Before 1.20: Legendary Island Retrospective

--- Introduction ---​

Legendary Island is getting some buffs in 1.20 so I figured now was a good time to talk about how LI is now so we can reflect on its changes in a more realistic way when the update does drop in a year. To prepare for writing this, I cleared LI twice back to back with morph archer, using crafted potions and Skillpots for Cybel to make it less painful. In hindsight, IO really didn't need the skillpots since my health didn't drop below 2 rows of hearts (70%), but damage was really nice to clear out all the minions. I'm saying this ahead of time for full disclosure. I'm no YY, but from the total of 5 runs I've bothered to complete, and the 3-4 I left before the cybel, I think I have enough experience to properly judge the challenge. Let's get into it all, and as always with these long essays, feel free to skip between sections, it isn't important that you read it all and I would love to hear your feedback or opinions on any and all sections.

--- Before Arrival ---​

I think when most people discuss LI, they don't really talk about the experience of getting to the island. I can see how it seams trivial, but I think the fact that you can just show up and run it is really telling of what purpose LI serves. For those of you who aren't aware, you basically need to ocean hop from Corkus to get there, washing up into a big port... First question, why isn't there a boat in the Corkus port which takes you there? There are plenty of boats in both ports, so why isn't there any form of fast travel to get there. I'll get into it more at the very end with potential improvements, but I think the process of getting to LI is a little anti-climatic, especially for such an interesting challenge.

--- The Island ---​

Okay, so we've hopped over an island (using your movement spell of choice, I personally use spell archer so it's not a very painful process, but I can't imagine it's too nice as a melee assassin...) what's there to greet you upon arrival? Possibly one of the most epic and beautiful builds in the game. From the strong and colorful boats at the port to the organic and functional store stalls set up outside to the giant tower sitting upon a hill which you're basically forced to look up at as you approach it, they really nailed the look of LI in my opinion. I've always loved the steampunk look of Corkus, but this takes that look in a different, more regal direction which I really love.



Something I really appreciate is the fact that every stall you could possibly want is there. Need to powder up? It's there. Need to bank, or repair items or buy potions? It's there for you to use. I really feel like it adds to the staging area vibe I get from the right side of the island. I don't love the shop area as much since it's a little less clean, but I appreciate how it leads you past the merchant of each tier before going to the next. It's a really organic way of showing progression which gives a really good feeling when going to spend the hard earned diamond tokens.

The one area I don't love is the lobby, it just feels a little more boring compared to the rest of the outside area. I guess I wish it was a little lighter, maybe adding some giant clockwork gears into the ceiling might go a long way, but I think it's serviceable, after all, you spend all of 5 seconds in there buying a ticket so it's fine as is. If they're going to be adding matchmaking here in the future, I would want to see the lobby get a revamp to something looking more like a waiting room but it's fine for now.

I also don't love that there's nothing on the island to really explore. There's a lot of empty space which I feel could be put to better use in the future, maybe if there's a discovery added here, but the main center of the island is so good I'm happy to let it slide.

--- The Boss Rush ---​

Wow, it only took 500 words to make it to the boss part of this retrospective, l must be really tired today. Anyways, boss time, but first let's talk about the cost. Wynn has had problems with overcharging or undercharging for stuff in the past, but I think charging 12EB per run is reasonably fair. If it were up to me, I would say maybe bump it down to 9 or 10 personally, but 12 EB is a fair price. At that cost, you don't feel bad if you leave early (which is good) and you don't feel like you've left the dungeon worse then when you started if you fail, which is another issue Wynn tends to have.

Okay, so onto the actual bosses now. I think most people would go in order, but I wanted to spice this up by making it into a top 10 list, going from worst bosses to best and my thoughts on each. I'll also be coloring the bosses name to show if I think the boss is good, bad or meh

Spoiler: My Top 10 LI Bosses

10 - Bronze III - Corkus Accipiant​

I hate this boss. I wouldn't have it here at 10 if it were just bad though, this boss is also so prone to breaking. I can't even begin to list off the number of times I've had this boss get stuck in the wall or just outside the arena. I had it sitting above the wall one, one time it was flying, threw me up and killed me with fall damage somehow, not really sure how that happened... Anyways, if they fixed this boss, I'm sure it would be fine but at the moment it's just too broken to call good of even meh. I also don't love the minions here. It's way better then the virus doctors for sure, but they're just kind of boring.

9 - Bronze II - Virus Doctor​

This boss also kind of sucks. I don't mind the fight, but I hate being hit with weakness and slowness since I tend to leave the boss fight with a min on the clock for each and I need to sit around waiting until it goes away. If they made the doors you use to exit the arenas clear all debuffs I think this boss would instantly move up at least one place, maybe even two.

8 - Silver I - The Matrojan Idol​

This boss is the first meh bosses. I like it for the first 5-6 phases, but at a certain point it just becomes boring. I like a multiphase boss as much as the next guy, but this is a little extreme, even for me. This guy also has a bad issue with getting stuck in walls, but it's particularly bad since it almost always happens in the final phase and if you need to start all over again it's actually infuriating. Speaking of the final phase, it sucks, it heals way too much way too fast. Before I started using morph archer I got stuck on that phase with my mage since I could only land 10K meteors and I couldn't land 4 consecutive shots to take it out so I was just screwed. My fault, and I had a bad build, but still annoying.

7 - Gold I - Mechorrupter of Worlds​

I really don't have much to say about this guy. It's fine I guess, don't really have anything good or bad to say about it, it's just kind of forgettable. I wish they added some sort of arena mechanic but I'll get to that later.

6 - Bronze 1 - The Mummyboard​

This boss isn't really good, but it's so high because I think it acts as a really good introduction to the idea of LI. It's easy, but it serves as a great entry test to see if you're ready to start the climb up the boss ladder.

5 - Diamond I - Doctor Legendary​

You would think he would be at number 1, but honestly Dr Legendary is kind of a pushover. For being the creator of the tower, you would think he would be insanely challenging and have a lot of gimicks, but no. He just stands there and gets his ass kicked. If you can beat the Cybel, you can crush Dr Legendary so bad he gets his doctorate revoked. There's so much cool stuff you could do with this fight, so it's really disappointing that you just go through 3 phases and it's all over.

4 - Silver II - Yahyabot V4.04​

This might be considered an unpopular opinion, but I think Yahyabot is actually an interesting boss. I kind of wish they chose more inspired rooms for you to go into. I think 3/5 rooms are good, but the tower room and the swamp leave a lot to be desired. I know people don't like that you don't actually do anything in the fight, but I look at is as more of a pace breaker in the middle of the tower to take a breather and chill for a little bit. I don't want to see more bosses like this, but I think Yahya bot being unique makes it a lot more fun to me.

3 - Gold II - Robob's Reincarnation​

Don't have much to say about this fight, it's like Bob, but better. I like that he's slow so you can avoid taking his heavy hits and the minions are super cool, really love the idea of flying swords and this boss executes it perfectly. He's getting a new phase in 1.20 so I assume I'll probably like it more since one of things holding him back is how easy the fight is, but I don't think he's making it to number 2 with that alone.

2 - Silver III - Death Metal​

I don't hear a lot of people talking about this fight and I think it's a bit of a shame. It might not be the most interesting fight in LI, but I think Death Metal has so much character. I love the fact that he has an animation, I love the diversity of minions he has and I also think he looks super cool, for sure one of the best designs in the game. I'm not totally sure how this boss compares to Death himself in terms of the fight mechanics, but I know I like Death Metal a lot more. I think it just goes to show you don't need to be the strongest boss to be one of the most memorable.

1 - Gold III - Orange Cybel​

I would @ Selvut here to apologize for doing a bad job of shitting on the cybel to his face the other day, but I think it's probably not good to @ mods so I won't, though I do hope he at least reads this. I think my issue is that I just didn't understand it very well since after running it a couple times today with good TPS I saw the fun in it. I think the communication of what's going on during the fight is extremely poor so it's hard to tell what's going on, however I think once you know what's going on the boss fight goes a whole lot smoother. I'm not a huge fan of the minions here, though I really love wybels so I think I can let the use of small hitboxes slide here. I see people calling this one of the hardest bosses in the game a lot, I don't know if I would go that far, but then again, this and the eye are the only bosses I didn't make it past first try so there might be something to that after all...

Overall, I think the selection of bosses in the tower is a little lacking. of the 10 bosses here, I think 8 of them come down entirely to hitting the boss as much as you can as hard as you can as fast as you can which isn't something I'm a fan of. Yahya and Cybel are the only bosses I would say don't involve that which is probably the reason why I tend to like them and in the case of Yahya, I like them a lot more then the popular opinion. A lot of the bosses tend to feel samey, so I think I also favored the ones which had more character like death metal.

--- The Rewards ---​

The greatest part of LI is the ability to chose and the scaling rewards. If you don't like risk and you want to use a build that takes LI items, most of the time you can use silver/gold items which means if you don't feel comfortable taking on the Cyble (me for the longest time) you have the choice to skip the risk and just do what you're comfortable with, which is the single biggest problem almost every other piece of content in Wynn has. Of course, nothing ventured nothing gained. If you're taking the easy route out of there you're getting less stuff, but the great thing here is the diamond rewards aren't that much better then the gold ones and getting to gold I or II isn't that hard and you get more then enough rewards to buy whatever gold items you want.

Coming off of that, there are so, so many choices, 3 tiers of 3 items across 6 elements makes for a lot of choices, all of which have their uses, though I think we all know which one is the clear winner (for now anyways). Not only are there a ton of choices, but there's even a reach goal of getting the LI Medallion, which is a massive undertaking for such a pointless item, but the fact that it's there means even once you have every item you could want, there's still something to work towards, which is yet another issue Wynn tends to have. I'm starting to see a trend here...​

--- The Issues and Potential Improvements ---​

This section is probably going to get reworked into a suggestion once I can get some feedback on them, so please don't take these ideas to make a suggestion. Thanks!

I think the biggest issues plaguing LI right now is the weak introduction, the sameyness/boringness of running it, the really bad Dr. Legendary fight, the reward accumulation and finally the lack of exploration. If they addressed these issues, I think LI could go from great to the best, so here are some of my ideas on how to fix LI;

First, as I mentioned before, I think the introduction to LI is kind of weak. This might be a little cliched, but I think adding a quest to introduce the island would be a great way to make LI a more important part of the story of Corkus. Right off the bat, I want to be clear that this quest should not require you to complete LI, in fact I think it should be done before you can even start your first run.

I imagine it would be a lot like call of the envoy, where you start on the Corkus docks and meet Dr Legendary who offers you the opportunity of a life time so you hop on his boat and (unknowingly) head to the legendary island. Not totally sure how the quest goes after that, but the key factors here are 1. you get some of the LI story told to you in the quest (good) and 2. you get a fast travel boat to and from the Corkus docks (great), everything else is really secondary to those two things.

Next, a lot of bosses have this issue where they all feel like they're the same as each other. I think the biggest offenders of this are the Mechoruppter of worlds, Yayhabot and the Virus Doctor and adding a little spice to these fights could make them so much better.

For the Mechorrupter, I want to see more of the corruption theme going on. I imagine dark pathes or obsidian appearing in the arena and when you walk over them you take damage and get a second of nausea. I would also love to see a cybel style invincible phase where he forms these patches in a line wherever he walks and you lose the ability to jump so it becomes sorta like tron where you can't touch the lines.

My idea for Yahyabot is simple, add more rooms and randomize them. Instead of having 5 rooms, have 10 and randomly chose 5 each time in a random order. This way, you never know what to expect going in which would be so much more fitting for the theme and could also make the boss actually challenging for a change since you need to be ready to adapt to anything.

For the Virus Doctor, I want to see more viruses and more effects in general. This might sound weird, but I think it would be neat if he could hit you with poison or withering or speed X for a second to really screw with you, maybe jump boost x for a couple seconds so if you jump during that time you fall and take a ton of damage. We've never seen positive effect get used to negatively affect the player so I think this could be a really great boss to play around with those ideas.​

The third issue is Dr Legendary as a whole. This fight should be so much better, especially considering he says this when you beat him;

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"Controller of the strongest mechs in the world..." Then why didn't you use the strongest mech in the world to try and kick my ass? It might be obvious where I'm going with this, but I want the fight to be completely revamped into something amazing. I still want it to be three phases, but I want the first phase to be a raid style fight (think the Eye) where the Doctor is in a Gundam, Metal Gear or some other badass, non-steampunk super hightech mech. Big epic mechanical wings, rocket launchers on the shoulders and legs, laser cannons in the arms and 100% badass. I'm thinking the first phase would be like the the rise of the Quarton fight where you need to destroy the legs and arms separately. Once that's done, he goes into an invincibility phase where the mech is melting down and so he's going crazy with the rockets and lasers. Your goal is to survive giant lasers sweeping across the floor and constant explosions every other second, it needs to be chaotic but awesome. That phase ends with an animation of him self destructing the mech which leads to the final phase which would just play out how his third phase is now. Might sound a bit crazy but honestly, it would make this whole thing way, way cooler and make his final words actually mean something.

Fourth, I think the rewards, while good, are a bit of an issue. When you complete diamond, you get way too many bronze and silver, so my idea is to add ranked passes which you can buy with bronze and silver tokens. These items would let you start on Silver I or Gold I depending on which pass you use. The idea behind it is sort of like with sports, where if you do really good in a previous tournament you can guarantee yourself a spot in the next one. If you've beaten diamond, it doesn't make a ton of sense that you should need to do all of bronze and silver each and every time.

That said, these passes need to be expensive. Maybe not a stack each, but at least 20, maybe even 30 (math would be good for 30) bronze or silver to get a single one. I think we need some use for lower tokens and I've seen the idea of having a direct conversion get thrown around, but I like this idea a lot more then a direct conversion since it serves the same purpose of giving lower tokens you have too many of a use while also giving you an opportunity to save a lot of time on the lower bosses that you have no chance of losing to. I think it could add some depth to the challenge as a whole while also acting as a nice and sensible use for lower tokens, though I imagine this is going to be a controversial idea.

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Finally, and this might be stretching it, I want to see a discovery added to the island in some capacity. In my head, there are three ways to go about this; You don't need to take on the challenge to find it, you need to beat LI to find it (probably would just be the last room in that case) or finally a mix of the two. Secret discoveries are supposed to be about exploration, so I really don't like the second idea. Locking a secret discovery behind a completely optional challenge to me just doesn't sound like a good idea. I also think the first idea is a little weak though since the whole point of LI is fighting so it only makes sense you would need to fight something to make the discovery.

I think the perfect balance of the two would be to hide a key in one of the earlier boss fights and if you die with the key, you have a 100% chance of dropping it. You would then take that key outside into the world, maybe behind the legendary island building and could use it to enter a basement or maintenance room and get some lore about how the tower is powered or something.

Okay, so the question becomes what boss gets this secret key drop? I think the best answer is the Yahyabot, but not the boss its self. In one of the rooms during the high, a thematic key guardian could spawn and if you kill it it drops the mysterious key. Since most people hide during that fight, it would be fairly uncommon to randomly come across but would also incentivize people to actively participate. This could also work wonders with having the random rooms since it would make it so much harder to know when and where the guardian is spawning so even if you know what you're looking for, you still need to be ready and actively participating in the fight.

--- Conclusion ---
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Honestly, I think running LI and writing this has changed my opinion of LI a lot. I wasn't a huge fan of it, especially compared to what I considered to be the gold standard which was the Qira hive. After beating it 5 times now, 3 solo, I think my opinion of the hive is the same, but I would call LI the diamond standard. LI is a near perfect example of what a challenge should look like in an MMO and I think some of the new, and old features should be changed to be more like it.

As for the changes in 1.20, I think LI is going to get a little harder, but I don't think doubling the health of most bosses is really going to change much. If you can beat a boss now, I see no reason why you won't be able to beat it later, though it might take around twice as long so I would grind for what you need now to save time in like a year when 1.20 is finally in a somewhat functional state.

I know this was long (4000+ words) so I appreciate everyone who read parts or all of it. It might be a little late to say this, but I would love to see what people think, especially what their favorite bosses are since I have a sneaking suspicion my top 10 is very, very far from the majority opinion

 

You also need to be aware that all the bosses lost all their health regen, which elongated the fights significantly as well. It's a trade-off- fights will take slightly longer overall, but they're a lot more accessible to more builds.

 

A really great change imo, really makes it a more interesting challenge since you have so many more choices.

 

Hm, imo Dr. Legendary is definitely harder than Cybel on every build I've tried (in 1.19 - in 1.20, Death Metal is probably going to be the consistent hardest).

 

With morph archer I haven't had any issues with either Death metal or Dr Legendary. I've never struggles with Death Metal on mage or archer which are the only classes I've run LI with, but for Dr Legendary I think range makes a huge difference, I can imagine on warrior, shaman or assassin Dr Legendary would probably be a challenge since he deals a lot of damage when he hits you and he has a lot of knockback spells.

 

if yaha had an objective to get to that would end that stage instead of wait here for 1 min then progress it would be way better

 

Maybe some sort of core in each stage which you need to do parkour to get to? I don't think a single boss has any sort of parkour integrated into it so that could be an interesting gimick to give to spice up the fight too.

 

hmmmm
As a heavy melee assassin I am obviously biased against anything that uses flamethrower a lot (mummy/dr legendary in particular), but overall this seems like a pretty good list. Although, I don't really think Robob deserves to be so high, especially with the new 1.19 normal bob fight it's just a more boring version with higher hp.
There should definitely be a fast-travel there, perhaps unlocked by a new quest (or maybe secret discovery if they don't want to do a whole new quest for this). I am a bit iffy on the whole quest idea, though, and I definitely don't think it should be required to access the challenge (unless there's a big enough revamp to warrant this somehow). LI has always been kind of fun as its own separate thing, sort of like the clock mystery, and I feel like it would make it too normal to tie it into a quest. A secret discovery there and more NPCs mentioning it (there's just one citizen in Relos so far) would be nice, though.
Also, being able to buy tickets with tokens would be absolutely amazing. Even if it just amounted to a quarter of a ticket's worth when you beat Dr. Legendary, it would make running LI a ton a lot easier on the bank (even if it only takes 12 le to get a medallion if you don't die).

As a side note, I would really like it if cybel's spell combos either forced self-destruct after a minute or two regardless of resets or just didn't reset at all, since blinding it and moving too far away are some of the most obvious things to do if you don't know about the combo resets, and this can get people stuck on the rage phases for 5-10 minutes regardless of how much they're actually struggling to survive.

corrupted slykaar already has it, but it would be cool to see a boss built around that idea, even just one phase of it

 

You're totally right, C-Skylar does have the little parkour thing at the end, I totally forgot about that. I guess it would be like that but you need to do it 5 times, it would be a little more elaborate and stuff would be trying to kill you. You would also still need the choice to not do it and to just wait it out, I don't like the idea of actually needing to do something to beat Yahya, but I do think there should be a way to speed up the whole process. Would make speedruns more interesting too.

Also, I'm kind of on the fence about the quest being required. I was thinking of it as more like the hive where there isn't really a quest, but I can see how that might cause some issues. That said, if they're going to add fast travel there, I do think there needs to be a quest to unlock that so you can actually know what the fast travel point is for.

I wasn't really thinking of the medalion when I came up with the fast pass idea, I guess it would make getting it a lot easier since you would only really need to kill half the bosses in a run, but if it takes 3 runs to get a bronze pass and a silver pass, I think it would make for a nice pattern where you do a full run, a bronze skip, a silver skip and you start all over again. it might take some math and some more thought, but I think there's definitely potential here. Glad you like the idea!

 

As Morph Shaman, I really love Death Metal - he is the easiest boss by far and takes about 20 seconds to kill.
But, I really hate Dr Legendary - he is the hardest boss.
Orange Cybel is hard, but beatable hard, I defeat him apx. 1 in 2 times.
Dr Legendary I have battled at least 6 times and won twice.
The biggest problem with Dr Legendary is the flamethrower in phase 1.
Hopefully 1.20 will make him beatable.

 

I think they're making flamethrower more common and giving him more health so I wouldn't get your hopes up lol

 

Oh.
I had been told it was removed from phase 1 and added to phase 2.

 

morph archer

 

Is that a judgement, a statement or a question? I feel really judged right now :(

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Yeah, sounds about right to me. I saw a guy complaining about it being more common but that might have been it. Selvut (I think) also said something about being 1/6 now, not sure if that means he spams it more but I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

 

He uses Flamethrower in specific well-telegraphed combos.

 

was this intentional?

 

It was not, thanks for pointing that out, I've edited it out!

 

couldn't have done that before my 5hour+ li run (5 hours only from bob - dr)
also that's something i didn't notice, pretty good that more builds really have a fighting chance

 

your ranking hurts me deeply. I kept scrolling and got more and more concerned at a lack of yahyabot at 10th place for me it goes:
10: yahyabot. Soooooo boringgggg. I've sat through it almost 64 times now and it hurts my soul
9: Dr. Legendary: Push, heavy flamethrower and heavy charge do not deserve to be put in a boss's design together. His attacks are also just obnoxious to dodge or tank from experience
8: Matrojan: "Hey guys, what if we try and encourage the player to use off hands to exploit elemental defences?" "Yeah that might work".... proceeds to not work. This fight is also a boring slow burner
7: Corkus accipientis: HEALSPAM BEGONE!
6: Hot take: Robob. 1.19 robob is boring af and doesn't resemble his original at all.
5: Virus doctor: the only fun I get out of this fight is beating him and AFKing with a tank build to see how many minions I can spawn
4: Mummyboard: I'll forgive the flamethrower for a boss that is albeit generic but a great intro to the challenge
3: Mecchoruptor: I actually like this fight. It may be because I use endurance builds but it's really fun. It could do with straying slightly away from being a COW clone however
2: Death is another fun fight, especially with a steal build. 1.20 death on the other hand is probably the hardest overall boss.
1: We all know this. It's cybel. Even though it can glitch into walls with heavy charge or spend 15 minutes on phase 2/4, It's an actual challenge and decently entertaining. The plates function also provides 2 different ways of playing the fight out

In other news, with the LI buffs, I'm sad to see that they're nerfing the best reward: T̶h̶e̶ ̶L̶e̶g̶e̶n̶d̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶M̶e̶d̶a̶l̶l̶i̶o̶n̶ The dhydro Necklace. RIP intel sp

 

The problem with Dr Legendary is that hes a joke for rangeds and when done with 2+ people (because you can stunlock him then), but when done as an assassin solo the 3rd phase can be by far the hardest/most annoying in the entire challenge with teleport and 3 times push combo + ranged attacks.

Also Corkus - LI ship pls