tarashon wrote: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.
tarashon wrote: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.
tarashon wrote: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?
tarashon wrote: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.
tarashon wrote: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.
tarashon wrote: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?
tarashon wrote: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.
tarashon wrote: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?"
- i Think it might be ghostly visage on either yourself or your companion.