The Official Haunted Halls of Eveningstar Discussion Thread!

[SqueakofDoom]

Please use this thread to discuss the Quest: Haunted Halls of Eveningstar.

Also catch PurpleFooz's thread!

Please note that things are still in an early state. Loot is not yet ready for preview. If you happen to stumble upon an unknown item, please remember that it is not finished and will likely be changed entirely. Deco is still incomplete: some areas have had attention, but others are still bare. Monsters have not been balanced. Voice overs are approximately half-finished. However, the primary path through the Haunted Halls should be completable. Additionally, note that the Extended and Director’s Cut versions of Haunted Halls can be played after completing the base quest once.

The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar Survey is now closed. Thank you for your feedback!

[PsychoBlonde]

My first impression was pretty good, but it's all so DARK. Large portions of the game are in indoor areas but, for the most part, they are well-lit. By all means have dark AREAS, but the WHOLE QUEST is DARK.

It's very difficult to tell which path is supposed to be the "well lit" path, particularly since the Zhentarum crests are in dark side areas but you need them to finish the quest.

Are the ghost bandits etc. supposed to have like 100% incorporeality?

There's some neat stuff going on that I saw. I liked all the little tricks and secrets I found. I suspect doing this quest without a rogue or artificer is going to suck. I do like that large numbers of them are traditional control-box style traps, though.

The Doppleganger fight was a bit weird because the statues didn't seem to be DOING anything when he hit them. Other than that it was pretty nifty.

Make Rivior's Treasure piles give you something other than totally insignificant amounts of gold. I'd almost say make them into special collectibles and slap a collectibles vendor outside the quest entrance that has specialty pots and thieves tools or similar.

It was by no means obvious that killing the Zhentarum Archwizard in the Throne Room was going to end the quest. The fight felt in need of some kind of "grand finale" aspect--other than him casting Call Lightning on you (if that's what it was). I know it's probably not in the original module, I just feel that there ought to be some kind of special trap or trick to that fight.

For the places that spawn stuff (like the hearth that spawns ghost bandits), some kind of counter that indicates how many spawns you've got left would be really nice.

There's a spot in the Kobold area where you can come up behind a kobold spawn location via a secret door and it looks really bizarre for them to run past you toward a different room.

[DemonStorm333]

well there was a choice of 3 things in the barter window so I took the crown

[Wizzly_Bear]

Please use this thread to discuss the Quest: Haunted Halls of Eveningstar.

Also catch PurpleFooz's thread!

Please note that things are still in an early state. Loot is not yet ready for preview. If you happen to stumble upon an unknown item, please remember that it is not finished and will likely be changed entirely. Deco is still incomplete: some areas have had attention, but others are still bare. Monsters have not been balanced. Voice overs are approximately half-finished. However, the primary path through the Haunted Halls should be completable. Additionally, note that the Extended and Director’s Cut versions of Haunted Halls can be played after completing the base quest once.

Keep an eye out for a survey!

Quest is relatively enjoyable. I died at same time as doppleganger, however, and never was able to get that crest - bug report. I did everything else before the crests door though, and there were some nice surprises.

[Grosbeak07]

Quest is easy to figure out. Makes it quite clear you need 2 crests and you need to go find them. Would be great if they were random in the dungeon!

Non-evasion toons with no search ability (either clicky or what not) could struggle in some of the traps here. That's not a bad thing however.

Kobolds with automatic crossbows was nice, though I'd suggest removing the slow effect (just not fun in a video game) and upping the damage the bows do. Still makes them dangerous, but doesn't slow down game play.

Mobs seemed well spaced, not overwhelming, shrines were also well placed. Mob HP and scaling seemed off, but then again the release notes said that.

Decor seemed fine for an abandoned place. It's supposed to be dark. In fact I'm someone, who thinks most quests in DDO are not dark enough!

Only tried one optional, and got the Giant Skellie. Was able to beat him down, but didn't figure out how to actually finish him. Tough fight solo.

Also really enjoyed Ed Greenwood as DM, and really look forward to the commentary and extended versions!

Took me about 2.5 hours to finish everything. Now, I spent a good deal of time back tracking, checking all doors, looking for hidden doors and trying to figure out ways to get my non-evasion fighter through some of the traps some of those took several attempts. I also wasted a bit of time waiting for shrines to reset. After 1st time, actual completion times will be around 1 hour.

Overall, the quest is enjoyable and challenging enough. Having extreme optional fights after the quest is completed is something I endorse. Put some good loot there and people will run it!

[Systern]

I went exploring on my artificer. Had 2 jeweled keys, found 1 of the optional treasures (through the privy), and decided to check out the 3 doors before finishing.
Seeing as I fell through the privy back down to the underground tunnel, I tried the left door thinking it would just drop me down there. Kinda stunk it was an instadeath trap. Nice that your stone gets dropped at the shrines at the beginning.

When I tried the right door, the blenders eventually got me since they kept interrupting me trying to disarm the trapbox. When I died in there, I was forced to drop my keys and crests, and was too weak to open the portcullises to retrieve them. This made the quest un-completable.

Some of the traps seemed like you absolutely need evasion to get through them to the box. Such as the first trapped stairs to the right when you enter, and the right door with the blenders. This was kind of frustrating on my pure artificer.

The skills on the doppelganger status seemed weird. It's cool that you're trying to incorporate little used skills into the game, but I can't imagine anyone actually spending points on listen just for this quest. Heal, Listen, and Perform checks? really? REALLY?

[Flavilandile]

Couldn't test...

The Character copy tool is broken, and creating and outfitting a LVL 28 Character with the right items would take too much time.
I'll spend time exploring once the Character copy tool is repaired.

But if the above is true : Instadeath Trap is BAD, it's bad design ( or lazyness ), there's probably a better ( and more fun ) way to achieve the same result.

[Minrothad]

This quest is amazing. I strongly recommend that people play it in the extended version with commentaries.
I've done it 4 times on EE, the quest at first seems like a maze (very huge dungeon) but once you know what to do and figure out the quest, it's not that hard to finish quickly. This quest has some of the most unique optionals I've ever seen and doing them reveals a lot of more content that you would normally skip if you just go for fast completion. Couple of things need some work. Some envelopes with unknown weaponry give you epic normal weapons even if you are doing epic elite. There are several traps in the quest that are instawipe, this may be WAI or not. If you keep blocking Doppelganger's path he will keep backing up until he goes through the wall and gets stuck. Miir, the optional statue after you defeat the Wispher's Apprentice, cannot go live as it is on lammania, it's just way too hard. In several places of the dungeon you can aim your camera to a specific angle and actually see the outside of the map. Many of the envelopes with unknown weaponry can't be used, the window seems to get stuck. This: Some doors can be picked with bells of opening from the store even when they need a key to be opened (bells shouldn't work), I hope this is not WAI since a group with many bells could shorten the quest and the optionals by several minutes and skip a lot of content of the quest that is actually lots of fun.
Other than that, I really like where the new u21 content is going, good work.

[Henky]

Just did a normal epic normal run. Liked the quest and wanted to share an almost complete map:

[Kambuk]

27,000XP for extended version on EN
Really?

Kambuk

[whiteline]

The quest is the best so far finding all the doors was some times had with a search of 60 but when I got my search to 92 that was great a rouge will like the quest for the traps

[digital_terror1]

I went exploring on my artificer. Had 2 jeweled keys, found 1 of the optional treasures (through the privy), and decided to check out the 3 doors before finishing.
Seeing as I fell through the privy back down to the underground tunnel, I tried the left door thinking it would just drop me down there. Kinda stunk it was an instadeath trap. Nice that your stone gets dropped at the shrines at the beginning.

When I tried the right door, the blenders eventually got me since they kept interrupting me trying to disarm the trapbox. When I died in there, I was forced to drop my keys and crests, and was too weak to open the portcullises to retrieve them. This made the quest un-completable.

Some of the traps seemed like you absolutely need evasion to get through them to the box. Such as the first trapped stairs to the right when you enter, and the right door with the blenders. This was kind of frustrating on my pure artificer.

The skills on the doppelganger status seemed weird. It's cool that you're trying to incorporate little used skills into the game, but I can't imagine anyone actually spending points on listen just for this quest. Heal, Listen, and Perform checks? really? REALLY?

It's called YOU NEED A PARTY if you want to complete all those extras. Perform check? Absolutely, bring a bard! Heal check? Absolutely! Bring a cleric, favored soul, or pale master! Listen...well, no class uses this like the other 2 skills, but some players train it up so they can see hidden/invis enemies and avoid traps that have a listen check (crumbling floors, etc)

DDO needs MORE content that cannot be soloed 100%. Solo the content, sure...but not 100% without help.

[Vooduspyce]

Ran HH last night for the first time. Ran it slow and solo for that first run so I could soak it all up. Maybe it was just the graph paper, but it had an old school feel to it that I thoroughly enjoyed. Really nice work devs, looking forward to the extensions