The daily ToT struggle

Lavum · July 24

As of right now, i have played 5 ToT games. 0 Wins for this daily. been over a hour and 1/2. The rage is real. I love how the NPC will pull combo's out of a hat last minute to win. I hate this game, yet we are forced to play it for certain things. I had such high hopes for this when it launched. But apparently ZoS had other ideas.
it took 7 games to complete the daily. Think the Novice NPC's are tuned a bit too much

SeaGtGruff · July 24

I think you should be able challenge the Expert NPCs even if your ToT level is low, and I find them to be easier to beat than the Novice because they tend to pick other patrons than the four basic patrons. Pelin in particular can be tough to win against if the NPC gets a few good power cards, so challenging the other two NPCs instead of Novice can actually be helpful if it means Pelin doesn't get chosen. See if you get experience with each of the patrons and their decks by challenging Expert NPCs and going up against more than just the four basic patrons. Remember, you can still use the other patrons if the NPC chooses them, even if you can't choose them yourself. And try to find a couple of basic patrons you can get good at using to your advantage so you can choose those. For instance, I find that Hlaalu and Crow are two that I can use well, so I make sure that any match I play includes those two patrons. Most of all, just keep at it and try to learn from your mistakes as well as from what strategies the NPCs like to use-- but be aware that the NPCs can be pretty dumb about using certain patrons in ways that can work against their best interests, so don't try to just copy what it looks like the NPC thinks is a good move.

AzuraFan · August 12

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I think you should be able challenge the Expert NPCs even if your ToT level is low, and I find them to be easier to beat than the Novice because they tend to pick other patrons than the four basic patrons.

I tried ToT recently for the first time in a long time. So long that I'd forgotten how to do stuff like exchange 1 coin cards for 2 coins.

In any event, what the heck have they done to the novice NPCs? Took me 3 tries to beat the one in Skywatch. Unfortunately, there was no expert NPC in that area or I would have played them instead.

The difficulty level of the novice NPCs has jumped considerably. If I had been a fresh new player who decided to try ToT for the first time by playing a novice, I'd never play again.

It would be okay if they were using the novice NPCs to further teach people strategies about how to play. But stuff happens so fast that I couldn't tell what the NPC was doing - could have been cheating and playing bogus cards for all I know.

Novices should be just that - novices. Not harder to beat than expert NPCs.

I just saw another thread about how someone keeps getting the same person in the ToT queue, implying that there aren't many people who play it. Well, I can believe it's not bringing in new players, who are shown the door as soon as they try to play a game with a novice NPC, which is exactly what most new players will do.

I was only doing this to try to finish off the ToT daily achievement (wish I'd done it before they made the novice NPCs grandmasters), so no problem for me. I'll just scratch all ToT achievements off my shrinking list of what there is to do in this game. But they should consider reverting some of the changes. They don't have to make them pushovers, but the novices should be beatable by someone new to ToT.

And to add insult to injury, after spending all that time, I get 50 gold and other junk as rewards when I finally win. When the difficulty was beefed up, the rewards should also have been increased. Does ZOS seriously expect people to spend upward of 30 minutes for 50 gold? No wonder ToT is dead.

I don't know who asked for the novice NPCs to be buffed, but it was probably experienced players who were finding them too easy to beat. Those aren't the players to listen to in this circumstance. Novices should be beatable by the most casual of ToT players, and those pretty new to the game.

SeaGtGruff · August 12

@AzuraFan, I play the Expert NPC in Skywatch all the time (when I get a match in Auridon). IIRC, the Expert NPC is somewhat separated from the other two NPCs, sitting at a ToT table that's under a little canopy.

AzuraFan · August 12

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

@AzuraFan, I play the Expert NPC in Skywatch all the time (when I get a match in Auridon). IIRC, the Expert NPC is somewhat separated from the other two NPCs, sitting at a ToT table that's under a little canopy.

Ah, wish I'd known that. I had the daily to play ToT in Auridon and I went to where the quest indictor was. Thanks for letting me know.

freespirit · August 12

I usually pick novice NPC's my preference of decks would be Hlaalu and Rahjiin, Novice NPC's are generally pretty stupid.

I've lost count of the times I've seen an NPC end a game with less than 5 cards due to idiocy on their part!

Necrotech_Master · August 13

freespirit wrote: »

I usually pick novice NPC's my preference of decks would be Hlaalu and Rahjiin, Novice NPC's are generally pretty stupid.

I've lost count of the times I've seen an NPC end a game with less than 5 cards due to idiocy on their part!

im similar except i usually do rahjin and the red eagle decks (as novice npcs dont have those) so they can also add hlaalu into the mix themselves lol

had several matches where the npc actually removed all of their cards from their deck (though in more recent matches they seem to do this a little bit less, like they usually dont remove non-coin cards like writ of coins)

red eagle + hlaalu they definitely will sap their own deck, and they still dont remove rahjins bewilderment cards lol

expert npcs do tend to actually remove bewilderments occasionally, but still fall into similar traps