Some preface:
I’m late to the party. My opinion was that a change to the purge was needed but I didn’t anticipate that it would become an on-demand disappointment. So I avoided it, only using the bare minimum of Levels 1-2 purges for quick thralls. That crafter thralls were not included in all updates since its inception up to this Beta was an immediate turn off.
There’s many arguments on multiple sides about its success or failure. Like a trapezohedron
While I have my opinions on whether or not the Purge as it is now is “survival”… that’s not why I’m writing this post.
I have completed all 10 Levels for the first time on the Beta for Age of Heroes. I can excuse the instability of the Beta version to a degree but it is also no different than what I have witnessed on both dead and populated servers in everything I’ve tested so far. While I don’t have much experience with Purges, I know that they’re very laggy either from being on a server where one (or more) is happening or my minimal participation in the past.
I am on an NA PVP Public test server. There are minimal builds and nothing too large or resource intensive in terms of placeables, lighting or other effects… except for a few bars including my own. The server acts and feels like a dead Official. While all Officials (and some privates too!) suffer from performance related issues as a baseline, those performance issues can be greatly exacerbated by multiple players online, all doing things. Y’know, building nice bars, building at all, running purges, going to Al-Merayah, fighting bosses/doing dungeons, farming. And if you’re on PVP summoning avatars, bombing bases, fighting in big groups. Etc.,… etc.,…
That’s a lot of stuff to be happening simultaneously.
So I’m going to run through what occurred.
Starting off with the only good thing: there’s now the opportunity to rescue any tier crafter thrall from the cages. Having looked for a shieldwright for weeks to no avail, upon Level 9 I was able to get one. Well done, finally a reason for me to do it. RIP all crafted armours I made XD
The Build Up
The bare minimum is placing a Coffer, adding treasure and hitting Proclaim Wealth. Really there’s nothing else to it.
If you intend on defeating a Level 10 then you have to be very well prepared. Fighters and archers that have food, good armour and weapons. Levelled thralls are better but will die regardless of how much you maximize what they do, wear and use.
A T3 building is best for defence against Demolishers, Starcaller, exploding golems and a lot of clanging weapons. Now HOW you build makes an incredible difference. Some players create mazes or funnels, placing archers with gas and explosive arrows for maximum damage. I did a funnel with mostly thralls being the danger.
Admittedly, I paid good attention to posts on the forums about purges since they implemented it in this way so I was well informed. Prior to doing this on my own, I also watched a few run-throughs and heavily relied on the wiki for what to expect.
Ultimately I wasn’t looking for an experience as I was testing the Purge of course, so I was ok with being guided.
The farming required for running these purges is large. Setting aside the astronomical loot drops you get in the game now, there’s still so much you’ll need even to gain the slightest advantage. Fur, ichor, hides, ichor, leather, iron, steel, tar, ichor, mushrooms, alchemical base… so much alchemical base, starmetal too. Immense amounts.
Then there’s the gold needed. I can see now why they upped the drops for gold. Coin purses galore, seemed like every second NPC dropped coins and treasure. You can farm the gold rocknoses and still not achieve the numbers you need in short order.
So, to save time I went to Al-Merayah. The fact that the site resets so quickly (including NPCs within seconds),10k coins a pop sure does relieve the burden of farming but it is a cheap, inconsequential and potentially game breaking advantage to get those piles. I’d already learned the quickest way to Nimlot as I’d assisted in obtaining gold to run purges for Isscar the Sellsword so as to buy rams en masse. You don’t even need armour or to bring anything with you! The free raid materials are there plus a Musashi’s Black Blade. So, 4 bombs + a few smashes with 1 ram and done. Rams in PVP are quiet and you can run a raid naked with them - some good times with friends were had… but again, advantageous to nth degree, if not exploitative.
I mention all of this things because players will take great care in perfecting their bases and thralls to run Purges, especially without shortcuts like I’ve done. There is a large time investment if you’re taking it off from the ground. However, most dedicated players are established and perhaps will not have to worry about such things as picking up those gold piles or farming ichor for the tenth time. For these people, it will be in ensuring all of their thralls are the best.
It took me quite a few days to accumulate. I cut some corners for thralls, buying them from the bar or Buccaneer Bay.
Performance
I’m showing this video to get an idea of my base layout and that I haven’t decorated, it’s not a particularly big base. The most that might impact performance minimally (doesn’t bother me) is my inventory of chests. I have 7 lights in total. Aside from thralls I’ve tested and those I needed to stop dancing, the rest are default with no emotes. Aside from the Gothrad I broke bond with (wonder where he went), all crafters are stationary as they’re broken. I kind of feel like I’m having to explain myself 
(But there’s just so much criticism in terms of opinion in size and impact on performance.)
Anyway…
Levels 1-5
Underwhelming and fairly easy to defeat. You do start to run into problems with lag in Level 2. The Purge as it goes up in level means larger waves, differing enemies and new attacks.
Levels 6-8
The performance at my base was astronomically bad during and afterwards. So bad that it reminds me of multiple gods destroying bases on a map at the same time in PVP.
Pathing for the purge NPCs gets progressively worse as the purge progresses:
This is 20 minutes after the 6th ended:
That fire had not disappeared until server reset.
I received some feedback from others on the server that at least they weren’t having issues at the time.
Thralls that are in DBNO stay in a kneeling stance and slide back to where they were originally on guard:
Bodies are like Stretch Armstrong and can’t be removed by harvesting easily:
Things take forever to load and you rubberband if you die (this little section has chests, benches, my bedroll and fridges, the doors are missing):
Levels 9-10
Performance TANKS. I was appalled at how badly everything ran and both of these were while I was alone on the server. I made minimal changes to my base in between 8 and second attempt at 9. It would not spawn until I removed everything including the Coffer.
I won’t be uploading the video because I don’t have the patience for it to process and wait as it is too long. I want to go to bed at a reasonable hour tonight so here are screenshots and dictation XD
I did not witness Scorchers or Demiurges.
My first attempt at a level 9 had issues with StarCaller being visible, I could not find them but that didn’t stop them from raining star metal on my base for 10 minutes, I pulled Coffer to stop it as only pulling the treasure didn’t make a difference. (Yay, lots of star metal now!)
This is 1 minute into Level 10 and I’m rubberbanding attempting to get some ground, this is a guarantee throughout the whole ordeal:
Here I can’t attack but keep weapon out because the 1 HP NPC is trying to initiate a fatality without follow through, this is a reoccurring issue throughout the Purge. Hell, it’s a problem just about anywhere in the game and it even gives you an emote error in dungeons:
Attempting to tap E is near to impossible for DBNO thralls and have to very carefully wade through all the other visual static to press E instead to revive. As a result, you end up having the new revived thrall follow you instead of your intended. Even IF you press and hold at the prompt, it will often only bring up the menu for following thrall commands:
Dead thralls will be stuck in fighting stances and their inventories nearly inaccessible, only harvesting will drop a bag with the contents of their inventories unless you can find the sweet spot to open the dead body’s inventory:
The Demolisher’s have no animations other than walking, they will stand there doing damage with no indication:
If thieves were successful in getting some treasure out of the coffer and they drop it from being killed, there will be a duplicate treasure bag hovering above it:
Multiple cages will give you an error that they’re empty even though you can see NPCs in them:
However, they’re not really, after the purge camp disappears the “empty” cages drop the NPCs:
The NPCs show red as an enemy, “Returning Home” or “Guarding”:
You can try to fight them, it will show that status effects are applied, but their HP does not drop. They also will draw weapons but do not attack you:
They also can’t be KO’d:
These NPCs will remain until server reset.
In addition to dying and waiting for things to load, they load in sections. So this means if you wait for a door to load to open it, the next door will take just as long. Upwards of 5 minutes before everything loads enough for you to do anything.
NPCs often stand staring at your thralls or vice versa, appearing to have troubles calculating where to go and what to do.
Thoughts
As I said in another post: The GPortal servers being used for Officials and advertised by Funcom cannot handle this stuff. No wonder they are the way they are. No wonder we have problems with falling through foundations, being stuck in them, rubberbanding and issues when people have bars and run Purges. It’s so bad. While Purges might not be the cause of many performance issues I’ve listed right here, it has been a reasonable assumption by other players. The Purge could potentially exacerbate those bugs.
When I was on a server in an entirely different place I KNEW when someone was running a Purge.
The good things are the crafter thralls and it doesn’t appear that this server crashes when explo+gas arrows are used at least.
Something needs to be done when it comes to the performance, not ONLY for Officials, for everyone that play on multiplayer. If this is considered the peak end game goal then it falls short mostly in performance; not necessarily the reasonable criticisms regarding its intentions.
If anyone who plays Singleplayer could speak up and state whether they experience the same there I would appreciate it.
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