Almost two years later, I revisit Necropolis IV...

[knightgf]

Revisiting the Horror of Necropolis IV...

It's been nearly 2 years since I made my rant about how bad Necropolis IV sucked and how much I hated it. Between the changes that went on with DDO, as well as the changes to the Necropolis IV area itself and my own personal changes, I decided to revisit the Necropolis IV area and give it another chance. And believe it or not, it actually has gotten better in some aspects! But that doesn't mean I am about to start giving it nothing but praise and glory, however! Read on, and I will begin to tell you my two cents about what shines of holiness and what stinks of undead doo-doo, complete from the beginning quests to the end raid!

The glorious good.

To begin with, the recent changes to the Necropolis IV area are quite good. It is nice that you no longer need to grind for items there as much, and quite a bit of the items, including the raid items themselves, have gotten to be more powerful. Plus, the difficulty seems to have been toned down just a bit, partly because the characters themselves have gained more power, and also because direct changes have been made to various quests. And as always, the experience is good for it's level. The pre-raid has a unique NPC enemy that switches weapons, which isn't something you see every day in DDO, even if he does it in a predetermined manner. The raid itself is also unique, if you can bear with the buggy mechanics and high level of teamwork needed to pull through the challenges you face.

The blood-screaming bad.

This is where my rant begins. I guess to start off with, this place is heavily caster biased in terms of challenge. It's not just a Necropolis IV problem either, its mostly a game problem (Which maybe ill discuss in another thread) but the bottom line is, if your not a spellcaster, or not grouped with one, then the difficulty of the Necropolis will be raised moreso than usual, and I would recommend at least getting a healing hireling in your group if you don't have one for the pre-raid quests.

Another rant to focus on is some of the pre-quests have mechanics that suck. The first quest ill focus on is Inferno of the Damned. In this quest, you have to navigate a maze that has two sides to it, in which you keep changing sides to get to your goal. My first complaint has to be, "Why do we have to attack something to get to the other side?" Seriously, why not just take a portal? Why do I have to waste time attacking something that, when it explodes, takes me to the other side as a portal would? Its just monotonous. The maze itself is also difficult to navigate without a guide; you could be doing this quest for 2+ hours if nobody knows what they're doing. Luckily, that tends to be rare, and plus, I doubt Turbine will do anything to fix it.

Flesh Maker's Laboratory could definately use a few changes. For one, the electric traps close to the end of the quest could use some tweaking, as it seems that people tend to get hit by the traps even when they're not in range, and that can be a problem on elite. Plus, when you do the rune activation at the end, why do the runes deactivate after a certain amount of time? It just doesn't make sense. I never checked if they updated it or not (because I believe Turbine's description of quest difficulties is inaccurate and often wrongly categorized) but I would definitely recommend, if not require bringing along three people for this quest, or two if your quite experienced. Temple of Vol is ok, though maybe the traps could be polished just a bit, and I definitely want to say something about Ghosts of Perdition, but I can't quite explain what's wrong with it.

The flagging quest is what I really hate in Necropolis IV. It SUCKS. Oh by the silver flame, does it suck. Why does it suck, you ask? Well, its not too bad in the beginning, until you get to the part where the chests are trapped. Once you find out the chests are trapped, you have to pull this lever to start this ENORMOUS waste of time to get a gate to open. It just takes so freaking long, and to top it off, monsters, including quells, constantly spawn to add more to your stress. The best way to put how annoying it is to wait for what could possibly be Ebberon's first-ever lever mechanism that opens a gate is like this:

*Pulls lever*

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*Clank clank*


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Come on!


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Is this going to effin open or what!?


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Why isn't anything happening? Am I stuck? Comeon!


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DM voice: The first crystal signal ignites, sending shudders throughout the mausoleum!


But that's just one crystal!


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*More clanking and raking*


If you didn't get it already: The wait to open the gate is a WASTE OF TIME and SUCKS HARD. If anything, the duration for the gate to open should be shortened a LOT, or it should open much faster if you kill a bunch of those monsters that spawn. Once you get past the gate and the monsters, then you have to navigate this weird drop maze. It might seem simple at first, but you REALLY have to move in this maze or else you'll get blasted with force. On lower difficulties, its no big deal, but on higher difficulties, it could one-shot you, and don't even bring a hireling through it because they'll just stand there and get killed! If you get there, try to move as one, and park hirelings at the top until you get down.

Another one of Litany of the Dead's greatest flaws is the riddle part. If you've never done this part before, your better let someone who has, and if your unlucky enough to have nobody in your party that has, well your totally screwed, unless you roleplay as a lawful good, lawful evil, chaotic good or chaotic evil character, and even then, you might be. What happens is you collapse through the floor in a cage. Then you awake a dragon, who asks you a series of questions, which relate to good/evil, law/good, and then both. If you screw up more than once on the three series of questions or the final question, your screwed, because your party will be blasted with a acid dragon breath that INSTANTLY kills everyone, regardless of protections, and pretty much fails the quest, as it puts up a barrier at the beginning to prevent reentry.

If you do get lucky or know the riddle, then don't recall just yet, unless your farming XP. What you have to do is navigate a corridor that you unlocked based on the type of riddle you answered successfully and after some battling, face off against a boss of some sort. While the beholder boss and Mentau boss are really difficult, and while the the other two bosses are fine, what really gets to me are some of these characters! Seriously, a Lawful Good beholder? How in the Sovereign Host is the beholder a Lawful Good one!? If anything, I actually thought it was chaotic evil with the way it attacks you in Ghosts of Perdition. It just does not make sense how the beholder acts as it does, I don't even understand it at times. It feels so weird how they chicken out on you a second time as well, and don't you basically kill all of them in the end? So, if im getting this right, you have to recruit some allies to your cause, and then just before you get to unlock the Abbot's chamber, they turn on you, and can't be redeemed even when you destroy the crystal that guards them? *Mind blown*.

Oh, and I might add that once you kill the boss and loot, you better not recall out yet, because then you have to go through a door nearby and destroy a crystal, making you 'flagged' for that part. And you have to do this four times. I am not making this up. You have to go through the ENORMOUS waste of time near the beginning so the gate can let you through, navigate a maze with finesse, answer a BS riddle that you could only answer by looking it up in a guide or roleplaying well enough, then navigate another corridor that may or may not have a BS boss, then destroy a crystal at LEAST four times. It will really test your patience if your going to flag for this, even as a TR.

And now, we get to the final presentation: The Ascension Chamber! Before you think about running this raid, don't bother running it at level. Like the Shroud and other raids, its in no way, shape or form to be run below or near level 17 because of how difficult the enemies are and such. And as I said before, it is a unique raid, but I swear its cursed because even from the very beginning, it has had dangerous bugs and mind-boggling mechanics. I'll spare you most of the details and encourage you to read up the previous versions on the DDO wiki, but I will add that if they never fixed the bug where you could throw a Greensteel or other type of weapon in the asteroids room, I would never run that raid for the risk.

The BS that gets to me in that raid is mostly the bugs and a few curveballs the abbot throws at you in the puzzles. The invisible asteroids in the asteroids room ****es me off, and the wands can either missfire and screw you over when you land in the water or you could miss and not be able to jump back up. Not to mention the tile puzzle can take a REALLY long time to get over if you want to do it right, as the puzzle combinations can be confusing. For these and other reasons, this raid is NOTORIOUS for not being friendly to pick up groups. If you go in and don't know what to do, your screwed. You might as well turn back around and exit the raid to spare yourself the trouble. You'll definitely need some in-game experience in addition to reading up about the raid because the raid has that feel that can only be known when you experience it successfully. Oh, and if you beat it, one chest. Yup, that's right, just one insignificant chest that has no visual appeal whatsoever. So lame.

And I gotta end with how lame some of the NPC responses are, specifically the main NPC that gives you the quest for the raid and such. His responses tend to be pretty lame, especially when you beat the raid. Rather than saying his lame stuff, I just think that when you beat the raid and get your reward, he should only say, "Congratulations. You have survived." Just to mock his poor dialogue. Nothing else. Just that.

That which could have been: Improvements.

I guess if anything, Litany of the Dead needs some major tweaking. The three things I absolutely cannot tolerate is the enormous time grind after you discover the trapped chests, the subtlety of the riddle, and flagging for the raid. If anything, I believe that once you successfully answer a riddle, you should be flagged for Ascension chamber, period. It shouldn't be rocket science to flag for it!

The raid definately needs difficulty tweaking. Im fine with seals dropping only on hard/elite, as well as a much better chance of loot on elite, but I believe if anything, it should be clearer what players have to do. I say make normal a 'tutorial' difficulty, having either a DM or in-game readables explain more about the puzzles and lowering the consequences for failing these puzzles. And of course, hard and elite put you to the test. Not to mention level 17? There's no way in ebberon a level 17 will run it! Im not sure how exactly to fix the problem of end-game raids being run like this, but I suppose one could go at it with pickable levels, though that would require some good tweaking to both not be abused and to be useful.

Most of the regular quests are ok, save for some fine-tuning that could be used, and the rewards are nice now that they're revamped, but the graphics kinda make me want to hurl. I know the land is supposed to be dead and such, but the quality of how dead it is could be better.

The inevitable conclusion.

As hard as it may be for some to believe, the pack has gotten better. It still needs some major work, and I still hate it, but for those who love battling undead, or for those who are TR's and need XP or even those who are in a guild that does a lot of abbot runs, this might be for you. For everyone else, I recommend caution buying this, and I definitely will say buy it when its on sale. 895 or so TP for this is too steep. If there's one pack that could use a facelift, this pack is it, Turbine. Give it the love you have given gianthold.

[ZeebaNeighba]

All I can say, is get rid of the bad repetition requirements for flagging. Run each of the orchard quests once and be flagged for litany, no sigil bs. Litany should be like Gianthold Tor, when you finish one boss, you can go straight to the next boss instead of having to repeat the whole quest again and then go to the next boss.

[sirgog]

I don't see why people complain about the medium difficulty maze in Inferno of the Damned but I don't see similar threads for the comparable difficulty mazes in Maze of Madness, Trial By Fury, VON2 with the epic-only adjustment to the maze, or a couple of others. It takes an hour to solve yourself, then you know it well and can do 7-8 minute runs.

I do share your dislike of the three minute Litany lever and the end rooms of Fleshmakers, but overall I'm a fan of Necro 4.

[sirgog]

All I can say, is get rid of the bad repetition requirements for flagging. Run each of the orchard quests once and be flagged for litany, no sigil bs. Litany should be like Gianthold Tor, when you finish one boss, you can go straight to the next boss instead of having to repeat the whole quest again and then go to the next boss.

You only need to run each quest 3 times max in your group for everyone to have a full sigil and a lot of pieces to spare. The flagging is MASSIVELY better than pre-U17 Gianthold was with the relics.

[Kilbar]

All I can say, is get rid of the bad repetition requirements for flagging. Run each of the orchard quests once and be flagged for litany, no sigil bs. Litany should be like Gianthold Tor, when you finish one boss, you can go straight to the next boss instead of having to repeat the whole quest again and then go to the next boss.

But... But then how would Turbine sell so many Spell Point pots? Won't somebody think of the devs???

[Hafeal]

I don't mind Inferno or the other flagging quests except Fleshmakers - the final room requires most people to have at least 2 others who know what to do to get it done.

The pre-raid irks me only as far as the force traps. For as few times as I run that thing, I inevitably turn the wrong way and die. This is designed for grind players not casual players as it is very unforgiving. And waiting for someone to get your stone is as boring as waiting for the gate.

The raid? Run it successfully less than 5 times (all PUGS). Besides the utterly ridiculous flagging. it took me almost 3 years after the raid to find enough random poeple in a PUG to get a completion.

My Bottom line:

1) Streamline flagging; and
2) Make Abbott, and all raids, scale to 'at level', first life, non-geared players for normal difficulty.

[Qhualor]

I solo xp farmed the typical way in Litany earlier tonight and I actually thought the fight where the clanky lever was shorter than normal. I feel like there usually are more spawns and the time was double it actually took me. I must have had to deal with 1/2 a dozen or so mobs that took seconds to beat down, even on elite. total completion time was average 10 minutes on hard and almost 20 minutes on elite. im a bit more cautious on elite or I could have shaved off 5 minutes. also, I tried invis running for devious which made the fake chest fight more interesting as I had to deal with ALL the mobs I ran past and yellow alert.

GOP does need to be fixed in order to get proper xp bonus. you cant get ransack even if you break everything in there.

Fleshmakers is now better with air eles toned down a bit. you still can get tossed like a rag doll, but there is a better buffer zone for melees now. much improved.

not a fan of Inferno just because I don't like alt tabbing constantly to read wiki so I know where to go in there. some parts I remember, some parts I don't without looking at wiki, but I just assume join a group with a guide. because of alt tabbing and the difficulty for me to know the route, that's also why I don't solo the underwater Necro maze quest. other than that, the quest is fine and its something different than your normal "run through a quest. KILL! KILL! KILL! loot".

Vol I have nothing bad to say. the traps are fine. if you can equip/cast blurry, the darts have a chance to miss you. by timing the darts and jumping along the way, I usually don't get hit much.

[Onetunge]

With the exception of Abbot raid, rest of necro 4 is great. Don't chenge it. But do change raid a bit.

I don't see how you complain about waiting 3 min in Litany. On hard it's a 7 min run (with 2 ppl group) which gave me 17k exp on the first run. I reallydon't see anything I need to complain.
Long waste of time doing 4 bosses you say. Well flagging isn't supposed to be easy.
Quests have nothing to be changed. Maybe only to add trap box for ele trap in Fleshmaker. other than that quests are OK the way they are. Some are tough, but if you want to stroll throu quests and get to lvl20 with no efort what-so-ever, maybe Sim City is a game more suited for you.

[Klixen]

Charming or suggestion makes fleshmakers lab much easier at the end.

But the total amount of time spent flagging is still reasonable in my view. Try flagging for Vex Tal in Everquest at Luclin release for a lesson in futility.

[Vellrad]

For me this pack got 3 huge flaws:

-air elementals.
no comment needed, everyone hates them

-cast a specific spell to complete quest
this is plain wrong. period

-need to relog to get rid of orchard music.
the music is great and fitting the orchard theme, but after teleporting, it is played with another musics (for example, orchard and crafting hall themes at once)

[Milfeulle]

I always solo Litany about 10 times each life for xp and I actually love the 3 minute wait. If you act fast enough to pull the lever and invis yourself, mobs won't see you at all and they just stand there and do nothing, so I can use this 3 minute of free time to do some other stuff. If you just kill the mobs at the beginning and mobs in Kei-Teng room (a few more is fine, no more than around 20 I think), you'll get a sweet 7% xp bonus as well. Total time is about 5 minutes if you're very experienced. Hope this would help.

[Sweyn]

The maze itself is also difficult to navigate without a guide; you could be doing this quest for 2+ hours if nobody knows what they're doing. Luckily, that tends to be rare, and plus, I doubt Turbine will do anything to fix it.
There's maps and guides online
Plus, when you do the rune activation at the end, why do the runes deactivate after a certain amount of time? It just doesn't make sense.
The point of that is so you have to bring multiple people to complete, just like many other quests in the game.
Once you find out the chests are trapped, you have to pull this lever to start this ENORMOUS waste of time to get a gate to open. It just takes so freaking long
It's 3 minutes

If you didn't get it already: The wait to open the gate is a WASTE OF TIME and SUCKS HARD.
We got it, your point is invalid.
Another one of Litany of the Dead's greatest flaws is the riddle part. If you've never done this part before, your better let someone who has, and if your unlucky enough to have nobody in your party that has, well your totally screwed, unless you roleplay as a lawful good, lawful evil, chaotic good or chaotic evil character, and even then, you might be.
"Flaw"? That riddle is probably one of the most ingenious things in the game. If you don't know it there is a guide online
It will really test your patience if your going to flag for this, even as a TR.
More raids should have complex flagging systems like this one. Zerging trough a few quests on casual to get flagged for a big raid just seems stupid to me. If the devs want to implement flagging, they should at least do it right and put some thought into it. And they got it right with this one.
If you go in and don't know what to do, your screwed.
you're*

I absolutely cannot tolerate is the enormous time grind after you discover the trapped chests
Three minutes is not an enormous grind.

I still hate it
You've made that pretty clear.
If there's one pack that could use a facelift, this pack is it, Turbine.
This is one of the best designed and thought out packs in the game, both questwise and storywise. There are a handful of packs in this game that are way worse.

Necropolis is one of the best packs and one of the most well thought out in the game. These packs actually require thought, intuition, and player skill. Every thing you see now-a-days can be completed with brute force if your character is all maxed out with epic destinies and gear. Raids like Abbot and Titan are awesome because they require you to think and not just be in "auto pilot" mode. Yeah new quests on high difficulty are challenging, but not in the same way these quests are. If more quests and raids were like this, this game would be a lot more fun to play.

[sirgog]

For me this pack got 3 huge flaws:
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-cast a specific spell to complete quest
this is plain wrong. period
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Experiment with other ways to light or extinguish fires. You can solo Inferno on a Barbarian with no UMD or clickies. All that having Icestorm and Fireball does is speed up the process.

[Qhualor]

I always solo Litany about 10 times each life for xp and I actually love the 3 minute wait. If you act fast enough to pull the lever and invis yourself, mobs won't see you at all and they just stand there and do nothing, so I can use this 3 minute of free time to do some other stuff. If you just kill the mobs at the beginning and mobs in Kei-Teng room (a few more is fine, no more than around 20 I think), you'll get a sweet 7% xp bonus as well. Total time is about 5 minutes if you're very experienced. Hope this would help.

no more than 58 kills for devious 7% xp and invis is broken atm. I tried yesterday and didn't work. normally, that's how I do it too though.

[Phidius]

All I can say, is get rid of the bad repetition requirements for flagging. Run each of the orchard quests once and be flagged for litany, no sigil bs. Litany should be like Gianthold Tor, when you finish one boss, you can go straight to the next boss instead of having to repeat the whole quest again and then go to the next boss.

Love it.

...what really gets to me are some of these characters! Seriously, a Lawful Good beholder? How in the Sovereign Host is the beholder a Lawful Good one!? If anything, I actually thought it was chaotic evil with the way it attacks you in Ghosts of Perdition. It just does not make sense how the beholder acts as it does, I don't even understand it at times.
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Agreed. At the very least, Cholthulzz should stop attacking your in GoP once he drops down to the last level, instead of continuing to fight until you've almost killed him, then begged off using the excuse of needing to get out of the Abbot's range.

[Jaid314]

my opinion: the pack could use a bit more explaining.

for example, there's not really anything to indicate to a first-time player last i checked that the dragon in litany is challenging you to give the responses that one specific NPC would give. nor, for that matter, is the alignment of those NPCs ever clearly shown that i am aware of. the riddle, in a way, explains a lot of things that happen in the quests, but only really hints at a lot of them imo.

another example is what exactly the NPCs you're supposed to be getting help from actually do. you get them to agree to help you, then suddenly you have to fight them for no visible reason, then when you go fight the abbot... ummm... where are my freaking allies?!?!?!?!

you know how long the abbot would last if that stupid beholder would just focus an antimagic ray on him? or floated across the bloody huge gap in goggles? meanwhile cinnis should be smashing asteroids, and mr vampire priest should be swimming in ice (he's undead, should be enough to protect him), shrugging off the non-silver trapped arrows, and regenerating what little damage he takes. and mentau should be showing up at the door with a small army of flesh golems to kick the crud out of the random trash mobs. cinnis... well, cinnis we should just destroy. dude's main goal is to blow up all the things, and frankly fighting him is nearly a joke, and the only thing i can say about his minions is that they're a damned nuisance with their refusal to stay dead. how is that a useful ally? hell, why is he even 'helping' (if you can call "doing absolutely nothing whatsoever" helping) in the first place?

[NytCrawlr]

I do share your dislike of the three minute Litany lever and the end rooms of Fleshmakers, but overall I'm a fan of Necro 4.

Yup, don't get the Necro 4 hate. I disliked it at first, but then I ran all the quests solo a few times to get the feel of them so I wouldn't feel rushed and now it is one of my favorite packs.

It could use a few more improvements, but overall it is one of the better areas IMO.

[sirgog]

my opinion: the pack could use a bit more explaining.

for example, there's not really anything to indicate to a first-time player last i checked that the dragon in litany is challenging you to give the responses that one specific NPC would give. nor, for that matter, is the alignment of those NPCs ever clearly shown that i am aware of. the riddle, in a way, explains a lot of things that happen in the quests, but only really hints at a lot of them imo.

another example is what exactly the NPCs you're supposed to be getting help from actually do. you get them to agree to help you, then suddenly you have to fight them for no visible reason, then when you go fight the abbot... ummm... where are my freaking allies?!?!?!?!

you know how long the abbot would last if that stupid beholder would just focus an antimagic ray on him? or floated across the bloody huge gap in goggles? meanwhile cinnis should be smashing asteroids, and mr vampire priest should be swimming in ice (he's undead, should be enough to protect him), shrugging off the non-silver trapped arrows, and regenerating what little damage he takes. and mentau should be showing up at the door with a small army of flesh golems to kick the crud out of the random trash mobs. cinnis... well, cinnis we should just destroy. dude's main goal is to blow up all the things, and frankly fighting him is nearly a joke, and the only thing i can say about his minions is that they're a damned nuisance with their refusal to stay dead. how is that a useful ally? hell, why is he even 'helping' (if you can call "doing absolutely nothing whatsoever" helping) in the first place?

The Abbot has some hold over all of the bosses in Litany.

For Cholthuzz it's a contract. For Mentau it's his daughter (the Abbot has kidnapped her or something). For Cinnis it's just that the Abbot is bigger, badder and meaner. Not so sure on the High Priest, his dialogue gives less hints.

But basically you recruited allies, then the Abbot turns around and pulls out a big trump card against each of your new allies and forces them to fight for him.

[phalaeo]

Seriously, a Lawful Good beholder? How in the Sovereign Host is the beholder a Lawful Good one!?

How are there Good Drow? Welcome to Eberron, I hope you enjoy your stay.

Look, everyone has a pack they don't like. I despise running Threnal. But do you know what?

You don't have to run it.

Your post was far from a review and read more like a whiny kid who's screaming that his life is over because mom served broccoli instead of corn for dinner. There was not a lot of constructive criticism.

The things you list as being annoying qualities of the pack are what the rest of us call "quest mechanics". That's why we play DDO- levers, puzzles, mazes, observational tactics.

I'm not saying that you have no right to your opinion, but with such an unrelenting, ranting diatribe, it seems obvious that Turbine would have to re-code an entire pack before you're happy. That ain't happening, so I'm left wondering why you put so much time into bashing a quest line that the majority of the DDO population seems to like just fine.

[Infant]

The flagging sucks -- too random. Each quest 1x on elite should be enough to flag for Litany.

The quests themselves are great! Fleshmaker is a bit boring...