U45 Preview 1: Revamped "Catacombs" and "Delera's Tomb"

[Dabima]

The redone Catacombs are neat. Here are some bugs I found, though

Marketplace: Multiple of the red platforms that look like sideways blinds in the center of the market have their elevations off, and are floating in the air or in the ground.

Library Archives: Lots of leftover heroic Rotting Zombie variants in Library Archives on epic. The blade trap at the third Duality fragment on epic is scaled for heroic, doing <10 damage to me on epic elite.

Dryden Family Tomb: Some leftover heroic Ghouls, the NPC at the end states the dialog from the public area if you don't have the quest chain yet, if you speak to him after turning the quest in. He should have a different dialog line, perhaps suggesting that you leave the tomb.

The Patriarch's Crypt: The "Defeat Undead Rat Swarm" objective didn't complete after I killed them. The objective is called "Defeat the Ghouls and Ghasts", but there are only Ghouls, no ghasts.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

I really liked the old format of always putting a max level version of a pack in. Why did we go away from that?

All the changes look amazing so far but I'm not a TR kind of guy.
<3
I hope the people who do TRs like this.

RIP me coming back for another update.
Another update with no max level content.

[PsychoBlonde]

Just finished both chains. Catacombs has been mixed up a fair bit for epic and is overall a pretty solid offering, if a bit on the dull side. I give it a B+

Delera's is a straight copy-paste and incredibly tedious. The only real change I saw were changing the one lever from needing to pull it three times to a "puzzle" that is really quite silly and just makes it awkward to get that door open with a hireling. Oh, and you gave Dreadlord Giddeon a robe upgrade. The rest of it just feels very heroic-level, with small mobs that you've seen a billion times. At least Catacombs has some new mobs for variety. I give it a C-.

[Saekee]

YOU.
RUINED.
ARCHBISHOP.
DRYDEN'S.
CHAMBERS.

YOU RUINED IT.
RUINED.

I am so mad right now. That room with the lighting and the elevated throne etc. is one of the COOLEST ROOMS IN THE GAME AND IT IS DESTROYED.

PUT IT BACK.

/signed, I agree with PB, I just saw the screenies below. Ugh. If you are worried about perches and kiting, make the last quest where you fight him inthe new room. Keep the old. It is awesome climbing up to him, gives a sense of power

[WestiesMA]

Update 45 is expected to contain revamped versions of both the "Catacombs" and "Delera's Tomb" adventure packs. This revamp will include the debut of Epic versions of the quests in addition to polish of the existing Heroic versions.

Epic Catacombs and Delera’s? Did I miss a vote? Because I would not have voted for these quests to be made epic. Can we vote again? Please?

[Deathbrings]

https://imgur.com/a/lg5ah7p Found two typos and what I imagine is misplaced named loot (min level 3 hat in 23 catacombs). The one talking to Thaddeus should be "I would BE named his successor..." The one with dryden should say his eyes dart from side to side instead of dark from side to side. Thanks for the content, I'm enjoying it so far.

[cdbd3rd]

Epic Catacombs and Delera’s? Did I miss a vote? Because I would not have voted for these quests to be made epic. Can we vote again? Please?

[Greantun]

Most of the changes to catacombs I really like. I ran heroic last night on normal and here were a few observations:

1) No more hellhounds - Shadows were used instead
2) In Setting the Wards: The Patriarchs' Crypt, you could no longer get the trapped levers without doing the trap (unless you had evasion). The boxes were moved out of the trap, and it was going BEFORE you pulled the lever, and there was a gate blocking direct access. This will make it harder without a trapper.
3) Marguerite is no longer a wraith and you can no longer fight her. This fixed a weird part of the storyline for me.
4) Love that you no longer have to run up and down those stairs with the introduction of a new NPC at the end of the quests
5) Love that you compressed the public area so there aren't as many levels
6) There are now end chests, new red names, etc in the quests to get the named items from

However, I do not like the new look of the "alters" in Setting the Wards: The Lower Cathedral, those don't look like alters

[noinfo]

I really liked the old format of always putting a max level version of a pack in. Why did we go away from that?

All the changes look amazing so far but I'm not a TR kind of guy.
<3
I hope the people who do TRs like this.

RIP me coming back for another update.
Another update with no max level content.

2 in a row, waste of dev time.

I hate TR but ended up doing a couple. Went to borderlands once. Got some twink gear and am done with it. Horses? cant even take them on a ship. This is worse than the WPM pack since it at least had 1 high level quest. Its pretty obvious that you can get xp from level 30+ quests but you get almost non from those below 30.

[Greantun]

Ran Delera's chain this morning. Not as many changes as catacombs, but still one

* In Missing party - the lever you needed a hire fire is no longer behind a cage - it is now 3 levers, puzzle type, to open all the doors

In addition, I think there is a bug:

I did the whole chain on HN, except the final quest which I went in on EE. In the end rewards was 2 things:
* Voice of the Master (ML5)
* Commendations of Heroism

So I got some epic end rewards for just doing the chain on Heroic

[Memnir]

PUT IT BACK.

They need to put Archbishop Dryden in a silver flame robe instead of that ugly generic red and brown thing.

Agreed on both.

[Satyriasys]

YOU.
RUINED.
ARCHBISHOP.
DRYDEN'S.
CHAMBERS.

YOU RUINED IT.
RUINED.

I am so mad right now. That room with the lighting and the elevated throne etc. is one of the COOLEST ROOMS IN THE GAME AND IT IS DESTROYED.

PUT IT BACK.

New room looks way better.

[ThomasHunter]

I'll echo that smoothing out the levels into a more modern feel would be a good thing.

For example, the final quest for Catacombs - just keep it a 3 like the rest of them!

For Delaras, maybe make them all 7? With so many heroic quests now (woot), smoothing these out would be good. No more chasing back and forth and it would help with LFM's as well.

Thanks!
Taleisin

[AbyssalMage]

Just finished both chains. Catacombs has been mixed up a fair bit for epic and is overall a pretty solid offering, if a bit on the dull side. I give it a B+

Delera's is a straight copy-paste and incredibly tedious. The only real change I saw were changing the one lever from needing to pull it three times to a "puzzle" that is really quite silly and just makes it awkward to get that door open with a hireling. Oh, and you gave Dreadlord Giddeon a robe upgrade. The rest of it just feels very heroic-level, with small mobs that you've seen a billion times. At least Catacombs has some new mobs for variety. I give it a C-.

SSG,

Can you just scrap Delera's and save it for U45.3 or something? We don't need more copy/paste content. That way you can focus on making Epic Catacombs something better than copy/paste, add/move a few traps, add some NPC's, and call it a day.

Maybe link the events of Epic Catacombs to Epic Delera's with dialogue and NPC's? More reason to save the Delera's update for U45.3

Thanks,
AbyssalMage

[Malex]

put archbishop in his old chamber!

[C-Dog]

Can I just say, for a brief moment "3/23" confused me, until I realized it was the different levels. Maybe alter that presentation?

Pretty standard presentation. You thought it was March 23?

- No Epic Dryden Mace? Or Dryden Mail? Or Battleworn Sword?

All of the new items can be found in Lamannia sold by "The Loot Guy" in the center of the Test Dojo.

[count_spicoli]

No epic version of "And the Dead Shall Rise"? That's the coolest quest out there.

[KingKoz]

YOU.
RUINED.
ARCHBISHOP.
DRYDEN'S.
CHAMBERS.

YOU RUINED IT.
RUINED.

I am so mad right now. That room with the lighting and the elevated throne etc. is one of the COOLEST ROOMS IN THE GAME AND IT IS DESTROYED.

PUT IT BACK.

It's just a game....take a deep breath and repeat with me....It's just a game! :-)

[Strimtom]

catacombs quest notes:
[BUG]monster saves are higher than EE level 32 legendary quests. like grim and barette. I had 85 Conjuration DC for my offensive spells at level 25 in catacombs and I got resisted about 50% of the time. Unplayable for new players or first lifers. When I had 73 DC I literally could not hit monsters with spells.
[Suggestion]The experience in Deleras seemed good, but catacombs seemed really low. Very high difficulty quest + low Xperience points seems like a bad idea, and will make epic catacombs just like the other tales quests in the twelve from WPM and other tales. Would recommend 30% bump in xp across all epic catacombs quests. This is especially ironic since catacombs has great xp in heroics.

[Scuddy]

I really like all of the new changes to the Catacombs. I am a fan of the new sanctuary. It's not as claustrophobic now and looks more sanctuary-like. The werewolf and the other minor changes actually breathe a little life back into this chain for me and I will be running them at least a few times on the live servers. I only ran the first 3 in this chain but they all ran smooth. As others have said the XP seems a little low but they are pretty quick to run.

My only very minor suggestion would be to maybe consider moving Nina Brightheart (the NPC vendor) down one level to where she is just across from where you zone in from the Marketplace so people can see her a little easier. I really like the fact that you can sell/repair inside the catacombs now. Maybe also consider adding some low-level healing potions or wands to her sales list just to make the chain slightly more "noob" friendly by letting new low-level players easily access some healing options while they are in the catacombs adventure area. Nina Brightheart currently has a string-table error message but I am sure you are already aware of this.

For the amount of time and effort devoted to this with all of the other stuff keeping your staff busy, I think this is a very positive update of an older chain that adds value to an older pack as well as offering some new sources of low/mid epic level XP. Well done and thanks for your time and efforts. I appreciate what you have done here even if it was not a major overhaul. Thank you.