The Official Brothers of the Forge Discussion Thread!

[oberon131313]

Please use this thread to discuss the House Cannith Quest: Brothers of the Forge

[oberon131313]

Ran the quest yesterday; here is some feedback.

The quest itself is fairly interesting, though I'm admittedly annoyed at having another quest "below the Mournland" without any of the associated Mournland's effects. (I'd give you all puppies for a Mournland explorer zone, btw)

The repair drones have WAY too many hitpoints, and are too slow to repair. I didn't notice them once attempting to repair anything but themselves, and even then, they'd really only attempt to repair themselves when they got to around ~20%-30% health.

The spotter drone was interesting, but not at all a threat. With the changes to AC, this bot will only affect a very small percentage of players. Maybe give him a fort debuff as well to make him more of a threat.

Quest itself seemed very long for the xp payout.

The explosion was a huge surprise, and took me down to exactly 1 health. I don't know if that's how it effects everyone or if I was just lucky in my number of hitpoints, but there really was no warning (that I saw) that it was coming; The DM text coincided with the damage, so I only had time to read the first word before I realized I was at 1 hitpoint. If the trap is just straight damage, maybe give the player more warning so that this doesn't become a "only if you know" trap.

End fight was nothing special.

Overall, I kept waiting for this quest to have some "wow" factor, and it really just didn't.

I didn't find one of the optional wf guys, so not sure if that had any special effect (xp, treasure, etc)

No named loot dropped.

Bug wise, I noticed a switch that was placed backwards, and a couple of switches that you had to really jump to in order to get them "unblocked" by geometry. I also received no end reward list for this quest, though that may just indicate that the loot for that list isn't ready (assuming it's using the same mechanic as the storm horns quests with a set reward list).

I also have no idea what the switches did, but I'm ok with that if there was some purpose I just didn't figure out yet.

[Saaluta]

Ran this and pretty much had the same experience as Oberron, although I did find some of the fallen brothers, I did not find them all, so not sure if extra chest for finding them all or not. Did find a red named scorpion and a red named drone, so 3 chests total for me. No end reward as well. Also found some switches that seemed to have no purpose whatsoever and one switch was on both the front and back of the box...and both kept saying blocked so let them be.

Also one of the dogs in end fight seemed to be stuck and could not be hit except with my long range GMOF group attack.

Saal

[Amarath]

Mostly the same for me. This one was a cakewalk I didn't use a single pot the whole trip no hires either, just my death aura.
The only time I took even half a second to worry about my hp was that crazy explosion outta nowhere. even then I still had
~300+ hp and no mobs to worry about. I did notice that explosion must have an insane range two of the iron golems a room
behind me got taken out by the boom. Those repair drones are just irritating they take forever to drop and they do nothing.
The drones that put the laser pointer on you are amusing but I felt no need to even bother with them. You have to stand
just so to interact with several of the switches. There is a iron defender dog in the boss fight that does nothing. I only
found random loot gen in the chests and no end reward at all. I did like the quest overall it feels different from most others
but it also felt a little easy and the bugs took it down a star as well.

[Saaluta]

Went through a second time and found all but one of the fallen friends. I found an area where I think they might be found, but as I was having jump lag problems(pretty sure it is between my laptop and wireless router, but no idea how to fix it, besides hard-wiring straight from laptop to router), so was unable to check it out.

It seems that Telebron can get bugged out after the bomb if you are soloing and die. Thought I was out of blast radius, but took about 900 pts damage after resists, etc. on epic normal. Would be glad to go back in tomorrow with someone with good jumping skills to check the area out to verify my theory

Although it would be nice if the pipes were grabbable....so basically devs, need to make pipes grabbable for those with minor lag problems and give us a way to restart Telebron if he happens to get stuck somewhere, like the meeting Ana at the shrine feature from Lost Thread quest or the "hey let's go" feature from the escort mission in harper quests. I must say it is nice to have a NPC that can take care of himself, and will even throw a buff on you if it is needed

Saal

[oradafu]

I had pretty much the same experience that everyone else had.

I ran this on Epic Normal on a pure Paladin and a few hirelings, such as the Onyx Panther and Owlbear.

Yes, this is a very long quest with very little XP reward. Even with the two optionals (about 2.5k xp) that I found, the XP is horrible for this quest.

The quest itself isn't much different from what we've been getting since Druid's Deep. Enter room, kill everything, find item to advance by going to another room and kill everything. In fact, it's just a Druid's Deep quest with Constructs/Scorpions instead of Plants/Animals/Abberation/Human End Boss. And much like the Druid's Deep quest, outside of the end boss, a pure Paladin might as well be swinging a bagette at all the mobs since the damage would be exactly the same.

As others mentioned, the Spotter was interesting but harmless. If this was pre-AC changes or even a mob found in the lower heroics, then it might be a threat. Instead, it's just a bag of hitpoints that moves about.

The Repair Bot has way too many Hit Points. I'm guessing it's just a reskinned Stormhorn Giant.

One thing I did like was that the optional bodies aren't always in the same place when you enter the quest. Finally the Devs are using a pre-existing mechanic from the lower levels (in this case Stromvauld's Mine)... Too bad they couldn't do the same thing with Secret Doors in the last update. Speaking of Secret Doors, I was unable to enter the Secret Doors because of the above said mechanic. Again, another recent horrible change to the game for no real reason but ego stroking.

I didn't get hit with a big explosion. In fact the only big explosion I remember in the whole quest was to advance the quest about 1/2 through. You know, after killing some stuff. (Retire this mechanic already. It was overabused with Druid's Deep and yet it's still in every update since).

No named loot. And no end reward. Maybe it's there, maybe not. I'm pretty certain that there will be no unique Docent dropping in a Cannith quest (again). Of course, after seeing what passes as special armor in the Shadowfell "expansion", that might actually be a good thing.

And yes, no WOW factor as Oberon131313 put it. And yes, Mournland would have been an interesting place to explore. Much more interesting than what we got in the Shadowfell "expansion".

This will probably be a run once and done quest. Too long. Bad XP. Nothing special. A Study in Sable was definitely the better of the two quests, by miles.

[Urjak]

First: The bugs:

.) If you disable the Magefire Cannons before the endfight (right in front of the door to the Elite Training Room), the quest becomes impossible to complete, because you cannot enter the door (spent approximately 30 minutes running through the quest looking if I forgot anything until I gave up ... in second run I just killed them and tadaa was able to proceed to boss fight)
.) Speeking of bugged doors: in the endfight room both doors are bugged (didn't find a way to "unbug" them so far) - the exit door with the orange swirl does not work and the door back to the previous stuff doesn't work either (even after the quest finished ... so no going back checking for other fallen comrades once you enter boss room, except if you got ddoor. And from a logical point of view there is no reason at all why one should be prevented from going back O_o)
.) The unfunctional levers are totally buggy: First they don't seem to have any use at all and second some of them are incredibly hard to activate (geometry wise).
.) The trap boxes for the Magefire Cannons in the first "console room" cannot be disabled because of geometry issues (they are always blocked)
.) The trap box at:You are at: "r1 lx1808 ly16 i4 cInside ox-43.72 oy190.88 oz-216.34 h167.3" also cannot be disabled because of geometry issues.

Second: Design:

.) Whoever thought an unavoidable trap hitting for ~700 damage TWICE on epic normal is fun: it is not -.- Second time I ran this I already knew the blast was coming and thus moved as far away as I could - BAM blast ... lying on my back with my full hp + temp hp ... so around ~850 hp ... I think "Cool if you move away you can actually survive this!" ... a second later, my hp get reduced to around ~150 ... I think "Well okay ... you can't avoid it ... at least I survived" ... another second later *ding* dead -.- ... and that on epic normal? Seriously: not fun!
.) Story: IMO the quest starts very interestingly. I read all the DM text and was excited what would come next. Then I reached the endfight ... and it was just one line of DM text - and such a rly poor choice too? I mean couldn't you have come up with something creative?

Third: Summary:

The quest starts cool and ends abruptly with a really boring ending. Except for a totally insane explosion (a total of around ~1300 damage ... on epic normal??? Are we now supposed to have 1500+ hp on each and every toon? O_o), the quest is super easy ... I think during the whole quest (except for the rez cake after the explosion) I cast cocoon 4 times ... no other healing used ... and yes some of the drones have weirdly high hp ... one should think that a huge golem should have the huge hp pool ... not the tiny drone lol.

Also I can't help pondering about the end: Basically this quest is about war veteran with a heavy case of PTSD, who then decides to run amok and kill all his comrades. IMO neither actual war nor PTSD are "fun" and considering DDO was always a more "children-friendly" fun game and not a serious war-ego-shooter for adults only, I just wonder how this theme fits in? ... Well maybe its just me ... simply reminds me way too much of actual RL issues way too many people have to suffer from (thank god not me) ...

TL;DR:

This quest has tons of bugs, whereby at least one can hinder quest completion. Storyline starts well, ends boring and the theme's appropriateness for the usual DDO audience might be questionable.

[SqueakofDoom]

Thank you Oberon131313 for starting the thread on Friday! This is primarily for Dev Tracker Purposes.

[Flavilandile]

[snip comments].

Basically more or less the same :

- The quest is interesting and has some reusability.

- I didn't find anything beyond all the secret doors I found that ended in dead ends.
- Some of the trap boxes weren't disarmable. ( they were probably from the cannons that I killed )
- some levers are hard to reach due to geometry. ( they are near the shafts we go down/up on ramps usually )
- some boxes are hard to reach due to geometry ( I bug reported one ), which can be a problem if one hold the items you need to progress in the quest.
- There's a problem with one objective : it says Beta and Sigma when It's Beta and Gamma... I went through all the areas twice looking for that sigma bit before trying the Gamma one. ( Bug reported that one too )
- The explosion surprised me too, but it didn't bother me much as a Cleric with Aura on, running on Casual to explore the quest.
- The end fight was anti-climactic enough that I thought it was just some intermediary fight and tried to find a way out of the room.
- And Quest giver didn't give me any reward once I came back after completing the quest.

[Grosbeak07]

This quest had potential. I did it on Epic Normal on a Level 25 Caster druid.

I like the setting. It's nice to get away from the Forgotten Realms stuff for a bit. The story actually seemed kinda interesting, seen a lot of Bad Saturday afternoon movies with similar plots.

But like so many of the quests recently, from Druids Deep, High Road, Shadowfell etc. The end fight was about as unimaginative as you can get. I'm pretty sure I said the following out loud.

"Oh look he's trying to kill me. How cute. Wonder if he can do any kind of special tricks?... Apparently not, he just swings at you. *Sigh* Oh well..."

On Epic Normal mobs seemed to have a ton of HP, which made certain fights boring. The Spotter Bots and Repair Bots are great concepts, but they really didn't do much. Spotter Bots should have a DoT affect to AC and I'd say movement speed while they have a beam on you, with a new stack every 8 seconds or so. so something along the lines of -10 AC and -2% movement speed and have no cap. Repair Bots should do force damage in addition to repairing the forged mobs, I'd even give them a telekinesis or knock down ability that players love so much Otherwise, they are just metallic balls of way too many HP.

Really, high HP does not equal challenge. Give mobs some teeth, make players go "hey now, there is a Spotter Bot, fight near this pillar so we can break the beam... or we need to take out the repair bots ASAP or we'll never get out of this room alive." Too often its just... these things have a lot of HP and nothing else.

[Ovrad]

At first I was super excited, not only do we travel to the Mournlands, but that's also our first venture into Khorvaire! ....and then you're stuck inside a Cannith factory that's all re-used assets. Huge disappointment.

Nevermind that lore-wise, we should be prevented from any healing, and that the rope leading at the start of the quest says "to marketplace", my lore-boner was already dead.

As far as the quest itself goes, it's pretty generic. Some enemies seem to have completely unbalanced hp amounts. The AC debuff, while a cool idea is laughable, nobody cares for AC since the MotU changes. The explosion mid-quest seems to happen without any context, it killed me while I was still reading the DM text telling me to move, people aren't gonna like it much on servers where you have to pay for those rez cakes.. And then the boring end fight had a dialog between the boss and Talbron, but he never stepped into the room! He was stuck somewhere before the door that zones you to the boss, and didn't even come in past quest completion.

Also, this is a lv 28 quests, and once again, doesn't feel in any way epic. It's even duller than the lv 18 cannith quests.

I'd give this quest D- for effort.

EDIT: Oh and quest reward was missing.

[rimble]

Nevermind that lore-wise, we should be prevented from any healing

Yeah, but that makes playing in the Mournlands impossible. Keith Baker suggested a fix, that no natural healing occurs, and magical healing is halved.

[Ovrad]

Yeah, but that makes playing in the Mournlands impossible. Keith Baker suggested a fix, that no natural healing occurs, and magical healing is halved.

I'm fine with these sorts of workarounds. Just you know, it would be better to acknowledge the lore a little, instead of completely ignoring it.

[Texlaw1992]

Most of my observations about the quest have been repeated by others, so I won't repeat them. However, I am glad my toon has over 1400 hp - the second of the two blasts in the middle took me completely by surprise.

I too could only find four of the five figures - guess number five never spawned.

Telebron becomes inactive if reduced to 0 hp (he'll follow, and his hp show as full, but he does not do anything). Please let us have the ability to heal him during the quest.

I did like the design of the final room, since you can just run up one of the two ramps and leave everything but the boss behind, then kill the trash at your leisure.

Overall fun quest, but as others have observed, missing that "special something."

[SHOCK_and_AWE]

Definitely add in some kind of healing penalty similar to the effects of the Demonweb.

[Jefro]

definitely need to have some healing penalty in the quest. Throw some named items in there. for added flavor. Most of the other observations have been said but I wanted to stress those two

[2x4]

Just ran it today.On EHI liked it a lot. I didn't see a single bug, but wasn't looking. I found all of the brothers and like the explosion. I liked the twists and turns.This is an anti complaint so don't know what else to say. Big thumbs up. I was on my level 27 Arty. First life and nothing special.

[2x4]

Just ran it today.On EHI liked it a lot. I didn't see a single bug, but wasn't looking. I found all of the brothers and like the explosion. I liked the twists and turns.This is an anti complaint so don't know what else to say. Big thumbs up. I was on my level 27 Arty. First life and nothing special.

I tried 3 times to use edit key but to no avail.I just wanted to add that I really like the feel of this quest. It had a close quarter's feel to it which is something new. It adds variety and I imagine it will make some groups feel cramped. That is a good thing. Normal cc tactics will really clutter up the screen but I ran it solo only using BB once in a while so maybe not a big deal. Just observations.

[Habreno]

So I decided to be a brave soul and try this on EE with my barbarian...

He heals for 429 with SF pots and has done many other EE's (actually has 4,918 favor on Live at the moment) so I know he's certainly capable in an EE. Yes, soloing isn't the easiest, but we'll see where things go. Running in Fury of the Wild for this one (have all destinies L5 at least and majority capped)

Started off fine, few deaths due to stupidity with the scorpions. Get to the first main training room and get ripped apart by the golems. Release, heal up, reenter. 5 tries later beat a golem, able to slowly beat down the other golem. Use the other two training modules and beat both of those fairly easily for being on EE. (1) Go to proceed on, Telbron's still there. He doesn't move for the rest of the quest. (2)

Proceed on, get some hard beats at the next wave of scorpions, causing deaths + reentries. Several tries later kill optional red-named scorpion. Loot chest (with a +2 jewel) and get ML 24 lootgen... (not ML 24 that should be higher, straight ML 24) so potential bad roll or bad loot table there. Either way, doesn't really matter.

At the top take a few deaths to the mass of dogs. Not a hard fight but difficult to approach because you're coming up the ramp. After that fight, clear out the next rooms and head straight. Open the door into the second training room, start the fight, and get ripped apart again. Forgot how hard the golems were. :P

Reenter and leave the golem room alone and clear out toward the shrine. Manage to get the optional checklist corpse there but don't bother staying to get the scorpions. Kite two of the scorpions to the start of the dungeon... and neither one has rebounded yet. (3) I eventually realize I just have to kill them both and do. Rest of the scorpions ignore me and I leave them alone. Head the other way and clear out that room. Discover the third body but don't have the search to get the secret door that's in front of it, so I leave it alone.

Spent half an hour or so ranging the spotter sentinel and laughing as the two golems couldn't figure out how to go through the door. Then proceeded to enter the room and smash face. Dogs this time was rather rough, had several deaths here. Once I got down to four dogs we were okay and didn't die... until the bomb went off. Died to a 1,178 point blast. (4)

Reentered again, had several deaths on the initial wave of scorpions at the base of the shaft. The first death I had I took some time while dead to scout the map out and discovered the fifth body. As it was surrounded by scorpions and I'd already missed one I never grabbed it. Several tries later cleared the path to the ramps up.

At the top I'm greeted by some dogs + golems, nothing too difficult here but certainly challenging. Pull a lot of the mobs one at a time which makes things easier. Have a few deaths here from just getting unlucky but nothing too overpowered. Make it to the end fight.

Step in, soon as he became active he Tac Det'd and just slaughtered me. After a few tries of that I realized I needed to change gears. Swapped to a Pinion and went into Shiradi and over at least twenty plus deaths manage to get him down to roughly 85%... at which point I realized that I didn't have enough time to complete at the current rate and logged out.

Dogs bugged out as the one other player had stated. Up by the top door, if you haven't engaged the boss he doesn't come to you there, so you're able to pluck off the dogs one at a time and just kill them one at a time. Turrets also are killable from that ledge without taking the boss aggro (you can put him in the middle kennel and he pretty much won't aggro you at all). Never was able to target the final spotter sentinel and thus had to deal with that annoyance the entire time.


Overall, not a bad quest. Challenging, some parts more than others, yet certainly doable on EE with a good group.

Silver Flame Pot Count : 600+
Deaths: 45
Reentries: 25
Time Spent: 6+ hours.


(1): Turrets on EE are extremely easy. Their attacks aren't that damaging and the blast is only remotely threatening. Most of the trash mobs hit about as hard, maybe slightly less, than the turret blasts did. I'd say scale these guys up a bit- they don't seem as though they're actually CR 70 as they say they are.
(2): Tolarn bugging out isn't fun. He's not bad in there because you don't have to care about him. As an aside on him, not sure what the hidden diplo check in the beginning is for... either he's got something different to say if you pass or it's a once per toon occurrance which is odd. I only saw a dice roll on fails, but never saw a dice roll on what I presume may have been a success. His dialogue doesn't change regardless.
(3): I understand the scorps should track you for a while, but everything has to rebound *sometime*...
(4): This explosion, as others have stated, needs a heads up of some sort. I can see many frustruated groups wiping here when it's not even a real threat.

Final comment: CR 70 trash mobs... please Turbine, even EE Stormreaver/Truthful One aren't that high, and those are raid bosses. (CR 68/69 respectively) It's not like the actual named are much different; red-named scorpion optional is only CR 76 and I don't even think the end boss is over 79.

[Clatterfist]

I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this quest, especially the things you see as go further along. The mixture of training scenario combat sequences with dummy-assisted flashbacks was very cool, and it was incredibly evocative of the dark history of my favourite race in Eberron. The colouring and decay of the facility along with the super-tough scorpions gave me a good feeling of being in the Mournlands - and yeah, made me wish there was an explorer area, too!

I found it quite a bit harder than other epic hard quests that I've been soling, but then, it is higher level. I like that Talbron doesn't die escort-NPC style or do anything particularly annoying, but I did encounter a bug where he stopped doing anything at all about 3/4 of the way through. I was expecting A Study in Sable to be the quest with the more engaging ambience, but I think both these quests have that in their favour. Good stuff.