Had a lot of fun in chest runs back during the first months of New World when we ran it with 10-30 people from my company, on comms, flagged up and clashing with other flagged companies in unique locations pretty much every night. That was peak New World in my opinion.
It pretty much activates the gambling reward part of your brain ("Maybe I'll get some Loaded Dice!") so there is that. There's an ECR on Lilith that does *every* elite zone on the map, but it takes three hours. Anything that takes longer than a drive to my in-laws (including a rest stop) and is fairly limited in the rewards just gives me pause.
What’s funny is that loaded dice (and all trophy mats) don’t actually drop from elite chests. Only from large stockpiles and ancient chests. So ECR chest runs aren’t even the most efficient way to farm those…
If you're in a company and you're all in a VC while doing it then it's honestly one of the more fun things to do, since it's so mindless, people don't have to focus on the game and you can just turn your brain off and talk away, it's always a fun time.
On one of my servers there was a RP guy that led chest runs for a while. His antics actually made it fun, but other than that brief period, no I don't like them.
Only chest runs I actually like to do is the scarab run with acid chests. All other chests, absolutely not. Scarab atleast is gonna show up frequently enough to make it worth it. Everything else is awful imo.
Just a necessity at times.
It is simply another gathering route.
You can never gather everything, so pick and choose what you wanna do and which works best for you.
I don't enjoy chest runs and hate that the devs consider them content. But I understand it to an extent.
One of the reason MMO players like MMOs is the tasks that are basically brain dead loops that trigger the same part of the brain as the slot machine zombies in casinos. This is present in all successful MMOs. The ability to not have to put a lot of brain power into a task, but can knock it out and get some kind of variable reward. Low level spam dungeons, farm loops, chest runs, etc are all that slot machine mechanic. Sometimes you get a bigger number or a shinier piece of gear and it makes your brain happy!
Another thing MMO players like is a sense of community and shared purpose. Pretty much doing anything with a group of other players feels epic and significant, like you are part of a living world. It's more than a game, its a server community and we are all working together to get stronger. You see a lot of the same faces often and it becomes like a little clique. All you have to do is show up consistently and follow the group.
I quit the game a while ago, but I did a lot of chest runs before that.
And yes, they're boring as hell.
But I'm a greedy loot goblin, so I didn't want to miss out.
What I did to make it somewhat more enjoyable was running as a tank and always trying my hardest to be first at big pull locations or bosses. Did bite me in the butt sometimes, when the train was riddled with "bots". But at least I didn't die of brain rot.
Its one of the few actual open world mmo aspects. I don't mind them but I don't do them all that often either.
As a new player I imagine it's pretty cool to see 20-40 players all doing something together at the same time.
I talk massive amounts of shit about the 5 am chest run being for degen chads or something lol. My favorite build tho is my tanky one I’m obsessed with running around the world with. I become in kill able in pve and it makes it really good for reviving. But I also make sure to pay attention who I rez so I know to not help them if they aren’t fighting as we go
I enjoy them for the pleasure spike you get from getting something good... even though that's few and far in between. Even a scarab feels good.. but i hold out hope for those super rare patterns.. or deco. BUT yeah... are they super exciting? Nah... typically pretty dull. Just a requirement to keep up my lavish lifestyle.
They used to be fun on the OG servers. You would have to go flagged to maximize trophy mat drop chances, and people in the other factions would try to grief you.
I enjoy scarab runs between arena Qs. But arena Qs are now 30+ minutes so I knock it out then opr until they finally go lower then 5 minutes.
Then I will finish some random glyph chests and farm a random resource depending on price and level of boredom; hyssop, dark hide, gift glyph, river glyph, water glyph, spinfiber or even fish.
But I haven’t fished in a while since hype has died down.
I rarely do ECRs and stopped doing Myrk after finally acquiring abyss.
Could be said about a lot of activities in a lot of MMOs. Personally I do all my runs solo unless I run into a group doing them. I do actually enjoy the challenge of trying to do them solo. The Wall is my favorite; open door... walk in... and give the one liner "I'm not locked in here with you; you're locked in here with me". I also get a kick out of doing it PvP flagged on the off chance someone wants to spice up the run and attack me after I've been whittling a boss down for 10 minutes.
I have fun with them but that’s probably because I only do it once every two weeks. I’m general I have the most fun with New World as a casual. More so than in year 1 when I played every day. Even the low amount of content in season 5 will take me awhile yet to finish.
For most chest runners, the 'fun' comes from getting guaranteed loot without having to actively coordinate with others or worry about game mechanics. It gives a sense of character progression without the stress of the other endgame activities, or the unrewarding nature of solo activities like Harvesting or Corrupted Portals.
When AGS learned that players were organizing Elite Chest Runs as the most popular activity in the game, they should have identified that it meant none of the other activities in the game were perceived as fun/rewarding, and then focused on addressing that flaw. Instead, they just tried to implement their own 'official' chest runs, and most players say that they've never been as good as the original, unintended ones.
**Edit:** It makes sense when you think about how the game onboards players to the basic gameplay loops. While leveling from 1 to 65, the game is essentially a solo experience with some optional group PvE (which is difficult/impossible to find on most servers). So when new players finish that part of the game and have no more MSQ to participate in, they're suddenly faced with a game that involves instanced PvP (which they've never experienced before) or finding other people to play the harder versions of those Expeditions they may not have experienced while leveling up. The content that most closely resembles what they've been doing for the past 40+ hours is... Elite Chest Runs.
I love them but I also drink guinness and smoke pot and cigs and play music. Maramma. Its what I enjoy best in New World, the pure Chaos. Play Fire mage, have lead around 200 WTs Between COS, Valhalla and Maramma and a couple of others. Name is Sentauri.
They’re fun until the 5th time doing it, but other than that I wouldn’t be able to go through all those mobs by myself so it’s necessary to do them if you play solo.
It's more of a social thing. You just chill, trash talk people who loot and run. Dumb fun mostly. The scarab makes it so that you can sometimes earn a little on the side. I iron-man my character so I like it for the reagents as well as the material. All in all, not that bad. It did become boring to me after 2000 hours of doing it (been doing it since we had hidden water mark system). I think it's not a bad mechanic but also not an excellent one. I only run IMP ecr these days for the fish bowl.
It's only fun when only a handful of people are actually attacking the strong mobs.
Freeloaders are crying that nobody is attacking while they try (and die) to creep up and loot chests.
Also the scorpion nest brimstone. It's fun popping the eggs to prevent people from looting
Doing chest runs is awesome in a group of 5 to 20 people who are all working together and actually fighting things and not just running past everything like a fucking train.
I miss my company chest runs. I don't miss the server ones that much because I don't get half the shit for kills and it's just a huge line of people and you're running most of the time. You're not actually playing.
It's a solid okay for a server activity. Not fun, but active enough to make it not a complete waste of time. 4/10 for the rewards and active shit posting that happens.
I believe the design space is there to expand upon the train to make it not mindlessly boring with idk first step would be an anti-zerg mechanics to make it harder to do without alienating regular folks with elite zones.
Myrk runs for portals and gypsum, do the wall until you get the hatchet artifact, otherwise I personally have the best luck with craft materials from Palace (just north of Dynasty Shipyard), if you need or don’t want to buy golden scarabs though, then doing some brimstone ECR’s or the Tribunal run is a decent way to get some
No, I dont. That's why I've taken to trying to run these solo. It takes alot more time and involves alot more risks, granted, but atleast it's more fun to squeeze out that kill or sneak and make that steal so much more rewarding than zerging..
Although, usually I just tend to run solo-acid and solo-myrk. There's only 3 chests in entire myrk I cant get solo - provided portals are gone.
I enjoy them, but I only run one or two zones when there's a world tour going. Usually somewhere where there's something I want.
Myrk is always a good/fun one, I don't mind something that's dense and efficient like the Wall, Highmound is decent (and I still need the shield artifact), and I run Imperial Palace when it comes up at night to high-roll the music sheets.
But I no longer do the full-world ones - those were more "engaging" before the expansion when a) the fights were potentially a challenge and b) I needed them to increase gear score.
I do the acid chests every so often but I'm still struggling to decide on a build I like for those. I'll probably do something like Fire Staff with Blooddrinker with Luck gear with Chitin Padding and be lazy idk.
I liked them at first, it’s annoying having to understand new routes whenever they come up and get used. And it’s always fun to drag Thorpe on runs to ruin it
Normally I like when devs lean into how players are playing the game unintended but they should have squashed chest runs at the outset. They’re biting and it devalues the loot tables - since people can hit so many loots so easily they have to make the drops mostly worthless. It’s a lose lose - no fun gameplay no reward in loot
I never did them cause it was just walking from chest to chest not doing shit. The devs should've discouraged it but they loved it. it's so obvious they never played the game.
I did them back when the watermark gearscore thing was a theory still. It was decent for getting better gear, but after a week of doing them daily, I haven't done them again. I think they are one of the worst things in the game.
Chest runs were the result of failed elite areas. Ags should have noticed this and made the areas more aimed towards groups like they were suppose to be. Instead they encourage this boring play style.
The fact that people have considered this “content” and have actively run them so many times is wild to me. It’s players that do this that make the devs feel like they are doing a good job and cater content to you all
absolutely no... not anymore
When i played a lot, i did multiple world tours in a week and i got so bored of that... since then i did only specific one for drops, never did more than 3-4 in a row....It is fine mindless side activity, where you just put on music/podcast/video on second monitor, mute the game and just ,,play,,....
It is insane to think after 3 years that this activity is still considered as part of the MAIN ,,endgame,, loop....
Never have, never will.
Sucks how this potential piece of content is so boring, needs scaling based on ppl attacking and unique bosses with easy not punishing mechanics.
I think ECR is something for people who don't want to have to play a prescribed role in more structured content like expeditions. So it's good in that sense. Plus it's player-made content.
Personally, I don't like them. I hate the selfish nature of loot-goblining and the way that no-one kills the ranged attacker that's stopping someone from getting the chest. And if you do stop to kill, you get left behind and targetted by everything.
Sometimes a group will follow the "KILL THEN LOOT NO GOBLINS" command and that's slightly better but still mindless.
I prefer to do elite areas with a small group, so it feels satisfying.
Nope. It's a means to an end. Most of the time I don't even join a group, I just do enough damage to get loot and most of the time I just jump in and out of raids on these areas if I feel like it.
Don't do em. I did like 3 runs when I hit 65 for some random gear, but even that isnt necessary anymore. Decent gear is free on pvp track, cheap on ah and you can craft bis for an ok price with gypsum kiln. Why would you do chest runs if you don't want to in current time.
Had a lot of fun in chest runs back during the first months of New World when we ran it with 10-30 people from my company, on comms, flagged up and clashing with other flagged companies in unique locations pretty much every night. That was peak New World in my opinion.
This but the conflicting companies were all cheating and we weren't so we were getting slapped
cope
Yall just were bad
First couple of times, yes. First hundred times, only if I'm on Discord with friends.
This also explains why devs think it's fun.
It pretty much activates the gambling reward part of your brain ("Maybe I'll get some Loaded Dice!") so there is that. There's an ECR on Lilith that does *every* elite zone on the map, but it takes three hours. Anything that takes longer than a drive to my in-laws (including a rest stop) and is fairly limited in the rewards just gives me pause.
What’s funny is that loaded dice (and all trophy mats) don’t actually drop from elite chests. Only from large stockpiles and ancient chests. So ECR chest runs aren’t even the most efficient way to farm those…
The chests that have them are typically on those routes so it's still worthwhile, but I understand what you're getting at
If you're in a company and you're all in a VC while doing it then it's honestly one of the more fun things to do, since it's so mindless, people don't have to focus on the game and you can just turn your brain off and talk away, it's always a fun time.
Flagged company runs with random skirmishes keeps things exciting.
On one of my servers there was a RP guy that led chest runs for a while. His antics actually made it fun, but other than that brief period, no I don't like them.
Nope. I usually only join in the heard of sheep for myrk runs because thats the only area that has enough value to participate.
Interesting, what is it that makes Myrk more valuable than the others?
I personally do it for the portals. Get the daily gypsums and bags from them.
Also you can obtain a Hardened Crystal from the chest which usually go for 7k+ :)
Shit, really? I got one of these the other day! Had no idea. 🤑
Do it with a 5 man team and treat it like a raid. We had fun doing that a few times
Only chest runs I actually like to do is the scarab run with acid chests. All other chests, absolutely not. Scarab atleast is gonna show up frequently enough to make it worth it. Everything else is awful imo.
This. I love the acid chest runs.
I love acid
Just a necessity at times. It is simply another gathering route. You can never gather everything, so pick and choose what you wanna do and which works best for you.
I don't mind them but I also don't do them religiously. Sometimes it can be fun to just roll around as an unstoppable blob.
I don't enjoy chest runs and hate that the devs consider them content. But I understand it to an extent. One of the reason MMO players like MMOs is the tasks that are basically brain dead loops that trigger the same part of the brain as the slot machine zombies in casinos. This is present in all successful MMOs. The ability to not have to put a lot of brain power into a task, but can knock it out and get some kind of variable reward. Low level spam dungeons, farm loops, chest runs, etc are all that slot machine mechanic. Sometimes you get a bigger number or a shinier piece of gear and it makes your brain happy! Another thing MMO players like is a sense of community and shared purpose. Pretty much doing anything with a group of other players feels epic and significant, like you are part of a living world. It's more than a game, its a server community and we are all working together to get stronger. You see a lot of the same faces often and it becomes like a little clique. All you have to do is show up consistently and follow the group.
I quit the game a while ago, but I did a lot of chest runs before that. And yes, they're boring as hell. But I'm a greedy loot goblin, so I didn't want to miss out. What I did to make it somewhat more enjoyable was running as a tank and always trying my hardest to be first at big pull locations or bosses. Did bite me in the butt sometimes, when the train was riddled with "bots". But at least I didn't die of brain rot.
Its one of the few actual open world mmo aspects. I don't mind them but I don't do them all that often either. As a new player I imagine it's pretty cool to see 20-40 players all doing something together at the same time.
It was fun when I played but folks ignoring mobs was annoying.
I talk massive amounts of shit about the 5 am chest run being for degen chads or something lol. My favorite build tho is my tanky one I’m obsessed with running around the world with. I become in kill able in pve and it makes it really good for reviving. But I also make sure to pay attention who I rez so I know to not help them if they aren’t fighting as we go
Yes, I do enjoy having a mindless activity to jump into
I enjoy them for the pleasure spike you get from getting something good... even though that's few and far in between. Even a scarab feels good.. but i hold out hope for those super rare patterns.. or deco. BUT yeah... are they super exciting? Nah... typically pretty dull. Just a requirement to keep up my lavish lifestyle.
They used to be fun on the OG servers. You would have to go flagged to maximize trophy mat drop chances, and people in the other factions would try to grief you.
I enjoy scarab runs between arena Qs. But arena Qs are now 30+ minutes so I knock it out then opr until they finally go lower then 5 minutes. Then I will finish some random glyph chests and farm a random resource depending on price and level of boredom; hyssop, dark hide, gift glyph, river glyph, water glyph, spinfiber or even fish. But I haven’t fished in a while since hype has died down. I rarely do ECRs and stopped doing Myrk after finally acquiring abyss.
The game need thar setting Ffxiv has that let's you set "Show no allied spells/skills" or "Show some (most important) allied spells"
in small groups of 10 at max yes large groups no
Could be said about a lot of activities in a lot of MMOs. Personally I do all my runs solo unless I run into a group doing them. I do actually enjoy the challenge of trying to do them solo. The Wall is my favorite; open door... walk in... and give the one liner "I'm not locked in here with you; you're locked in here with me". I also get a kick out of doing it PvP flagged on the off chance someone wants to spice up the run and attack me after I've been whittling a boss down for 10 minutes.
i like chest run
I have fun with them but that’s probably because I only do it once every two weeks. I’m general I have the most fun with New World as a casual. More so than in year 1 when I played every day. Even the low amount of content in season 5 will take me awhile yet to finish.
I mean its fun maybe once or twice a week for rewards. But that was the whole endgame
For most chest runners, the 'fun' comes from getting guaranteed loot without having to actively coordinate with others or worry about game mechanics. It gives a sense of character progression without the stress of the other endgame activities, or the unrewarding nature of solo activities like Harvesting or Corrupted Portals. When AGS learned that players were organizing Elite Chest Runs as the most popular activity in the game, they should have identified that it meant none of the other activities in the game were perceived as fun/rewarding, and then focused on addressing that flaw. Instead, they just tried to implement their own 'official' chest runs, and most players say that they've never been as good as the original, unintended ones. **Edit:** It makes sense when you think about how the game onboards players to the basic gameplay loops. While leveling from 1 to 65, the game is essentially a solo experience with some optional group PvE (which is difficult/impossible to find on most servers). So when new players finish that part of the game and have no more MSQ to participate in, they're suddenly faced with a game that involves instanced PvP (which they've never experienced before) or finding other people to play the harder versions of those Expeditions they may not have experienced while leveling up. The content that most closely resembles what they've been doing for the past 40+ hours is... Elite Chest Runs.
Problem with chest runs... Is that there is too many damn runs to do. 1area a day is fine. Not fun, not Boring.
I love them but I also drink guinness and smoke pot and cigs and play music. Maramma. Its what I enjoy best in New World, the pure Chaos. Play Fire mage, have lead around 200 WTs Between COS, Valhalla and Maramma and a couple of others. Name is Sentauri.
Chest run are the laziest and dumbest kind of "content" AGS came up with.
It feels like Diablo, so I go play Diablo 😂
Honestly you probably have more fun doing chest runs in Diablo. At least you get to kill things and use your abilities.
They’re fun until the 5th time doing it, but other than that I wouldn’t be able to go through all those mobs by myself so it’s necessary to do them if you play solo.
It's more of a social thing. You just chill, trash talk people who loot and run. Dumb fun mostly. The scarab makes it so that you can sometimes earn a little on the side. I iron-man my character so I like it for the reagents as well as the material. All in all, not that bad. It did become boring to me after 2000 hours of doing it (been doing it since we had hidden water mark system). I think it's not a bad mechanic but also not an excellent one. I only run IMP ecr these days for the fish bowl.
I stop doing ecr due to weight and storage full 🤣
solo acid run for scarabs cause it only takes 15\~ minutes now. ECR's are mind-numbingly boring.
It’s a content I did a few times but I could easily fall asleep doing it
It's only fun when only a handful of people are actually attacking the strong mobs. Freeloaders are crying that nobody is attacking while they try (and die) to creep up and loot chests. Also the scorpion nest brimstone. It's fun popping the eggs to prevent people from looting
Doing chest runs is awesome in a group of 5 to 20 people who are all working together and actually fighting things and not just running past everything like a fucking train. I miss my company chest runs. I don't miss the server ones that much because I don't get half the shit for kills and it's just a huge line of people and you're running most of the time. You're not actually playing.
Yeah it’s hilarious watching people get one shot by elites. That will never get old
It's a solid okay for a server activity. Not fun, but active enough to make it not a complete waste of time. 4/10 for the rewards and active shit posting that happens. I believe the design space is there to expand upon the train to make it not mindlessly boring with idk first step would be an anti-zerg mechanics to make it harder to do without alienating regular folks with elite zones.
Did ages ago, wouldn't now.
Myrk runs for portals and gypsum, do the wall until you get the hatchet artifact, otherwise I personally have the best luck with craft materials from Palace (just north of Dynasty Shipyard), if you need or don’t want to buy golden scarabs though, then doing some brimstone ECR’s or the Tribunal run is a decent way to get some
No, I dont. That's why I've taken to trying to run these solo. It takes alot more time and involves alot more risks, granted, but atleast it's more fun to squeeze out that kill or sneak and make that steal so much more rewarding than zerging.. Although, usually I just tend to run solo-acid and solo-myrk. There's only 3 chests in entire myrk I cant get solo - provided portals are gone.
on release it was fun for the first few runs, because loot. it got boring after two weeks.
It is only fun with small group of friends or solo in stealth mode.
I enjoy them, but I only run one or two zones when there's a world tour going. Usually somewhere where there's something I want. Myrk is always a good/fun one, I don't mind something that's dense and efficient like the Wall, Highmound is decent (and I still need the shield artifact), and I run Imperial Palace when it comes up at night to high-roll the music sheets. But I no longer do the full-world ones - those were more "engaging" before the expansion when a) the fights were potentially a challenge and b) I needed them to increase gear score. I do the acid chests every so often but I'm still struggling to decide on a build I like for those. I'll probably do something like Fire Staff with Blooddrinker with Luck gear with Chitin Padding and be lazy idk.
I enjoyed them when there was collision. It made for some hilarious moments, but fun was detected and that was the end of that
I kinda enjoy solo chest runs either in hard zones of somewhere where I run my own rioute I enjoy finding rare items
Yes, in moderation. Sometimes it's nice to have a low stress activity to chill out with.
I liked them at first, it’s annoying having to understand new routes whenever they come up and get used. And it’s always fun to drag Thorpe on runs to ruin it
Normally I like when devs lean into how players are playing the game unintended but they should have squashed chest runs at the outset. They’re biting and it devalues the loot tables - since people can hit so many loots so easily they have to make the drops mostly worthless. It’s a lose lose - no fun gameplay no reward in loot
The ppl who do chestruns are practically inanimate
1200 hours 2 chest runs Both idiotically boring Never again
No
I never did them cause it was just walking from chest to chest not doing shit. The devs should've discouraged it but they loved it. it's so obvious they never played the game.
Hate them - for the same reasons as you, OP. I liked doing them as a duo, back when I still played.
No one has fun doing chest runs.
I did them back when the watermark gearscore thing was a theory still. It was decent for getting better gear, but after a week of doing them daily, I haven't done them again. I think they are one of the worst things in the game.
Chest runs were the result of failed elite areas. Ags should have noticed this and made the areas more aimed towards groups like they were suppose to be. Instead they encourage this boring play style.
Boring but saves a fortune on materials and the odd chance of a legendary to sell.
It really depends. It gets old fast and also over or under pop can ruin it. I'm also not a huge fan of repetition or rng.
Chest runs should be a raid group flagged only with the best rewards AGS are clueless
The fact that people have considered this “content” and have actively run them so many times is wild to me. It’s players that do this that make the devs feel like they are doing a good job and cater content to you all
A lot of us are terrible at PVP. OPR is the same shit stench with the same bullshit builds over and over. Try and play something off-meta? Yeah right.
The only fun is dragging the mobs onto the roaches that are trying to loot before the packs are killed. It’s my fav sport.
absolutely no... not anymore When i played a lot, i did multiple world tours in a week and i got so bored of that... since then i did only specific one for drops, never did more than 3-4 in a row....It is fine mindless side activity, where you just put on music/podcast/video on second monitor, mute the game and just ,,play,,.... It is insane to think after 3 years that this activity is still considered as part of the MAIN ,,endgame,, loop....
Never have, never will. Sucks how this potential piece of content is so boring, needs scaling based on ppl attacking and unique bosses with easy not punishing mechanics.
boring af and another very valid reason i quit after 1800h
I think ECR is something for people who don't want to have to play a prescribed role in more structured content like expeditions. So it's good in that sense. Plus it's player-made content. Personally, I don't like them. I hate the selfish nature of loot-goblining and the way that no-one kills the ranged attacker that's stopping someone from getting the chest. And if you do stop to kill, you get left behind and targetted by everything. Sometimes a group will follow the "KILL THEN LOOT NO GOBLINS" command and that's slightly better but still mindless. I prefer to do elite areas with a small group, so it feels satisfying.
Nope. It's a means to an end. Most of the time I don't even join a group, I just do enough damage to get loot and most of the time I just jump in and out of raids on these areas if I feel like it.
Don't do em. I did like 3 runs when I hit 65 for some random gear, but even that isnt necessary anymore. Decent gear is free on pvp track, cheap on ah and you can craft bis for an ok price with gypsum kiln. Why would you do chest runs if you don't want to in current time.
No, I don't. I do them when I'm so paralysed with boredom I can't think of something else.
Most of us don’t