Ruhnuk - Six Months Later

When Ruhnuk was added as a new planet almost six months ago now, I quickly went from excited to confused. It had looked beautiful in the previews, and the story update set there featured some amazing cinematic cut scenes, but my feelings about the story as a whole were... complicated, and my first experience with Ruhnuk as a daily area was a bit of a nightmare. However, I did wonder even at the time whether it would grow on me over time, the way Iokath did after not making a particularly stellar impression at first.

My feelings on Ruhnuk have indeed become more nuanced since then... though I'll say right away that I'm still not a fan of doing the dailies.

The Planetary Story

I realised that in my original posts about Ruhnuk, I never said much about the optional planetary storyline that unlocks after the main story, which seems like quite a big thing to leave out, especially considering that it's actually quite good. After the endless alien gibberish on Manaan, I definitely appreciated all the characters speaking Basic this time around, and it was just an enjoyable storyline in general (with one "bug"/flaw I ran into early on, where Lane chastises you for supposedly making a certain choice at a point where you're not actually given any choices). I especially liked how when you find the little Basilisk droid at the end, it's implied that it could join you as a companion or pet later on... we'll see whether Bioware ever follows up on that.

Relic Hunts

There's also this other "side quest" to unlock three minor buffs to help you with your questing. I have mixed feelings about this one. As an optional side mission, by itself, it works okay, even if the last part goes on a bit and features several bait-and-switch scenarios where it seems like you should be done after the next step but then yet another obstacle appears. However, in terms of how helpful these buffs actually are for everyday play, I'm not entirely convinced.

I liked the way this was done on Manaan, where you organically earned three temporary abilities as part of the optional storyline, and they were really useful ones as well, such as stealth for non-stealth characters or a reflective shield. With the Ruhnuk Relic Hunts, the abilities are both less powerful and require waaay more running around to acquire, to the point where if you don't strictly focus on completing the long mission chain as a priority, you might well max out your planetary reputation before you've actually earned the tools that were supposed to help you with making questing easier. That felt a bit misjudged to me in terms of effort vs. reward.

Datacron & World Boss(es)

First off, I generally really appreciate that Bioware took the time to add these things to Ruhnuk to make the planet feel more "worldly" and to ensure that there are some things to do beyond just doing dailies. I didn't actually bother with getting the datacron until today, but I liked that it felt interesting to get without being too challenging. I've kind of had enough of the fiendishly hard jumping puzzles to be honest...

The summonable wraid boss is a nice idea but somewhat hampered by not having any purpose beyond a one-time achievement and the fact that one of the drops required to summon him seems to have a stupidly low drop rate. The "regular" world boss, Kithrawl, was kind of disappointing to me in that his mechanics are extremely basic yet he has a ridiculous number of hitpoints, meaning that he's both quite boring to fight but also takes a long time to die unless you bring an absolutely massive group - not the best combination in my opinion.

Navigation & Obstacles

All that said, the main reason that I still don't like Ruhnuk all that much remains that it's just a chore to get anywhere. After six months and visiting the place on several alts, I kinda know my way around by now, but it remains easy to get lost by taking a wrong turn inside a tunnel. Still, there are other planets that are hard to navigate, and that alone hasn't been a reason for me to dislike them, so what's the problem?

I realised that what makes Ruhnuk such a pain to traverse is that a lot of the map consists of narrow ravines and tunnels stuffed with mobs, which means that assuming you don't have stealth, getting anywhere requires fighting every single step of the way (which makes it feel all the more punishing if you accidentally end up taking a wrong turn and then have to backtrack). I didn't like the endless tunnels of skytroopers in the KotFE chapters, and there's definitely a bit of that vibe here.

Even worse though, for some reason there are way too many silver and gold mobs sprinkled throughout the area, which makes everything take even longer. More specifically, the areas for the heroic missions are not clearly delineated but instead kind of "bleed into" the regular questing areas, which means that you might just be following an arrow towards a story quest objective when you turn a corner and suddenly find yourself in combat with a large group of golds and silvers.

I had one particularly memorable encounter of this kind which was exacerbated even more by the fact that two groups of mobs appeared to be linked in some way that didn't make sense, so I'd not just get one group, but another heroic-level group of mobs would instantly come sprinting around the corner the moment I pulled, which caused me to get overwhelmed and defeated in the same spot about three times before I could proceed to my quest objective. I like heroics as optional, more challenging content, but the way Ruhnuk has these unavoidable heroic-level mob groups blocking your path everywhere is just tedious.

I hope that Bioware will continue adding new areas like this; I'd just prefer them to be more open, to not have so many unavoidable mobs, and for side content to either be more rewarding or less tedious. Ruhnuk's planetary storyline and the datacron both hit a pretty sweet spot in my opinion; there's just too much other stuff that detracts from the experience for me to want to spend much time hanging around.