Discussion thread - The Lords of Dust

[Khimberlhyte]

I like the levers hidden behind bookshelves. That is a nice finishing touch. It seems like a fairly short quest - I finished normal quite easily on an 18/2 cleric without shrining. Hard solo I shrined once, but wasn't exactly using any tactics or SP conservation. Epic was pretty easy - it took me 17 mobs before I died, and that is on a new character with zero raid or twink gear (not from my main server - it did a quick run to cap on Khyber, and I copied it over to Lama back in Nov? right after hitting level 20).

On normal, I took my time and had to cast buffs twice. I went through afterwards on hard without doing optionals, and it seems like it is over pretty quickly. While the XP seems low, this quest will be farmed in a lot less time than something like the Vale quests. I did elite with a party of 4, and it was pretty easy. Nothing like some of the elites on the Harbringer or Lord of Eyes chain. I'd like to know if there is a difference in rewards between smashing and cleansing altars. Others in my party did not get the option to cleanse them, so I'm not sure if that is class specific or alignment specific.

I really liked the inquisitor's and the novice's healing amp on epic. I was able to pull some mobs back to them, and they would help out. Not sure if that is WAI, but I kind of liked having some NPCs to help out. I did manage to watch the inquisitor die on epic after I died. I'd like to know if you can still finish the quest with him dead, but didn't have time to find out. I didn't think to buy a rez cake or store mana pots.

I did not like how the end bosses just sort of stood there with their backs to me until I attacked them. For some reason, cleric bosses in this game are really easy, but bard bosses are brutal (Hazadil and the boss in Chains of Flame). You should transplant some bard code to the Rakshasa bosses in there. All of them, including Gnomon, took the short bus to the quest.

I found it refreshing to be on the receiving end of Divine Punishment, and made sure to stay out of line of sight after I got hit once, since taking a stack worried me. Pale Masters probably won't enjoy that as much - the ones I ran with were taking a lot of damage in Lich form, and one died pretty quickly after failing concentration checks. Vampire form would be suicide, unless they let someone else grab and hold aggro.

I also reported a few bugs. Map was not working. Social panel was broken. Storyline continuity was poor - I could find the dead novice, and then run back and talk to him in the parking room near the entrance, alive, and standing with Gnomon. I'd also like to see those rooms connected - after I find the apprentice, I should be able to work my way back to the room that they parked themselves in.

[bhgiant]

Inquisitor Gnomon? The Inquisitor Gnomon of Purge the Heretics Infamy?

Finally!

YEEESSSS!!! My vengeance will know no bounds! Finally I get to make him pay for making me kill all those innocent civilians. I'm going to beat him down with holy flame clubs and then shadow h... no, that's going a little too far.

Thank you Turbine

[Vengeance777]

Inquisitor Gnomon? The Inquisitor Gnomon of Purge the Heretics Infamy?

Finally!

Whoa didn't catch that when I ran it. It is the same guy. Now Purging the Heretics makes a little more sense.

Though I feel like my characters are really dumb to keep working for this guy lol.

[Flavilandile]

As I thought almost everybody concentrated on doing it Epic....

Well, I went on Casual, with a LVL 20 rogue for a look and see.

My first thought upon reading the starting dialog was "oh hell, he's at it again, another purge the heretics".

Then I open the door and that idiot tells his novice to follow and starts rampaging. Bloody hell, that's why you hired me why are you rampaging through my mob.
Ok, might be like The Tide Turn, first room and all.
Without any prompting he then starts to climb the stairs and do some more rampaging *frown*.

There has to be something wrong.
Check Gnomon Health, seems ok, I'm a rogue I can't help much there beside using scrolls, I don't want to be sadled with another Coyle all the way to the end of the quest, and if he is Coylish at the rate he goes on rampage he'll be dead before the end. Check objectives, no 'Keep Idiot Inquisitor Alive', looks good then I don't have to bother with him and his rampaging. He can die, actually that might make my life easier.

Then the idiot open a door, it's a frigging door, you're an NPC, you're not supposed to open doors and go rampaging... And tells me to go my way. Ah, ok, it's all in the script, he is supposed to go up to here.
Being a good little rogue, I follow the order to go my way and start killing people.

I won't go into quest difficulty, as it wasn't my objective. ( well a LVL 20 Rogue in a LVL 16 quest on Casual shouldn't ( and didn't ) have any difficulty )

The knights are a nice touch.

The traps are easilly avoidable, I got the first 3 easilly ( Blade + Fire + Blade ). The other two fire (?) didn't trigger for whatever reasons, and it took me time to find the boxes ( My Spider sense told me there was a trap, but I wasn't looking at the right place for the boxes ) I crossed them several time, running back and forth in search of the two boxes and finally found them.

The spike trap is a niche touch, as it's not common to need two boxes to disarm all the spikes.

I loved the hidden levers .

All in all the quest is nice, though I agree with other a little diversity in cultist design would be nice.

[Glenalth]

Is there no epic chest on this one?

Completed all optional objectives and just a plain ol' chest at the end.

[lopkon]

I ran this quest multiple times with my lvl 20 geared FvS once on epic/hard and a few times on elite.
Also I ran it once on elite with my lvl 15 rather bad geared Sorc (it also took me a while to actually take a savant for my unloved sorc, the current lam version doesnt have a savant).

atmosphere:
+ the dim light feels alright, it brings in at least some atmosphere
+ the zergy character of the quest is nice
+ the altars are nice, actually Im not exactly sure how they work but it seems like only a character with religious lore can purify them and so get the party an extra chest
- you cannot smash all doors, personally I would enjoy it a lot more if I could break down all the doors instead of having to stop and open then

TRAPS!:
+ they can kill if you are unprepared (well actually they should scale up more on epic, they should one hit low hit point toons/casters)
- Traps are not random

+Traps + Altar chest makes it benefitial to have different classes in your group, but still it is not required

items:
+ each chest seems to have at least one named item
- drop rate on elite way too high
- BtA? Oh please it's supposed to be a free pack, make it unbound

non- epic:
+ difficulity seemed fine
- the xp are horrible

epic:
+ Scrolls/Seals/Shards!!!!
- way to easy in all ways (no dangerous mobs/no threatening bosses/low HP)
- no epic chest/token (eventhough someone in my groups said something like 'maybe we got as many tokens as we deserve for this')


Overall:
Increase xp.
Increase difficulity on epic (by a lot).
Randomize traps.
And the quest would be a good one.

[Targonis]

One thing I noticed is that other than the unfinished feel, the entire place feels a bit...linear. You can ONLY go one way, since all side doors are self contained rooms. Console games may be about making it all about action and a lack of depth, but I really don't like when areas have ONLY one path to get through them. I can see one place for the stairs between floors, but this just felt like a small little place and too confined to let me NEED to explore and learn the layout.

Current "unfinished" issues should include how the named mobs seem to have a somewhat proper number of hit points, but all other mobs go down really quick without any effort. For the rest, it is still clearly a work in progress, so I won't bother to go into individual detail there.

One thing I did not look at(and need to check again) is the adventure placement. For the size of the adventure area(not to be confused with Adventure Areas), does it actually fit into its location in the Harbor? Some people may get confused that they get the adventure reward from someone other than the quest giver(who is on the other side of the building).

At this point, even with all the finishing polish put on it, this adventure seems very simple, and even with increased challenge, isn't going to generate much in the way of interest or excitement due to storyline. Perhaps more scripted dialog within the quest would help, or something to really make the players who pay attention FEEL like there is something not quite right, and WANT to continue on to discover what is going on(without the objective panel being the only reason to keep going). Other than fighting evil, why should the players care about destroying the altars, and should something happen if you do destroy them.

[Razcar]

Whoa didn't catch that when I ran it. It is the same guy. Now Purging the Heretics makes a little more sense.

That's a cool story twist.

[GoldyGopher]

I have run this quest a couple of times.
Once on Epic with an “Underequipped” Level 20 Human Sorcerer, Earth Savant; the second time with a level 17 Hybrid build (Fighter/Rouge/Monk) on Normal. Both runs were solo, no ship buffs.

The quest is TOO EASY, I should put more emphasis on that if I could.
As point of comparison the Many of the Mobs on Epic had less than 1000 HP. A single blast (cast) of “Acid Rain” would wipe a room full of mobs clean. Those that survived the Acid Rain, died to a spell like effect casting of Acid Spray. On Normal I figure the named mini-bosses had 2500 HP at most, some of the mobs I was “one shotting” in the 200 point range for damage.
My thought is this is from bad scaling, at least I hope it is from bad scaling and not intentional. I will not mention this again however it affected my play and probably other thoughts. In terms of comparison the mobs in Gwylan's Stand are tougher than the Mobs in this quest on Normal and on Epic this quest makes Epic Snitch look challenging.

I felt like I was visiting the TARDIS when I got this quest. The interior quest location was way too large to fit in the physical location of the warehouse district in Stormreach. It wasn’t that it was slightly too large, but rather like fitting a city block within someone bedroom too large. (Yes I know I was looking for a guy with a Fez and funny noise making screwdriver. Crack in the wall.)

After visiting with Inquisitor Gnomon and the Silver Flame Novice right inside the door I figured out the storyline, while I was not sure if Gnomon had been replace or always was a member of the Lords of Dust it was too obvious.

The first fight was the toughest encounter in the entire quest. With more mobs and less than stellar performance of both Inquisitor Gnomon and the Novice, they either need to really fight or stand out the way, the Novice grabbed agro and didn’t do anything. Kind of annoying. My quest let me fight or let them take damage and die failling the quest.

When the Inquisitor Gnomon and the Silver Flame Novice go into the room and freeze, I was waiting and waiting and waiting (five minutes the first time) for them to do something. (They were still there at the end of the quest I ran back and checked.) Would it be possible to make Inquisitor Gnomon tell the novice he wants to teach him a new spell and make them disappear.

The travels through the quest encountered several doors that some I had to break, others I had to open and some were locked until I did something, and finally two need me to throw levers. However I had to figure out which was which, the second lever tripped door hung me up the first time. Like what did I miss. Not fun (made more difficult by lack of a map). Can we add some sort of tip when we try to use the door, "Locked look for a lever".

Mob encounters were unfulfilling in terms of game play. Two mobs here, another there, hey look a fourth mob is bringing up the rear. The fact that none of them had any HP may have been a factor.

I didn’t find the third alter in either run, the lack of a map was an issue. I spent a little while turned around a couple of times when I missed a hidden lever.

I hate quests split into two instances, what’s the point. From a player’s perspective none what so ever and this one had two that made even less sense than most. Can it be made a single instance.

Why cannot the Mini-bosses both Monologue and Fight at the same time? Sucks when you can get your AOE already, position the party, have lunch, take a bio, come back to the end of the monologue and then start your 15 second fight. Boring Boring Boring.

The end fight was extremely unfulfilling in how it unfolded. Didn’t make sense in how the scripting worked. On Epic I threw up a short term AOE (Acid Rain) blasted with a Acid Blast, killing the Skeletons, waited for the Monologue, threw up an Acid Fog, prepped and Acid Rain, Gnomon becomes active, hit with a Curse, Blackdragon Bolt, another Acid Rain, and an Acid Blast, Dead. What huh, that was easy. Waited ten seconds for the Drow to start his Monologue, rinse and repeat. Except the Drow actually tried to kill me, for about five seconds before he melted into a pile of goo under my Acid Attacks. On Normal change the Acid attacks into a haste filled rapier swinging party (that lasted even a shorter duration).

Throughout the entire quest I noticed many mobs that were not active until, wait for it, wait for it, a timer went off. Yeah I just slaughtered your two buds ten feet from you, now I wait until you become active.

No Epic Scrolls or Tokens (I had to check twice to make sure I was on Epic), the Loot was substandard, XP was Bad, the layout made little sense, and …

All and All the quest felt extremely unfinished, like I was looking at stand-ins for what the finished product was supposed to be. It was like hey this is being cobbled together at the last moment type of feeling. Some of the quest interiors looked like they had been yanked whole sale from other quests.

I hope the Devs come back and make a fairly substantial pass at what goes on in this quest. Covering everything from quest layout to mob selection (including Spell, Attack and Damage, True Seeing, AC, HP) to scripting to … well everything.

[Gimpinator]

Not supprised its unpolished. MajMal did say they were going to try and run things out earlier for a preview. Warts 'n all.

As to the inquister...I take it you didn't notice you fought him at the end? :P

Yeah... Except I used a D-Door and found him still in the empty room doing nothing, right where I left him!

[WruntJunior]

In my run of epic dust this morning, a few things seemed fixed...the traps are doing about 100 more damage per hit (around 350 now), everything but the cultists were dialed up a bit, and things were actually saving against implosion/destruction.

Still no epic chest, though...and I still think the amount of dungeon tokens is appropriate for the amount of work. :P Still extremely easy.

One thing that bothers me about this quest, though, is that the mini-bosses don't seem to have metamagics. The normal casters in epic last stand seem to do more damage with their cometfalls, for example, than Gnomon.

[Ziindarax]

In my run of epic dust this morning, a few things seemed fixed...the traps are doing about 100 more damage per hit (around 350 now), everything but the cultists were dialed up a bit, and things were actually saving against implosion/destruction.

Still no epic chest, though...and I still think the amount of dungeon tokens is appropriate for the amount of work. :P Still extremely easy.

One thing that bothers me about this quest, though, is that the mini-bosses don't seem to have metamagics. The normal casters in epic last stand seem to do more damage with their cometfalls, for example, than Gnomon.

And while the mobs died to my death magic in both epic runs (first one I recalled out of), they were saving more often from my death spells. Additionally, the dogs often ignored the disco balls I threw down, forcing me to use irresistable dance instead.

[Fefnir_2011]

I'm seeing a lot of you say this is too easy on Epic. I'm reinstalling the Llamaland client still so I haven't run it, but I am curious... this is a free to play quest chain, right? That means this will be the first free to play epic, so shouldn't it be a little easier, as "baby's first epic" so to speak? Or, is it ridiculously easy? Once i'm done installing I'm going to port over my evoker favored soul and pale master and see if it's silly easy for myself, but i was wondering if you guys would rank it as either:

a great introductory epic for those new to level 20

or

there's level 18 quests on elite that are miles ahead harder than this?

Interested in the answer either way, as regardless I have some friends who are new to 20 and are varying levels of subscribed, and if it's easy enough for a moderately geared wizard to solo, then it will be awesome for introducing those kind of people to epics (more so than eSnitch or eParty, anyway).

[Glenalth]

if it's easy enough for a moderately geared wizard to solo, then it will be awesome for introducing those kind of people to epics (more so than eSnitch or eParty, anyway).

It was a moderately difficult solo for a well geared arcane archer after one look at the quest on normal.

The generic "cultists" need a little more variation in class and an HP bump. That would cover most of it.

[Cyr]

Can I ask people what level these epics are listed as?

Hopefully the devs put these in as gimped epics for level 20 or 21 when the expansion comes out and levels of content might matter again.

[sweez]

3) Bosses should use more tactics. The same kind of AI in the lava caves challenges (where the casters knew to hit necromancers with spells that worked against their undead forms). Other than that, it was a nice touch that the end-boss karas scored a critical hit on my lich-form mage.

Um, they cast DP in lava caves randomly lol, I get it all the time on my WF sorc. No AI involved heh.

[Fefnir_2011]

It was a moderately difficult solo for a well geared arcane archer after one look at the quest on normal.

The generic "cultists" need a little more variation in class and an HP bump. That would cover most of it.

hmm, that's good to know. Was it mostly just a matter of them not having the normal epic stacks of HP?

[Glenalth]

hmm, that's good to know. Was it mostly just a matter of them not having the normal epic stacks of HP?

Low HP, slow attack rate, low damage with their sickles.

Hard/Elite Harbinger of Madness mobs are considerably more dangerous.

[junior_w]

I ran this quest on normal with my level 15 Warchanter Bard.

Quest design
The quest is pretty linear, it's not a bad thing and I like the switches hidden.
Somethings to consider: the part where Gnomon and the player need to split, they enter the room and stay here, make the players unable to enter in this area because there are nothing here, just an empty room.

Enemies
The Human cultists appear to deal less damage than the dogs, the Rakshasas lord appear to be fine and I really enjoyed the new armor/skin they are wearing.

IMO more variation to the human cultists model could be nice.

XP
The xp is low for a level 16 quest.

[joaofalcao]

Now Purging the Heretics makes a little more sense.

Well, heres an except from the eberron wiki for you.

• The ultimate goal of the Church is to cleanse Eberron itself. For many members of the Church, this noble goal justifies any means required to reach it. This manner of thinking serves as one of the sources of evil-aligned priests within Thrane. Such a priest may be good in almost all ways, but she has a willingness to employ evil tools -- such as torture -- when necessary to achieve a goal that furthers the Church's cause .

While its by no means a complete description of the church, its intolerance and its whereabouts, it shows that a quest such as Purge the Heretics is well justified on Eberron.

The fact Turbine turned Gnomon in a rakshasa just shows Turbine is really serious in business and will dumb down Eberron and whatever takes it, to get a bigger black and white audience in order to make more profit.