Update 39 Preview 2: White Plume Mountain and Other Tales

[PsychoBlonde]

If this is correct then it really needs to be spelled out clearly before people buy the Falconry tree only to discover that they could have earned it for free in game.


EDIT: And a post in this thread does not qualify as being spelled out clearly.

Would you like to point out where any of the other things you can buy on the store "spell out" that you can obtain them in-game?

[FlimsyFirewood]

In The Price of Freedom down around the lava areas I had some bad video and audio stuttering.

Can you give a /loc where this happened? By stuttering do you mean a drop in frames per second, or texture z-fighting?

[Niminae]

Would you like to point out where any of the other things you can buy on the store "spell out" that you can obtain them in-game?

Pointing out that the failure is systemic only points out that the failure is systemic.

[SinnJinn2]

Can you give a /loc where this happened? By stuttering do you mean a drop in frames per second, or texture z-fighting?

the /loc is r1 lx416 ly1176 i7 cInside ox-0.41 oy53.54 oz-328.96 h203.9

Q:0x700304F0

video would freeze for about 1 second 3 times in a row about every 5 seconds and voice chat would stutter when a friend would talk to me.

[Aelonwy]

Kind of a Big Deal:

Nimue's name is spelled differently when you talk to her in the tower before she teleports you to the village. It's spelled "Nymue" in the floaty over her head but Nimue everywhere else.

The control panel after the second blade trap is inaccessible, no matter where I stand to try and disable it, it says "control panel is blocked". Move it down some.



The Price of Freedom:

OMG aiming these platforms is HARD. Could you make them a bit bigger please?!

I encountered these same issues this morning. In fact I tried to run the Price of Freedom with my son and he just couldn't manage the wand whipping, aiming jumps to even get into the floaty castle. Now, objectively, he is only 9 but he's usually much better at Mario-skill-checks than am I. Making the jumping platforms 15-30% larger could help. Although it seemed to me the delay between using the wand and the platform appearing was more of an issue. Also many of the platforms appeared to the side of where I was aiming rather than directly in front of me.

Some images to help with the issues I saw.

Kind of a Big Deal

The quest giver outside the quest spells her name thus:



But inside the quest its spelled in character and some dialogue as:



I also encountered the trapbox (2nd blade trap) that was too far off the ground to be used:




Price of Freedom

There simply is not enough direction in this quest. I spent over two hours in there trying to figure out where to go and what to do in order to open the door to the eventual boss. I really felt like the creator of this quest is just a tad sadistic what with the difficulty of just getting into the floaty castle + multiple lighting puzzles that if you make a misstep (or missfloat in the case of the ones on the walls) there is no way to reset and you just have to keep hitting things randomly till it goes your way. A reset lever for these puzzles would go along way toward easing the frustration. Oh and disappearing platforms on lava. Let's not forget that aggravating mechanic. Yeah... by the start of the second hour I was picturing an evil DM gloating over my frustration.

And if the end fight with the warden wasn't enough... the quest isn't even over with that... no no there's an unexpected twist I wasn't prepared for and things almost went belly-up right there on the ship. And after I finally put every one out of my misery... nothing named in the SINGLE end chest on EH. If there had at least been a filigree I might have felt more charitable but... then I realized I hadn't seen even one filigree in any of these side quests and now I'm wondering if its even possible?

With practice and experience I may come to like this quest. Eventually. Its certainly beautiful and interesting... although I wish there had been more lore tucked somewhere in the castle/prison both to give me more direction and maybe some backstory on this place.

Additionally,

Can I haz this hairstyle, please with bacon?




Text error in Another Man's Treasure on a scroll:



Text error in Memory Lapse



Finally, in all of these quests I believe most of the dialogue is hooked up in such a way that if you want to know the response to multiple options you have to restart the conversation. There is no way to go back and know what they would have said if you had asked something else. No -anything else you want to know- option. I don't know if that makes sense but I like to ask multiple things before I go forward and often I could only pursue one line of dialogue because any choice forced the conversation forward with no going back.

So that's my experience.

[PsychoBlonde]

The interesting thing with Freedom is that, once you actually know where stuff is, it can potentially be a reasonably short quest. But I do think there ought to be *at least* one "get a second named loot chest" optional.

I didn't select to distribute the loot among the sailors, but if that actually gets rid of the SINGLE named loot chest, OMG what a huge opportunity for GRIEFING for whoever gets to the Captain first and picks that option. Boom, you wasted everyone else's ENTIRE quest run. There is NO WAY to stop someone from doing this. You can't even pick the "resolve the mutiny" option because the "distribute loot" option STAYS there while you're doing it.

[PsychoBlonde]

OMG. Uh, yeah, telling the captain to distribute the loot--which NOBODY can stop you from doing--gives you a HUGE wad of XP and eliminates all named loot from the quest.

THIS IS BAD DESIGN. THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED IMMEDIATELY. Nobody should be able to PREVENT you from getting your named loot chest. That is GRIEFING. I love the mutiny but you HAVE to re-design this before it goes live. You HAVE to.

My suggestion would be to add optional named loot chests for each of the "rescue 5 prisoners" optionals. So even if some total ****** speed-finishes and throws away your chance at named loot, you can still get some (I hope?! Does the quest finish lock you out of completing optionals in this one?!) by going and releasing the prisoners.

On the plus side, I did a "know what I'm doing" run and my completion time was 13 minutes. So it's actually quite a short quest if you know how to do it.

[QueenOfTheHook]

I started off running the 5 quests on HN on my level 30 fvs just to see how they looked and the basic mechanics of them. It's hard to really stop and look around when you are constantly trying not to die. I went back on my lvl 30 arti and ran them on EH to check out the new traps and the xp value. I know they will get faster with a party when people learn them, but the xp per minute right now stinks for most of them. I see potential for Memory Lapse, Another Man's Treasure, and maybe White Plume Mountain becoming part of the "daily" run in epics if you boost the xp in them. That would be a big marketing plus for them, as many people that don't own it will end up breaking down and buying it eventually so they don't miss out on a daily. I have seen with both Mines of Tethoweveryouspellit and Reign of Madness that people won't run it if the xp per minute isn't there. It's maybe a once a life chain if someone else is already running them and there is nothing else to do sort of thing. I definitely think this new stuff will go the same way if you don't adjust the xp.

Kind of a Big Deal (Levels 6/21)

On the HN run through of this, I managed to bug out the quest by killing the spider at the start from too far away. When I went back in on EH I knew to be more careful and wait until the objective appeared. I would suggest you widen the box of when the objective appears to potentially the start of that whole area as I was on a crossbow user and my first instinct is to shoot from really far away.

I loved the combination of large targets and small targets. Those small targets might be the harder of the two because they sneak in while you are looking in the eyes of the giant rat.

I felt like you guys did a great job with making me feel small when I was small (and I was a halfling so I was really small) and gigantic when I was bigger. To the person up thread that said the trap box was too far away when you were little, you just had to hop on the rock next to it to disable it and I liked that. I would suggest making the rock a little bigger or moving it closer to the trap though as the blade was able to smack you there (not a big deal at level 30, maybe deadly at level 6).

As a trapper, it drove me nutso not to be able to disable more of the traps and I didn't manage to find enough to even get ingenious. I may have missed a few in side passages without realizing it, but I had my spot up high for the new content so I'm sure I didn't miss any that were along the main path.

The door to head to the end needs to be more obvious or at least searchable. I had forgotten overnight were the door was and it took me shooting out of frustration to smack the right spot.

I was not impressed by the "gather the party" mechanic and it will eliminate this as a daily.


Another Man's Treasure (Levels 6/21)

This quest I absolutely loved. I love puzzles though and was on a high reflex character. That invisible maze will frustrate some to no end. It took me a few minutes to realize I should watch the ooze to see the path in reverse. The second time through wasn't as bad, but still hard to navigate, but that's okay.

This has daily potential with an xp boost.



Memory Lapse (Levels 6/23)

Overall, I liked this quest. Please consider removing the "optional" objective and just make getting both books in each area mandatory. I left the wrong book in one of the sections because the optional popped up to collect both books showed up and I couldn't find the other quickly. I know that eliminates optional xp so just boost the amount given for quest completion which it needs anyways.



The Price of Freedom (Levels 6/25)

This quest was a royal PIA on the HN run to the point I refused to attempt it again on EH. That should say something of the mechanics of the quest. The platforms never went where I thought I was aiming. The way to the first end fight was not obvious enough. I see lava, I don't think, let's go explore there. I did like the new puzzle though, but again, I like puzzles.

I see this as a "I ran it once and never again" quest as it isn't even a requirement to be able to run another quest. Unless the starting mechanics change, I don't even think an xp boost will take it out of this category. Maybe take the wand aspect out of it and only have the next platform appear after you bounce on the previous one. This will still frustrate many people.



White Plume Mountain (Levels 9/32)

I ran this one on HN (on lvl 30 fvs), then R7 (on lvl 30 healbot cleric), and finally solo on EH (on level 30 arti).

I had very mixed feelings about this quest. I liked the riddles, but I think you guys have one of the answers incorrect. You ask for how many were left and the correct answer was how many were killed. I liked the new bad guys. That crab was evil on the arti. I didn't like that the entire quest was geared to the high reflex guys though. My poor cleric in heavy armor was the only one in the party to take damage from the heating floor while the monks just flew across using their new speed boosts (like I didn't have enough issues already trying to stay up with them). In the bubbling mud area, again the monks with the reflexes just saved against the steam areas while my poor cleric just died on the first blast. We did go across the top for that one whereas I traveled the lower option on the HN run. I'd have liked to have seen how easy it was to at least get the cleric across if we had gone the bottom option. When I fell off the slippery floor, I landed in another area that high reflexes could easily navigate (the spinning blades weren't touching them and the spikes on the floor were easily avoidable). I really feel a tank would have really helped in this quest, but I will hesitate running mine through because of all the reflex stuff. Granted she has nearly 7k hp and probably could just run through it all, but I didn't have time to try that.

The difficulty was mixed in here. We shouldn't have been able to walk in on R7 and been able to just beat it. There might have been a few cakes used care of it being on Lam and they are "free". Never were they used because the party was sitting there all dead going, now what do we do. The areas between the bosses seemed too easy for R7 but the boss fights felt close to right (maybe a hair too easy but I had ~Nightmare~ in my party leading the way and he makes stuff look easy, so my view might be skewed).



Overall, I like the new pack, but I think that unless you change the xp values, they will be one and done quests and that's just not going to sell them.


~Revi~

[Lokeal_The_Flame]

Yes. These are separate purchases. There is 0 crossover in the contents of either purchase.

What if someone wants to buy this pack several times just for the sentient XP stones?

[FlimsyFirewood]

OMG. Uh, yeah, telling the captain to distribute the loot--which NOBODY can stop you from doing--gives you a HUGE wad of XP and eliminates all named loot from the quest.

THIS IS BAD DESIGN. THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED IMMEDIATELY. Nobody should be able to PREVENT you from getting your named loot chest. That is GRIEFING. I love the mutiny but you HAVE to re-design this before it goes live. You HAVE to.

There's a second named loot chest in the prison, in a very secret location that does not require any skill checks. If you don't group with griefers, 2 chests per 13 minutes is reasonable. If you do, 1 named loot chest per run is acceptable.

[FlimsyFirewood]

I encountered these same issues this morning. In fact I tried to run the Price of Freedom with my son and he just couldn't manage the wand whipping, aiming jumps to even get into the floaty castle. Now, objectively, he is only 9 but he's usually much better at Mario-skill-checks than am I. Making the jumping platforms 15-30% larger could help.

Making platforms larger today.

[Kza]

Making platforms larger today.

Big big Thanks you listen to this!!

[Matuse]

I also encountered the trapbox (2nd blade trap) that was too far off the ground to be used:

From the screenshot, it looks like you should be able to stand on that rock..is that not possible?

[GoldyGopher]

The Quests

• Kind of a Big Deal (Levels 6/21)

A powerful magical artifact has gone missing. If it's not found quickly, it could cause pandemonium in this once quiet valley.

• Another Man's Treasure (Levels 6/21)

Objects made out of pure platinum have unexpectedly turned up in the Stormreach Dump, causing dissent among the Kobolds who scavenge there.

• Memory Lapse (Levels 6/23)

The famous Wizard Tarent Hoxworth has organized his memory as a library. Each memory was neatly filed away on the shelves - until a rival Wizard cast a spell that has brought chaos to Tarent's tidy mind.

• The Price of Freedom (Levels 6/25)

The Esoteric Order of Aureon has built a very special prison specifically to contain lawbreakers who are talented in arcane arts.

• White Plume Mountain (Levels 9/32)

Search ye far or search ye near

Quest Known Issues

• All Quests
  
  • Some of the dungeons may not have music yet.
  • Some of the dungeons are not completely decorated yet.
  • An experience pass has been done (though it is not necessarily final.)
  
  
• Kind of a Big Deal
  
  • Boulder Encounter has not been finished in its current form.
  • The area should be under the effect of a dimensional anchor. It is not currently so in the build, so I would suggest not using Dimension Door in it.
  • Monster Placement not final (They do not currently have intro animations, not placed logically, have additional text)
  • Stuck spot on the path to enter the Kobold Warren
  • There are a few areas that players are not meant to access that can currently be accessed. It should become obvious if you have reached one of these areas.
  • There is some floating dirt in the area.
  • There are performance skips on certain places on the map
  
  
• Another Man's Treasure
  
  • The Endboss is currently placed in a very drab stone room. It has yet to be decorated but will be before release.
  
  
• Memory Lapse
  
  • One of the books sometimes erroneously spawns in mid air
  • The podium will display the optional books whether or not you have collected them
  • When you pick up any book, An objective text will appear on the top and say "All (whatever wing it is in) books collected" even if you haven't collected the other book in the wing
  
  
• White Plume Mountain
  
  • During a swimming section there is a opening in the floor which you can swim down and become trapped in darkness. We suggest you don't do that.
  • When you pick up the Crest of the sword text at the top will state" All the crests have been collected go collect your treasure!"

I ran all these quests solo with a Level 30 Melee oriented Cleric on Epic Elite or Legendary Hard (White Plume Mountain). For the Epic quests i was over level and my responses should be taken with that in mind.

All of the quests felt empty and many were very dark making it difficult to see.

When I say empty I mean i would round a corner and low and behold there was a encounter with two three mobs. Strike them down quickly and move a fair distance to the next corner and next set of two or three mobs. It wasn't engaging. I dislike the double scaling, where both the mobs HP and the number of mobs scale based upon party size. I am sure in a full party those might be encounters with six mobs with three times the HP...

Almost every combat sequence was unchallenging. The Crab in White Plume Mountain being an example of the Fight that had challenge, most of the rest of the encounters were over before the Mobs could finish buffing themselves.
The End Fights - Were all underwhelming.

Too many Kobolds.... Sorry I don't care what you do but a kobold is a kobold is a kobold.

Kind of a Big Deal - Loved the premise of the Quest. It was however a slow quest to run, lots of running between points and fighting mobs with way to few HP (Did that Kobold really only have 150 HP)?
Another Man's Treasure - Lets just say the maze was interesting and I am not sure what the buttons were supposed to do.
Memory Lapse - Again I loved the premise of the Quest but I spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what I was supposed to do to advance the quest. Never sure if I was supposed to fight some of the mobs (bookshelves) or not. It was Dark, much to Dark to see. Wonder if i was the only player to have "Futurama" kind of thoughts about the quest.
Price of Freedom - Not sure I liked the premise of the Quest (there are potential lore issues - Dreadhold).
White Plume Mountain - The mini bosses were interesting encounters and the optionals, the regular mobs were ahh dead before they could finish buffing themselves. I like the fact the mini bosses had some interesting twists to the encounters and they were not just the same beat downs. If the regular mobs had two few HP the Crab had too many.

[Aelonwy]

From the screenshot, it looks like you should be able to stand on that rock..is that not possible?

Its kind of possible... maybe... but its in the hit-box of the blade trap and as soon as I tried jumping up there my character started making rapid saves and swooshing sound effects were going off so I said forget it and kept going. I was also on a bit of a time crunch, especially as the previous quest I ran -Prison Break- took an inordinate amount of time.

Did anyone find more than one trap box in the watery dart trap section? I only found one on an island and it seemed to only turn off the darts on that island but no others.

[Kza]

I ran all these quests solo with a Level 30 Melee oriented Cleric on Epic Elite or Legendary Hard (White Plume Mountain). For the Epic quests i was over level and my responses should be taken with that in mind.

All of the quests felt empty and many were very dark making it difficult to see.

When I say empty I mean i would round a corner and low and behold there was a encounter with two three mobs. Strike them down quickly and move a fair distance to the next corner and next set of two or three mobs. It wasn't engaging. I dislike the double scaling, where both the mobs HP and the number of mobs scale based upon party size. I am sure in a full party those might be encounters with six mobs with three times the HP...

Almost every combat sequence was unchallenging. The Crab in White Plume Mountain being an example of the Fight that had challenge, most of the rest of the encounters were over before the Mobs could finish buffing themselves.
The End Fights - Were all underwhelming.

Too many Kobolds.... Sorry I don't care what you do but a kobold is a kobold is a kobold.

Kind of a Big Deal - Loved the premise of the Quest. It was however a slow quest to run, lots of running between points and fighting mobs with way to few HP (Did that Kobold really only have 150 HP)?
Another Man's Treasure - Lets just say the maze was interesting and I am not sure what the buttons were supposed to do.
Memory Lapse - Again I loved the premise of the Quest but I spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what I was supposed to do to advance the quest. Never sure if I was supposed to fight some of the mobs (bookshelves) or not. It was Dark, much to Dark to see. Wonder if i was the only player to have "Futurama" kind of thoughts about the quest.
Price of Freedom - Not sure I liked the premise of the Quest (there are potential lore issues - Dreadhold).
White Plume Mountain - The mini bosses were interesting encounters and the optionals, the regular mobs were ahh dead before they could finish buffing themselves. I like the fact the mini bosses had some interesting twists to the encounters and they were not just the same beat downs. If the regular mobs had two few HP the Crab had too many.

Hmm- we have 14 difficulty levels and you play them on ee overlevel or eh at lvl and Think they too easy?


Before they too easy on r2-10 i really dont understand why its bad also casuals have difficulties they can have fun in?

I must say that i like the lessened difficulty in new content that started with ravenloft. Mines, black and blue and even slavers is harder. But ravenloft can be brutal anyway just upping the skulls.

So plz have n h e quite easy and targetted for ppl that is not best of the best, and skull 1-10 just try to kill us!

My opinion (that i Think ssg has perfected in ravenloft and age of rage)

/Kza

[Aelonwy]

Making platforms larger today.

Thank you.

[Aelonwy]

There's a second named loot chest in the prison, in a very secret location that does not require any skill checks. If you don't group with griefers, 2 chests per 13 minutes is reasonable. If you do, 1 named loot chest per run is acceptable.

I hope its not in the lava. There was one time during the disappearing lava platforms of the Warden fight that I somehow fell under the lava and through a wall into some "extra" space. I was momentarily afraid everything was going pear shaped but after a second or two I was back in the right space. It happened way too fast and I was way too busy to take a /loc.

[Aelonwy]

If there had at least been a filigree I might have felt more charitable but... then I realized I hadn't seen even one filigree in any of these side quests and now I'm wondering if its even possible?

Its certainly beautiful and interesting... although I wish there had been more lore tucked somewhere in the castle/prison both to give me more direction and maybe some backstory on this place.

Going back to my previous post, could someone address these questions? Do sentient filigrees drop only in WPM? or do they also drop in these side quest adventures shipping with WPM? I did all the side adventures on EH without seeing one and only getting one named drop - the platinum mace.

Can we get a few "notes of lore" tucked away inside the floating prison?

Also would it be possible to get a lever or switch to reset the light puzzles? Specifically I had to use the floaty platforms to reach the lights on top/toward the ceiling of the high-security puzzle and aiming your floating/flying self isn't easy so a reset lever would have been incredibly welcome there.

[FlimsyFirewood]

Price of Freedom - Not sure I liked the premise of the Quest (there are potential lore issues - Dreadhold).

Dreadhold is a prison for aristocrats and was built by Karrn the Conqueror, it belongs to the nation of Karrnath, the guys who have skeleton and zombie regiments in their army.

Brimstone Boulder Prison is run by Esoteric Order of Aureon, which is a wizard guild from Sharn, which is in Breland, a completely different nation.