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View Full Version : So, I just finished Menace of the Underdark...



knightgf
10-24-2012, 06:58 PM
And I must say, overall, for a Turbine expansion, it's great. Key things summed up below:

- For 2495 TP's, it's EXPENSIVE. You thought gianthold was expensive, well...but it is at least worthy of a good portion of it's value. Get it on sale, without a doubt.

- The first series was pretty good, in terms of questing and such. The King's Forest is HUGE! You could get lost in it for hours on end if you chose not to be careful. The drawback to this, of course, is that it takes time to find and get to the quests, but the art is pretty good. Not sure about the new type of explorer ideas, but the rares are pretty interesting, its nice to talk your way out of a situation using your character's skills.

- I thought for some reason, the first series of quests were well thought out, and adds a bit of thinking of the quests.

- The underdark is my FAVORITE part of MotU. If you've ever played any of the avernum video games, or visited the underground section of skyrim, you'll love the underdark. The huge caverns, the unique scenery, and the HUGE monsters make it worth the visit. Of course, the only drawback is that the scenery is naturally dull and grey, but it's good. I see a lot of inspiration in this section. Oh, and I love the underdark goggles, they remind me of one of the powerup's you pick up in Doom with how they light the underdark.

- The city of the drow was pretty interesting, especially fighting in it, and my jaw dropped when I saw both the waterfall and the ziggurat. It would be interesting though if there was a section of the city that was friendly to us, like a 'black market' district or something like that.

- I'm eager to see more of the underdark. Even with what I see, the opponents I face are terrifying. I can't imagine what lies in the dark chasms below, especially since the drow fear it so much. Perhaps it is these chasms that gives reason for these realms to be 'forgotten', since we best fight things we're afraid of by forgetting them.

- The second set of quests were alright; in particular, I loved the idea of 'Bringing a house to it's knees' in The Lord of Rusted Blades quests. It had a good jingle to it. However, I did not like the one quest where you must destroy necromatic cauldrons because I felt the quest was more tough than usual; up until this quest, I managed to do well as a rogue mechanic with a hireling tag-along. For this quest, I needed a party to finish it, and thankfully I won't have to do it for a while.

- The third set of quests were kinda lame; in particular, the demonweb was something im not fond of, despite the fact that Lolth owns it, her nature is chaotic, exc., exc. It makes getting to the quests difficult. I will admit though that the explorer journals work well here, as they are easy to find, and its cool standing still and looking at the place with shadow walk, as the beams of purple light you see are fascinating, and the explorer areas also wisp smoke under shadow walk.

- The raid was just...lame. It starts promising at first, but then it just gets UGLY. Every corner you turn, tons of red-named casters come out to attack you with their minions to aid them. You gotta be sure to kill the lesser enemies first or else it just get's downright ugly. While it is cool that lolth may chase you around using parts of her physical avatar at times, I wasn't too fond of fighting her physical form, because I had trouble actually finding a 'hit spot'. Her 'soul drain' ability is unique, and is like VoD where you need curse pots, but I felt they could have tried something different there. I felt that fighting a god should be unlike fighting Arritrekos or other end-raid bosses.

- I can't believe that this raid had so many technical issues and such back a while ago. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of players felt the raid delivered a weak experience. Heck, it doesn't even give that much experience! On my first completion, I got about 30k XP from it, which is just lame. I should be getting about 60-90k XP for completing it, more on higher difficulties, especially considering what your up against. 30k is just lame, especially considering most of the quests in this pack offer a similar amount of experience. It doesn't feel like a 'epic' amount of raid XP.

- MotU plotwise is very good, maybe even one of the best in DDO. It has some memorable characters, there's plenty of plot details, and it leaves you wondering what happens next. I feel odd saying this, but I will miss Elminister and Anna. I wonder where they will go off to in order to protect themselves from Lolth? Elminister is a powerful wizard, perhaps he created his own plane by which to protect her. Who knows? But I do hope to run across them again in the future, though I hope I do not have to cross paths with Lolth again. And I do hope that someday, peace can be established with the drow, no matter how impossible that might seem.

-I think the challenges are unique, but they could offer more material rewards. I heard that there were issues with XP as well, and, well...I have no opinion on that.

Overall, it's a good pack, but I would wait for a sale to come by, as the up-front cost is STEEP.

TrinityTurtle
10-24-2012, 07:08 PM
I also love the explorer areas and quests, but felt flat about the raid. On top of the game play being boring, it's just weird. The disembodied parts you fight are just...odd. Lolth is sneaky, devious, plans within plans, but that raid fails to deliver an feel of that, and instead seems like she's not really even trying.

Vellrad
10-24-2012, 07:15 PM
Story wise, IMO motu is fail.

Drow in underdark are so overused everywhere, that they would have to try very hard to squeeze something more out of it, and a minor deity trying to take over after one of most powerful gods is not a good story, not to mention Elminstrel, who was supposed to be wise and intelligent, to bring Lolth what she is looking for. Come one, 99,9% of players guessed Ana will be thread of the weave, and old man couldn't guess it?

Saravis
10-24-2012, 07:20 PM
instead seems like she's not really even trying.

She isn't.
Its an overly used cliche, an unbeatable enemy defeated because it wasn't trying hard enough.

I agree the quests are fun, but the raid lacks creative design. The portal keepers are the only thing interesting in that raid and that aint saying much.

Isolani
10-25-2012, 01:01 AM
Most of the quests are decent in MotU. I like the demonweb explorer area. King's Forest is alright. I hated the Underdark personally, a giant multilevel explorer area...no thanks, but it's fine since some people will like that. I just discover the portals ASAP so I can avoid all of it.

It's really the ED grind that makes me not like the expansion. I went back to TRing instead. I'd rather run 200+ quests once or twice getting back to L20 on a TR than run 1 or 2 quests 200 times for EDs.

brian14
10-25-2012, 12:12 PM
I also love the explorer areas and quests, but felt flat about the raid. On top of the game play being boring, it's just weird. The disembodied parts you fight are just...odd. Lolth is sneaky, devious, plans within plans, but that raid fails to deliver an feel of that, and instead seems like she's not really even trying.
Of course she is not really trying! Lolth is a goddess. If Lolth seriously wanted to kill you, you'd be dead within minute. The raid is the way it is -- and survivable, -- because she is just playing with you.