Official Thread - Shadow Dracolich Raid

[KookieKobold]

Please use this thread to leave feedback on the Shadow Dracolich raid (temporarily named It Came from the Depths).

Feel free to use this thread to discuss strategies that succeeded or failed against this raid.

Also, please fill out the survey that Squeak will post shortly

[SqueakofDoom]

I have closed this survey so I can gather your responses. Thank you for your feedback on the Shadow Dracolich Raid.

[jbart9999]

Please take a moment to fill out the Shadow Dracolich Raid Survey.

Just finished the Raid with +Kookykobold and had a great time. The pace of the raid was pretty quick and I did get separated from the group a few times but it was fun. I loved the look and feel of the new content. It give new live to the game. Thank you for the opportunity to test it.

Sorrianna, Bard/28 - Fatesinger.
~"I have a song for that!"

[Seikojin]

I ran this evening with Kookie as well. It was a blast. It was fun figuring out the tricks to handling some of the more twitch puzzles, and the bulk of the mirror/laser puzzles.

As kookie commented, it seemed the mobs weren't as challenging as they could be. It may be because we were on EN, but I think the beholder could be a lot stronger.

Also I think there needs to be shadowstalkers in that raid. Or maybe a nightcrawler ot three.

I felt we moved through pretty well. It took 85 minutes to complete, and considering it was a lot of peoples first time, that was a good pace. I am sure it will be shroud speed or a bit slower after people get through it once or twice. I think there is some randomness involved in the puzzles, which will help keep things fresh for a while.

[Iriale]

don't change the raid name. It Came from the Depths is an awesome name, and more interesting than Temple of the Deathwyrm.

I know, is a silly suggestion, but.. i love the name

[serthcore]

Puzzles, lots of them. 85 mins to complete it even with some people knowing a bit about the puzzles. Even the fights had a puzzle portion. And a "mario bros" skill part, which i liked a lot.
This one is very well designed, the only thing i would do is to add is some more fights with rednameds and an extra shrine or two (was there just one shrine in the whole raid?). And making them stronger, as i was one shooting trash mobs with energy burst and nameds with a ruin crit, but it was on epic normal, and the length of the quest was already making it a challenge.
The end fight was similar to spinner of shadows with lots of things to do, this part was making it a BYOH raid and very hard for the casual pugger, as we had to split to do everything. What caught my attention here is the named mobs called "Battlebones!!", as they had lots of HP, couldnt be kiteable (they run fast and apply a movement speed rebuff) and seemed to always respawn, so we will need a "tankish" melee to take care of them instead of kiting monchers.
Was fun, very worth it.

[Shorlong]

Ran this with Steel last night. Wow. Amazing raid. I kept hearing about Squeak's party finishing first even though they started after us, couldn't figure out why. And then, when taking the survey, I discovered that there are six challenge rooms, so I am guessing they got different rooms from us. We had the trap corridor and the red light/green light room. I didn't think the mobs where that bad, until we got to that room. Between the insane damage and the lag from SO MANY mobs, I think we tallied most of our 93 deaths in that room (granted one guy died 18 times, all of them due to some bug, he even died after shrining right before we went to the boss fight....)

Overall, I love the concept, I love the puzzles, and now that I know there are four other challenge rooms I haven't been in yet, I love this even more. This was probably the most fun I've had in a quest in a long time. Even my first VoN run, while I enjoyed it, wasn't fun. It was a lot of sitting around, frustration, etc. This was pure awesome.

We even got one named item out of the quest, from the bone guardian's chest. I can see my assassin wanting this bad boy:



All in all, I only have two bits that I would change (outside of the light beam killing you and the mirrors just stopping reflecting sometimes). Add in a shrine somewhere in the middle area. It would be tough to say where, maybe after the Bone Guardian, maybe in the room where you choose your second challenge room, no idea. The other would be more chests. End game raid, three chests total. Now, I am sure there area a few more on EE, but a small normal chest at the end of each challenge room could be nice as well, with a smaller chance to drop a named item and a guarantee on ingredients drops.

[Ancient]

I'm not a fan of the "raid of puzzles" concept. Waves and waves of puzzles is not fun for a raid because it ends up with 11 people waiting. Either the puzzle can be done by one person, and 11 people are passive OR everyone has to do the puzzle and 11 people wait on the 1 person who struggles with the puzzle.

The end fight however was great.

[Ancient]

I do have one suggestion on how to make the mirror puzzles more of a team activity.

Right now, people fight mobs while the mirror puzzle is done because... well, the mobs are there to fight?

If you had the mobs spawn from a portal on one side of the area, and then attempt to move towards and try to break the light emitting crystal. That would make the defense of that crystal part of the raid (Think tower defense). Now all of a sudden, fighting the mobs has a purpose and the activity becomes a 12 person activity.

[Epitome]

Currently doing some puzzle work on this raid streaming live atm. http://www.twitch.tv/jibcutter

[Mindos]

I ran this with Kookie's group lastnight. Was a blast.

After thinking things over, a few suggestions:

1. Differention between levels. Maybe a color difference in the walls? As we climbed the tower, level after level, every floor looked the same. Look! Mirrors, lights, portal. I didn't even realize how high we were until I looked over the edge. (can you fall off?)
2. The portal puzzles. I know *these* are suppossed to look alike. But isn't there a second set we had to go thru? Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but if true, these should have a different colour/design than the first.
3. Jump puzzle. Looks the easiest, but wasn't, especially for me! And I like to think I have great mario skills. Had the hardest time with the stick out ledges, tried running straight across them, nope.
4. AOE spells affecting phylactery even after the shields came back up. Is this WAI? Once player Enervation got a DOT up, it went down fast.
5. Entering a fake phylactery room at the end. IMHO, once the real phylactery has been found, entry to these rooms should be disabled. I got stuck in one, promptly died, +kookie my hero rescued me.
6. Unclear which way to go. Particularly on the mirror levels, but even on the inside tower thingy, with mobs up top and phylactery down below. It seemed to me, that once an objective was met, the portals would activate, but maybe a level wide lighting change to make it more clear? I remember fighting mobs, looking around and everyone was gone. Was playing without sound FYI. But a more visual indicator of success and intended direction would be nice.
7. Speaking of which, in the portal puzzle. If you are following a teammate and you happen to look away, face the wrong way, etc. You have NO idea which portal they took. If only there was some way, like a temporary lingering trace of which portal was just used...
8. I agree with the above poster. The piking during mirror moving was high. If the mobs would be drawn to the solver, or if AOE spells could damage the mirrors, causing them to reset, or if mobs damaged them, and needed kiting (with battleragers, would be an adventure!) Something to spice this part up, make it feel like a real team challenge.
9. Loot. For 84 minutes, something had better drop. Whether high level random teal border loot gen, or a new ingredient that takes 1000 to trade in/up, something needs to make it worthwhile. Heck, a cosmetic armour/shirt I killed the dragon would be something.

It was hard to gauge mob power when using a Llamm toon, but it seemed like some things were way too easy. The bone guardian went fast, for example. However, while trying to solo some of the mobs alone in a corner, it was not so easy.

Things that I liked:

1. The timing. THIS is what team raiding should be about. Get a group together, and work your way thru stuff.
2. That feeling that, uhoh, haven't seen a shrine in a while. I liked wondering if, yes, if a shrine was ever gonna pop.


Finally, I just wish there was more benefit and less risk of getting left behind when splitting the party up. You must gather your party before... Nobody likes to hear that, and I know requiring everyone to be in one place can lead to griefing, or hopeless problems with disconnects. I guess my biggest problem was that I didn't like the feeling I was playing catchup with the others. If an option to skip ahead somehow when the others are way up on another level would be nice, ala CiTW portal to the end area.

ps. Along with the above feeling, the opposite is true, too. If you give me something to do to feel usefull, that maybe would impact the end fight. Then splitting the party would feel better. Maybe make a random shrine location in the portal puzzles. hint hint

[Epitome]

Cool puzzles so far

Suggestion
Have hands blink when yellow is blinking. Have a color blind guildy during RED LIGHT / GREEN LIGHT puzzle that is having a difficult time.

[Hathorian]

wow. if the goal was to find a worse raid than citw then you have succeeded with flying colors!! by far the most boring (and lognest) raid I have ever been involved with. far too many puzzles. extremely redundant with so many mirror puzzles. I am being constructive here...please reduce the # of puzzles by 75%. everyone just stands around and watches...not fun at all. way too long of a raid. took hours to run this raid. not fun. need a lot of work. I am actually sitting on a rune right now writing this feedback. nothing else for me to do.

[Hathorian]

grav on. grav off. grav on. grav off!!!

[Hathorian]

also...it took far too long to get to the raid. I am not sure why you think it is fun to run around in circles killing hundreds of trash just to get to the raid. please allow a free teleport to the raid entrance.

[Hathorian]

everyone just got stuck (or maybe it was massive lag for 5-10 minutes). can't logout...have to close the game and try to relog. I have other stuff to do though so I had to quit...didn't think it would take nearly so long.

[Leclaire1]

While it needs some polish no doubt, I'll agree with the majority here that this is a fantastic raid. Completed it with a pretty solid group and +steel (presumably Steelstar) earlier today and was challenging but a blast. Took us two hours, but that was mostly because none of us knew any of the puzzles or tricks to the challenges yet, so I see this probably completable in 30-45 mins when people know what they are doing. For those who havent' done it yet, here's the rundown.

1) Kind of like a combination of Tempest's Spine style raid of a colossal dungeon with a lot of things to do to get to the fight, and a Shroud/ToD raid which has several distinct phases.

2) Basically there are three phases-

a) In the first phase you have to navigate through a dungeon to get to the Shadow Dragon, which involves completing multiple mirror puzzles while being hit with AoE damage from the dragon and fighting mobs which continually spawn. Completing these puzzles opens the way forward to more mazes, which eventually leads to a fake phylactery and a named skeleton boss who evidently drops named loot in his chest, such as the item posted earlier on this thread.

b) The second phase has multiple completions paths (I hear there are six challenge rooms?) two of which have to be completed to finish the raid. This is a very interesting concept, which is new to ddo raiding which I like quite a bit. Not certain if taking the harder paths yields better rewards though, which would be a must to give raid groups real choices in how to run this. In our group, we first took a trap-filled hall which required the skill of multiple trappers to get through effectively. We then has two paths. The first led to a gravity/antigravity puzzle with spikes where one had to open the way forward by standing on five different platforms. They did respectable damage on enorm, so I can't imagine a group completing it this way on higher diffs without at least 5 people with evasion and lots of self-healing. The other way involved continuously respawning mobs and red names and a phylactery which needed to be broken through strategic use of a certain effect. We never figured out how to do it as a bug allowed us to destroy the phylactery with Meteor Swarm, but it clearly would require careful player planning and coordination.

c) The boss fight is the most complex I've seen yet. The dragon needs to be beaten down and weakened via various means. Several spellwards need to be disabled and two levers pulled simultaneously to temporarily open a portal to a shadow side. On this side several fake phylacteries need to be destroyed until the real one is (this will stop boss from healing himself indefinitely)and light orbs gathered from a portal puzzle which enable pedestals on the light side. Then everyone needs to cross back to the light side where the levers will now enable pedestals to shoot light beams at the dragon, which will hit her if she is pulled right to the center. These can be debuff him and ultimately are necessary to kill him. He then needs to be beaten down right on the center, and the levers pulled at the same time to destroy her while she is down or she will heal some and get back up. The margin to hit her is very short, so this requires a lot of coordination.

d) Once dragon dies the raid is complete. The end rewards seem to be entirely mats which go towards the new "Greensteel 2" crafting system. Of course, the earlier chest can drop named loot and there are side chests at the end that may as well. This is therefore a unique mechanism where opt chests drop named raid loot and the main ends chests drop mats, which I like a lot.

All in all, I think this is one of the best raids yet for ddo. The multiple paths and loot options, creative use of puzzles and traps, requirement that the party remain well-coordinated while splitting up, and the coordination required make it a real winner. That and it has more of the sprawling, epic feel of Tempest's Spine, Shroud, and CiTW rather than being a typical massive boss beatdown.

The first part, as others have said, needs some work as the challenge isn't too high. I don't mind one person doing the puzzles, esp as that will go fast once people learn them, but adding more challenging mobs, red names, and making the dragon's ranged attacks more deadly and more frequent would make this phase more interesting. The second and third parts are absolutely fantastic. Great work Steelstar and company! Thanks for the run also those who ran in Stormz group.

[Shorlong]

wow. if the goal was to find a worse raid than citw then you have succeeded with flying colors!! by far the most boring (and lognest) raid I have ever been involved with. far too many puzzles. extremely redundant with so many mirror puzzles. I am being constructive here...please reduce the # of puzzles by 75%. everyone just stands around and watches...not fun at all. way too long of a raid. took hours to run this raid. not fun. need a lot of work. I am actually sitting on a rune right now writing this feedback. nothing else for me to do.

You are the first person I have heard complain about it. I don't know about your group, but the group I was in had no one just standing around doing nothing. We had three people working together doing the mirrors, while everyone else was dealing with the constant spawns. The challenge rooms, well, if you are not prepared, I can see this being an issue, and it will be, at first. But once people know what to expect, I don't see it being a problem at all. In fact, with a good group, I see this raid on EN and even EH being completed in around 30-45 minutes in less than a few weeks, once people learn it. The only issues I see with this raid is just the amount of mobs in certain areas causing extreme lag (the red light/green light room, for example) and some overall polish. Maybe add in some chests at the end of the challenge rooms.

[xTethx]

You are the first person I have heard complain about it. I don't know about your group, but the group I was in had no one just standing around doing nothing. We had three people working together doing the mirrors, while everyone else was dealing with the constant spawns. The challenge rooms, well, if you are not prepared, I can see this being an issue, and it will be, at first. But once people know what to expect, I don't see it being a problem at all. In fact, with a good group, I see this raid on EN and even EH being completed in around 30-45 minutes in less than a few weeks, once people learn it. The only issues I see with this raid is just the amount of mobs in certain areas causing extreme lag (the red light/green light room, for example) and some overall polish. Maybe add in some chests at the end of the challenge rooms.

There is a chest at the end of the anti grav room, and it should stay that way. There should be incentive to run the hardest rooms, and if you want an easier completion then run the easier challenge rooms. I would say for higher difficulties though each room should have a chest and the harder rooms (anti-grav) should have multiple chests.

[Shorlong]

There is a chest at the end of the anti grav room, and it should stay that way. There should be incentive to run the hardest rooms, and if you want an easier completion then run the easier challenge rooms. I would say for higher difficulties though each room should have a chest and the harder rooms (anti-grav) should have multiple chests.

I would be ok with that. I would say the red light/green light room should have one chest, as that can be a tough one if you don't know what to expect. I didn't get to try the anti gravity room, just the red light/green light and the trap corridor.