U56 Lamannia 3 - Temple of Elemental Evil Content Updates Overview

[Tolero]

As part of U56, we took on the task of re-working Temple of Elemental Evil. When we were evaluating this piece of content we took some time to determine the scope and size of the re-work.

While looking at the content, we decided on the following course of action:

Break the Content into several smaller quests.
Updating and Augmenting the Quest Flow to give more direction to players
Rebalance both the scripted encounters and various random encounters.


Break the Content into several smaller quests:

Part One was separated into two quests:

The first quest contains the Upper Temple and the Earth Temple.
The second quest contains the Water, Air, and Fire Temple to Fallrinth in the Lower Temple.


Part Two was separated into 5 quests:

Each of the Elemental Nodes are now there own quest.
The culmination features the old beginning of Part 2, leading into Zuggtmoy.


Updating and Augmenting the Quest Flow to give more direction to players:



Several quests had additional objectives added to make the game play flow.


Rebalance both the scripted encounters and various random encounters:



The Zuggtmoy and Falrinth encounters were tweaked to be more approachable.
Overall Monster Counts per group were reduced
Number of Hallway Encounters were Reduced


Please use this thread to discuss your experiences on Lamannia with the updated Temple of Elemental Evil! To see the updated Temple of Elemental Evil adventure pack: From the Harbor, visit the Gatekeeper's Grove and once in the Grove speak with Bagnam the Gatekeeper on the east side of the Grove, then enter the gateway behind him. Note that you must own Temple of Elemental Evil to enter, and it is available in the DDO Store on Lamannia for Points. If you need Points you may speak with Lord Poincelot in the Test Dojo.

[Gatlinbow]

All of this sounds great! I run these every life.

My question/concern is only how it's roll out will effect the current HCL. My group just ran these a few days ago. If this rolls out, will the favor we earned be stripped away?

[merridyan]

All of this sounds great! I run these every life.

My question/concern is only how it's roll out will effect the current HCL. My group just ran these a few days ago. If this rolls out, will the favor we earned be stripped away?

I skip these every life. This change may add them to my leveling list.

[Dilbon]

How's the favor in these? And are the elemental node quests optional?

[Mindos]

All of this sounds great! I run these every life.

My question/concern is only how it's roll out will effect the current HCL. My group just ran these a few days ago. If this rolls out, will the favor we earned be stripped away?


Ha, maybe it will give more favor. What fun at the end of the season as some have more favor than thought possible!





Part Two was separated into 5 quests:

Each of the Elemental Nodes are now there own quest.



"there" should probably be "their"

[Talnar00]

Base exp for the length of the quests on heroic is rather low.

[SirShen]

I thought you had done this to make it faster?

Part 1 of quest 1 took me 30 mins to find the runes but this will get faster now I know were they are. Part 1 of quest 2 is fine.

Being forced to do each node before Zuggtmoy is not making it faster. I hate this. Also before it was just find one crystal, now it find 3 flames, water, air ect for each node.

I did these all on normal. The dragon dots in Earth is too high. 40 sec dot damage at 20 a tic nearly killed me.

The XP in the nodes is too low for 20 mins of work. 4.5k XP is too small on normal.

What happened to headband of all the elements (Elemental Victory)? Has it gone?

Please make set quest end rewards important. Getting the same as a normal end quest reward is not nice. You have done a set of quests to get that end reward it should reflect that. You got rid of this for Catacombs and Dels. PLEASE stop killed quest set end rewards.

[HailBlazR]

Base exp for the length of the quests on heroic is rather low.

So it's the exact same problem we had back when Turbine first released the pack in 2015. Gee, who could've seen this coming?


I thought you had done this to make it faster?

Being forced to do each node before Zuggtmoy is not making it faster. I hate this.

Did they seriously not change a single thing about the nodes themselves? Wow. If I heard the phrase "ToEE Rework," the first thing I'd think of would be reducing the inordinate hallway sizes in all of the nodes. All of them are unnecessarily large, with water in particular having huge segments where you're swimming for >2 minutes and otherwise doing nothing. Anyone who actually has played the quests will quickly realize that this is one of the biggest problems with the pack.

If SSG actually did the opposite, and instead made it mandatory to go through all four nodes... then yeah, that's incredibly bad design, to the point that I'd even prefer ToEE in its current state. Warts and all.

[Ipsum]

I just finished playing all of it. I'm never setting foot in the water or fire nodes again which is a shame because I really like the Zuggtmoy fight. If the flagging requirements were changed to only require one node completion before running Zuggtmoy I might consider it, but honestly every quest also needs to give A LOT more XP. Every part of new ToEE, aside from the finale, takes ~15-20mins which makes them some of the longest quests in the game and they do not give XP commiserate with that.

Under the old version of ToEE, I ran part 1 every other life or so because I thought it was cool and gave ok XP. I never ran part 2 because it took way too long and had a rough fight at the very end. With the new version, even if the XP is improved, I will likely not run even part 1. Basically, making part 1 slightly longer with the runes has passed my threshold for how long i'm willing to spend in halls of endless enemies. The elemental node quests are just annoying and poorly designed like they have always been and I don't think there is an easy fix for this.

How would I change ToEE?
- Turn the elemental nodes into mini challenges. Reduce the length of each of them to 1/5th of what they are currently and turn it into a single quest. Make each node quite hard but short.
- Keep the Zuggtmoy fight as its own quest
- Breaking ToEE pt1 into 2 quests as was done on lamm is fine but I don't like the rune placement for the first quest (does anyone enjoy fighting harpies?) and the XP needs to be way increased. I honestly prefer the old version of the first floor.

I basically think that without a serious overhaul to the elemental node areas, a rework of ToEE is not very exciting.

[grrowler]

All of this sounds great! I run these every life.

My question/concern is only how it's roll out will effect the current HCL. My group just ran these a few days ago. If this rolls out, will the favor we earned be stripped away?


I am curious to know the answer to this as well; it would not affect me, but if you completed TOEE1 and TOEE2 as they currently are live, I am assuming that the favor would be stripped away from people that already earned/finished the existing TOEE's. Is that not going to be a bit unfair to people on hardcore?

I like how the quests have been split apart to be more manageable. I do not feel it is an issue of making the quests "quicker" - splitting them apart makes it more manageable to run the quests as you want. I think the new items might give incentive to run these quests as well - the eternal wands look nice.

1. I found the dungeon mobs to be a bit more manageable - it used to be that you would run into a mob just as you finished the last one - it was exhausting.
There are still respawn mobs / rares after some time, but overall the density feels better.

2. I am not sure if it was because I was soloing, but most of the random spawning traps seemed to be gone/removed - maybe the chance for random traps increases in a larger party size. can anyone else comment on this? I only ran into bear traps once in a secluded room and I covered the entire map for the first quest.

3. the one thing I disliked about the Falrinth/elemental encounter being separated from the earth elemental quest is that now we are unable to use Romag's Club of Earthen Dominion on the earth elemental in the last boss room. I always thought that was a clever strategy for making the elementals fight a bit easier having the earth elemental charmed.




The Zuggtmoy and Falrinth encounters were tweaked to be more approachable.


4. in fact, I did not see anything that made the end fight with Falrinth more approachable? What was changed? It felt like pretty much the same fight as usual, and without the ability to charm the earth elemental making it actually a bit more difficult.

5. all the elemental barries (earth/air/fire/water barrier) are missing the visual fx. On lammania, it is just transparent - you run into an invisible wall. When you apply the key to the invisible barrier, the elemental color barrier flickers for an instant.

I only had a chance to run the first 2 quests; I will see if I have time to check out the breakdown of TOEE2 tomorrow.

[SWCarter]

I just finished playing all of it. I'm never setting foot in the water or fire nodes again which is a shame because I really like the Zuggtmoy fight. If the flagging requirements were changed to only require one node completion before running Zuggtmoy I might consider it, but honestly every quest also needs to give A LOT more XP. Every part of new ToEE, aside from the finale, takes ~15-20mins which makes them some of the longest quests in the game and they do not give XP commiserate with that.

Agreed. If all four elemental node quests are now required and there are no plans to shorten them, the old crafting system is being replaced with inferior items in comparison to what's readily available elsewhere in the game, and the XP rewards are lackluster, this rework will actually generate the opposite of the intended effect - players will run it less than they do now (and I suspect the run rate is already quite low).

[Ipsum]

Agreed. If all four elemental node quests are now required and there are no plans to shorten them, the old crafting system is being replaced with inferior items in comparison to what's readily available elsewhere in the game, and the XP rewards are lackluster, this rework will actually generate the opposite of the intended effect - players will run it less than they do now (and I suspect the run rate is already quite low).

I actually think the items are fine, they seem to fit pretty well into other sets and we need more legendary ml items.

[mikarddo]

Having to run all 4 nodes to get to the finale is huge nerf. On live you only need to run 1 of them.

In particular for the heroic versions - unless the xp is competitive the quests wont be run much. Aim for atleast 4k xp/min all counted. Thus, if a quest takes 15 mins it should give 60k xp all in all or roughly 10k base xp. For comparison Von3 is 9k base xp, somewhat faster than 15 mins and includes quite a lot of easy to get optional xp. So, 10k base xp for a 15 mins quest would still be significantly worse than Von3 but reasonable and 5k base xp would be terrible.

[mikarddo]

3. the one thing I disliked about the Falrinth/elemental encounter being separated from the earth elemental quest is that now we are unable to use Romag's Club of Earthen Dominion on the earth elemental in the last boss room. I always thought that was a clever strategy for making the elementals fight a bit easier having the earth elemental charmed.


That is really sad. Being able to charm the earth elemental in the end fight was easily the best part of the quest line. I sure hope there is still a way to do that.

As for lowering the difficultly of the Falrinth fight - why? That was a very fun fight but certainly doable. I can understand reducing the difficulty of the Zug fight but the Falrinth one?

[LittleLexi]

I don't really like this new take on TOEE. It feels very haphazard, and less like a module, or an adventure. Somehow– breaking it up has made it more confusing. Certainly less enjoyable. A classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

My only issues with old TOEE were the layout and map not being overly intuitive, and too many samey encounters with stacks of mobs in every other corridor. Oh and the Wheaton orbs. Musn't forget those :p

Otherwise I was fine with it. I liked the length. I liked the difficulty. I liked treating it as a pseudo Wilderness Area at times. I even liked finding shrooms in chests. And I liked that we have dungeons that aren't all Medium-length strolls. This is a direction in quest design lately that I'm not best pleased with. There ought to be a variety in how quests play out. All this homogenizing that has been occurring in DDO is making for a much duller game.

It may be that I accepted that– while I might get through 10 or 15 dungeons on a particular evening– TOEE was a unique case, and that it might need an evening all to itself. And honestly? That's totally fine by me. There should be a place for these longer dungeon delves. It helps break up the monotony. I also don't feel entitled to complete any and every dungeon I step in. So I respected and appreciated the challenge of the Zugg fight. It was something to aspire towards. It made eventually overcoming it very satisfying. Will it still feel special and awe-inspiring? I'm not sure.

I was hoping for other old-school areas to get a touch-up. But if this is the sort of treatment they will get– then please leave them alone!

Wow...U56 is proving to be a real stinker eh?

[The_Human_Cypher]

Are they ever going to remove that entrance to TOEE in the Hall of Heroes? All of the other old quest entrances have been taken out except the one for TOEE.

[DrrIzzy]

These new cool changes with story split could serve as the ground for more content adding to the story in the future. I suggest the following:

1) Make two versions of TOEE, Standard and Extended, as you did with The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. You can leave the old version as Extended, that could be played longer and with extra chests as end rewards.

2) Make Zuggtmoy fight a full lowbie and/or endgame raid. In fact, there could be two raids - one with Iuz as end boss, the other with Zuggtmoy. Or pre-raid and raid.

3) Add additional modules to the story: Hommlet, Nulb, Emridy Meadows, Temple outpost...

4) Add more plot tasks for Circle of Eight or different temple factions

5) Add "named hirelings" to represent characters from the story (like Otis), to make the story even more immersible.

[ironmaiden-br]

What will be DDO strategy to implement this change in TOEE regarding HC6?


Ideally i expect this change do not be implemented during the current season.


Some of us did TOEE 1 & 2 and the risk on 2 (how it is today) is high.


Putting it up in the middle of a season bring a lot of problems to some players planning like:


1- If all quests will be new favor added will force a lot of us to do quests on Epic that originally would be done on heroics.


2- The unique favor of TOOE current version should be maintained which leads to the ones that did it before the possible update having a bigger pool of favor


3- This one i really hope that doesn`t even cross the mind of the developers, the new favor will replace the favor earned of the old version which would be a slap in the face of the ones that risked doing part 2 ....




Hopefully you guys apply this TOEE change only on live servers and leave HC6 as it is for this season

[cru121]

Hopefully you guys apply this TOEE change only on live servers and leave HC6 as it is for this season

no.

[Sowahh]

Is it required to run ALL four nodes to play the last part of ToEE2?
Running one was painful, but acceptable.
Running all four? That's just a no.

Have you even considered actually ASKING players why they're not running ToEE? What they like and dislike?
Or just made the assumption that splitting it into smaller pieces would somehow make it more bearable?

[GoldyGopher]

I tried to run the Temple of Elemental Evil on Legendary last night. I say tried because I ran out of time after spend more than an hour on the "first part" after running it I still probably won't run the quests.

I don't run TOEE currently because it is too long and too much of a slog, uninteresting content and the XP is way to low. The idea of splitting it apart into smaller quests on the surface makes a lot of sense. After seeing the loot last preview I think it needs some adjustment but ...

Lets just start and say it is not the way I would have split up the quests. I guess I had visions of the exterior and interior of the base quests as 'wilderness adventure areas', with rares as optionals and explorers with the end sections of the nodes|quests as the new shorter quests. It made sense to me based upon how it was described before seeing it. Now instead of one super long quest, that an uninteresting slog with low XP, it appears we have multiple uninteresting slogs, I mean long quests with low XP.

[Mindos]

Have you even considered actually ASKING players why they're not running ToEE? What they like and dislike?
Or just made the assumption that splitting it into smaller pieces would somehow make it more bearable?

I wonder if the Player's Council feedback matches the general population sentiment.

[HailBlazR]

Have you even considered actually ASKING players why they're not running ToEE? What they like and dislike?
Or just made the assumption that splitting it into smaller pieces would somehow make it more bearable?

Of course they never ask us. And then when they DO get feedback about why the changes are terrible (like here), they just ignore them and proceed with their plans anyway. This has been their modus operandi for years now.

At this rate, I predict the ToEE rework will end up being even worse than the original launch from 2015. And i'd know from experience; I wrote extensively about this back when it was first launched (https://forums.ddo.com/forums/showthread.php/460235-Temple-of-Elemental-Evil-(Heroic)-What-went-wrong?highlight=).

[Aelonwy]

I know almost no one ever goes and tries new or revamped content on heroics so I thought I would transfer my rogue acrobat who is at level 8 and try the changes out on NORMAL and even with named item gear and True Seeing with a search and spot of 32 I CANNOT see the secret door that the DM narration hints at in the gargoyle room of the VERY FIRST quest, again on HEROIC NORMAL. I have no idea what DC you have this set for but this is a multi-life character with good gear. EVEN the Secret Door Detection wand from the store could NOT find this secret door which leads me to believe it doesn't exist anymore despite the DM narration which by the way is also triggered from the Shrine side. Wasted a lot of my time there expecting the north rune to be past that secret door. I did find the rune but I also found this incredibly annoying. Removing secret doors removes joy for rogues.

EDIT: I suggest you remove the secret door from shrine side and bring one back to the gargoyle room this will block off the shrine and northern halls but open up a small secret room north of the gargoyle room where you could place an extra locked and/or trapped chest, a spawn place with a higher than average chance for a rare, or even an elemental shrine. Furthermore not only is there still DM narration on gargoyle side but there are also footprints leading to a blank wall.

Overall my only other complaint is that on normal that ballista is still unusually deadly, I can't imagine taking a shot from it on a higher difficulty. It is the absolutely most dangerous thing I faced in there on normal. Not that I think you should bum rush the thing but the way it slows you if it clips you even once means you are likely to get hit multiple times trying to position yourself out of its line of sight.

[Recared]

The new augments (from this U56 and also from last U55) are very nice, but while I would prefer it very much to make them tradeable (not bta), could there be at least a system to exchange an amount of augments (from same pack, for example) for a desired one? It's a bit frustrating to get augments in loot but never the one you are looking for, and no way to have a guarantee to get it even if trying hard. Thank you very much for thinking about it!! Great work altogether, the game just keeps getting better and better!

[Epicsoul]

I will miss stepping into the court yard and opening the gold plated doors to Wheaton's narration. It would be cool if you had to complete the first quest, which then opened up the public area for the remaining quests.

[Dabima]

5. all the elemental barries (earth/air/fire/water barrier) are missing the visual fx. On lammania, it is just transparent - you run into an invisible wall. When you apply the key to the invisible barrier, the elemental color barrier flickers for an instant.



This has been bugged for at least 3-4 years now. I've reported it at least 5 times during that time, but maybe it'll finally get fixed now that they are redoing the quests

[grrowler]

This has been bugged for at least 3-4 years now. I've reported it at least 5 times during that time, but maybe it'll finally get fixed now that they are redoing the quests

is that really the case? I have run TOEE part 1 on live multiple time within the past year, and each elemental force barrier was visible as a color wall which disappeared when you unlock it with the appropriate elemental key.

It was only when I ran the updated lammania one that the barriers were invisible. Has this really been a visual bug on the live TOEE?


I was able tonight to run the earth node TOEE(2) quest on Lammania.
I am a bit disappointed that there was a dragon at the intersection for the final hall area


Optional Encounters!
There are a few tougher optionals in the new Temple, and that's where you will be able to locate the old named items you used to be able to find in the Temple's Random Encounter chests (Sapphire Sting, etc).


I am hoping that is not one of the "Optional Encounters!" that Steelstar mentioned. It did not feel "optional" because I had to get past it in order to get to the halls beyond.

It was the dragon, surrounded by something like 15 watcher constructs that were hitting me with arcane zaps.
ugh that was unpleasant. I do not know if this was considered an optional or if this was a required encounter.

Anyway, I agree with others that the xp rewards for the node quest seemed low for the time it took.



Since I never got to the final Zuggtmoy quest, I was wondering if anyone could describe to me how the fight has been updated to be more 'approachable'? is it the same mechanics as before?

[QuantumFX]

Someone broke the secret door at (Standard): You are on server 24 at r2 lx912 ly2024 i7 cInside ox20.00 oy303.70 oz-249.39 h4.2. Game timestamp 136525.404.

[Cordovan]

I wanted to follow up on the question of Favor when this goes live: For now we will be retaining the favor associated with the completion of the soon to be old Temple of Elemental Evil parts 1 and 2, so your favor total will not change when this goes live. This is being done in part to not impact the standings on the Hardcore leaderboards, but it's a general experience as well. Eventually, however, we will be removing these quests from the adventure compendium, and their favor will be reduced. When that happens, no favor tier already unlocked will be impacted.

[rabidfox]

I wanted to follow up on the question of Favor when this goes live: For now we will be retaining the favor associated with the completion of the soon to be old Temple of Elemental Evil parts 1 and 2, so your favor total will not change when this goes live. This is being done in part to not impact the standings on the Hardcore leaderboards, but it's a general experience as well. Eventually, however, we will be removing these quests from the adventure compendium, and their favor will be reduced. When that happens, no favor tier already unlocked will be impacted.

So those who've done ToEE prior to change will have an advantage of extra favor on HC that no one else can obtain after the update? That makes the HC favor leaderboards pretty unfair.

[dogsoldier]

What is happening with the ml7 and ml22 pet collars? These are a couple of the very few functional pet collars in the game. If the 22 one moves to 31 it goes from being useful for druid and arti epic leveling to being mostly useless.

[ahpook]

I wasn't going to comment on this change because I didn't care enough about ToEE. But as I completed another Epic TR this weekend, I realized that the reason I don't care about ToEE is not just because it is an overly bloated pair of quests but because it sits at level 30. There is already so much content in the legendary range that I don't know if you can make enough changes to make this content interesting compared to Ravenloft, Feywild, Sharn, Tethyamar, Saltmarsh, Disciples of Rage, Trial of Archons, Devils Gambit. That is a big list to compete with.

At level 30 there are 10 quests (and another 30 quests at level 31). This will increase that by another 5(?) meaning 45 quests between 30 and 31.

At level 25 there are 6. At level 26 there are 9. If ToEE had been worked to smaller quests in the 25 to 26 range that would have been far more interesting. It might have also solved the loot issue where you don't need to compete with all the Ravenloft, Sharn, Feywild gear slots that are giving required set bonuses. Honestly, has the feedback in the loot thread made you feel like you are pleasing the player base with what is on offer?

I doubt that you will change plans at this time but you really need to look at the quests available by range and quit jamming so much up in to the legendary where there is already so much content.

[SocratesBastardSon]

I wasn't going to comment on this change because I didn't care enough about ToEE. But as I completed another Epic TR this weekend, I realized that the reason I don't care about ToEE is not just because it is an overly bloated pair of quests but because it sits at level 30. There is already so much content in the legendary range that I don't know if you can make enough changes to make this content interesting compared to Ravenloft, Feywild, Sharn, Tethyamar, Saltmarsh, Disciples of Rage, Trial of Archons, Devils Gambit. That is a big list to compete with.

At level 30 there are 10 quests (and another 30 quests at level 31). This will increase that by another 5(?) meaning 45 quests between 30 and 31.

At level 25 there are 6. At level 26 there are 9. If ToEE had been worked to smaller quests in the 25 to 26 range that would have been far more interesting. It might have also solved the loot issue where you don't need to compete with all the Ravenloft, Sharn, Feywild gear slots that are giving required set bonuses. Honestly, has the feedback in the loot thread made you feel like you are pleasing the player base with what is on offer?

I second the motion. Moving ToEE epic quests down a few slots would be huge help and make epic leveling feel less, well, barren.

[Epicsoul]

I wanted to follow up on the question of Favor when this goes live: For now we will be retaining the favor associated with the completion of the soon to be old Temple of Elemental Evil parts 1 and 2, so your favor total will not change when this goes live. This is being done in part to not impact the standings on the Hardcore leaderboards, but it's a general experience as well. Eventually, however, we will be removing these quests from the adventure compendium, and their favor will be reduced. When that happens, no favor tier already unlocked will be impacted.

What? This is completely unfair to those who don't run it beforehand. Just don't introduce the new version of the quests on Hardcore or automatically grant players the favor from old Temple of Elemental Evil 1 & 2. Otherwise, you are essentially giving some players a 30 favor lead and that's equally bogus. Releasing these changes during HC is bad enough, let alone influencing the leader boards like this.

[rabidfox]

What? This is completely unfair to those who don't run it beforehand. Just don't introduce the new version of the quests on Hardcore or automatically grant players the favor from old Temple of Elemental Evil 1 & 2. Otherwise, you are essentially giving some players a 30 favor lead and that's equally bogus. Releasing these changes during HC is bad enough, let alone influencing the leader boards like this.

Yeah, it's no longer a fair ranked contest once people are locked from being able to obtain those 30 points. No matter how highly someone ranks, the results will be questionable since they may or may not have had that extra favor on the character to get their lead.

[Seph1roth5]

Is it really a ranked contest when there's absolutely no prize?

[Tanky]

I wanted to follow up on the question of Favor when this goes live: For now we will be retaining the favor associated with the completion of the soon to be old Temple of Elemental Evil parts 1 and 2, so your favor total will not change when this goes live. This is being done in part to not impact the standings on the Hardcore leaderboards, but it's a general experience as well. Eventually, however, we will be removing these quests from the adventure compendium, and their favor will be reduced. When that happens, no favor tier already unlocked will be impacted.
With this decision, you have done a great job of trashing the legitimacy of the favor rankings.

[Annex]

Have you considered bundling the 7 Temple quests into a saga? If 7 quests are not enough for a saga, have you considered bundling the 7 Temple and 3 Slave Lords quests together as a very long saga?

[droid327]

Eventually, however, we will be removing these quests from the adventure compendium, and their favor will be reduced.

Reduced?!?

They give 30 max favor for both as "long" quests...there's 7 now...so keeping with general design philosophy, that would work out to 4 max favor each, and 5 max favor for the two parts corresponding to the "end" of TOEE 1 and 2

Thats really low for individual quests at that level - which says something about how TOEE was always undervalued for its length (especially if you needed to run all 4 wings in ToEE 2, like you need to run all 4 pre-quests now as I understand it?)

I get you dont want to mess up HC (though I dont like that its forcing you to make Live accommodate HC like you said it wouldn't), but this chain should eventually have favor that reflects the actual time and effort it takes, relative to other quests at-level, and that means a substantial increase in total favor...Gatekeeper favor is not a bottleneck for anything anyway, really, since there's already 660 available.

I like the idea of Saga-fying it too - I'd probably pair it with WPM (not the "Other Stories" though, just the main quest at L8). Both are Gatekeepers, both are in Greyhawk, both have a similar feel of being a long wing quest with lots of different variety, and the quest length is comparable to 3BC saga (since WPM is also like 3 "short" quests in one). Or you could put Slavers in there too as a complete "Champion of Greyhawk" saga - but that'd be a LOT of questing, and the reward would have to really knock your socks off.

[mikarddo]

Reduced?!?



You misunderstood, try again :)

The new quests will add new favor. What was mentioned was that once they remove the favor entries for the old quests those characters that ran those quests will have their favor reduced by the amount they earned running the old versions.

This has nothing to do with the new versions at all.

[Tanky]

Is it really a ranked contest when there's absolutely no prize?
It's called bragging rights. And if you think there's no contest, then you haven't been paying attention to past seasons.

[ahpook]

Break the Content into several smaller quests:
...

Going off reports in this thread it appears that you need to run the quests in order to be able to get into the next one. If that is the case that info should have been included in this overview. Also, if the flagging is required, I invite the devs to go back and review the various threads pleading to eliminate quest flagging. It serves no purpose and should not be required.

If you really want a forced story mode you can add a quest giver that only provides the end quest rewards when you run the quests in order but flagging should not be used to lock out players from helping each other and enjoying the quests.

[SocratesBastardSon]

These new cool changes with story split could serve as the ground for more content adding to the story in the future. I suggest the following:

1) Make two versions of TOEE, Standard and Extended, as you did with The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. You can leave the old version as Extended, that could be played longer and with extra chests as end rewards.
[...]
3) Add additional modules to the story: Hommlet, Nulb, Emridy Meadows, Temple outpost...
4) Add more plot tasks for Circle of Eight or different temple factions
5) Add "named hirelings" to represent characters from the story (like Otis), to make the story even more immersible.

I guess I'm one of the few that likes ToEE, but it's just too big to handle comfortably when you don't have a long slice of time available to tackle it. I really like the idea of breaking it up into more manageable chunks. In addition, like Drizzy I'd love to see it expanded to something closer to the original module, with wilderness area, side quests, and so on.

UPDATE: In my previous post I argued in support of making the revised ToEE slightly lower level to fill in the barren 25-26 quest range. They moved the level of ToEE in the other direction to 34 on normal, 36 elite. Actually, that works pretty well too. They are going to need to populate higher Legendary levels with quests so why not modify an old one. I seem to recall mention by a dev of taking some older quests and doing three tiers: heroic, epic and legendary. Saltmarsh already includes that schematic for gear, but not for questing. Is there still any consideration for quests available at three stages?

[Epicsoul]

I really appreciate SSG for trolling its own Hardcore players with this update. You guys are really crushing it (the player base).