devs: time to finish ancient caverns

[Fusionstrike]

The latest expansion, Ancient Caverns, is now almost 4 months old. It's decent (for what it is) but there are still some things that need attention to complete it. Here's what is still left on the to-do list to finish the place.

• Fix the quest count. None of the caverns quests count towards the total quest count.
• Add lustrous axe. This item has never been inserted into the game even though the recipe for crafting it has.
• Raise non-weapon recipe drop rates. There are plenty of weapon recipes to be had, but virtually none of the others. Armor/helm/shield recipes are pretty much never available in CS, with most of them having been absent since the first week or so of the release. (I keep records of prices of crafting items in CS. Str shield recipe has never been listed. Str helm has appeared only once in 4 months. These are just two examples.) L77 is hard enough to get to that players shouldn't be stuck with plat recipes as their only way to craft.
• Add the elite weapons. You promised elite weapons when the area was first promoted, but none have arrived. It's not that hard to do the same thing you did in BSM to provide an additional high-level farming opportunity. Plus more firepower for capped players would even the playing field on the high-damage-output mobs there.

These are the minimum items to do to complete the area. Here are some additional improvements that would make it much more fun to play.

• Reduce the armor debuff of golems. This is the single factor making the place a death farming run for int- and dex-based players. Even with thrasher/3x combo, non-str players are almost always dead the instant the massive armor debuff hits them. This is because a) it cuts their armor in half or more, b) there's no warning it has hit them, so they don't know until it's too late, c) the amount of damage being done means a certain 1- to 2-shot kill for them even with 3x armor from elixir/blessing, and d) it also stops mana and health regen on top of it all.
• Reduce the health of the dust ball mobs. These things are just insanely high in health compared to every other mob there. And they don't even drop anything for all the time it takes to bring them down. There's no joy or point in killing them.

Work on these things and you can make Ancient Caverns reach its full potential. And it wouldn't even take very long either. You made a good start; now it's time to finish the job.