Quest diffiiculty

[CarlM]

Is it just my play style or are quest levels and difficulties often misleading.

Stealthy repossession is supposed to be easier than most level 2, but as soon as you unstealth to operate a lever you get mobbed and get blocked if you try to run away and if you attack the prophets will rush into your sword.

Freshen the Air and Archbishop's daughter seem much harder than the "Depth of ..." quests despite being a level lower and all are classed as average difficulty.

If this is generally agreed is there a player based ranking for difficulty

[JeisonBlade]

Sometimes it depends on your tactics and style and what kind of toon your using. A quest thats absurdly easy for a paladin may tear a rogue to shreds for example. Also depends on your knowledge of the quest; the very first time we did genesis point we stumbled through on normal about 2 hours and many many deaths, and swore the devs were sadistic pricks for creating it. Later on we got a guide who knew the quest and how to handle the mobs properly (ah the newbishness of my youth...), and pretty much breezed through it on elite in about 30 mins.

In short, yes, at any given level on any given toon you'll find that some quests are harder for you than others. Thats just the way it is, and over time you'll learn which ones to look out for

[Frotz]

For example, in Stealthy Repo, depending on class, you can just run from lever to lever, jumping over any kobolds that get in your way, and just grab the gem at the end without touching anything but switches and levers. You may have to pause to let the Dungeon Alert calm down a bit along the way though. Only slightly more difficult than Scrag's dogs. You can also just selectively kill all the non-Prophets, or just the shamans, and ignore the Prophets as they can hardly damage a kitten. If you're intent on sneaking from lever to lever, just wait till they're not looking at you to unstealth and hit the lever, but that's so long and stressful. :)

[redspecter23]

As others have mentioned it depends highly on your level, your class, your skill and your tactics used. In stealthy repossession for example, I just use invisibility hit the switches and reinvis after each switch. Use expeditious retreat clickies, shield clickie and as a bonus if you have high AC not much will be hitting you. You can often get to the end without killing a single kobold and often be green alert or lower.

Quests with alternate win/lose conditions can often feel much harder until you know the ins and outs of that quest well.

[MrkGrismer]

There are a few quests that are far hard for most first-timers than others of similar level. You've mentioned a few, here's some more:

Proof is in the Poison
Devils Assault
Faithfully Departed
Setting the Wards: The Patriarch's Crypt (mostly because most first-timers don't know the route good enough to run, once you know running is easy enough)
Taming the Flames (need fire resistance)
The Sanctum: Quench the Flames (need fire resistance, blind immunity)
Cavern's of Koromor (need to be able to deal with beholders)
Hold for Reinforcements (protect a person with a glass jaw)
The Prisoner (need to be able to deal with beholders and need some form of haste/expeditious retreat to get past some air jets)
Jungle of Khyber (beholders, including a red-named that has two red-named non-beholder pals; and then a Marut)
The Maze of Madness (levers that open doors that are not necessarily nearby)
The Cruicible (gack)
Madstone Crater (protect)
Made to Order (Marut)
Prisoner of the Planes (Marut and Marilith, but you can avoid fighting them)
All Vale Quests
All Reaver Reach Quests
All Devils of Shavarath Quests

That being said, if you have a good group or learn the quests good they are normally much easier.

[DrawingGuy]

Surprised you don't have Chronoscope listed in that. You have to have one darn good party and likely still lots of deaths to crawl through that raid at level.

As for Vale, I consider them easily done at-level. Coalescence is the most hated, but only because it's tedious (think the Pit, but bigger). Never been in a failed pug on the standard quests (though only takes one idiot for killing spiders in Let Sleeping Dust Lie). The Shroud is the Vale Raid, and was only next to impossible at level due to OP blades. Those have been un-buffed, so the biggest concern is the boss again, and he's easily doable at level.

[Impaqt]

Is it just my play style or are quest levels and difficulties often misleading.

Stealthy repossession is supposed to be easier than most level 2, but as soon as you unstealth to operate a lever you get mobbed and get blocked if you try to run away and if you attack the prophets will rush into your sword.

Freshen the Air and Archbishop's daughter seem much harder than the "Depth of ..." quests despite being a level lower and all are classed as average difficulty.

If this is generally agreed is there a player based ranking for difficulty


I thought Freshen the air was an "Extreme Challenge" dungeon...... Shield CLickies and acid resist go a long way in that one though.

Are you soloing these quests? What class? What difficulty are you selecting?

[Alrik_Fassbauer]

Personally, I kind of agree to that list.
If you are in a quest for the very first time, you just don't know what to do, and especially important : How to protect yourself.

This is the reason why my inventory is full of clickies, armor, weapons and potions for almost every possible occation, if possible (I don't have protectivec stuff against sonic traps, for example. Or against coldness).

[CarlM]

I thought Freshen the air was an "Extreme Challenge" dungeon...... Shield CLickies and acid resist go a long way in that one though.

Are you soloing these quests? What class? What difficulty are you selecting?

One of the things as a newbie is you don't know what the nasties are throwing at you fire is obvious acid less so. What clickies protect when I guess is all a case of experience. I also havn't played enough to know exactly what is coming or at least which potion icon is the acid resist and by the time I've found it I'm dead.

Having said that it appears that most low level quests are forgiving, you can just head for the spell caster kill them and then wipe up the rest of the mobs.

I started with a Paladin got to level nine and rerolled, could do either stealthy repossession or freshen the air when I tried normal at about level 7 or 8 (solo, with a cleric hireling in freshen the air). I have now rerolled and have a (trainee) tempest trapmonkey and had the same problems.

Catacombs I remember by Paladin got a bit of a shock at the step up in difficulty for the final quest (on normal). My trapmonkey did catacombs at level 5 (solo with cleric) getting elite bravary bonus. Before Archbishops daughter I levelled up to 6 and dropped to hard but still didn't get close to winning the fight in 3 attempts. (In one my cleric forgot to heal himself and I wasn't watching in the other 2 he ran out of mana before we had had much of an effect on the monsters and I was then struggling to drink potions and fight at the same time.).

[hiryuu42]

I thought Freshen the air was an "Extreme Challenge" dungeon...... Shield CLickies and acid resist go a long way in that one though.

An arcane with decent Charm DCs can chop down the difficulty, too. In fact, that's true of most early content. I was so used to them being sucker spells in most RPGs until I pugged Kobold Assault with a good wizard, and the defenders outnumbered the enemy. I think Misadventure led the kill count.

Nash's Farm is fine with a real group, but that's frequently a PUG-eater.

[Frotz]

Also for Freshen the Air, the perching casters are immobile and you can pull all the ground-level melees back through a door, around a corner, or behind a column and take care of them without being hit by spells, then deal with the casters by shooting them from entirely out of spell range, manually dodging the ray spells if you're in the open, or shooting them from around corners (mob AI has problems with Line Of Sight :D). For the final fight in Catacombs, you can also jump off the dias, run behind it, and have only a few of the mobs follow you; all the archers will remain where they are and the rest may path to you one-by-one. It may seem like cheating, but there are ways to take advantage of the mob AI by doing more than just charging at them and mashing buttons. ;)

[MrkGrismer]

Surprised you don't have Chronoscope listed in that. You have to have one darn good party and likely still lots of deaths to crawl through that raid at level.

I didn't list any raids, as they are generally - by definition - 'more difficult'


As for Vale, I consider them easily done at-level. Coalescence is the most hated, but only because it's tedious (think the Pit, but bigger). Never been in a failed pug on the standard quests (though only takes one idiot for killing spiders in Let Sleeping Dust Lie). The Shroud is the Vale Raid, and was only next to impossible at level due to OP blades. Those have been un-buffed, so the biggest concern is the boss again, and he's easily doable at level.

All of the Vale Quests have at least one item that can be troublesome for new players:

Let Sleeping Dust Lie: Can't kill more than 4 spiders, there are 4 spiders in the end fight. Thus if the group kills even a single spider before they make it to the end fight there is a good chance they will fail unless they are careful.

Rainbow in the Dark: items tend to take a LOT of damage in this quest, unless the group is willing to pay for a repair from the ddo store this can cause a group of new people problems.

Ritual Sacrifice: At the end must protect an overly aggressive member of the twelve; if the group does not have resist energy and/or is not on the ball it can mean a fail.

Running with the Devils: right before the end fight there is a self-healing redname that can be a pain in the butt for many new groups. Easier with a full group, can be difficult to solo. Most of the dungeon is not 'evil' so some groups may find their dps lowered.

The Coalesence Chamber: Probably the easiest of the group, but tedious. The Geletanous Cube can give some groups a problem; the ledges give many new players a problem with falling; the acid spam can give groups that rely too much on hirelings a problem; the single rest shrine can give newbies that don't manage their sp well a problem.

The Shroud wasn't next to impossible at level even with the buffed blades. But we are not talking about that, we are talking about some quests that are a bit more (or unexpected more) difficult than others.