawns will always be the same, and then start randomizing it, if they really want to keep that element of the fight.

^^^ that all sounds fair enough, i hate it less now that i can auto it too

And with the clan ambivalence towards the hydra we rarely clear hard either. 

I wish instead of nerfing the difficulty they would have reduced the scores needed for each level.  It takes longer now :) 😃 

I care less now i can run auto but yeh it is a big timesink for sure

I 1 keyed brutal, but that took well over an hour manual.  Ugh.  Just did 45 mil on hard, and that was even longer.   I can only auto easy.

First normal after the changes, I think it took like 1.5-2 hours. Long enough that I got warnings about the turn limit and I was seriously considering throwing in case the game just decided to not save the results if I did hit the limit. Could've stopped earlier I guess, but I wanted to get as much damage in as possible to unlock hard since the rest of my clan doesn't really bother with hydra.

I can 1-key hard without too much difficulty, but even that takes like 45 minutes.

Here's Plarium's latest response. Summarized as "we're going to ignore everything people are complaining about". Great work, Plarium!

The New Advanced Quest. Yes, that one, with Hydra
Many thanks to those who shared their opinion with us regarding the new Advanced quest. The purpose of this quest is to encourage players to tackle Hydra, which became a bit easier after the recently introduced changes, namely the nerf of the beast and the key-free possibility to restart the encounter. Please keep in mind that this quest belongs to the batch of Clan Boss quests, so on any given day, the game might assign a player with either a task to fight Hydra or one of the challenges against the Demon lord. The game won’t ask you to attack Hydra if you don’t have any Hydra keys left.

 

Okay... So they think the problem is that we don't understand the quest, not that the quest is a bad idea? They are literally just hurting the people who already care about the hydra and would've used those keys anyway, while those that don't are mostly unaffected and can just throw away a key by quitting the fight as soon as it starts. Few are the times when a change has no redeeming qualities, but this might be one of those times.

They ignore us.... but i ignore this stupid quest. 

Thanks for nothing Plarium. 

Nothing more to say. 

This was very helpful, now I understand that when the quest says to use a hydra key it means I need to use a hydra key!

Now that it's all cleared up I don't hate the fact that there are heads that you can't attack, heads that fear you, heads that steal your buffs, heads that then spread all your buffs, heads that cleanse all your debuffs, heads that put up posion cloud neutering your team for 2 turns, rng stacked ontop of rng stacked ontop of rng, did I mention RNG?

I don't hate the fact that post mithrala I have zero desire to waste my time doing this encounter over and over until RNG is on my side, the same team I did 25 mil 1 key hard this time did 5 mil then after wasting 1.5 hours it did 21 mil, I assure you it was pure skill that got me these numbers, it had nothing to do with wasting an afternoon on this piss of a fight until it just worked.

I don't hate the fact that you expect me to waste hours on the worst I mean best fight ever. I don't even hate that you expect me to do this absolute trash 3 times each week. It's not like I already have to spend 1.5 hours every single day doing normal clan boss but let me sit around and manual some exceptionally poor fight over and over and over until I get good results with the same comp because of how skilled I am at this game.

Again Thank You so much plarium for clearing up the meaning of using a hydra key. It makes me very happy to continue playing this game and gives me something to look forward to.

And bravo to the design team of this encounter, maybe Satan is hiring and needs help finding the most optimal way to torture souls, the hydra team would be a shoe in for the position.

I totally get this post, it reflects many of the frustrations i have had with hydra 

I agree 100pct.   But I also realize that missing an energy refill a couple times a week has zero impact on me.  

I agree with all those saying how bad an idea it really is to make this an Advanced Quest. I now have to either fail to complete my AQs for the day (and we all need those for the books that are so hard to get in the needed quantity) or just waste a key which essentially cripples me for having a chance to get the low chest for the week. If you want to encourage us to try Hydra, make it a weekly quest to use the 3 keys and MAYBE some fairly simple minimal score (to guarantee some level of effort).

The problem for me is, is this boss worth the effort?

Now that i have mithrala the answer is probably no? i have very few decent pieces of stoneskin and protection even now- RNG is like that, and it feels unrewarding compared to the main clanboss.

Maybe they need to review the rewards?

I'll put it this way..... I hear you guys. And I also am having to randomly drop what I'm doing that day if I want to complete the advanced quests when this one shows up. That or do it ALL the day after Hydra reset, which means not really getting a chance to build or test teams.

I will ensure the continued community feedback, and my own, on this quest goes to Plarium.

ALSO....

With RNG, Hydra does seem to take me somewhere between 30 minutes and many hours to get a single key done on anything past Normal. 

And I would say that Normal is a ton faster, and that makes this quest easier to deal with once a week, but at this point I am using my scrubs/castoffs for Normal so I can have my better teams hit Brutal and Hard. So I think I reset my Normal key 4 times this past week, which was basically 50 minutes before I started my "10 million" run.

You need better scrubs if you need 4 resets on normal 😆 🤣 

Yep, have run into the same exact problems you're outlining here. I use my best 12 on Hard/Brutal, and then I'm scraping a bit on Normal. On the easier (read: non Wrath) weeks, it's not so bad. I don't really want to take up dupes or fringe Hydra champions at the cost of getting masteries on Arena champs just in the hopes of making this go easier.

Getting the quest three times in a week was not ideal. I don't mind passing up energy and such at this stage of the game and have outright skipped the quest a few times now because I just can't be bothered.