Underdark, City of Portals, Demonweb.

[DeadRabbat]

These aren't quests but are areas that need comment.
I love the Underdark. Big expanse of fun. A little bit confusing to navigate but awesome in it's endeavor & a great wilderness area just to play around in.
Purple Worms need help still. They start attacking but after about 1 minute, they stop and you can beat on them till they drop. No fun.
Statues in the Garden are still target-able with talk options but no talk & no breaking them. Also noticed 2 stealthed statues? why?
The salamanders are my favorite. They look awesome. Diff skin on the Yuanti but effective none the less.


City Of Portals. Great layout. Fun in all areas.
the Drider rares are still misnamed. The Journals have no text in chat box or pop-up box, but does have DM voice over. I have found 16 of the Journals, but in quest log there is a string table error..so no recollection of whats been collected. I have also come across 6 of the 8 rares & none of them have Loot. Is this WAI? At least make em drop a few epic fragments if nothing else.
Also the map doesn't show up.

The Demonweb. Annoying. Very confusing to navigate and find the right path. No real landmarks and even the Journals are not in any special order it appears. Though through time, the right paths will become second nature... give us something to go by. I have found 5 of the 7 rares. Rrh'gitl, the harvester of souls is pathetic imo. A Glass spider that doesn't seem to attack but lay eggs and get beats on with a lot of hit points. Not very tantalizing to me but boring. I am on a pure monk build, so not sure if that has any say in how in-effective It is.
Again the journals are not appearing in the quest log.

Just pointing these things out. Not sure if it is finished yet or not. I do know between build 3 & 4, the firebrand salamanders went from Kolbolds (yes i was disappointed) to awesomeness.... so lets hope not done yet.

ty.
DR.

[Urjak]

yeah totally love the underdark ... it has exactly the right feeling ... just how one imagines it ... though i think a few smaller passages could be added ... you know natural caverns often change their size in rapid succession, going from the large caverns we currently see in the underdark to super small tunnels often requiring the explorer to crawl^^ ... imo the coolest feature are the high ways ... lots of fun exploring them ... i really hope we get more underdark explorer maps! ... yeah i m serious about that^^ ... maybe a possibility to travel to the lower underdark? ... that would be awesomesauce ... all in all great fun exploring it ... most of my time beta testing i spent in here ... only "negatives" i want to point out:
.) 750 max slayer kills are a joke ... please increase that maximum by A LOT!
.) explorer entry in quest journal is broken ... pls fix it!
.) please somehow indicate where to find sschindylryn ... it really sucks if you use the cavern teleporter instead of the entrance from kings forest and then stand somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the underdark, with no clue that using the kings forest portal gets you closer to sschindylryn and no idea where sschindylryn is ...
.) it would be cool to have more quests in the underdark ... maybe random ones like in kings forest, maybe static ones, maybe semistatic ones (see further below)
.) dunno why the north western purple waterfall section was removed in open beta 1 ... please re-add it ... it was just sooo beautiful
.) also the vast hidden secret area in the south east got removed in open beta 1 ... since it already exists and the underdark can't be big enough IMO please re-add it too and populate it and give it a map^^ ...

kings forest:
this are is really HUGE and there definitely needs to be some indicators of where to find the quests! especially the graveyard one is hard to find ... i mean the quest giver knows where the graveyard is ... please give us a hint where to look for it in the quest description ... all in all nice graphics, though it gets a bit monotone after a while and i still haven't found that cool looking river bend from one of the early promotion screenshots :/ ... apart from that I think "semirandom" quests would be cool, to give players more "to-do" in the forest (see further down)

sschindylryn:
very similiar to underdark ... though imo the city itself seems rather small, and imo no that "drowlike" ... i d imagine more slaves ... orcs, goblin, duergar and bugbear slaves standing guard and hauling goods ... slave markets, ... slums,... I mean sschindylryn isn't exactly a small hamlet^^ ... pls make it feel like a glorious drow city^^

demonweb:
at first a bit confusing ... but one quickly adapts ... the red named right at the beginning seems a bit tough (lots of incomming CC spells) ... apart from that there are definitely some shrines needed! ... it sucks to need to enter the demonweb quests with a half empty blue bar ... also wings are very nice to have in here^^ ... graphics wise its done nicely, but somehow i simply don't get excited about it ... at least by far not as excited as about the underdark

SUGGESTIONS:
don't think anything of this can make it in the x-pack, BUT i would love to see it as part of u15/u16:
.) more underdark areas .. seriously! especially i would love to travel to the hazardous lower underdark^^ ... maybe even discovering some imaskari .... also something i definitely missed so far in the underdark: beholders^^

.) semistatic quests:
this is a new idea i came up with: spread random invisible quest entrances around on the kings forest and underdark map ... every time a new instance of those is created, it is randomely determined which of them are active and to witch semistatic quest they are linked this time ... just like it is determined which rares will spawn this times and where they will spawn ...
those semistatic quests themselves should be short to medium length quests (real instanced quests!) ... they should all share the same named loot (the ones in the underdark should all have the same loot-table ... the one in kings-forest should all have the same one too but not the same as the underdark ones) ... this would IMO make exploring even more fun ... run around until you find a semistatic quest ... run it then move on exploring ... farming stuff from these quests would then be rather fun as well ... why? because no matter which of the semistatic quests you run into first .. it will always have the possibility to drop the item you want ... AND you don't have to farm one and the same quest over and over too ... the quests would ofc be walkups

EDIT:
added a screenshot of the beautiful purple waterfall that got removed in open beta 1 ... please re-add! :O
ScreenShot00028.jpg

[Devonian]

sschindylryn really shoudn't look like a drow city, it was a Koa Toa city that drow took over.

[arkonas]

as i have said before i would like demonweb underdark and kings forest have some sort of ways to find the quests. Seriously most people will give up and leave. others will only find it because someone showed them. We all love the huge areas. Its great that their that big since you can always add quests to it in the future but signs of some sort will make it easier to navigate. in gianthold vale sands they were all divided into sections so it was easy to figure the sections..

in the xpac there is none of that and it's hard to guess which way to go once it starts to blend in. like i said most casual gamers " the bigger population" will skip this area if they cant find their way.

[black_pearl2001]

as i have said before i would like demonweb underdark and kings forest have some sort of ways to find the quests. Seriously most people will give up and leave. others will only find it because someone showed them. We all love the huge areas. Its great that their that big since you can always add quests to it in the future but signs of some sort will make it easier to navigate. in gianthold vale sands they were all divided into sections so it was easy to figure the sections..

in the xpac there is none of that and it's hard to guess which way to go once it starts to blend in. like i said most casual gamers " the bigger population" will skip this area if they cant find their way.

I'm surprised people are having so much trouble finding quest entrances. I found them during routine exploration and their locations seemed quite intuitive but I guess if you go into explorer areas specifically to run quests without having explored the area first it could get frustrating. Personally I find the Vale much more confusing.

[kierg10]

My guildy explored that area for 2-3 hours and only found one quest entrance, for a quest that was one of the greyed out chalices. The new areas are way to large for the number of quests in them. They either need to reduce the size of the maps (probably not a good idea) or make it a lot easier to find the quests.

Although, personally, I am against having quests in wilderness areas.

[Nitesco]

Anyone got a map of the Underdark? One that's not hidden on the Beta/VIP part of the forums. One that can be viewed by anyone, even if they don't have DDO installed or a DDO account?

[sirgog]

I really do not like feeling that I need to consult external information sources to get to quests.

[Nitesco]

I really do not like feeling that I need to consult external information sources to get to quests.

Me either, but I don't have blocks of hours at a time to wander around these areas looking. I'm on a time budget.

[RandomKeypress]

The wiki is your friend:

http://ddowiki.com/page/The_Underdark

[RandomKeypress]

Uh, back on topic, I agree that the Underdark can be lovely in places and it does make a stark contrast to the King's Forrest.

One of my problem is the maze-like structure where the map isn't much use - trying to get the explorer done was very time-consuming. The other is the lousy exp - you get very similar awards for incrementally difficult achievements.

Exp / kill goes: 277.5 for first 10, 249 for the next 15, 201 for the next 25 and then 146 for the next 50. Releasing slaves has a similar curve. It is just not worth your time to do anything in there except opening Sschindylryn and getting to the belly of the beast.


Loved Sschindylryn, but cannot find three explorer scrolls - I don't think anyone else has found them either.

Haven't properly explored the demonweb yet, but it looks like another underdark at least as far as mapping is concerned...

[Nitesco]

The wiki is your friend:

http://ddowiki.com/page/The_Underdark

Thanks, I found this too in the meantime. It was just uploaded in the last day or so.

[Kits]

Thanks, I found this too in the meantime. It was just uploaded in the last day or so.

Yes I uploaded it to the wiki yesterday, and had you not been quite so rude in your other thread I might have told you about it.

[Nitesco]

I had already found on on Google in the meantime. I was just following up with my posts for the community. You had no impact on my gameplay whatsoever.