Discussion thread - The Lords of Dust

[KookieKobold]

Brother Dectaran of the Silver Flame, a member of Inquisitor Lightbringer's retinue, has begun an investigation of a devious cult tied to the Lords of Dust. The Church of the Silver Flame believes that these cultists may be responsible for the mysterious crack in the wall near the Waterworks. Any who wish to assist can find Dectaran near the Wayward Lobster, in the southern end of the Harbor.


This quest would be best run with a level 16 or higher character. Feel free to leave your feedback and to discuss this quest in this thread.


(Due to faulty map information, the following map has been generated to assist in finding this quest)

[Imploded]

hmm mysterious cracks in the wall you say. will we be meeting a charismatic artificer who thinks fezs are cool to take us to the forgotten realms?

[RabidKoala]

hmm mysterious cracks in the wall you say. will we be meeting a charismatic artificer who thinks fezs are cool to take us to the forgotten realms?

And he takes us there in a blue police box

[somenewnoob]

Does this give silver flame favor?

PLEASE say yes!

[QuantumFX]

And he takes us there in a blue police box

No. It looks like the locks in the beginning of Temple of Vol.

[LeLoric]

Spoiler alert.

Soloed this on epic on my caster took some pots and a couple cakes.

Heres my thoughts.

1. Trash is pretty generic must all cultists be exactly alike in looks as well as actions. Death Knights were awesome in name but puny in ability. could use some casters spotted throughout to spice things up and add different challenges.

2. Traps were ok for first time but pretty easily recognizeable and avoidable just like most in this game. When we have a quest with rakshasa we need cry for help style traps of awesomeness or it's just not the same. One fire trap shot out and killed me at the second orange named fight.

3. End fights. The rakshasa at end got my other death. He actually tripled stacked a divine punishment on me. As a pale master you can guess that didn't go over too well. The drow? Did you really have to lead into this storyline with a dual scimitar wielding drow as it's first end boss. He hit fairly hard but needs more than just run after you while swinging swords. Hamstring would be a good option here or imp trip. Maybe have him mix in a spell or two.

[Gimpinator]

Solo'd on Epic with a Wizard. It feels really unpolished and I have little input other than the fact that the quest was quite easy. The Inquisitor seemed to initially have a role in the quest, but after suggesting (forcing) we split up, he literally stood in an empty room for the remainder of the dungeon.

Lets see if the next quest feels better. :-)

Edit: I really liked the giant hole in the wall, but it lead me to believe Kookie was letting us try another dungeon. (Error): This adventure is currently unavailable.

Does this give silver flame favor?

PLEASE say yes!

18 Silver Flame for Epic completion.

[Garix]

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

[Vordax]

Ran it on normal, and it did not register Gnomons death and was not completable:



Vordax

[Natashaelle]

Keep on needing to run about back and forth like a headless chicken before the quest will let me enter the second part of it.

[Vengeance777]

Ran it on normal, and it did not register Gnomons death and was not completable:



Vordax

If you put an aoe spell on Gnomon before the Skeletons are all killed at the end you break the quest. Skeletons must die first. Gnomon doesn't trigger to attack the player till all skeles are dead. If you kill him before the trigger the quest objective won't register and you can't complete.

[TheDearLeader]

Just ran it once on Normal to get a feel for it on Aneist, the level 20 Paladin.

XP - Too low. Base XP even. It's just...too low.

Traps - Seemed like they weren't doing a lot of damage. Then again, it's Normal with Dungeon Scaling. They could be a much bigger threat with a full party.
Also, their hit detection/hit box seems a bit larger than the visual representations of the trap. Maybe tweak their size a bit?

There is a door right beside the slain Novice that can't be opened. Sup with that?

The Silver Flame Novice, and Inquisitor Gnomon, never disappear. I completed the quest, ran back to the beginning... and the "original" Novice + Gnomon are still standing there.

I like the skins for the new Rakshasas, and the Drow at the end. The Death Knights are cool, and the Cultist's have neat quotes, but it would be nice to inspire a bit more creativity in their design. They all looked the same.

I also liked that the Cultists are, in fact, evil. It's nice to see the Pally Capstone work against Evil Cultists - I was concerned that someone would forget to code their alignment.

Another positive point was collectibles - there were plenty. I like collectibles. It's one of the few things I miss in the Amrath content. Good on your guys for making collectibles plentiful.

Receives 4 chests in total, no named items, but loot nonetheless. I received no crafting essences, and no renown - I'm a level 20 running it on Normal (16), but still.. I would have expected *something*.

That's what I've got as a preliminary.

[GoldyGopher]

Before I provide too much feedback, will the Devs check to see if there is some sort of scaling issue on Epic?

Yes it was WAY too easy for my Undergeared Level 20 Human Sorc to solo. I mean I did use 2 heal scrolls after the first fight (I rolled a 1 on the first attempt).

[Ziindarax]

First impression - Ran it on elite with two others (a rogue, and a favored soul). It was amazingly easy.

I was able to beat some of the mobs to death with the epic elemental great axe with lich form, and maybe some "standard" melee set up (+3 str item was just barely enough to hit the mobs in there, that's with 10 bab. 13 str is what he had, and GH was mostly enough for his attacks to connect).

The mobs died effortlessly (then again, we were all level 20's running it, and I had the "ideal" gear set up). Not sure how the quest will feel running it at level, but one thing is clear, the mobs have little hp (even on elite).

The map in that quest was non-functional. Additionally, the EXP was rather poor (only 2k exp?).

Here are some suggestions:

1) beef the mobs up a little (but not a whole lot). A psychotic wizard running around with a great axe should not be able to easily (with minimal buffing) kill the mobs in melee (that I could seems to indicate that melee's will have a field day with this quest, as Lasktar's attack speed suffered from an egregious lack of BaB).

2) Edit about traps: I did wait for the rogue to disarm the traps. Traps should be more varied, and random.

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.

[LeLoric]

Before I provide too much feedback, will the Devs check to see if there is some sort of scaling issue on Epic?

Yes it was WAY too easy for my Undergeared Level 20 Human Sorc to solo. I mean I did use 2 heal scrolls after the first fight (I rolled a 1 on the first attempt).

Just soloed this on my self haling ranger lev 20 epic most content melee a few kiting spots. The cultists have less hp than normal shroud orthons.

Devs look at the skellies they are healing from cure serious.

[Culver.Civello]

I think overall it was pretty easy. A well geared character could easily solo this at level, though it does pose it's challenges. I find the bosses pretty fun, and the traps in this quest are interesting. It is a good pugging quest, though I suppose it's easiness suits it being a Free to play quest. I think overall the story was pretty interesting, though once I seen the dead apprentice(or whatever he was) I already knew how rest of it was going to play out. I'd hope for a little more 'spice' to it being a quest introducing us into Forgotten Realms, but maybe I'll see a little more of that throughout the other two quest when they are up. Overall, I'd give it a pretty decent 7/10. The xp seemed kind of on the weak end, but with the quest not being too difficult, I'd suppose it isn't too bad. Maybe a little more? Not too much.

[Grosbeak07]

Ran this with a level 20 cleric.

1. Way too easy.
2. Xp is way too low for a level 16 quest.
3. Somewhat generic looking mobs and traps, hardly paid any attention to them on Normal.

End fight has potential, I liked have Divine Punishment casted on me, but I also dislike this one at time thing, have both end bosses attack at once. The end bosses also need more HP, fort and other ways to slow the party up. Bascially the end fight bosses were really no more difficult than the orange named ones earlier in the quest. This may also be a temporary scaling issue.

The Dungeon however looks cool and has a really good feel. The length and scale feel right and once the mobs get tweeked a bit, I think it could be an excellent opening quest and a fun epic.

[xveganrox]

Ran on elite with my gimp capped rogue. Overall I like some elements of the quest design - the switched hidden behind breakables are always a nice touch in my opinion. Enemies seemed to die very quickly, but I was running it with two other capped characters so that's to be expected. Glad to see traps, but they were very basic and nothing we haven't seen before, and like every other trap in the game they had laughably low DCs, so anyone with any rogue/arti splash at all should get crit-success on a 1 (although that's more a complaint with the state of the game in general than this quest specifically I suppose).

No DM audio or map. Looking forward to playing this series when it is complete, though.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and like everyone else is saying, the base XP is puny.

[sirgog]

This feedback is specific to Epic difficulty. I have not attempted any other setting yet.

Went in solo, on my medium-geared Pale Master. Completed first try with 9 deaths (used 6 or so raise cakes and wandered to shrine the other times) and about 20 store SP pots. No attempt at all was made to conserve SP and I did not use the second shrine. I got 'stuck' at one point until, after searching high and low, I realised there was a lever behind a breakable I had missed.

In its present form, the quest is probably about the same difficulty as a no-optional Epic Snitch, or maybe a little easier. Snitch is arguably the easiest of the epics on live.


This quest can be broken into two parts: the path to the chapel and the chapel itself.

Path to the chapel:

- The only threatening mobs, at all, are the dogs.
- Cultists are CR 23 and only hit for ~40, dogs for ~80 and they appear to trip on Vorpals or maybe all crits. Cultists seem never to save against deathspells (I was only packing a 40 DC) and Energy Drain followed by a Finger almost always took out the dogs. I'd peg their Fort saves as 23 or under (Cultists) and low 30s (Dogs). I never saw the Cultists do anything even remotely dangerous, and they have very low HP.
- Minibosses have sensible amounts of HP (20000 or so) but aren't immune to Energy Drain and have a pretty low Spell Resistance. They should probably be promoted to redname status on Epic at least (or given high-30s SR) - otherwise caster-heavy groups will kill them within 10 seconds by focus-firing Energy Drains.
- With my real gear (not what I had at the time of character copy) and foreknowledge of the quest, I'd be able to just run non-stop to the minibosses (ignoring everything) and then kill it all at once.
- I didn't even cast a single Enchantment spell here despite having a significant offspec in Enchantment on the character (they didn't ever seem necessary). So not sure if Holds or the like stick well.

The Chapel:

- Traps hurt. ~320 damage, Reflex DC 49 half. I had more than one death to them. Some are easily dodged, others are not. And they all hit a larger area than they look like they hit.
- Khyber Jariliths are nasty. These are possibly the toughest trash mobs in any Epic excluding one or two of the toughest casters. They hit like trucks (one hit was for 117 and they swing quickly too), trip, have decent saves, enough SR to matter, and they killed me twice. Not being overly geared, I just used Power Word Kill a couple of times, waiting out the cooldown. Full group, however, these don't strike me as too deadly.
- IMO you should make up your mind: Is this meant to be an easy epic? If so, tone down the Jariliths and the traps. Is this supposed to be a medium-difficulty epic? If so, toughen up the mobs in the road to the chapel. Is this supposed to be a difficult epic? If so, add more Khyber Jariliths to it.

Final Fight

- The skeletons need better saves. Undeath to Death decimates them even at 41 DC (I'd hit a Yugo pot by this stage) and they have very few HP (a 2-stacked Eladar's killed the one that saved). I know these aren't the focus of the fight, but right now they are a joke. Maybe push their Fort saves up to the low 30s so that Undeath to Death is still worth casting, but the fight isn't just ended by two of them.
- The Rakshasa has no metamagics. Even then, his caster level 20 Divine Punishment was nasty, hitting my PM for 50 - I survived by breaking line of sight every time DP had 6 or less seconds left on it (ensuring he could never 2-stack it). His Cometfall was a joke, hitting for only 120. The fight went on a while, but that was only because I lost more than one DOT stack to prioritizing survival over DPS. In a full group this fight will be a cakewalk.
- The Drizzt boss doesn't just hit like a truck, he hits like a freight train (100 per hit, fastest attack speed of any hard-hitting boss in the game except Lailat). He looks like he'd be a total terror to stand toe-to-toe with. After a careless early death I had a lot of trouble staying alive in this fight. However, this boss lacks any way to seriously harm players that are effectively kiting him, assuming they are Hasted, have Jump and the like.
- The final plot twist (the Drizzt's dying words) was great.


Suggestions, if your goal is for this to be an easy epic (like Snitch)

- Tone down traps to 280/DC44 so most players have a fighting chance of surviving two hits. 400/DC50 is fine on the fire trap in the corridor as fire damage is so easily mitigated, but the fire traps in the Rakshasa room should be 280/DC44 at most if you want this to be easy.
- Tone down Khyber Jariliths.
- Drop the Drizzt's damage to something more in line with other Epic bosses that attack fast. (8d12+25 would be appropriate, presently it feels more like 8d20+25).
- Up the saves on the Cultists and the Skeletons to the 25-27 range, so a fresh 20 caster can thin them out noticeably with a Wail/UtD, but the mobs have a fighting chance.

Suggestions, if your goal is for this to be a medium difficulty epic (like VON1)

- Keep traps as-is, maybe upping the corridor fire trap to 550/DC55.
- Power up the Cultists by giving them a mixture of Evil Burst weapons, Improved Cursespewing weapons, and Incineration weapons. Keep them as squishy as they are now in HP so the quest remains fast-moving, but do up their saves to the low 30s.
- Give the skeletons better saves. Not sure how hard they attack as none of them had a chance to swing once in my run.
- Keep Khyber Jariliths as they are.
- Give every Rakshasa a Spell Resistance in the 35-38 range (or promote them to rednamed status)
- Give all the minibosses and bosses Maximize Spell. (Pale Master still hates you, Divine Punishment spammer).
- As for the Drizzt - I'd need to have my Defender on Lamannia to give suggestions here, to see just how hard he rips into you. He desperately needs a way to deal with kiting players - I'd suggest giving him a 40% run speed increase so that he is significantly faster than Hasted players. I'm guessing that he'd then be well-tuned for a 6 player group that gets to him with half SP.

Suggestions, if your goal is for this to be a genuinely difficult epic (like VON3)

- Add mobs to the areas where the traps are encountered. Add traps to the boss fights.
- Power up the Cultists even more, perhaps giving them all Greater Incineration weapons. Keep the low HP - their role is as deadly melee glass cannons, just like VOD's Fire Bat Detonators.
- Add one or more Khyber Jariliths to every miniboss fight
- Give every spellcaster Maximize, Empower and Heighten. Add more of them.
- Have the Drizzt activate when the Rakshasa miniboss falls to 50% hp, but have him be invincible (2000hp/sec regen) while the Rakshasa lives.
- Give the Drizzt an active attack (like Improved Sunder) that lowers Fortification, alongside 15-20/x2 crits. Players might then need to bounce aggro between a main tank and a designated offtank to defeat him.

[FranOhmsford]

Ran it on normal, and it did not register Gnomons death and was not completable:



Vordax

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

Finally!