Aiiro dost thou need a hug?

But on the more serious note, pubs for these kind of events are not exactly the best thing to do. Apocrea requires coordination, which is the least vitamin found in pub parties.

I'm not saying solitude yourself, rather find some friends to do this event, guildmates even(are you in a guild question mark). I much rather do pubs in where the goal is simple and even braindead button mashers can succeed. Like fsc or the arcade gates. The point of an mmo is meeting and playing with other human beings.

Honestly, I think its just as important to note that one or two scarabs won't kill anyone-- and a couple WILL get out 90% of the time. So when you get hurt, don't worry. The worst thing you can do is get mad at your team and jeopardize the run. Likewise, if there are 2 people dead and you're still farming the level, you should probably move on- you need them to increase your productivity, and slowly clearing the level at 1/3 of the speed isn't necessarily the best of ideas.

@Alfredo

If you're soloing, then you're going to be gathering at less than 1/3 of what you could be. I don't think that's a good idea.

@Fehz

Ok, here are some numbers

120 sigils per level, about 12 mins as solo.

With party i know you can get 200, but its hit or miss with randoms, so yeah. Whatever works, eh?

I got 226 on a solo run (after I went solo because the team wanted to skip the arena after not getting any plateau levels). It wasn't that bad since scarabs and souls are way easier to kill. But it was really boring. If you guys prefer that then more power to you.

Since it seems like most of the players here don't like skipping arenas or simpleminded knights who don't kill the scarabs, maybe we could go in a party with each other for some successful runs? Just a thought. Feel free to add me in-game if anybody wants to party. I make sure to kill everything and I'm willing to do even the third round of fiend arenas.

--Yeah, I don't get the concept of rushing through that first level in the least. It's saving you what, all of five minutes? Whoopee. And there are these wonderful little things called Vitapods and health pills that greatly increase your survivability on the Plateau...guess where you can get those from?

--I'm honestly more ambivalent about skipping the arenas. They can take a while to slog through, and if people are already concerned about surviving on the Plateau, they may not want to run the risk of burning more lives in a Fiend arena. The other issue is that a good weapon loadout for the arena isn't necessarily the same as a good loadout for Soul-hunting, and obviously you'd want to stick with the latter. I'm probably swayed by the fact that I was finally part of a run that did decide to continue through the arena...and then we managed to wipe in the second room, before ever hitting a Plateau level. Bad End. In any case, I can completely understand skipping the final room: that 12-Greaver wave can suck it.

--It really is sad how quickly some people die on the Plateau, and you're absolutely right that they usually seem to be the people most eager to rush. And words cannot express my rage at the scumbags who just park themselves AFK at the elevator. I had another run recently where one guy died almost immediately, the other sat at the elevator, and I was the only one scrambling around trying to drudge up a few Sigils. Awful. And why does it seem so hard to maintain a full 4-person party through more than a level or two? There are far too many players who just bail for no apparent reason.

--The bugs...well, the obvious argument for getting rid of them is that it helps cut down lag (really that should be on OOO for how horribly-unoptimized the game is), but they can be a pain in the rear to completely track down unless you have the most effective weapons to deal with them, which I really don't. I generally just try to dodge them unless I wind up with a whole bunch in a small area, and then I'll do my best to thin the herd. Standing still for too long on the Plateau is generally your worst enemy, after all.

But honestly none of this bugs me all that much anymore. Apparently I'd done better than I remembered the previous time around, since I only needed a few more materials to be able to craft all three weapons. I had one final run last night where we managed to hit (and yes, skip) three arenas in a row, but by the time we hit the final Plateau, we were nice and pumped up on health, and we scored over 200 Sigils. It was just enough to buy my last materials, so now I never have to play this mission again! I'm free!

...So you ignore the Scarabs and thus cause an increasing amount of lag?

The puzzles give you 4.5 times as many tokens as a lost soul, and you probably would also take a lot less time if you weren't soloing.

And just because there's a "go solo" option doesn't mean the game isnt meant to be co-op. That's like trying to say tf2 isn't an online game because it has one or two offline modes with bots...