Quest Feedback: Into the Deep

[Tarrant]

A group of rebel Sahuagin contact you, revealing that not all of their kind are hell bent on dominating the shores of Xen'drik and summoning demons. Help them restore the balance of power in their underwater kingdom by traveling to the underwater city and experience DDO's new underwater combat system! Let us know your thoughts on the new Update 6 quest, now available for VIPs to preview on Lamannia!

[Dylos_Moon]

it's completable now, yay!

I must say its a rather nice quest, the end optional was difficult even for my level 20 monk! (mainly due to soloing) I can't wait to see this quest on epic.

I am disappointed in the lack of named items from the chests though, I did get an option of 2 named items in end rewards however

[Fattiest]

it's completable now, yay!

I must say its a rather nice quest, the end optional was difficult even for my level 20 monk! (mainly due to soloing) I can't wait to see this quest on epic.

I am disappointed in the lack of named items from the chests though, I did get an option of 2 named items in end rewards however

ScreenShots?

or stats?

[MalakRevan]

What's the ML for this quest? Is it a high level quest, maybe give us clues as what to expect from Update 6 to boost everyone's spirits a bit. Wish I could transfer some stuffs over to Lamania but I alas I cannot.

[Eladrin]

I did get an option of 2 named items in end rewards however

The items in the U6 pack are still under development - a lot of the stuff you may still be placeholders.

[Asketes]

The items in the U6 pack are still under development - a lot of the stuff you loot might be placeholders.

fixed ya there

/hugs

[Eladrin]

fixed ya there

/hugs

Yeah, that.

[Wurmwood]

Is underwater combat still wonky? When i ran it *cough* (before it was enabled) you couldn't do anything other than walk.

[toughguyjoe]

Is underwater combat still wonky? When i ran it *cough* (before it was enabled) you couldn't do anything other than walk.

When i ran it *cough* as well....

I coudl run it just ook some steam being built up. if you hit stuff it slows you down, uneven flooring especially. But once i got out into the open a ltitle i could pick up decetn speed, but was slowed down during turns and such.

[Karrantine]

Wouldn't say life is better under the sea, but you can still have some fun there.

I loved the underwater movement. It's exactly as it should be - Slow and difficult. If you keep moving in a straight line, you can build up speed, but if you stop or turn it's going to take effort to get moving again. I also liked how electrical and sonic spells had bonus damage, though the science part of my brain thought sound should have extended range and electricity wouldn't really work at all since it would be conducted every which way. Not requiring Underwater Action items was nice, too, for including more people.

Now, there were four sub-quests so I'll look at them each individually.

The temple. Not having the minimap was slightly annoying in this one, but it's a small place, so not too much of a bother. Not a lot of enemies in this part; generally the easiest part.

The scrag mines. A large number of enemies, but at least they sometimes fight each other instead of you. This quest makes it apparent why you removed the scrags' needing Fire or Acid to kill - Otherwise, you could just free the scrags and they'd stomp through the place like they owned it. Lack of a minimap wasn't much of a problem, as this part was very linear. This would be challenging on Epic due to the number of enemies often present at once, especially that last room.

The Palace. A good end fight with a few stages. The loyalist guards on the raised platforms will probably be annoying on Epic, as there's four of them and they never move. The scrag wave seemed too easy - I didn't know it was over until the priestess aggroed, and was left thinking 'That's it?' The priestess put up a good fight but was promptly stomped by massive overlevel.

The demon. Queen Lailat's got some competition in this hezrou. Was extremely difficult to kill solo on a Sorc 20 on Normal - He's probably got 20-30K HP, and the Fire Reaver adds that pile in make things especially tricky. He doesn't actually hit as hard as you'd think, though, which makes him feasible for an at-level party in my opinion, though they'd need to be well-balanced and coordinated, like a mini-raid. For as hard as he is, he dropped useless loot - A +3 bastard sword was the best item I saw. Probably worth a big pile of XP, though.

Overall opinion? It's a straightforward beat-em-up with a twist. The underwater aspect is fun but would quickly grow tedious to the impatient. Couldn't really gauge the fights due to being overlevel. Except for the demon. That was a good challenge, and will definitely be interesting and helpful for parties that need to work on their coordination. I dare say I enjoyed it.

[Hendrik]

THE MOST visually stunning Quest I have seen in DDO.

DEV(s) who did this; take a bow!

GREAT WORK!

[asphodeli]

Well finally it seems that there's a better effort in quests. Good job, devs

Tried to solo the optional demon, and it was no easy feat. Lots of mana pots burnt. Might need to check the dungeon scaling for the demon. And it doesn't drop any good loot for that matter.

Overall, very enjoyable "dungeon", seems that casters will love this quest, since being a melee is not really fun in there.

[Jay203]

while the quest itself it great, there are a couple things that are really out of wack that'll make this quest unable to be enjoyed

1) the movement underwater is WAY TOO SLOW, if i want to take 75% of my game time trying to get from point A to point B, i'll go play WoW

2)the so-called "underwater battle" is nothing but an extremely slowed down version of land battle with some hovering enemies, give us ability to actually swim up or down rather than just small SLOW HOP and go back to bottom of the sea again

3)whoever designed the optional daemon fight needs to be shot
environmental hazard + red named boss with over 100k hp + infinite spawns to lag you down does NOT equate to a fun setting
for a group of six lvl 9~12s, this optional is WAY above their head as a CR 19 daemon will outlast the whole groups resources
tone down the freaking HP for crying out loud

[D-molisher]

Did the hole chain.
And the optional deamon - with my low DPS bard & a friend.

Good things:
New monsters, S/E/R area.
4 nice quests, exept 2 things ...

Bad things:
UNderwater fight is slow & 2d, like walking and not 3d like - even a slug moves faster.

Why so low lvl stuff yet again!!! Try set your Quest paige on lvl 6, and it will just go a little into lvl 7 - if you do that with lvl 15 as low in paige top will be lvl 18 stuff = wery little high lvl stuff & basicly high lvl quests is mainly a BORING grind for flagging or worse. So plz plz could you try focus on some lvl 12 +++ stuff for once.

P.S If you fix underwater fight i would say 8 of 10. good work - just fix underwater fight make it fell a little 3d like and faster.

[xTethx]

Not sure if anyone has run this on epic, but let me be the first to say, it was awesome. Especially with only 2 people and the beast hezrou.

[SisAmethyst]

Wow, I really like that Quest!!!

Yes movement is slow but I wouldn't have expected something else. Indeed it is an interesting idea how to get the players in this underwater scenario, and to be honest to all people who say 'its to slow'... if the Devs would have implemented it without the bubble I would have expect it even more slow. Anyone ever tried to punch something under water? Impossible! This bubble slows down without really hindering the movement too much considering this environment. What would be interesting indeed is to be able to jump a bit higher, like walking on the moon and dodging with the bubble.

But its nice by walking in that bubble that you can as long as you keep one direction get some decent speed, enough that it gets not too annoying to walk from one edge to the other side. I have to try it with my caster but its even interesting that killed mobs will not fall down to the ground but rise upwards to the surface
The big fights are anyway not really under water but in the separated Zones like the Mines.

Also I like that Demon and how you get there. I killed that demon before the end Boss and by jumping down I just thought, ****, I will never be able to come back up
That Demon is really a mini Raid Boss. Perfect, finally some challenge, but the loot of this demon could be a bit increased compared to the others.

By the way, who said this Quests are unfinished 'maybe except of balancing the Quest rewards... no no keep them as they are )

[Neko-kun]

I liked it.

The main underwater area was beautifully made, it felt like I was exploring atlantis. The mob placements made them seem cohesive. Unlike some of the older areas where orcs and hobgobs are just standing in the middle of nowhere, the sahuagin guards did a number of things that just felt right for them.
The mines had a neat feature, with the charmed scrags vs the devotees. The temple area was also cool, playing pac man with the water ele's.

I was expecting more than just an end fight in the palace. I'm not sure if my completing the 'slayer'-esque optionals changed the outcome though. (It was a clear path to the priestess's room.)

And for the Optional BBEG, all I can say is: It's one of the few places where the NPCs' warning of "It's dangerous to go alone!" should actually be taken into serous consideration.

Only issues I can really think of would be that the underwater run animation seems a bit choppy and stiff, but that'll probably be resolved before release (hopefully!) As well as how the swimming sahuagin can get somewhat on top of you, so they can hit you, but you can't hit back. Resolved by moving, which has them drop down to melee range, but being able to jump higher would be nice for that.

[Claver]

A stunningly beautiful quest. It was like another wilderness area. I just enjoyed exploring all the nooks and crannies. The area seems huge; this quest will be epic in length. I only had time to complete the Temple portion of the quest; my first impressions are that the quest will be outstanding. I'll be back with future posts when I have time to complete the other portions of the quest.

- I had no issue with the underwater movement. It didn't seem that slow to me. You build up speed moving in a straight line. The Temple portion of the quest was fought in air so its not all slowed down. I did note I could still throw sun flasks. It seems grenade type weapons shouldn't work underwater.

- I came upon the quest giver at night and was struck by the vista of the spires emerging from the sea. This is how I've always imagined an ancient Cthulhuian ruin from Lovecraft to look - very cool indeed.

- The Sahaguin seemed rather easy, particularly those outside underwater. I was playing solo on an 8th level fighter. The fishmen were going down on 2 or 3 hits. I didn't bother to use my bulls strength or rage clickies even if I was fighting 3 or 4 at a time. Make them a little tougher please.

- The optional to collect 20 sea urchins (or whatever they were) for the priest was bugged. I'm sure I collected that many. My quest log didn't credit me with collecting any and when I spoke with the priest at the rebel hideout he didn't recognize my efforts.

- The blind corrupted water elemental sentries in the Temple made for more interesting game play - I had fun playing hide and seak.

- In this case, I felt the optional xp award for freeing the drow prisoners was much better deserved than in Fathom the Depths. Here, you had to avoid the sentries and backtrack to free some of the hostages.

- The various shell breakables looked great.

- I totally bought the backstory for involving players in the quest - both from the drow perspective of not wanting to help the race that destroyed there village and the sahaguin perspective of it being taboo to kill their own priestess. Good writing!

[Claver]

I ran the mines portion tonight - Fun miniquest. The game play felt sufficiently different from The Temple. More Brute Force: Less Sneaking but there was still the option of breaking the mages concentration to make the scrags take out the Sahaguin. I eventually figured out that you only needed to distract a mage rather than kill it; once I did that I bleed much less.

- I know I've already said this is a beautiful quest but I was really impressed with the lighting of the mines. The water on the floor is like a mirror. The light from the crystals has a halo. The waterfalls look different and better than the ones Turbine has made elsewhere. Who would have thought a mine could be so pretty.

- I enjoyed this end fight more than the one in the temple because it was more of a challenge. I was glad to have 3 Sahaguin helpers. I had to retreat from the Scragg a few times to heal up. I probably should have gone after the mage first to see if I could have broken his charm.

SUGGESTION: Make the number of Sahaguin "Hirelings" linked to the number of enemy Sahaguin loyalist that have been killed in the waters outside. The more loyalist that are dead, the more rebels freed up to help the party.

- I'm noticing the Sahaguin patrols in the water outside sometimes get stuck in directly overhead in combat. That happens a lot in the domed structures when the fish men will swim between the ceiling and a floating spherical light source.

[SisAmethyst]

...
- I know I've already said this is a beautiful quest but I was really impressed with the lighting of the mines. The water on the floor is like a mirror. The light from the crystals has a halo. The waterfalls look different and better than the ones Turbine has made elsewhere. Who would have thought a mine could be so pretty.
...

Yes, the crystals looking great, you directly get the feeling 'Where is my rock pick? I just want a small little piece of that crystal' That is anyway something that I recently enjoyed in the Game 'Risia' that in case you have a rock pick that you actually can dig out some valuable stuff used in a crafting process rather then collecting bags of dead monsters (why the hell a rat has this kind of stuff in the bagpack?)