Feedback - Challenge - Dr. Rushmore's Mansion: Behind the Door

[Saaluta]

/snip

In an earlier post mentioned the desire to have more chests upon deaths of the red names. Taking in consideration that the crests take up inventory space, I could careless for vender trash polluting my inventory. Crystal Cove didn't have chests for red names, why should these red names? Also, the loot you're grinding out collectables in these Cannith Challenges should be reward enough.

I agree that we did not get chests per se for killing the red/orange named bosses in CC, but everyone in party got a quest item whether it was a port or barrels or what have you. So maybe when a boss is killed, everyone in party gets a quest item added to their inventory, like extra parchments or wolf crests(since you seem to need more of those and they didn't seem to drop often enough)

Saal

[Shade]

This is nothing like crystal cove.

And the fact random loot is utter trash lately is just showing a problem with the game.

It can still drop some decent stuff, if only 0.001% tho.. Things like essences, xp potions, loot jewels, sp potions are stll of interest to me and other.

And please dont compare this to crystal cove. That was one of the most boring/buggy things I've ever seen in this game. this is a lot more fun. Theres no reason for ANYTHING ever to be like that boring event.

It should have good random random loot, ingredients for named loot, good xp, good variety of challege.. You know - thigns regular quests have. I don't see why challenges need to be a step into the dark ages of mmos.

[Amber-Dawnn]

Giggity giggity!

I 2nd that!

[Maluthion1]

This quest would have been quite nice and unique if I hadnt had to spend all of the time searching for crests. In my opinion the dungeon should either be easier to navigate and smaller, or the crests should drop from monsters and breakables MUCH more frequently.

I ran this quest a few times but could not reach the end bosses because (as I already said) I had to waste half the time getting lost and finding crests.

[irivan]

Ok so the first couple of times I was getting lost like crazy, but the more i ran it, the more familiar i got with the basic patching in the dungeons.

I love the hugeness of it, its massive, I still haven't explored it all, but it really reminds of some the giant mod maps from Unreal. I love getting lost and exploring.

The mobs were average, I pretty much ran them over, but then again it wasn't the Epic dungeon so i can see why.

Finding the crests at first was a little challenging because i did not realize they fell out of the crates, but regardless, i figured that out and then did not have any trouble bypassing gates, the last one i did i ran out of time working on *spoiler alert* working on a puzzle i found, there was a door right next to it that i could have opened for more time but i got distracted....will continue to play around with these, but was a ton of fun, even killed 3 of the bosses in that one.

[altrocks]

Rand it twice, solo, with my transferred level 20 AA ranger on Level 4 rating. Just getting a feel for the basic layout of the place. Definitely not solo-friendly, but not impossible either.

First of all, when I click on the challenge rule button on any of these, it gave me a MyDDO 404 error screen, so apparently that isn't in yet. Even so, this challenge was pretty easy to figure out. First time through, I spent a lot of time looking for crests, trying to find the right ones to open the doors that were locked and ended up stuck in the first couple of areas with nothing to do really except run around the same rooms over and over again hoping for a crest to drop. Saw no bosses at all, but I didn't get very far. Dead-ended in the Banner Room because of a lack of crests.

Went back in and had better luck this time. Opened many doors, for a bunch of secret doors and 2 or 3 boss mobs, including Dr. Rushmore and his elementals in the back alley area. (Note here: I was able to use crests to unlock the outside gate near the Pleasant Street exit and then take those crests back out to re-use them. Not sure if this is a bug or WAI, but it's the only place I saw this happen. all other door/gates locked the crests in place).

Had a lot more crests drop from mobs and they made more sense (wolf crests from dog-like mobs, scorp crests from insect mobs, etc). I also got to see a lot more of the map and wow, is it huge. I don't think I even came close to seeing all 16 gates. I did get to the gate to the puzzle room, but the crest slots were on the puzzle side of the door and the door could not be opened from the side I was on. I did take a few secret door shortcuts, however, so that might have been the issue. The sheer amount of non-mapped secret door paths made it hard to keep track of how I got from room A to B, making back-tracking very hard.

I think I got about half the gates, giving me around a half hour in there. Maybe 2 or 3 bosses (Spider and Dr. Rushmore are the only ones I remember clearly, but I think there was one other that run, maybe?). I never came across any traps, as others have reported, but that could be due to the low level I ran it at.

Overall, I have to say that this challenge, as it is right now, is pretty difficult and like no other one in game. It's like you took the end of VoN4 and stretched it out into a whole quest. Zerg, zerg, zerg. With level appropriate mobs, I can see it getting pretty short on time if their HP is too high with the respawns. I will have to take a look at it later with a group at-level and see how it goes.

However, as with most quests, I believe this one will end up being easily beaten for the collectibles in short order. There are only 3 or 4 variations on this map, yes? Once people get used to those variations, it will be no different from phase 2 of shroud. Everyone will see what the group has to deal with and will know the appropriate paths/strategies to defeat it. Unless boss mob locations are completely random, people will zerg right to them, kill all 4 (probably by splitting up or taking a least-resistance path past all 4 of them) and then split up to collect crests and open doors for optionals.

This points out a double-edged problem with the game, overall. The random element can keep quests from becoming grindy and predictable, but it's never used that way, at least not when it comes to map placement/generation. On the other hand, the randomness of the crests spawning leaves any groups ability to advance up to complete random luck. You might get a ton of wolf crests in the first areas, but to advance you might need 4 octopus crests (and maybe you have 1?) It's going to be frustrating for most players and the only real reason anyone will run it is for the collectibles to turn in for the loot. Just like Threnal with the Mantle/runearm/other end loot. Then no one will run it again unless it's to twink out a TR/vet toon.

You guys need to up your game on random generation for quests and the rules involved in door/key generation that go along with it. This stuff isn't new. It's been around in the PnP community for a long, long time. Basic DM-helper programs came with tile-sets and random generation rules for making dungeons of varying types, sizes and complexities over 15 years ago. The math and programming for it hasn't changed much, you'd just be using different "tiles". Maybe reliable on-the-fly map generation is a limitation the game engine has and so it cannot be done, but if it can I would suggest using it. It would help this quest out greatly. Not only in making the quest more interesting, but also more immersing.

If I'm running around a huge mansion and there are doors like that which require multiple crests to open, but mobs walking around only have maybe 1 crest, and the rest are scattered randomly around, behind other locked doors and in seemingly silly places, it just feels like a big, sloppy grind, not a quest or challenge. I can't suspend disbelief because it's just TOO random and nonsensical. How can anyone live in a place like that, from a practical standpoint. If there is another way of opening the doors for those who live/work in the place, then we should be able to discover and use it instead of relying on those random crests. Maybe there should be armory or guard rooms where there are large groups of mobs that are guarding the crests for a nearby door. Those would make sense and make it fun. A timed scavenger hunt for crests in a large, mostly empty mansion complex is just kind of... silly?

I mean, don't we already have something like that? Around Easter? In Marketplace? I think we do.

[RandomKeypress]

Did a few more runs and finally got all five stars, with three minutes to spare. Once you know what you are doing and can navigate well enough, it's easy! As long as you're doing level 4 on your epic geared level 20 toon with constant haste / expeditious retreat and 30% striding boots that is.

Okay, I did take a few wrong turns - I was trying to map the place and only stopped running into corners when I realised that getting all five stars was possible. Still very tricky to solo at level, I feel.

There is a certain amount of fun to be found in there, but it is a very long quest with no tangible reward. No chests, no collectables, no end reward beyond a small handful of yet another turn in. (86 coins for all five stars). 3 points of favour for completing every objective. Favour farmers will do it, dedicated twinkers and completionists will probably find a reason - you know how useful a dragon-slaying blade is at level 4. For everyone else, I don't see this as being done often. I was hoping for a quick repeatable farming quest, but this is anything but. It's also expensive to run - you don't get back the cost of your consumables and money is tight at low levels.

Suggestions:
Give some reward of some kind - at least let people recover the wear-and-tear cost of armour and weapons.
Tone back the elementals - they're much tougher than the other mobs, and more annoying to fight than the bosses.
Make the doors two-way. When soloing a lot of time is wasted trying to find the side of the door that can actually be opened. Yes it makes it easier, but frankly trying to open the door to the war room from the other back passage end is annoying.

[Shade]

3 points of favour for completing every objective.

mm 3 favor for 5 stars eh?

I got 4..

Perhaps lvl u select does affect favor in some way.

[RandomKeypress]

mm 3 favor for 5 stars eh?

I got 4..

Perhaps lvl u select does affect favor in some way.

I certainly hope not - if you can't get full favour on a level 20 toon then I'd say something is seriously broken. Preventing people from getting favour because of level is seriously wrong.

[Shade]

I certainly hope not - if you can't get full favour on a level 20 toon then I'd say something is seriously broken. Preventing people from getting favour because of level is seriously wrong.

I agree. Did you run it at the maximum available lvl? (15 iirc)

I do think you should have to run at lvl - when available tho.

Rule should be simply like this imo:
Run at lvl else:
if above lvl = favor -50% penalty.. round up (5 stars = 3 favor, 4 = 2 favor, 3 = 2 favor, 2/1 = 1 favor)
however if:
Quest lvl = maximum lvl available = favor = 100% regardless.

No idea why they dont simply all offer all 20 lvls tho. Seems like the scaling tech obviously does that automaticall so it wouldnt be hard (they obviously didnt manually edit stats of monsters on 20 different variations at ~15+ lvls per (~300 ish total mutations), its automatic)

[RandomKeypress]

I agree. Did you run it at the maximum available lvl? (15 iirc)

I do think you should have to run at lvl - when available tho.

Rule should be simply like this imo:
Run at lvl else:
if above lvl = favor -50% penalty.. round up (5 stars = 3 favor, 4 = 2 favor, 3 = 2 favor, 2/1 = 1 favor)
however if:
Quest lvl = maximum lvl available = favor = 100% regardless.

No idea why they dont simply all offer all 20 lvls tho. Seems like the scaling tech obviously does that automaticall so it wouldnt be hard (they obviously didnt manually edit stats of monsters on 20 different variations at ~15+ lvls per (~300 ish total mutations), its automatic)

Sounds reasonable. I must admit that I ran it at lev 4 - if I'm doing it the easy way, might as well do it the EASY way. Once I've got my map sorted out with all the portraits, boss spawn points and one way doors, I may try another solo run with that lev 4, fresh-off-the-boat horc barb.

[RandomKeypress]

Okay, I know I shouldn't just keep spamming this thread, but I did another run. Lev 20 rogue, lev 4 dungeon. No speed boosts beyond 30% striders. I had a path mapped out and knew what I was doing. I failed.

The reason why I failed was simple - there were two doors left that required crests of the octopus to open. One needed one crest, the other needed two. I had: 5 crests of the monkey, 7 crests of the scorpion, 7 crests of the wolf, 9 crests of the bat and 19 crests of the snake. That is an actual inventory count when I had 30 seconds left. I had already used up my 'mood' crest on another octopus slot.

I saw two crests of the octopus that I couldn't get at - one was on the balcony at the end of the shady tenements - couldn't reach because I can't jump to the balcony and it was behind the door that required the crest to open - and the other was further along the flying buttress route that I couldn't get to because I was running out of time - it was either get that or kill the crystal giant kobold.

It was a frustrating run. I don't want to put words into the devs' mouths, but it was probably just a quirk of the random number generator. If these quirks happen that easily, though, I'm not going to be happy.

On a completely unrelated topic, what's up with Smiley? I decided to try and do things properly, so I went to him first, persuaded him to join me through my amazing disarming trap abilities, and then went to Dr. Rushmore. No Smiley. Am I supposed to go back to him after Rushmore is dead and _then_ kill him? Why should I do the dialogue option rather than just cut him down when we first meet?

[Claver]

I thought this was a reasonably fun quest.

Solo'd it with a level 9 warforged Air Savant and brought along a level 8 fighter hireling (Tower).

The first two runs were in a level 8 instance, the last run was in a level 9 instance.

(1st run) Failure
(2nd run) Success, Killed 2 bosses
(3rd run) Success, Killed 1 boss

XP: I was getting around 1100 - 1300 per completion. While that may not be the best xp in the game, I would be content with this so long as I was having fun in the quest itself. My assumption is that I would get more XP if I beat this challebge several levels above my level. If not, THAT is how the xp reward should scale for Challenges at least to give an incentive for doing things on a virtual "harder" difficulty.

2ND Run: The rogue assassin boss was very easy to defeat. Liked having all the crests in the water below the docks. I've often wished more secrets were submerged and am glad to see DDO giving us a reason to explore the nooks and crannies. The hall of traps leading to the docks was very interesting - wish I could have gotten into those rooms of locked crates.

Question, why all the exits to Market street and the harbor at the end of the quest? Why would we want to leave before finishing our objective - can we get back in?

I had time to go back and kill a second Boss, the Succubii. She was much more challenging than the rogue but all I had to do was heal myself a few times. It was the force traps that activated once I made it into her room that did me in - no problem getting in but it was too dangerous to get out. I was killed on the way back down the hallway.

SUGGESTION: Add an additional 2 minute timer for killing a boss to increase the liklihood additional bosses can be reached. Once you cross the hurdle of the pass/fail objective of killing one boss you can be generous in helping us kill more.

3RD RUN: I ended up in a back alley fighting a Kobold Boss (money changer) and his 3 elementals on top of a pile of money. At first it appeared I was going to have to leap to various roof tops to access this boss. Even with jump potions I didn't have the skill to make it to most of the ledges. That's fine if you want to hide crests on those roofs but if I would have had to make one of those jumps before finding the boss I would have been majorly annoyed. Not sure if there is another boss up there; just keep the frustration factor in mind if boss placement is random, the upper reaches of the roof would be a poor choice.

SUGGESTION: It would be helpful to know what type and number of crest are in inventory without losing time to search our inventory. It would be awesome if a visual cue could appear on the screen like an enchantment. Granted, this could be done by dragging the various crests into the hotbar for future reference. As an aside, the skeleton key crest was a nice feature.

The only other challenge I've run is Kobold Chaos - comparing the two, I think Kobold Chaos might have more "interesting" replay value with a larger party but "Behind the Door" has more "practical" replay value in that it strikes me as being much easier to solo.

[Shade]

XP: I was getting around 1100 - 1300 per completion. While that may not be the best xp in the game, I would be content with this so long as I was having fun in the quest itself.

it may well be the WORST xp in the game.

Considering all challenges are a fairly fixed time limit . this one being slightly variable, in the 25-40min range (longer being when you do better oddly).

Thats around 32-44 XP per minute..

Acording to Mr Cows XP chart, the next worst quest in the game for xp is probably hold for reinforcements (Threnal East III), which is 70 xp per min..

So twice as bad as the worst quest in the game.. And your content with it?

Most any reasonably balanced quests gives in the 500-1000 range, even when ran slowly by new/poor players... Veterans are averaging 2000-3000 over a characters lifetime doing double TRs.

They need a MASSIVE boost for most players to be anywhere near content with the xp.

Now sure they are fun for what they are on the first few runs. But it's a mmo, they should offer some replay value and reasonable character advancement.

re: More for running it over ur lvl: Nope. Years ago all quests used to reward such a bonus.. It was removed.
Challenges are no different. There are penalties for running over lvl, but no bonuses for under.
Now running higher lvl versions does up the base XP slightly like any quest, but not by much.

[Claver]

So twice as bad as the worst quest in the game.. And your content with it?

Yes......

MY feedback to Turbine was as long as I was having FUN with the quest/challenges I would be "content" with the XP. "I" am motivated to run quests for fun rather than XP per minute. Now eventually those quest will no longer be shiny and new. When they are no longer a novelty and are competing with all the other quests in the game then the xp becomes a bigger issue. I would be "unhappy" to play them if they offered zero xp and I would "happy" play them much more if they offered 10,000 xp and I will state again that at 1,000 xp I can be "content" so long as I am having fun.

re: More for running it over ur lvl: Nope. Years ago all quests used to reward such a bonus.. It was removed.
Challenges are no different. There are penalties for running over lvl, but no bonuses for under.
Now running higher lvl versions does up the base XP slightly like any quest, but not by much.

This comment is for Turbine: Change this, at least for Challenges. Given that there is no Hard/Elite setting there should be a dramatic XP bonus/incentive for doing challenges under level. Something like the following:

1 level+10%
2 levels +25%
3 levels +50%
4 levels +75%
5 levels +100%

[Stev69]

Ran the lvl 15 solo on a lvl 20 monk about six times, was pretty easy.

It was fairly easy to pick up on what was required to compete the challenge and crests were plentiful, you really have to look in every nook and cranny for them at times. And if and when the time comes you find yourself without breakables left to acquire more crests respawning mobs drop them also. The time limit gives a sense of urgency and isn't overly harsh or demanding.

The bosses can be a bit tricky to find but once you know where they are they will always be in those locations it seems, have found four so far.

The only criticism I have is the low drop rate of antique coins, this could possibly be because I was running it on a level 20 toon, however to give you an idea of the lack of parity, I ran Disruptor twice (lvl20) and ended up with 1.1k worth of necromantic charms, whilst six runs of this quest has yielded less than 200 coins so far.

[Shade]

5 Star'd at maximum CR, solo, no hireling, brute force:
980 points. (Went for high score too, points in this quest seems to be just kills + bonus for objectives, ~150+ kills at least)

Fun. Not too difficult after some practice.

However from release notes:

If you complete all 5 star objectives in one run of a Challenge at its maximum available CR level, all of your blue stars will turn to gold - you'll earn bonus favor and bonus experience!

I didn't get any bonus favor or experience. Just 5 stars, 5 favor and the usual pitiful xp.

[FlimsyFirewood]

There've been reports of Dungeon Alert being slammed and abnormally large spawns at portraits. We've been trying to isolate the issue with little success in the mansion challenges.

If you've seen situations where there's more than 5 monsters hanging out by each painting at the same time, please let us know, describing step-by-step what you did to get it to spawn so many.

Any other monster-density related problems could use more feedback as well, in any challenges, not just the Mansion.

[brian14]

I ran this with a level 4 Barbarian Half-Orc + a level 4 hireling.
<skip>
I found this quest rather empty to an extent, it seemed I spent most of my time running down near empty hallways, smashing a few boxes and killing a few mobs (which look great).

What else could horc barbarian possibly want?

[brian14]

Crates "rarely" drop crests (but I tend to not waste time breaking them on my arti since XBOW is a SLOW option to break with).

Why not bring a shortbow for that very purpose?