U56 Lamannia 3 - Temple of Elemental Evil Content Updates Overview

[Tolero]

As part of U56, we took on the task of re-working Temple of Elemental Evil. When we were evaluating this piece of content we took some time to determine the scope and size of the re-work.

While looking at the content, we decided on the following course of action:

• Break the Content into several smaller quests.
• Updating and Augmenting the Quest Flow to give more direction to players
• Rebalance both the scripted encounters and various random encounters.

Break the Content into several smaller quests:

Part One was separated into two quests:

• The first quest contains the Upper Temple and the Earth Temple.
• The second quest contains the Water, Air, and Fire Temple to Fallrinth in the Lower Temple.

Part Two was separated into 5 quests:

• Each of the Elemental Nodes are now there own quest.
• The culmination features the old beginning of Part 2, leading into Zuggtmoy.

Updating and Augmenting the Quest Flow to give more direction to players:

• Several quests had additional objectives added to make the game play flow.

Rebalance both the scripted encounters and various random encounters:

• The Zuggtmoy and Falrinth encounters were tweaked to be more approachable.
• Overall Monster Counts per group were reduced
• Number of Hallway Encounters were Reduced

Please use this thread to discuss your experiences on Lamannia with the updated Temple of Elemental Evil! To see the updated Temple of Elemental Evil adventure pack: From the Harbor, visit the Gatekeeper's Grove and once in the Grove speak with Bagnam the Gatekeeper on the east side of the Grove, then enter the gateway behind him. Note that you must own Temple of Elemental Evil to enter, and it is available in the DDO Store on Lamannia for Points. If you need Points you may speak with Lord Poincelot in the Test Dojo.

[Gatlinbow]

All of this sounds great! I run these every life.

My question/concern is only how it's roll out will effect the current HCL. My group just ran these a few days ago. If this rolls out, will the favor we earned be stripped away?

[merridyan]

All of this sounds great! I run these every life.

My question/concern is only how it's roll out will effect the current HCL. My group just ran these a few days ago. If this rolls out, will the favor we earned be stripped away?

I skip these every life. This change may add them to my leveling list.

[Dilbon]

How's the favor in these? And are the elemental node quests optional?

[Mindos]

All of this sounds great! I run these every life.

My question/concern is only how it's roll out will effect the current HCL. My group just ran these a few days ago. If this rolls out, will the favor we earned be stripped away?

Ha, maybe it will give more favor. What fun at the end of the season as some have more favor than thought possible!

Part Two was separated into 5 quests:

• Each of the Elemental Nodes are now there own quest.

"there" should probably be "their"

[Talnar00]

Base exp for the length of the quests on heroic is rather low.

[SirShen]

I thought you had done this to make it faster?

Part 1 of quest 1 took me 30 mins to find the runes but this will get faster now I know were they are. Part 1 of quest 2 is fine.

Being forced to do each node before Zuggtmoy is not making it faster. I hate this. Also before it was just find one crystal, now it find 3 flames, water, air ect for each node.

I did these all on normal. The dragon dots in Earth is too high. 40 sec dot damage at 20 a tic nearly killed me.

The XP in the nodes is too low for 20 mins of work. 4.5k XP is too small on normal.

What happened to headband of all the elements (Elemental Victory)? Has it gone?

Please make set quest end rewards important. Getting the same as a normal end quest reward is not nice. You have done a set of quests to get that end reward it should reflect that. You got rid of this for Catacombs and Dels. PLEASE stop killed quest set end rewards.

[HailBlazR]

Base exp for the length of the quests on heroic is rather low.

So it's the exact same problem we had back when Turbine first released the pack in 2015. Gee, who could've seen this coming?

I thought you had done this to make it faster?

Being forced to do each node before Zuggtmoy is not making it faster. I hate this.

Did they seriously not change a single thing about the nodes themselves? Wow. If I heard the phrase "ToEE Rework," the first thing I'd think of would be reducing the inordinate hallway sizes in all of the nodes. All of them are unnecessarily large, with water in particular having huge segments where you're swimming for >2 minutes and otherwise doing nothing. Anyone who actually has played the quests will quickly realize that this is one of the biggest problems with the pack.

If SSG actually did the opposite, and instead made it mandatory to go through all four nodes... then yeah, that's incredibly bad design, to the point that I'd even prefer ToEE in its current state. Warts and all.

[Ipsum]

I just finished playing all of it. I'm never setting foot in the water or fire nodes again which is a shame because I really like the Zuggtmoy fight. If the flagging requirements were changed to only require one node completion before running Zuggtmoy I might consider it, but honestly every quest also needs to give A LOT more XP. Every part of new ToEE, aside from the finale, takes ~15-20mins which makes them some of the longest quests in the game and they do not give XP commiserate with that.

Under the old version of ToEE, I ran part 1 every other life or so because I thought it was cool and gave ok XP. I never ran part 2 because it took way too long and had a rough fight at the very end. With the new version, even if the XP is improved, I will likely not run even part 1. Basically, making part 1 slightly longer with the runes has passed my threshold for how long i'm willing to spend in halls of endless enemies. The elemental node quests are just annoying and poorly designed like they have always been and I don't think there is an easy fix for this.

How would I change ToEE?
- Turn the elemental nodes into mini challenges. Reduce the length of each of them to 1/5th of what they are currently and turn it into a single quest. Make each node quite hard but short.
- Keep the Zuggtmoy fight as its own quest
- Breaking ToEE pt1 into 2 quests as was done on lamm is fine but I don't like the rune placement for the first quest (does anyone enjoy fighting harpies?) and the XP needs to be way increased. I honestly prefer the old version of the first floor.

I basically think that without a serious overhaul to the elemental node areas, a rework of ToEE is not very exciting.

[grrowler]

All of this sounds great! I run these every life.

My question/concern is only how it's roll out will effect the current HCL. My group just ran these a few days ago. If this rolls out, will the favor we earned be stripped away?

I am curious to know the answer to this as well; it would not affect me, but if you completed TOEE1 and TOEE2 as they currently are live, I am assuming that the favor would be stripped away from people that already earned/finished the existing TOEE's. Is that not going to be a bit unfair to people on hardcore?

I like how the quests have been split apart to be more manageable. I do not feel it is an issue of making the quests "quicker" - splitting them apart makes it more manageable to run the quests as you want. I think the new items might give incentive to run these quests as well - the eternal wands look nice.

1. I found the dungeon mobs to be a bit more manageable - it used to be that you would run into a mob just as you finished the last one - it was exhausting.
There are still respawn mobs / rares after some time, but overall the density feels better.

2. I am not sure if it was because I was soloing, but most of the random spawning traps seemed to be gone/removed - maybe the chance for random traps increases in a larger party size. can anyone else comment on this? I only ran into bear traps once in a secluded room and I covered the entire map for the first quest.

3. the one thing I disliked about the Falrinth/elemental encounter being separated from the earth elemental quest is that now we are unable to use Romag's Club of Earthen Dominion on the earth elemental in the last boss room. I always thought that was a clever strategy for making the elementals fight a bit easier having the earth elemental charmed.

• The Zuggtmoy and Falrinth encounters were tweaked to be more approachable.

4. in fact, I did not see anything that made the end fight with Falrinth more approachable? What was changed? It felt like pretty much the same fight as usual, and without the ability to charm the earth elemental making it actually a bit more difficult.

5. all the elemental barries (earth/air/fire/water barrier) are missing the visual fx. On lammania, it is just transparent - you run into an invisible wall. When you apply the key to the invisible barrier, the elemental color barrier flickers for an instant.

I only had a chance to run the first 2 quests; I will see if I have time to check out the breakdown of TOEE2 tomorrow.

[mikarddo]

3. the one thing I disliked about the Falrinth/elemental encounter being separated from the earth elemental quest is that now we are unable to use Romag's Club of Earthen Dominion on the earth elemental in the last boss room. I always thought that was a clever strategy for making the elementals fight a bit easier having the earth elemental charmed.

That is really sad. Being able to charm the earth elemental in the end fight was easily the best part of the quest line. I sure hope there is still a way to do that.

As for lowering the difficultly of the Falrinth fight - why? That was a very fun fight but certainly doable. I can understand reducing the difficulty of the Zug fight but the Falrinth one?

[LittleLexi]

I don't really like this new take on TOEE. It feels very haphazard, and less like a module, or an adventure. Somehow– breaking it up has made it more confusing. Certainly less enjoyable. A classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

My only issues with old TOEE were the layout and map not being overly intuitive, and too many samey encounters with stacks of mobs in every other corridor. Oh and the Wheaton orbs. Musn't forget those

Otherwise I was fine with it. I liked the length. I liked the difficulty. I liked treating it as a pseudo Wilderness Area at times. I even liked finding shrooms in chests. And I liked that we have dungeons that aren't all Medium-length strolls. This is a direction in quest design lately that I'm not best pleased with. There ought to be a variety in how quests play out. All this homogenizing that has been occurring in DDO is making for a much duller game.

It may be that I accepted that– while I might get through 10 or 15 dungeons on a particular evening– TOEE was a unique case, and that it might need an evening all to itself. And honestly? That's totally fine by me. There should be a place for these longer dungeon delves. It helps break up the monotony. I also don't feel entitled to complete any and every dungeon I step in. So I respected and appreciated the challenge of the Zugg fight. It was something to aspire towards. It made eventually overcoming it very satisfying. Will it still feel special and awe-inspiring? I'm not sure.

I was hoping for other old-school areas to get a touch-up. But if this is the sort of treatment they will get– then please leave them alone!

Wow...U56 is proving to be a real stinker eh?

[The_Human_Cypher]

Are they ever going to remove that entrance to TOEE in the Hall of Heroes? All of the other old quest entrances have been taken out except the one for TOEE.

[DrrIzzy]

These new cool changes with story split could serve as the ground for more content adding to the story in the future. I suggest the following:

1) Make two versions of TOEE, Standard and Extended, as you did with The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. You can leave the old version as Extended, that could be played longer and with extra chests as end rewards.

2) Make Zuggtmoy fight a full lowbie and/or endgame raid. In fact, there could be two raids - one with Iuz as end boss, the other with Zuggtmoy. Or pre-raid and raid.

3) Add additional modules to the story: Hommlet, Nulb, Emridy Meadows, Temple outpost...

4) Add more plot tasks for Circle of Eight or different temple factions

5) Add "named hirelings" to represent characters from the story (like Otis), to make the story even more immersible.

[Dabima]

5. all the elemental barries (earth/air/fire/water barrier) are missing the visual fx. On lammania, it is just transparent - you run into an invisible wall. When you apply the key to the invisible barrier, the elemental color barrier flickers for an instant.

This has been bugged for at least 3-4 years now. I've reported it at least 5 times during that time, but maybe it'll finally get fixed now that they are redoing the quests

[grrowler]

This has been bugged for at least 3-4 years now. I've reported it at least 5 times during that time, but maybe it'll finally get fixed now that they are redoing the quests

is that really the case? I have run TOEE part 1 on live multiple time within the past year, and each elemental force barrier was visible as a color wall which disappeared when you unlock it with the appropriate elemental key.

It was only when I ran the updated lammania one that the barriers were invisible. Has this really been a visual bug on the live TOEE?


I was able tonight to run the earth node TOEE(2) quest on Lammania.
I am a bit disappointed that there was a dragon at the intersection for the final hall area

Optional Encounters!
There are a few tougher optionals in the new Temple, and that's where you will be able to locate the old named items you used to be able to find in the Temple's Random Encounter chests (Sapphire Sting, etc).

I am hoping that is not one of the "Optional Encounters!" that Steelstar mentioned. It did not feel "optional" because I had to get past it in order to get to the halls beyond.

It was the dragon, surrounded by something like 15 watcher constructs that were hitting me with arcane zaps.
ugh that was unpleasant. I do not know if this was considered an optional or if this was a required encounter.

Anyway, I agree with others that the xp rewards for the node quest seemed low for the time it took.



Since I never got to the final Zuggtmoy quest, I was wondering if anyone could describe to me how the fight has been updated to be more 'approachable'? is it the same mechanics as before?

[QuantumFX]

Someone broke the secret door at (Standard): You are on server 24 at r2 lx912 ly2024 i7 cInside ox20.00 oy303.70 oz-249.39 h4.2. Game timestamp 136525.404.

[ahpook]

Break the Content into several smaller quests:
...

Going off reports in this thread it appears that you need to run the quests in order to be able to get into the next one. If that is the case that info should have been included in this overview. Also, if the flagging is required, I invite the devs to go back and review the various threads pleading to eliminate quest flagging. It serves no purpose and should not be required.

If you really want a forced story mode you can add a quest giver that only provides the end quest rewards when you run the quests in order but flagging should not be used to lock out players from helping each other and enjoying the quests.