Challenges! With Steelstar!

[Steelstar]

Steelstar here, your local Challenge dev!

We're looking for more feedback on the new Challenges in the Eveningstar Challenge Pack, especially the Dryad Grove Challenges. I'll be on Lamannia TODAY, Tuesday, June 19th at 4:00 PM Eastern (-4 GMT) to observe some Challenge runs and ask/answer some questions.

Some specific things we're looking for:
- How is the difficulty as a Solo player (or Solo with one hireling)?
- How is the difficulty as a full 6-person party?
- How does the pacing of this Challenge feel? (Too much downtime? Not enough?)
- Were you able to understand the rules and mechanics of the Challenge easily?

Hope to see you there! In the chat, use /joinchannel challenges to jump into the conversation!

[WolfSpirit]

I have played them earlier this month and enjoyed them. The tree Guarding was a little tougher for me at lv solo with hire on 20 Artificer.
I more enjoyed the mass attacks of the guarding the Wizard one. MUCH less running around unless chasing an optional. This style defenatly favors the soloist.
I know you wanted some fresh and more complex input tonight but it looks like its not up for me again.
Once I can, I'll run these again. I enjoy the challenges in all their flavors. Unfortunitly it looks like Im not able to again tonight. But when I am, I will give my views.

[Steelstar]

I have played them earlier this month and enjoyed them. The tree Guarding was a little tougher for me at lv solo with hire on 20 Artificer.
I more enjoyed the mass attacks of the guarding the Wizard one. MUCH less running around unless chasing an optional. This style defenatly favors the soloist.
I know you wanted some fresh and more complex input tonight but it looks like its not up for me again.
Once I can, I'll run these again. I enjoy the challenges in all their flavors. Unfortunitly it looks like Im not able to again tonight. But when I am, I will give my views.

Thanks for the input, WolfSpirit! Glad to hear you enjoy them.

[Frotz]

I've done the tree-guarding one once solo (with hire), at 17th level, with my fighter. I guess I completed it successfully, but there were a couple red-names running around still beating on things at the end because I couldn't kill things fast enough or be in two places at once.

For the Keep mage-guarding, when solo it's annoying that there's not time to run off and get the ballista parts and supply crates without a good run-speed boost between waves. I guess I could have used a Haste pot to help me run faster, but I thought either there'd be enough time of the knights could hang on long enough for me to get back; I was wrong. The one optional seemed pretty durn invincible to me, again solo with a 17th lvl fighter. That's both absolutely and compared to the other mobs. That may or may not be by design--I don't know--but I wouldn't want to touch him again solo unless I were ripping through everything else like wet tissue paper.

The Arena ones were fine solo (17th lvl fighter, w/ hire), but again I found the optional much harder than a wave; didn't help that the next wave showed up before he was down too. No idea what the optional red-names are like with a full group in the challenges, though. Even if I just generally suck the relative difference is still there, but again that may be intentional that one shouldn't touch the optionals solo unless the rest is trivial.

[fourrumtest]

i tried them under lvl, dislike them as much as other challenges.

[barecm]

I like challenges for the loot. Unfortunately, I am not a fan of the loot system for this one. Too much grind for something random. No thanks. Challenge quests are fun the first time or two, but do not hold replayability like other traditional quests. So, if the loot system is going to be this random thing, then I cannot be in favor regardless of the actual quest mechanics.

FWIW I like them better than leading a bunch of low AI kobolds around by a string. But, at the end of the day, it is all about the loot... random = bad

Ran all of them.

Solo, at level 21 and again at lvl 25.
They were relatively fun, but not overly challenging.
The challenge rules seemed straight forward engouh
I don't like the loot system.... in case that didn't get through.