( ONGOING ) My experience so far.

[Spe]

Hello all,

I've been playing on your server for the past few days, really enjoying it so far! I'll keep playing as often as I can hoping the population increases.

I'm gonna use this thread as a ongoing bug reporting update as I play throughout the lands. I spoke to Tara for a while last night and he suggested I post my experiences here.

Spells.

- Magic Fang changes the default spell to Ghostly Visage, but it is still overwrited by Greater Magic Fang. So in order to get both effects you need to cast Greater Maic Fang first, only an issue at lower levels with limited spell slots.

- One with the land appears bugged. I have tried casting it on myself several times. It does nothing. Havnt tried casting on companions.

Quests.

The questing system is fantastic imo, especially with the low population. It was really smooth going from one area to the next I have always had places to go and suggestions for new areas. I enjoyed the "wizards ibrary book clues of the month club" quest as it actually took alwhile and I enjoyed the fact finding/guessing. I guess I have been fortunate that all the quests ive attempted have worked as planned.

Mobs and Spelling.

A fair few number of mobs have decapilization of there names. Which to me is just annoying. "man" should be "Man". I know there's a hole thread on spelling mistakes but just thought I'd bring it up as its the first thing you notice when you join the server is spelling mistakes. Also pretty much every single spelling of Strength is incorrectin both quest text and on items (the rings from the magic shop). I won't speak more on spelling as I know it's a work in progress :

Side games.

- In the dragon inn, the spin wheel minigame was bugged for a me. I had a roll and she said "Hey, you have won a speed potion" or sonething to that effect. The game took my money but received no prize. Which was quite a blow when I did it at level 3. So I stopped playing. I'll have a few more goes and post results now that my coinpurse is larger.

Sorry for the wall of text, I'm sure there where things I missed etc. I'll update on more bugs as I travel through the lands. But seriously great job so far. I appreciate the effort you guys are going through so far!

[tarashon]

Thanks alot Spe

As for the "One with the land" spell it has been changed to gah cant remember but look on the spellchange signs or here in the forum - i Think it might be ghostly visage on either yourself or your companion.

Spelling is an overall isue, and we are workign hard on it. For now - as we speak - I will run over the NPCs in Castle Balder and capitalize their "NAMES" to stop the overwhemling exposure of "tara's rotten written English"

I believe the Wheel of fortune might suffer from me having deleted lots of potions. That was a sideeffect I had given no thought. however I think that the overall lootrange of that Wheel needs a little attention so I shall look into it, allthough not first priority.

/tara

[Balkoth]

Tarashon, do you want to turn this into a general "My Experience" thread for people to leave feedback, would you rather have multiple threads so the discussion doesn't get too mixed up, would you prefer something else, etc?

[tarashon]

Hm...

Well Perhaps this could be an overall experience thread ( unless spe wants it to be personal ), so that we in this here thread talk about, Good& bad stuff, progression and such n a more generel level.

For more specific stuff it s more suitable to have one thread per isue. Like one for spelling errors, etc etc.

Just my 2 cents on the matter, and as such Seeker is the official boss here on the forum so I suppose he has the final Word on the matter

/tara

[Somnium]

I agree with Tarashon. For general impressions/observations, it is fine to have these in a single post/thread. For specific bugs and suggestions, it would help us to have these in separate threads, so that we can track and mark these issues separately as we fix them

[Balkoth]

Yeah, I meant as a general impressions bit (so that we didn't have 10 different threads about overall stuff). Going to talk about my current highest leveled character (a Fighter 8/Rogue 1/WM 2 with the overall intention of Fighter 10/Rogue 11/WM 19) who is not necessarily my "main," just testing the waters out still. Also have a level 5 sorcerer and a 2 rogue/2 fighter that I'm playing with two friends. I've encouraged those two friends to share their thoughts as well, though they'll probably pool their thoughts and make it one post.

Current Situation
I believe I basically have the best gear available outside of more forge tokens. +3 armor, +3 helm, +3 shield, +2 amulet in terms of AC from shops. Cloak of regeneration +2 that I also bought. Two +3 strength rings that I bought. Belt from goblins with 2 universal saves (so could "upgrade" to a store bought belt for 2 regen in exchange for those saves), boots from tormented soul quest (2 AC, 1 regen), and bracers I found with 2 strength/2 con/2 regen (warrior types only).

I am also using a +3 scimitar I bought in a shop. I tried to use the Forge to add 2d8 Sonic damage but instead it only added 4 Sonic damage. I picked Sonic since it's almost never resisted. That cost 2 tokens and I'm saving the other 4.

There is a 160k belt that would be good that I haven't bought yet, but that's far more expensive than anything else I've seen in Castle Balder.

General stats (unbuffed):

139 HP
36 AC
27/22 AB schedule
1d6 + 22 damage (various types) per hit

I also have a number of Bull's Strength potions and both food items from the Museum (2 strength/2 stam for 10 minutes from the pies and 3 regen for 18 minutes from the drinks). Also Clarity potions for mind immunity and some Invis potions for quick escapes. About 30 Cure Serious Wounds potions to use in combat if needed along with some Lesser Restoration potions and Healing Kits +1.

Deaths
I believe I've died six times so far on that character.

1. two goblin mages hitting me for the incorrectly massive Magic Missile damage north of the High Forest at level 4-5.
2. undead in the tax crypt when I went there at level 5-6.
3. fog beasts to the south of the fogshredder infants area at level 7-8 -- got instantly paralyzed with a bolt from a distance so couldn't run. It had a warning sign but I wasn't expecting the enemies to start off with a no-save paralysis bolt.
4. imps in Talkash forest at level 8-9 -- saw auras, thought they'd be fire auras, turned out to be fear. Ran around like an idiot (due to stupid NWN fear) and died.
5. found some "Anoy Trolls" with 80+ AB that hit me for 100+ damage per swing. Apparently I wasn't supposed to find that area yet but it lacked any warning unlike most other areas. Tarashon indicated it's supposed to be so super secret that most people wouldn't find it and thus he didn't think a warning was needed. I was just exploring an area!
6. Died to some Blizzard Wolven -- had been farming them for the quest, put on auto attack and alt-tab for about a minute and then come back to check on things. Wound up being at lower health one time, thought I was fine due to regen, got hit again a moment later and decided to drink a potion...and both Wolven still alive rolled a 20 on the attack of opportunity and killed me. Neither could have hit me except for a 20 either.

Fixing Magic Missile helps for #1. #2 has been addressed by adding a level indicator to the quest. #3...I'm not sure. I knew the sign warned it was higher level but since I was mowing through the fogshredder infants I wanted to see how it went. Did not expect instant no save paralysis bolt. #4...no reason to suspect a fear aura on those imps, it's to the right after you enter an area as well with no warning. Not thrilled about that one. #5, apparently I just explore too well. #6 is me not expecting a 0.25% chance to happen, oops. Many of the creatures seem to have a LOT of HP, though, given how many there are per pack. Boring to AFK my way through them.

Completed Quests
1. The two intro quests
2. Tobias skeleton quest
3. Both of Ralfe's quests.
4. Jorgen's quest.
5. Library quest.
6. Sarah's quest.
7. Martin Blackleef's quest.
8. Tormented soul quest
9. All four bounties for Jack
10. Goblin head quest (for the wizard)
11. Stalker/spider quests for the Bowmaidens.

After killing the fogshredder infants I cleared out the vampires in the crypt but apparently was no quest or boss there (and no loot).

I've also cleared out the water spirits and Shei'zan twice, have 5 water tokens and 2 hearts. The tokens can be turned into the bowmaidens but no idea what good the heart is.

The beetles for the bowmaidens seemed too difficult for me to handle currently (which is the 4th and final quest for them).

I also cleared out the gnolls -- not sure why they're even there given that there's no quest for them and by the time you get to that area you way outlevel it.

Available Quests
As mentioned, can collect 15 more water tokens (6 more clears of that place?) and eventually handle the beetles.

There's also the four collection quests in the frozen areas but only have 4 Wolven fangs after clearing 90% of the first area (which is a LOT of them and they take a LONG time to kill even hitting 90%+ of the time). Three more after that.

There's also two more collector quest NPCs offering four quests each for the earth elementals near a castle (also too tough for now) and wildlife like sneak attacking bison (killed the initial two, concerned about larger packs of them, also take a long time to kill).

There's the tax collector quest in Balder. Zombies took ages to kill, though, even with my upgraded weapon (they also have damage immunity to ALL physical types so switching to a morningstar doesn't help).

There's also a closed mine meant for 13+ and apparently theoretically a group.

Then I've found some other areas meant for much higher level and/or epic stuff.

All that said, with the possible exception of the tax collector quest, it seems all the quests "available" to me are the "kill 200 mobs" quests (literally -- 10% drop rate times 20 items needed). And I seem to need more AC to be able to reasonably survive...but I don't know where I can get that from at this point. Already using Expertise for an extra 5 AC.

Chests
Since they're all locked and apparently the only source of loot in "dungeons," I haven't gotten any. Can't bash them open. Expecting every character on the server to take several ranks in Open Lock seems odd -- especially for a character like my sorcerer with 8 dex. Would need 7 ranks in Open Lock (aka level 13) to be able to open DC 26 chests without resorting to Dex increasing items/spells or lockpicks. This also seems to be the main (only?) source of Haste/Mind Blank potions, haven't found those (or other potions) on a vendor yet.

I'm just not sure why, especially for an RP server, a Paladin or Cleric is supposed to know how to pick locks.

Conclusion
I think that's everything for now.

It is starting to feel a bit grindy at this point given how all my quests are "go kill 200 monsters" and those monsters are all taking a long time to kill. And come in large packs. When I'm AFKing for 60+ seconds just to see what my progress is in hacking through a cluster of monsters something seems a bit off.

In other news, during the writing of this that 2 fighter/2 rogue is now 4/4. And we haven't even done Sarah's quest, wiped on Martin's quest due to the boss one-shotting us with Fireball, and haven't done library quest yet. Believe we have 4 fighter/4 rogue, 8 cleric, 8 ranger, 8 sorcerer as our group.

The other quests are the grind quests, though, which don't actually drop for the whole group, just one person.

[tarashon]

Howdy Balkoth

A fairly long post, but I suspect my reply wil be just aswell, so here goes.

Before i start thanks for your info and hope your friends does indeed also share their opinion(S)...
-----

First and foremost this thread is supposed to be generel conclusions and observations. How I understands that and what I am looking for is "what's good. what's bad, what's ok(ish?) etc.

When I read your post I am forced to ask what your opinion might be , if any at all. There is litterelly not a single hint of anything remotely likeable or intertaining in the module and only a few gametechnically comments about reasons of deaths / mechanics scaling. This makes it rather hard for us to get a notion of what "Works" in the module and what does not...

Just a hint as to what we are lookig for and how to perhaps help us make this more enjoyable for us all

Now to address the individual "isues".

* The spelldeath isues have been resolved and both magic missiles and fireball have been corrected.

As a sidenote to fireball being too hard and instakilled your intire party this also tells me that your party is infact not using the slightest hint of tactics or battle formation ( apearantly one aoe from a "miniBOSS" you more or less knew would be there could hit you all at the same time ) which in my opinion speaks well for the module. It means if people just rush they have a chance of ending up in trouble. To emphasize this know that the encounter difficulty level scales and in many epic top areas this party wiping would not be a risk, it would be a given, and thats how we like it

* The chests, doors and open Lock.

One of our toppriorities in "Alangara - New Dawn" is to try make all classes needed and usefull/powerfull. This means that we have decided that Open Lock is a classdefining skill that should not be in competition with spells, nor overall useless. To this end we have made most treasurechests locked and described so clearly under create character sign etc. Now the fact that you describe having a character with a roguelevel and still not being able to pick DC 26, tells me that you have been so preocupied with a predefined powerbuild that you could not spare points for Open Lock. That's fine by us, but considering this is a RP server and you chose rogue but no open Lock just emphasized ( imho ) that this is not a server problem but a clear result of your characterdesign being gametechnically perfected and singlemindet...

Also the loot in those chests, such as haste potions, has to do with making one type of class benefit from others. Like a rogue would get a melee lots of good magical potions such as haste, or a caster could do it. A singleminded powerbuild however will lack out on essentials that could have been gained with an absolute minimum of diversity in charcterbuild.

The exsample of a sorceror with dex 8 just tells me the same. You can't have it all, not even in "Alangara -New Dawn", hehe

* the grind 200 quests is actually grind 100 quests. Drop % is 20, but admitably there were a few set to 10 when I ran them over to implement the new system, and I do believe some arcanummage dialog says its 10% - its not though and I'll look into it.

This being said however, this is a PW. PWs are not singlemodules and there will be some grinding involved, like it or not. And in the latter case I am 95% certain that in most PWs you will find even more grinding compared to the availability of quests and quest xp - That is atleast my own experience but things might have changed since I was a regular pw player years ago....

* AFK and bored vs unecspected powers.

Well what to say. First of you class/level description and gear tells me that you have a perfected powerbuild meleeclass going. If we made all encounters match such 95% of players would find the world ludicrously tough, and casual players would be unable to do anything but die miserably. As such you "bare the burden" of an overly technical attitude towards the game. On the bright side you will get your coppers worth of challenge son enough as you level up

As for the "I did not expect fear" comment; well GOOD !
We have even in our server description declared that the Inner Realms is a customsetting where nothing ( nescesarily anyways ) is what it seemes and beetles can have the powers of giants and vice versa. Until you have fought a monster or talked to fellow adventurers or read some of the fauna books in the library ( made by players years ago ) you simply wont know. This is a world of exploration and surprices, not an attempt to copy Faerun / Greyhawk / Planescape /Ravenloft etc etc. Allthough we do love to draw upon the lore and settings of those universes. We just tweak them to our likeing and purpose.

Another thing is that the specific exsample you mentioned was melee monsters. Had you had a similar "hardcore powerbuild" but sorceror or... chances are at the same monsters you would have been slain if AFK. Melee classes excells at standing infront of the mobs taking and giving damage, which is infact done automatically. Thus your class/build combination worked perfectly in that inviroment whereas you might find yourself over challenged somewhere else where casters fair better. Thats a good thing and we like it

* Exploration.

For most people exploring a new world is one of the best aspects of joining a new server or levelling up in a server that has a certain size and diversity ( like asumeably all PWs have ). As it is "Alangara - New Dawn" have taken massive steps to introduce new players to our world in a relatively safe way. Warning signs are littered all over areas ment for level 5 to 15/20'ish. However some things are supposed to be secret and if and when a player finds them ( like you did in one instance ) chances are you will die miserably. Well...so what ?

We live and die and learn from it and thats what makes the game fun, and if you never died from exploring on your own then I'd say that is an overly protective and booring PW you have found. Atleast that is my opinion and that is how we deliberatly build this world.

And when you deliberatly decides to walk into an area with a huge warning sign clearly describing that this is way more dangerous than where you are... you DESERVE to die. I'll even go as far as to saying that if you did not die ( unless you ran like biip ) then that PW once again is toothless and dull.

You also desribes SEING the flamefiends had auras and still you charged - becourse you asumed them to be something else. Once Again you ask for trouble, and to the benefit and praise of our worldsetting...you got it

Well thats my two cents on the matter, hope i managed to cover most stuff

/tara

[Balkoth]

When I read your post I am forced to ask what your opinion might be , if any at all. There is litterelly not a single hint of anything remotely likeable or intertaining in the module and only a few gametechnically comments about reasons of deaths / mechanics scaling. This makes it rather hard for us to get a notion of what "Works" in the module and what does not...

Well, I said that I didn't like the fear auras or paralysis bolt. The common thread there is that both are effectively instant death and there are no mind immunity items I've seen yet. There is a Lesser Belt of Guiding Light for the fear specifically, but that doesn't help against the paralysis bolt -- unless you expect everyone to be carrying around 30+ potions of clarity and quaffing them constantly (since they only last 1 minute). Which is not fun for me.

I mentioned that I think a lot of the mobs simply have too much HP at the point where I am (level 10-11+ -- didn't seem as problematic at lower levels) -- seems to take forever to hack through them, especially when you need to kill 100+. I mentioned I don't really like the "kill 100 mobs" quests, I'd rather be hunting down a pack leader or ancient version of the animal.

I mentioned that I seem to be having issues with finding gear at this point -- I think I've checked every "town" for vendors and am coming up with nothing. My AC is starting to seem to be an issue, even with Expertise.

I mentioned not liking the chests (more on that later).

Beyond that, part of the goal was to demonstrate how things actually played out to see how it compared to what you expected.

For example, it's possible that you expected me to be level 13 at the point where I am, quest wise, and that I'm actually "behind" in level compared to what you expected. It's possible you expected me to find some new vendor which I haven't stumbled across (despite the fact that I am generally very good at exploring as shown by the Anoy Trolls). It's possible I'm missing other stuff that you expected I'd do (or found other stuff that you didn't expect). Hence the observations.

Like, I have no idea what the "Heart of Shei'zan" does and I have two of them already. It also seems odd to expect players to clear the water spirits area *eight* different times to get enough water tokens.

As a sidenote to fireball being too hard and instakilled your intire party this also tells me that your party is infact not using the slightest hint of tactics or battle formation ( apearantly one aoe from a "miniBOSS" you more or less knew would be there could hit you all at the same time )

Except I never said that (because it didn't happen). What I said is that we got one-shot -- meaning our cleric went from 72 HP (at level 8) to 0 HP in one Fireball. No chance to heal/retreat/etc. I technically (on my fighter/rogue) didn't get one-shot, but I did from from about 75/88 HP to dead with the second Fireball, which is still about 85% of my HP gone in one spell. The ranger and sorcerer in our party died after that to more Fireballs and other attacks.

No Fireball ever hit more than 1 person -- we were spread out with myself and the cleric in front with the sorcerer and ranger in back providing support. But that hardly matters if the Fireball is essentially instant death.

One of our toppriorities in "Alangara - New Dawn" is to try make all classes needed and usefull/powerfull. This means that we have decided that Open Lock is a classdefining skill that should not be in competition with spells, nor overall useless. To this end we have made most treasurechests locked and described so clearly under create character sign etc. Now the fact that you describe having a character with a roguelevel and still not being able to pick DC 26, tells me that you have been so preocupied with a predefined powerbuild that you could not spare points for Open Lock.

You're making unfounded assumptions again.

My expectation was that most of the loot would be dropped either by random monsters or boss specific drops and that you might find a few treasure chests along the way as a bonus for rogues. Instead, the random monsters and bosses basically drop nothing and like 90% of the loot is contained in locked treasure chests -- including Haste potions, Mind Blank potions, and other stuff (which are not sold by vendors -- not yet, at least). But at the point when I took that rogue level, I was figuring that missing out on the Treasure Chests would be a minor issue -- not a major one.

You're also contradicting yourself. If you expect everyone to be able to pick locks and nearly every lock is easy to pick, then that is the OPPOSITE of a class-defining skill. A class-defining skill is something like Discipline for warrior types or Perform for bards -- simply putting a few points into it won't do much good. You have to be dedicated to it and invest heavily in it. And, correspondingly, the locks should be difficult to pick with the assumption that only someone focused on open lock will be able to open chests as you level.

I mean, if investing a few points into Open Lock cross-class and casting Cat's Grace on myself as a sorcerer and then open 90% of the locks in the module, how in the world is that a class defining skill?

This being said however, this is a PW. PWs are not singlemodules and there will be some grinding involved, like it or not. And in the latter case I am 95% certain that in most PWs you will find even more grinding compared to the availability of quests and quest xp - That is atleast my own experience but things might have changed since I was a regular pw player years ago....

Which is more fun?

1. Fight your way to the underground chamber of the ruined castle and retrieve the essence of the Ancient Earth Elemental responsible for leading an attack on the castle.

2. Eh, there's some Earth Elementals near a castle, go kill 100 of them.

Even if the former winds up involving killing more than 100 Earth Elementals, it feels different to most people. The main potential "problem" is people trying to invis or stealth past the enemies.

Part of it is also the scope of the grinding. "Go kill 20 tigers. Good, now go kill 20 spiders. Good, now go kill 20 orcs. Good, now go kill 20 wyrmlings. Good, now go kill 20 vrocks" feels better than "Go kill 100 tigers." You get a sense of completion per "segment" and feel like you're doing stuff that's different, even if they're basically just reskinned mobs.

Well what to say. First of you class/level description and gear tells me that you have a perfected powerbuild meleeclass going. If we made all encounters match such 95% of players would find the world ludicrously tough, and casual players would be unable to do anything but die miserably.

That wasn't my point whatsoever. My point was that the monsters were simply taking too long to kill, even as a character supremely focused on dishing out tons of damage.

Or, in other words, if my powerbuilt character thinks stuff is taking forever to die, what will the non-powerbuilds think? It'll be even worse for them.

As for the "I did not expect fear" comment; well GOOD!

Let me ask you this, then: if those imps had Will Save vs Death auras and I said "I did not expect instant death aura for will save," would you still be saying "well GOOD!" If not, then what is the practical difference? One kills me as soon as I enter the aura. The other removes control of my character after entering the aura and kills me a few seconds later.

I mean, is the assumption that every time I see a new monster that I manage to have both Death Magic and Mind Spell Immunity up?

However some things are supposed to be secret and if and when a player finds them ( like you did in one instance ) chances are you will die miserably. Well...so what ?

Well, given that there are limited quests and monster XP is pretty low (if anything it encourages you to fight much easier monsters since you gain more XP/hour) that 10% of a level lost is the "so what?" If I die at level 11 right now, I lose 1100 XP. That's 41 Blizzard Wolven. If you figure I can kill a Wolven every 30 seconds, that's a minimum of 20.5 minutes of grinding continuously to make up for that death...which isn't including stuff like travel time between spawns, healing, or respawn rate. So more like 25-30 minutes of lost time per death.

Which then discourages exploration. If I try to explore and die four times, then now only did I "lose" the time I spent exploring, I also lost another 2 hours of experience that I need to make up (and possibly lost an actual level). Which means I'm more likely to stick to "safe" zones and areas and not risk dying, which is then more boring in general.

And when you deliberatly decides to walk into an area with a huge warning sign clearly describing that this is way more dangerous than where you are... you DESERVE to die. I'll even go as far as to saying that if you did not die ( unless you ran like biip ) then that PW once again is toothless and dull.

So when IS it intended for you to enter an area in such a situation?

Let's say you're level 8 and completely wrecking an area that seems to be meant for level 5-6. Then you see another area with a sign saying the creatures are more dangerous (but NOT saying anything about epic). From my perspective, I thought it was possible the warnings were for those level 5-6s who would be struggling with the current zone and the new zone was meant for level 10s or so. But apparently it was meant for level 15+ or something. So how do I tell the difference between "This zone is meant for people 5+ levels higher" vs "This zone is meant for people 10+ levels higher?"

[Balkoth]

So just did an in-game test in the first Blizzard Wolven area.

With the new +4 sonic damage upgrade I got since the first time I was there (and +12 strength from gear/buffs), I was able to kill 59 Wolven in 23 minutes. Those 59 Wolven dropped a total of 5 Fangs which is an 8.5% drop rate.

It was going to be 63 Wolven but as I was alt tabbed to start writing this post in the middle of the last pack (of nine) I apparently had several Wolven roll a lot of 20s in a row and I dropped from about 70% HP to dead in a round or two. Which caused me to lose 1100 XP out of the 1593 XP I had gained from grinding the mobs.

Net gain for 23 minutes of work: a little under 500 XP and 25% quest progress. Wound up losing gold overall due to the potions expended (for healing and buffs) plus the death penalty.

[Balkoth]

Can't seem to edit previous post.

Apparently I did get more fangs, they just didn't keep filling up the same stack and started a new one? Or something? I seem to have 19 now when I thought I started with 4 originally and that stack went up to 9. But I have another stack of 10 now. I don't know if I started with 14 and wound up with 19, started with 4 and wound up with 19, or something else entirely.

Time to go run another test and figure out what in the world is going on.