U48.4 Preview 1: New Raid " The Dryad and the Demigod"

[Loholt-UK]

Look on the positive side, if the loot continues to be bad we don't need to care about the raid

There are at least 2 items that are good for my current build. I don't think the loot is bad. Remember that it's meant to be on a par with Sharn raid loot, not better than. I'm a bit miffed that the club that was listed in the previous loot list to didn't make the final cut but it's not a huge deal, I'll work around it.

[dunklezhan]

Between the music, the singing, and it being a protection/escort mission - this is just bad.

OK so I reserve judgement on the idea of the escort mission, it depends on exactly how easy it is to meet the fail criteria vs meeting the success criteria as to how much that really would matter to me. And Lammania on an early preview is not the time to assess that anyway. I don't hate the idea on principle, it's usually just that in DDO the flippin' AI is so unreliable.

But the music and singing? From what I saw on the livestream that part looks *awesome*.

*You* may not like that, but that's the kind of thing that actually makes *me* want to experience the thing enough to consider trying to find a friendly raid pug again.

[dunklezhan]

So many people commenting about a raid they haven't experienced first hand.

It's a protection mission, not an escort mission. The dryad doesn't move. This isn't a repeat of CitW with Anna's horrific pathing and aggro management scripting. It's more like Madstone Crater.

This sounds like the sort of distinction that is important not to lose in the sea of feedback.

[Loholt-UK]

It's more like Madstone Crater.

I got more of a Hold For Reinforcements vibe but with better scenery.

[Carrow12]

OK so I reserve judgement on the idea of the escort mission, it depends on exactly how easy it is to meet the fail criteria vs meeting the success criteria as to how much that really would matter to me. And Lammania on an early preview is not the time to assess that anyway. I don't hate the idea on principle, it's usually just that in DDO the flippin' AI is so unreliable.

But the music and singing? From what I saw on the livestream that part looks *awesome*.

*You* may not like that, but that's the kind of thing that actually makes *me* want to experience the thing enough to consider trying to find a friendly raid pug again.

You're right - I don't speak for you. I can only state my own opinion, which is that the continuous singing was annoying, and made it difficult to communicate with my party. But this isn't a huge deal - there is pretty much nothing that drops in this raid that works for any of my builds that I can see. There wasn't a whole lot offered for DC casters and healers - like usual.

[GramercyRiff]

I re-installed but only because Cindy and Scott go off in this raid. It's expletiveing awesome.

[dennisck2]

a protection raid? lol just how far out of touch with your customers can you be? this is laughably bad.

This.

[TitusOvid]

So many people commenting about a raid they haven't experienced first hand.

It's a protection mission, not an escort mission. The dryad doesn't move. This isn't a repeat of CitW with Anna's horrific pathing and aggro management scripting. It's more like Madstone Crater.

The raid is buggy. Sometimes you fail when the NPC is at 100% health and has no debuffs from the unicorns. Othertimes we succeed using the same tactics.

Thank you for clarification. I am hoping for someone to post a video to get a better impression.

Cheers,
Titus

[Carpone]

The music is great.

Hawthorn's singing pitch is awful.

Audio balancing is needed between Hawthorn and Hyrsam. Hawthorn drowns out Hyrsam right now.

The puzzles need to be dynamic so they aren't always 1/3/4/2/2 to solve.

No optional chest, for one, multiple or all the optionals. For optionals, you should add a Feytwisted chest for completing one optional and an additional raid chest with threads, runes and loot for completing all optionals.

Not going to comment on difficulty until all the special attacks have been added.

[Epicsoul]

Ran the raid twice, once on R1 and the second time on R3. It took between 20-25min to complete both times.

THE GOOD:

Many of the thematic elements of the raid are well done, like the music and landscape.

Even though it's a one-room raid (unfortunate), at least it is a larger area.

THE BAD:

Many of the fights feel boring. I realize not all of the special attacks were in this version, but as it currently stands, the mechanics of the boss fights seem subpar to other end game raids (KT, THTH, LOB).

The puzzles shouldn't share the same static pattern.

Lag was bad to say the least.

THE BUGS:

You can tumble through the barrier while fighting the Fomorian.

THE IDEAS:

If the group completes all the optionals, reward them with a second chest. It could be feytwisted and have a chance to drop different raid items than the main chest: Khopesh, Bow, Shuri, Handaxe etc.

Automatically teleport players into the barrier when fighting the Fomorian and activate a dimensional anchor.

Randomized, different solutions for the puzzles.

[GoldyGopher]

I attempted to complete this raid twice yesterday.

In the first attempt (R1) we had a lag storm so bad that we wiped and didn't know it for two minutes. The second attempt on Normal something bugged out and we could not complete the raid. I wish I could tell you exactly what bugged out, but I was busy solving a puzzle when the raid went sideways.


The Good:
The music was entertaining.
The space was large

The Bad
The music is going to get annoying
Hard to coordinate with the music playing
It is more of a quest than a raid.

The Ugly
Lag
The puzzles seem to always have the same solution
It is a single room.
This really felt more like a challenge quest than a raid.
The loot doesn't excite me at the moment.

I have never been a fan of the MOBA design philosophy when used in raids designs. Even though we are not battling other PC this raid sure had that vibe, more so than other recent raids. (VOD-LOB) One member of our raid group suggested the raid felt more like a challenge quest than a raid.

With as much lag as we encountered it is difficult to talk about mob hit points. They all seemed to have way to many HP but it could be we were just lagged out and only every third swing was actually registered as a hit.
Playing a rogue assassin build it felt like everything was immune to my specialized attacks.

To be honest I didn't see a lot for multiple characters to do, however I was engaged in my own tasks.

Our tank complained that his intimidate checks were not pulling agro (even on normal), I have no idea what their skill was however my rogue was -60% threat generation pulled agro of single monsters often.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Both of those raids are still there... I just went into Heroic LOB with no problems.

Heroic LoB/MA is still there.

Legendary LoB/MA is new.

Epic (low-20's) LoB/MA is now gone. It was removed from the game.

[LT218]

So many people commenting about a raid they haven't experienced first hand.

It's a protection mission, not an escort mission. The dryad doesn't move. This isn't a repeat of CitW with Anna's horrific pathing and aggro management scripting. It's more like Madstone Crater.

The raid is buggy. Sometimes you fail when the NPC is at 100% health and has no debuffs from the unicorns. Othertimes we succeed using the same tactics.

Yeah, because everyone loved Hold for Reinforcements so much that the devs changed the "Keep attackers from giving Coyle an incapacitating injury" task from a requirement to an optional out of pure spite?

Because everyone loves protecting the shamans in Madstone so much they found ways to just aggro the mobs and/or stick them with bad pathing instead of actually killing them?

Thanks for pointing out how forgetful all of us are and that we actually LOVE the non-escort protect missions instead of actively disliking that mechanic and the associated difficulties with bugs and lag.

[Deathlylife]

I saw mention of people wanting an extra chest for optionals. I thought it did give an extra chest for all opts.
My group got an extra chest with raid loot with all opts. The fire beetle opt is by far the hardest (if you fail the opt it disappears from xp log and the objective panel). The run that we actually got the fire beetle opt it gave the xp and stayed in the xp log was the run we got the extra chest. Maybe more testing that it isnt bugged but also make sure that when people test that they actually complete the optional.

[Carpone]

My group got an extra chest with raid loot with all opts.

Then the extra chest is buggy. Something isn't being tracked correctly because we absolutely killed all of the optional bosses.

[Jerevth]

You win, DDO.

Fixed that for you.

[GramercyRiff]

Yeah, because everyone loved Hold for Reinforcements so much that the devs changed the "Keep attackers from giving Coyle an incapacitating injury" task from a requirement to an optional out of pure spite?

Because everyone loves protecting the shamans in Madstone so much they found ways to just aggro the mobs and/or stick them with bad pathing instead of actually killing them?

Thanks for pointing out how forgetful all of us are and that we actually LOVE the non-escort protect missions instead of actively disliking that mechanic and the associated difficulties with bugs and lag.

There isn't an ongoing duet in Hold for Reinforcements though. If the original DM sang doing both male and female voices, Hold for Reinforcements would be the best quest in the game. He'd obviously have to use his rakshasa trying to sound like a human woman voice.

[Madja]

Will we ever see heroic raids again? Wish there was stuff for those that don't want to stay at max level. It's really sad to see the cool loot that's only used for 1 level before TR'ing and doing raids on your TR train is refreshing. It's also fun to have chains that build up to a big raid.

[Carrow12]

Did you mean to make it so undead tanks are actually healed by the unicorns? That seems to be favoring a small sub set of tanks, and makes this raid even more unappealing than it was before.

[Tilomere]

Can we get a heroic raid version?