Let Sleeping Dust Lie

[NUDS]

This quest is so easy.

1. Enter.
2. Kill everything on the lower level.
3. Jump up to the second level. (requires Monk, FVS, or Air Sorc)
4. Kill everything on second level.
5. Pick up second book.
6. Kill bosses.
7. Pick up first book.
8. Complete.

I actually found this out by accident when soloing, now this quest is bearable when farming for pie pieces!

I can just nuke everything, I even made a point to kill every single spider in the quest while skipping Ogres :P

Yeah take that, nature!

[Darkrok]

I actually found this out by accident when soloing, now this quest is bearable when farming for pie pieces!

I can just nuke everything, I even made a point to kill every single spider in the quest while skipping Ogres :P

Yeah take that, nature!

Now you guys have me curious...would it be possible to do this quest in a stealthy fashion, killing the three bosses and two ogre guards at the end only?

[Adrian99]

Now you guys have me curious...would it be possible to do this quest in a stealthy fashion, killing the three bosses and two ogre guards at the end only?

Probably not, because the spiders have true seeing. But assuming you can jump to the 2nd level, and assuming that both the first book and the first ogre-mage show up in the area before the main room, then you would have very little fighting.

[Darkrok]

Probably not, because the spiders have true seeing. But assuming you can jump to the 2nd level, and assuming that both the first book and the first ogre-mage show up in the area before the main room, then you would have very little fighting.

That's right...spiders have tremor sense.

I'm tempted to try it though, waiting on the cooldown for the wind walking at each spot. I wonder if they'd 'see' you if you flew over top of them. Would be another nice variation on the quest if it could be pulled off. Maybe try a hold monster any time you get caught as well.

[Musouka]

I love solo farming for funk in there on my Earth Savant.

Spider=Acid immune :P

[Thrudh]

To the folks who keep crying easy button/no challenge, you obviously do not comprehend what I said in the OP. Especially the jerk that tossed neg rep for it.

Griefing is the only real problem you pointed out in the OP.

The rest of that, play differently in this quest... Don't use cleave, or even Two-handed weapons. Don't use AOE spells. Play carefully... Pull the spders and ogres apart.

FtS the spiders at the end-fight helps a LOT.

I've done this quest in PUGs a hundred times, and only failed 2 or 3.

[Thrudh]

This is a good suggestion, but I hesitate to use ANY type of AOEs, or really any spell other than FOD in the second part while in a group, as those "special" people in the group might interpret that as "ok boys, lets start whackin' 'em all!!"

Communicate. If you get a griefer, you'll have to reform... that part does suck, but it happens very rarely.

One of my TRs is about to hit the Vale again... I'll see if PUGs have gotten worse since the last time I was in there.

[Thrudh]

Even though I don't mind the quest, and don't recall ever failing it even in a PUG, if it is really so difficult with new people, considering it's a mandatory shroud flagging quest, how about this:

- no fail condition
- 50% XP for completion, 50% for saving the spiders
- you get stone for completion
- you get blank ingredient for saving the spiders

This would mean that new players or people who hate this quest would be able to complete it and flag/get stone, but you couldn't just zerg a very easy quest (which it would be with no-fail) repeatedly to farm either XP or funks. You can trade other ingredients for funks, so even if you are utterly incapable of doing the optional, this doesn't prevent you from making GS eventually.

However, if you wanted to really benefit from doing this quest by farming it for XP/funk, you would have to be capable of doing it properly. If you can't do the quest properly, don't expect to be able to farm it for secondary benefits it provides (primary being shroud flag/stone). The result would probably be that almost all groups would try not to kill the spiders, but even if they failed it wouldn't be a complete quest failure.

Decent compromise... but here's the thing... I don't really want people who cannot adapt or communicate to get exp or flag for Vale

[Cyr]

I too was never a fan of this quest. IDK, but to me there is something wrong with a quest design when it is far faster and easier to just solo it...before DS.

Most amusing part of this quest and others like it is that they are actually easier on harder difficulties.

[Thrudh]

I like Sleepig Dust. Its a great quest.

Not being able to kill spiders breaks us out of the brute force wade in and kill habbit. We have to think of what works and what doesnt rather than just equip the weapon that gives us the best damage numbers and start swinging. Holy greater giant bane weapons rule in there because they barely do any damage to the spiders while hitting the ogres for alot of damage. Fearsome armor is also a good tactic.

Yes, a quest that makes us use different tactics is good.

[varusso]

So do you think they should turn the lights on in Rainbow too?

Not even close to the same thing. You dont auto-fail that quest. Even if you wipe, you can hold it open and save your progress while the rest of the party releases, hits the tavern, then comes back in. In Dust, you have to start over form the beginning, even if you were in the last room.

I would, however, support smoothing out the ramps in Coal
Tired of getting stuck on them in those wierd lag-hiccups when the server cant seem to figure out where you actually are.

Many people actually like that mechanic. It gives the quest come character, and makes it not just another beatdown quest where moar dps = better.

We have been running that quest since late 2007, and theres no shortage of people running the shroud. The issue isnt the quest.

We insist the mechanic stay because it makes for a multi-dimensional game, in this quest as well as other quests, where players have to think before they act, and actually have to pay attention to the quest objectives, which are something different than "kill everything in the quest up to the boss then kill the boss."

Thats what optionals are for. You can straight-line for the end and complete, or you can do the optionals for better loot/xp/other things. I dont want the 5-spider penalty taken out completely. I want it moved off to the side into an optional that carries enough reward by itself to still make it an enticing lure for players to do it. Putting a healthy chunk of the quest XP in it (and taking it away form the main xp) gives XP-runners an incentive. Putting the Ings in a chest that you only get by NOT killing the spiders gives an incentive for those farming ings. Both cases require you to complete the quest EXACTLY as you do now, so you can 'customize' your difficulty of the quest for your own party. For those who JUST want to get the pie and flag, you can either kill the spiders or dont. If you do, you still get to flag and pie without having to redo the entire quest. Whether killing them was intentional or not.

It just does not make sense to have a quest that encourages solo play, due to a mechanic that is so easily triggerable. In a group, run it on elite with a full party so the mobs have more HP, making it LESS likely to fail on a harder setting -- honestly, does that make sense to anyone? As opposed to running it solo on norm or casual to make it ridiculously easy on the other end of the spectrum (assuming the soloist knows what they are doing of course).

[Chai]

Decent compromise... but here's the thing... I don't really want people who cannot adapt or communicate to get exp or flag for Vale

This.

I feel there HAS to be other quest mechanics than "move forward, kill, move forward again, kill moar..." - this is what separates DDO from many other MMOs. I like quests like the pit, coal chamber, rainbow, sleeping dust etc, because they bring more to the table than DPS = victory.

I almost wish it was MORE of a sticking point and not less. Coal chamber already got easier with the air lifts, and rainbow got easier with archons providing light.

But alas, there is no shortage of players running the shroud, so I dont feel the issue is the quest mechanics, but the particular groups lack of ability to follow them. Not only does the DM narrate what needs to happen when a player picks up the first book, but the quest objective changes to (fail) do not kill 5 spiders or more. Usually at least one player knows whats up too, and informs the group. If someone is killing spiders repeatedly after that, they are either not paying attention, or griefing the party. Just what we need in the shroud, right?

Thats what optionals are for. You can straight-line for the end and complete, or you can do the optionals for better loot/xp/other things. I dont want the 5-spider penalty taken out completely. I want it moved off to the side into an optional that carries enough reward by itself to still make it an enticing lure for players to do it. Putting a healthy chunk of the quest XP in it (and taking it away form the main xp) gives XP-runners an incentive. Putting the Ings in a chest that you only get by NOT killing the spiders gives an incentive for those farming ings. Both cases require you to complete the quest EXACTLY as you do now, so you can 'customize' your difficulty of the quest for your own party. For those who JUST want to get the pie and flag, you can either kill the spiders or dont. If you do, you still get to flag and pie without having to redo the entire quest. Whether killing them was intentional or not.

So youre asking for an easy flagging button where you can plow the quest with DPS front to back. I dont agree with this. I agree with the post above, where 6 players should be able to communicate enough to get through it, or they just dont flag.

It just does not make sense to have a quest that encourages solo play, due to a mechanic that is so easily triggerable. In a group, run it on elite with a full party so the mobs have more HP, making it LESS likely to fail on a harder setting -- honestly, does that make sense to anyone? As opposed to running it solo on norm or casual to make it ridiculously easy on the other end of the spectrum (assuming the soloist knows what they are doing of course).

It doesnt encourage solo play, it encourages up to six players to communicate and cooperate. There are no shortage of players running the shroud so there should be no issue finding five other players to run the quest with who are on the same wavelength as you are.

Heck, we run this in permadeath and succeed regularly. The first time we ran it in PD, we let the first timers who had never done vale quests before figure it out, and we succeeded.

If communicating, reading and following quest objectives, is really a hard thing to do, do you want the individuals who mess your completions up to advance into the Shroud with their same demonstrated lack of ability to follow directions and communicate?

[Kushiel]

One thing we've already seen in this thread is confusion over whether killing all spiders before book pick up does or does not kill a chest.

I imagine there will be people who run the quest who have not been avidly following this discussion (the portions of it that were actual discussion) and can start off their journey together in an argument over what they can/can't do in the quest. That'll be fun. And then, even if they reach agreement... and play well together... something can go wrong at the very end (after their use of time)... and everyone walks away with nothing.

Another thing that has come up is that many people Do Not Consider The Quest To Be Hard. They are not asking for [Easy Buttons] because they cannot complete the quest. They routinely successfully solo it, get their goodies and call it a win.

There seem to be valid points made about areas the mechanism could be touched up and... it would not necessarily impact those of you who Enjoy the concept and can Easily do it already; while, maybe, more frequently opening up game content to others who, maybe still not finding it *fun* could at least more reasonably complete it.

If I was You, if I had your Gear, if I had your Twitches, if I played that Character - maybe I too would be able to say with great authority, "That quest is Easy." (Which, to those of you who in this thread have said that, I'd like to have you contrast it with the statement, "That quest is Easy for me." It's different. The quest is what it is. Some may find it easy, some may find it hard. Some may be able to take the usable bits of information from here and become more successful at doing it (solo, or in a communicative group, or maybe even a blind PUG).

The piece of this mechanism, for this quest and in others like it, that I hate the most is that it is all too often a WASTE of my RW time. As they move forward and introduce more quests that have mechanisms like this, I just want the dev's to keep in mind some of the good augmentations suggested in posts above. There are ways to tweak the mechanism to still "punish" the charcters - but not be a complete waste of a paying customers time.

[It is not *Hard* to protect Coyle, even on elite. It is just a stupid use of time that after ~12 minutes of frantic effort, resourse use, maybe a death or two... a Huge Rust Monster can appear practically on top of him and club him to death with one shot. Or that the PK hounds on their last, late to the fight round, destroy him in one shot.]

There is a better balance, I believe, for the concepts/fail-conditions/principles of missions - key ones that are flags for additional content too - and the time investment of the player.

Some of you here have given good insight to the specific quest behaviors, and provided knowledge about obscure things. That is far, far better than a simple, "the quest is Easy (for me)" reply. I'm grateful for your contributions.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

One thing we've already seen in this thread is confusion over whether killing all spiders before book pick up does or does not kill a chest.

I imagine there will be people who run the quest who have not been avidly following this discussion (the portions of it that were actual discussion) and can start off their journey together in an argument over what they can/can't do in the quest. That'll be fun. And then, even if they reach agreement... and play well together... something can go wrong at the very end (after their use of time)... and everyone walks away with nothing.

Another thing that has come up is that many people Do Not Consider The Quest To Be Hard. They are not asking for [Easy Buttons] because they cannot complete the quest. They routinely successfully solo it, get their goodies and call it a win.

There seem to be valid points made about areas the mechanism could be touched up and... it would not necessarily impact those of you who Enjoy the concept and can Easily do it already; while, maybe, more frequently opening up game content to others who, maybe still not finding it *fun* could at least more reasonably complete it.

If I was You, if I had your Gear, if I had your Twitches, if I played that Character - maybe I too would be able to say with great authority, "That quest is Easy." (Which, to those of you who in this thread have said that, I'd like to have you contrast it with the statement, "That quest is Easy for me." It's different. The quest is what it is. Some may find it easy, some may find it hard. Some may be able to take the usable bits of information from here and become more successful at doing it (solo, or in a communicative group, or maybe even a blind PUG).

The piece of this mechanism, for this quest and in others like it, that I hate the most is that it is all too often a WASTE of my RW time. As they move forward and introduce more quests that have mechanisms like this, I just want the dev's to keep in mind some of the good augmentations suggested in posts above. There are ways to tweak the mechanism to still "punish" the charcters - but not be a complete waste of a paying customers time.

[It is not *Hard* to protect Coyle, even on elite. It is just a stupid use of time that after ~12 minutes of frantic effort, resourse use, maybe a death or two... a Huge Rust Monster can appear practically on top of him and club him to death with one shot. Or that the PK hounds on their last, late to the fight round, destroy him in one shot.]

There is a better balance, I believe, for the concepts/fail-conditions/principles of missions - key ones that are flags for additional content too - and the time investment of the player.

Some of you here have given good insight to the specific quest behaviors, and provided knowledge about obscure things. That is far, far better than a simple, "the quest is Easy (for me)" reply. I'm grateful for your contributions.

I am not sure if there is a single quest in the game that I currently consider to be truly "hard" to complete.
Even if I am on a new server with only what gear I have pulled from chests as I level up.

But that is mostly because of experience. Knowledge is power. Knowing the quest really is half the battle.

But the day the Vale first came out, I did Sleeping Dust with a group that had no idea about the quest.
And we completed it!

The quest objective was clear enough and when we realised that we were not suppose to kill spiders......we didn't!

We did almost wipe near the end, but it had nothing to do with the spiders. But we retreated to the shrine and went on to finish.

No Green Steel. No level 20s. At level...first time. With no spoilers.

It was challenging, and it was fun.

It got easier and easier every time I did it of course.
Just as every other quest has.




Now...protecting Coyle....that was hard!
Back in the day when you could not even heal him...let alone knock him out!

But we learned how to do that too.
(CC ftw! And every possible way to get agro.)
And it got easier as time went on.

In fact, I would argue that the newest version is not even fun anymore. (of course I suppose the only fun that ever was, was the fun of being smart enough to actually complete that one.)


I do not want every quest dumbed down so that just anyone can walk in, swing an axe....and complete!

But I do not want any quest to be uncompletible by new guys either.

However, I have PUGed Sleeping Dust probably a hundred times, and I think I have only seen one or two failures. (although I have seen lots of screaming 'DO NOT KILL THE SPIDERS!!!!!!" )

[Kushiel]

Something is the way it is.

Changes are made that alter the accessibilty.

Statements of [Easy Buttons] and "dumbing down" ululate though the realm.

The processes of making content more appealing to a greater number of players, of in creasing the time they want to put effort into the game, and possibly bringing more pure *fun* into wandering about the place trying new things (instead of jack-booting through the known successful formulae for completion), is not a horrible thing to do to ones customers.

It would be an interesting set of data points if more quests had some options as described above, where players could make the attempt with a different scale of rewards based on how forgiving they want a given mechanism to be with their time over how much of a Hard-core, unforgiving experience they are willing to endure. Over some number of weeks, months, (years?) it would be an insightful look at the community regarding how often folks honestly chose the most "challenging" scenario. [Especially when there is XP on the line, and maybe a real-world money purchased bonus pot ticking away, and the results of failure may seem more meaningful.]

[ceiswyn]

And then, even if they reach agreement... and play well together... something can go wrong at the very end (after their use of time)... and everyone walks away with nothing.

So... how exactly does that differ from every other quest in the game?

If I was You, if I had your Gear, if I had your Twitches, if I played that Character - maybe I too would be able to say with great authority, "That quest is Easy."

None of those things are relevant for this quest, though. You don't need great gear. You don't need amazing reflexes. You don't need a particular character. You just need to be able to think at the level of 'maybe I'd better not swing my vorpal greataxe in here then'.

And if that's too hard, well then; there's just no helping some people.

But maybe the reason people are finding that a problem is because it's so alien to all their previous quest experience? Maybe there should be more quests like Dust or Faithful Departed, so that people get familiar and comfortable with the tactics required, and don't fail through silly mistakes like guard items?

[Kushiel]

For Ceiswyn who asked how exactly reaching the end of this quest and failing would that be different from any other quest in the game (my paraphrasing). An example somewhere above was talked about how this quests' auto-fail mechanism prevents a party from having the quest held open so that some can regroup and come in again.

When a fail happens early on into a quest, it is a reasonable learning curve (I believe) and can provide a means for people playing together to agree on an approach. When it happens deep into a quest, by a mechanism of the game that is so purely punative to the effort and time of *the customer* (where there are examples of how to scale optional rewards differently) - it has just been a waste of time (and possible resoureces, and potential future companionship).

To the other part of Ceis' response: I did not state that "great gear" was needed, I just attempted to point at how differing peoples gear does have a bearing on the quest (avoiding Guards, CON/HP bumpers to take the spiders beatings, non-piercing weaps, other things mentioned in posts above that may have been new to folks). One may not need "amazing" reflexes - but the better a person is able to Twitch away or towards hitting the right foe with the right keyboard/mouse button, the more likely they are to succeed. Characters built with certain attribute spreads, feat selections, skills applied, and 'options' for journeying through the quest seem to succeed more frequently (posts above from the arcane casters, for example).

There is room, I believe, to balance the content where there are a variety of options for rewards based on a players effort and time. I may be alone in this... but where there is content that presents me with such unforgiving possible outcomes for my use of time, I dislike it in the extreme and I avoid it more often than not. [From discussions scattered in another thread or two, thankfully there is a semi-abundance of XP in the game... because it permits skipping some stuff that is PITA, or giving it a random try and moving on whether it is completed or not.]

I think I can, for myself, conclude that quests -whether they ultimately are completed or not - where I feel that my time (my Real-World, currency spending, *fun* seeking time) was not abused, are quests that I'll come back to gladly. Potent foes, difficult terrain, unexpected environments, clever twists in dialog choices are great. Having a variety of ways to counter/recover when presented with those things is enjoyable. A blanket Fail, much like blanket Immunities - are, to me, limiting and far less *fun.*

[ceiswyn]

For Ceiswyn who asked how exactly reaching the end of this quest and failing would that be different from any other quest in the game (my paraphrasing). An example somewhere above was talked about how this quests' auto-fail mechanism prevents a party from having the quest held open so that some can regroup and come in again.

True, I suppose in that respect it is different from a standard party wipe.

To the other part of Ceis' response: I did not state that "great gear" was needed, I just attempted to point at how differing peoples gear does have a bearing on the quest (avoiding Guards, CON/HP bumpers to take the spiders beatings, non-piercing weaps, other things mentioned in posts above that may have been new to folks). One may not need "amazing" reflexes - but the better a person is able to Twitch away or towards hitting the right foe with the right keyboard/mouse button, the more likely they are to succeed. Characters built with certain attribute spreads, feat selections, skills applied, and 'options' for journeying through the quest seem to succeed more frequently (posts above from the arcane casters, for example).

Well, that's definitely the same for every other quest in the system The thing is, you don't need any of the gear people have talked about. There are a lot of cunning strategies and gear-choices you can use to make the quest easier, but you can run it fine without any of them (I have - often) because it's just not that hard a quest.

Your armour is your guard item? Take it off and run the quest in gimpy deathblock armour, or naked; the bad guys don't actually do that much damage. Only have piercing weapons? Hang around at the back of the group until there's an opportunity to hit an ogre that's not too close to spiders. You might still kill a couple of spiders that way, but hey, you can kill up to four.

I have run that quest with a lot of gimped groups - and my alts not the least gimped among them - and honestly, the only way you fail that quest is through carelessness and rushing.

I may be alone in this... but where there is content that presents me with such unforgiving possible outcomes for my use of time, I dislike it in the extreme and I avoid it more often than not. [From discussions scattered in another thread or two, thankfully there is a semi-abundance of XP in the game... because it permits skipping some stuff that is PITA, or giving it a random try and moving on whether it is completed or not.]

You are not alone in this, but this thread alone has thrown up a number of people who do enjoy this style of quest. A real need to think rather than run and use just a little bit of tactics, for high stakes; what's not to like?

Changing it to be an option for rewards changes one of the fundamental things that makes the quest fun for those of us who like it. If you remove the 'fail' condition, you remove the extra adrenaline that comes from the thin dividing line between success and failure. You just can't replicate the feeling of 'you might fail the quest' with 'you might lose an extra chest'.

As you say, there's abundant XP in the game. Don't like Dust? Just run it once for flagging and never return again. Maybe the people who enjoy Dust are greatly outnumbered by the people who don't; but that's why there aren't many of these quests around. Don't try to take one of the few of them that exists away.

There is, on the other hand, an argument to be made that a quest in a style many people dislike shouldn't be a required quest for flagging the best raid in the game. I don't know how I feel about that. Rather selfishly, I like it where it is; that way at least I can find a group for it. Nobody ever seems to run Faithful Departed

[Nysrock]

Not sure if anyone mentioned this yet but as a caster when using Finger or PK in here make sure you turn off auto-target and hard target (mouse-over and click instead of tab) your targets. That way if another caster kills the Ogre your targeting first then you don't have to worry about your spell going off an a hapless spider.

[cforce]

Looks like its been beaten to death at this point, but in case it needs strength in numbers:

You can count me among the folks who think failure conditions are a lot of fun, in general -- this particular quest is no exception. The possibility of failure and "losing the invested time" makes the victory sweeter. Other quests that I've enjoyed because of this element:

- Threnal South (back when Coyle was *truly* suicidal)
- VoN 2 (back when falling off was a failure)
- Stealthy Reposession

These quests are few and far between, and shouldn't be eliminated. There are plenty of quests I don't particularly like because they can't be soloed -- but I'm not going to go around and demand every quest in the game be solo-friendly just because it would suit me best.

Different strokes for different folks == more players in game == more development budget == more content period == more content I'm bound to like.