Brilliant Turbine! (Compliment, not sarcasm)

[Azoralq]

Excellent work on modifying Desicrated Temple of Vol. Now it's no longer a walk in the park, but an actual quest. Shadows are harder to kill now, they spawn within the room with the lever now, making it hard to set up the 4 million firewalls people put down. From what I can tell, after you kill them, they spawn again, forcing you to actually progress through the area as intended.

Beautiful job...I actually died laughing when the first party I made tried to do it the old fashioned way. The anger in their text..priceless

Someone, some where is gonna cry because you made it an actual quest, just laugh at them..you did a good job.

[Aspenor]

I always thought the method of pulling everything to the middle was dumb and boring anyway. It's just as easy and just as SP efficient to run through and kill everything without kiting.

[Strakeln]

If what I read elsewhere is true, and the shadows are now immune to fire, then I'm going to have trouble calling this move brilliant, or even smart.

Blanket immunities are not a solution, they are a cop-out.

[Qzipoun]

If what I read elsewhere is true, and the shadows are now immune to fire, then I'm going to have trouble calling this move brilliant, or even smart.

Blanket immunities are not a solution, they are a cop-out.

Immune to fire? Now that would just be dumb. Firewall is supposed to do double damage to undead not no damage -.-

[Azoralq]

They are immune to fire. Any why is this a cop out? How else would you solve it?

Next update, Turbine is going to remove firewall from the game, due to people complaining about making things immune to a spell that is used waay to much to exploit things. Thank you.

Cone of Cold works just as well.

Making stuff randomly immune to fire, ok..maybe not smart. What would ahve been smart is not calling the shadow sin this quest 'shadows' anymore..rather invent a new enemy specific to this quest, and make them immune to fire.

Overall though..it is a good remedy to fix people that like not having to play this game, and just like loot.

[Aspenor]

They are immune to fire. Any why is this a cop out? How else would you solve it?

Oh, they could leash the shadows so you can't pull them. That'd solve the problem in a less tacky fashion than a blanket immunity.

[Azoralq]

Oh, they could leash the shadows so you can't pull them. That'd solve the problem in a less tacky fashion than a blanket immunity.

Wouldn't solve anything, you'd just place a firewall on where they are leached at, watch them return to where they started, and burn as you shield block.

I like the 'new enemy specific to quest' idea.

[Mercules]

Oh, they could leash the shadows so you can't pull them. That'd solve the problem in a less tacky fashion than a blanket immunity.

The problem with that is that I don't believe you -have- to kill the shadows, well not all of them. So people would haste past them, much like they do now, and wait for them to rubber-band back. Sure they are not just using Firewall to get rid of them, instead they are expending even fewer resources to get past them.

[Talcyndl]

They are immune to fire.

I think my Pally with 3 levels of Divine Light and a good Charisma bonus to number of turns, just got a lot more useful on this quest.

[Dane_McArdy]

Oh, they could leash the shadows so you can't pull them. That'd solve the problem in a less tacky fashion than a blanket immunity.

I thought that too, but then I realized, leashing also means you can run past and not have to worry, because they can only go so far.

[jjflanigan]

They are immune to fire. Any why is this a cop out? How else would you solve it?

Next update, Turbine is going to remove firewall from the game, due to people complaining about making things immune to a spell that is used waay to much to exploit things. Thank you.

Cone of Cold works just as well.

Making stuff randomly immune to fire, ok..maybe not smart. What would ahve been smart is not calling the shadow sin this quest 'shadows' anymore..rather invent a new enemy specific to this quest, and make them immune to fire.

Overall though..it is a good remedy to fix people that like not having to play this game, and just like loot.

Erm...so setting up a magical ambush for creatures is an exploit? So I assume we should go ahead and remove all persistant damage area spells -- no more acid fog, acid rain, blade barrier? That statement was harsh and without any foundation in reality or logic.

Sticking a nonsensical immunity on a mob is never a good solution, ever. Doing it without saying so is even worse.

[jjflanigan]

I thought that too, but then I realized, leashing also means you can run past and not have to worry, because they can only go so far.

Not if they also leashed the priests, if you ran far enough to let the shadows leash back, the priests would leash back also.

[Aspenor]

The problem with that is that I don't believe you -have- to kill the shadows, well not all of them. So people would haste past them, much like they do now, and wait for them to rubber-band back. Sure they are not just using Firewall to get rid of them, instead they are expending even fewer resources to get past them.

Might be true. Frankly, I don't see the point to changing this quest at all, anyway. Sure, it was easy. Sure, you could run the quest in 8 minutes with a good party. So what?

[Azoralq]

Erm...so setting up a magical ambush for creatures is an exploit? So I assume we should go ahead and remove all persistant damage area spells -- no more acid fog, acid rain, blade barrier? That statement was harsh and without any foundation in reality or logic.

Sticking a nonsensical immunity on a mob is never a good solution, ever. Doing it without saying so is even worse.

Blade Barrier, Acid fod, and Acid Rain require a little bit of tact. Simply because they don't kill something on contact. Maximixed impowered acid rain, or acid fog does damage, but not as much..it requires just a bit of time.

Blade Barrier requires you to jump around, and move the enemies through the barrier over, and over, and over again.rather than just standing there, and blockign while the thing burns to death. Which is actually more annoying, in the fcat that the cleric is running around like a dimwit, not allowing the fighters to well...fight. Those, though not much better in my opinion..are better than firewall in regards to that.

Firewall? You drop enough to make a fancy design on the floor, pull something, and it suddenly takes 300hp of damage with each step. Something wrong here? Yes...yes, sir, there is.

[jjflanigan]

Blade Barrier, Acid fod, and Acid Rain require a little bit of tact. Simply because they don't kill something on contact. Maximixed impowered acid rain, or acid fog does damage, but not as much..it requires just a bit of time.

Blade Barrier requires you to jump around, and move the enemies through the barrier over, and over, and over again.rather than just standing there, and blockign while the thing burns to death. Those, though not much better in my opinion..are better than firewall in regards to that.

Firewall? You drop enough to make a fancy design on the floor, pull something, and it suddenly takes 300hp of damage with each step. Something wrong here? Yes...yes, sir, there is.

I understand what you are saying, I was only taking umbrage with the fact that you labeled using firewall an exploit. Yes it does more damage than the other spells, however, just giving non-named mobs an immunity to it without any reasoning other than "It kills them too fast" is not good development.

[Mercules]

Firewall? You drop enough to make a fancy design on the floor, pull something, and it suddenly takes 300hp of damage with each step. Something wrong here? Yes...yes, sir, there is.

Actually... I've started having Diablo/Diablo2 flashbacks what with all the firewalls being spammed.

[MysticTheurge]

Erm...so setting up a magical ambush for creatures is an exploit?

Honestly, JJ, to a point Yes.

We're far, far more intelligent than the AI. There's no getting around this. So, to some degree setting up overwhelming ambushes and waiting for things to run into them is bordering on an exploit of the fact that the AI can't do anything about them.

Now a better fix would be to tweak the AI so that it can do something about them, as suggested in this thread, but it's still awfully close to an "exploit."

[jjflanigan]

Honestly, JJ, to a point Yes.

We're far, far more intelligent than the AI. There's no getting around this. So, to some degree setting up overwhelming ambushes and waiting for things to run into them is bordering on an exploit of the fact that the AI can't do anything about them.

Now a better fix would be to tweak the AI so that it can do something about them, as suggested in this thread, but it's still awfully close to an "exploit."

Well, I've always had the loose definition of "exploit" as performing an in game action that goes against the initial intentions of the developers. Now, I can concede that pulling back the entire zone to one spot to firewall them was an exploit by that definition. However, I cannot conceive that, under normal circumstances, setting up huge bonfires to cook the mobs as you progress through a quest was not envisioned by the developers.

My normal play of ToV was to just WoF in each room that had a Priest, then move on to the next. We'd still be within each room as we went through so there was no massive pulling of the entire zone (just because that's cheesey). Now, even that is impossible due to a silly, non-sensical immunity tossed onto a mob that should not have said immunity based on any rational thought.

[Lightdragon]

I can't agree with making shadows immune to fire as they have several advantages to make up for this weakness.

1) They require ghost touch weapons to hit on a reliable basis. This means that alot of times the tanks can't use their best weapons on them unless those weapons happen to be ghost touch or the tank has acquired the ghost touch bracers. This can cut the damage done to them by 2d6 to 3d6 per swing quite often.

2) Shadows can blink out at will and cause several swings to miss outright even with ghost touch weapons. Don't even let me get started on the difficulty a ranger has if he tries to bow a shadow. Even with a disruption bow, the shadow can blink out before the arrow gets there. Oh, and that disruption bow better be ghost touch also. Those drop all over the place, don't they?

3) The shadow bypasses armor with it's attacks because it's incorporeal. Unless you have on ghost touch armor, this monster with more hps than you can hit you very easily. This means that the cleric is now going to be overworked healing everyone the shadows are ripping apart easily. Because they are now immune to fire, the party will expend a ton of resources recovering from them.

If you want to add more quell to the quest to make it more difficult with their special abilities, that's fine. But this immune to fire business does not follow in d&d rules and I expect it to be pulled from the game if you are going to keep calling this game ddo.

[Azoralq]

This just in...shadows are not undead in Temple of Vol, Appearantly...you can scare them, fear them, and stuff. Hmm