The Sky Islands lootrun camp is a horrific experience

I've only done a few runs at this camp and each one was painful as hell. There's so many problems it's shocking they all got past testing.
The first problem I encountered was before I even did the lootrun - skyshroom cave. Ok so the cave itself is terrible - it's a single room with a completely static 'boss' and minions that aren't even hostile. Once you've killed the boss you have to then wait a good 30 seconds or so for the platform animation to finish and allow you to actually access the chests. It shouldn't need to be said why forcing the player to wait is a terrible idea when they're on a time limit. I don't even need the platforms on mage, I can just teleport straight to the chests. Just make the animation and cave opening instant and it's fine. Then when you get into the chest room itself, the boss has already respawned and for some inexplicable reason, this one boss is the only mob I have ever encountered that is able to continue attacking you while you're opening the chests. Not only this, the damage seems to be some form of true damage as it can completely shred through my 57k+ ehp in a split second. And then while you were looting the chests while being attacked, the exit closes on you and in your panic you don't notice the stone button on the floor on a stone block - a block combination usually intended for pebble detailing elsewhere in the game. Hell, I didn't even know there was a button until I went back to check while making this post. So you then either die or /kill because you think you're stuck in a room with a boss that can attack you through walls and while you're opening chests. And then they decided to make it part of the lootrun.

But that's not all! Someone had the bright idea of having multiple slaying challenges which take place on tiny islands against mobs that have shove spells *and also* make them flying mobs. Now I'm sure for classes that have good melee damage or spells with verticality, this wouldn't be a problem. But I'm playing arcanist mage with psychokinesis - I have a melee that tickles the enemy and all my spells have either entire horizontal hitboxes or trajectories that are incredibly difficult to aim above you. Meteor is the only damage option against these mobs, and you have to stand a decent distance away from the enemy and aim in a specific way such that the meteor's trajectory intercepts the mob. It's not just a case of aiming at the mob and the meteor locks onto them - it seems to only lock onto blocks as the target. And then they decide to throw 7 waves at you and a boss with multiple millions of hp that sits in the dead centre of the 'arena', constantly throwing you around and shoving you. The only way I could kill it was by teleporting into its face, meteoring and then repeating. Both the bird slaying challenge and the one by the wizard's tower are awful to play, even at the start of a run.

But wait, there's more! As expected for the sky islands, the void is a massive issue. Usually it's not an issue for a mage, but occasionally you make a mistake and find yourself falling into the void. One would expect that the devs accounted for this and either teleported you back to land or have an instant kill box that removes a challenge like a normal death. But no. They rely entirely on vanilla void damage. When you have tens of thousands of HP. But you're not just wasting time by having the void kill you, because there's a system in place to prevent you from leaving the play area. So you're falling through the void, expecting to just die when a countdown starts and when it ends your run instantly ends entirely. It's better to /kill then to actually rely on the game's 'intended' mechanics, which is a command that should be reserved for when everything completely breaks and you need a complete reset. Fortunately the one time this happened to me, I was only a couple challenges in but it could very easily catch someone who's much further into a run. You should not have a run ended for something that would usually kill you.

There's a few other issues, like general cave bugs I've encountered. The Donjon (or however you spell it) doesn't seem to accept the 3 keys if you try to do it a second time, even if your challenge asks you to complete it. The only way to do the challenge is to use a movement spell to get to the top floor and do the cave backwards. I'll add more bugs here if anyone else has any they've encountered as I don't imagine I'll be doing any more lootruns at this camp unless the above issues get fixed.

The other 3 camps are incredibly enjoyable, going on long runs and racking up massive buffs and shredding through hundreds of enemies as you fly around the map from challenge to challenge is some of the most fun I've had.

 

It's fun on acro, apart from the glitches, but I don't even want to try it with mage... (especially not after reading this post)

I did actually /kill in the skyshroom cave, I too, could not see the button.

There's also another bug that was there for a while, a certain defend challenge didn't have health scaling, so I skipped it unless it was a rainbow beacon, and most of the time failed.
(FYI It's fixed now.)

And the void is very irritating. Losing at least a minute every time my mana runs out is just painful.

My personal fave is corkus, despite being a lower level, I have much better luck there, the caves imo are better designed, and the challenges are pretty fairly balanced. (Also I've found more mythics there than anywhere else definitely not biased whatsoever.)

 

don't, it's really bad. light bender would probably do better because ophanium is basically just an enhanced melee but arcanist sucks for it.

i just got my longest run a minute ago at molten heights, most of the challenges are really fun, but my run ended because i couldn't see the timer or challenge count because all the buffs covered it up. gonna have to tweak wynntils if i go for another long run

i have been playing since 2013 and i found my first mythic ever the other day and it wasn't even from lootrunning. i got the cheapest boots that are worth 15le

 

Honestly I have never had a problem lootrunning Sky as Arcanist - most of the challenges are fine except for Astralaus' tower, which rarely comes up for me because there are so many challenges. Also falling off the map isn't really a problem as long as you don't hold right click.

 

i main mage for lootruns and i have no problems with arcanist. For the bird challenge just look down and spam meteor because they come to you, you don't come to them.
for sky shroom you just have to loot chests fast, no way to go around it
you dont use the keys to do the donjon, do it reversed.

with that said i dodge comet and ovine spire at any cost

 

I've been playing since 2021 (not nearly as impressive tho) but I only found my first mythic in like- August- of this year (thanks to lootrunning).
Not found any boots yet, and for some reason I have 3 mythic daggers???

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is the only one of these that is ABSOLUTELY PAINFUL on Acro. Not enough damage to kill the final boss quickly as well as the main source of pain and suffering, the parkour.
Why?
Acro ability Psithurism gives a permanent +1 jump height, which overrides the room's natural jump height that I only discovered when doing for the cave for xp on Archer.

 

god those sheep are quick to jump out of range of the chests

 

Hate to break it to you but only one mob has a push/pull spell and it's an anti camp mob (Holy Rune), meaning you are trying to camp and that's why it's showing up.

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@Tealy change skyshroom though so it doesn't target you while you're in the chests. I reported that in alpha and thought it was fixed (and maybe it was and this guy has outdated information)

 

Ill see what I can do about these issues, thank you for the feedback

 

A side effect of anti-camping is acro spawns every single one. The molten heights anthill spews stuff and the defend challenge continously spawns stuff like crazy. There's glow bulbage everywhere. And I didn't even know Holy Runes were camping measures until now because they are an unavoidable part of lootrunning game play now thanks to acro's slow air speed while focusing on fighting.

 

that tower one is the one i was talking about, and the one with the birds on the tiny island too. and yes, usually movement is not a problem - i can infinite teleport just fine with manastorm and cost resetting - but mistakes happen sometimes and it sucks to have your run ended for no good reason

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most of the birds are fine but the big boss one can be pretty high up and be very difficult to hit. yes i figured out skyshroom after the second time but having to wait 30 seconds is still a pain in the ass and just because there's a strat for it doesn't mean it's not a problem to begin with. the solution to a problem during *loot*running should never be to just ignore the loot. same goes for donjon, i did it backwards the first time i ever did it because i couldn't be bothered with the keys but it should still be fixed regardless.

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well no, i was just struggling to kill the boss because it wasn't tested on my class, so the anti-camping strategy just made my job harder and forced me to 'camp' for longer. not a very good failsafe if it punishes players who aren't even camping to begin with

 

Then there was no push or pull spells in the challenge you were doing. If you were fighting a boss you were not doing the angel challenge, which as I said is the only challenge with a mob with push or pull.

 

i was doing the challenge by the wizard's tower. i was getting thrown around all over the place. im not gonna get gaslit about this, i know what happened. there is 100% a mob with a pull spell in that challenge

 

deus the comet boss has push and pull

 

why would you do that

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why would you give the boss in the limited arena that punishes you for falling off push and pull. evil beyond compare.

 

Sky islands has bee

Wybeleaters in scared wybel defend challenge have push/pull spells
They love to use them too

 

Simple: Im evil beyond compare

 

I mean making a challenge where all the enemies are basically immune to one archetype is already pretty evil.

 

If you're having trouble with the Donjon door not accepting your keys, you can do /class and try again and the door usually fixes :)

 

The skyislands is my favourite (it's just because i played it the most) but I still have a lot of gripes with it too. I made a post a while ago, mainly about that one bird challenge and the skyraider challenge. ALSO THE VOID THIS PAINED ME SO MUCH. I agree with all of these points too.