Shroud Epic

[Shade]

Shroud Epic is coming. Hopefully sooner rather then later as that's the one raid that can really extend the life of the end game to new.. Truely epic levels.

We know its partially done as the items are in the compendium. Items in the compendium is a good sign the content is mostly done but not available to us yet for unknown reasons.

So here's my suggestions on how it should work (fully realising the planning stage is probably already done so these can't be taken anyways, this is mostly just for fun)

Phase 1:
A) Make it fun.
The usual formula of 10x HP, bit more dmg/saves/etc won't work here. Portals with 40,000 hp instead of 4000 isn't a good idea (or whatever they have, too lazy to do the math on that)
Randomize the spawn order. Grinding the same patern every night gets boring fast, make quick thinking and smart tactics required. Several teams split up would be required for success as the spawn order would be random and the whole team at 1 portal strategy wouldn't work.
B)Allow CC as a means to success. Currently CC is rather futile as CC'ing the monsters will not provide any help in fulfilling the objective (or preventing portal keepers from spawning) So instead of prevent the keeprs from spawning, being able.. Change the fail condition to prevent the keepers from reaching the center. Have them move relatively slow and have insanely high saves and HP, but allow casters to wittle them down with energy drains, until they can finally stone them. Altenative tactics like exhaustion, clouds and other means of slowing monsters should all work also. So non-red named would be preferable.
C) Make it tough. It's epic, its for the best of the best. The spawn speed should be incredibly fast. Only the most powerful group fully equiped with tier4 epic GS weapons should have a chance at killing their way thru. Other groups would required heavy crowd control.
D) Add some random. Give 2-3 portals a small chance to spawn a special lieutenant immediately, perhaps a lesser pitfiend, horned devil, or use that cool oversized orthon model from Sins of Attrition for a super orthon lieutenant.
E) Allow special tactics against portals again. It's just more fun to have more means to take down the requirex objective then just auto attack and wait. Bring back the auto-crit via exhaust + ray of enfeeblement, it will serve both to ensure casters have a better role in the shroud, which they need. Yea it doesn't make sense per DnD rules, but neither does swinging at an object that otherwise should be considered fully incorporeal anyways. Set there stats to be more fun then true to the rules. So make tactics more important. Adiditionally if the monk ability to lower fortification could work, that would be great, a small chance to crit them would make rogues quite happy. Currently the portals have 9999 fortitude save for an unknown reason making such an endevour quite unlikely, if not impossible, there's no reason for a portal to ahve a fortitude save, take it out. In-fact make it negative -20 so they auto fail all fort saves.

Phase 2:
Already considered by most very well designed and one of the most fun parts of the shroud so needs little changes.
Perhaps add a couple new lieutenants, and accordingly more random sets to mix it up even further. Epic-only luitenants perhaps, tho they could be available for all difficulties if the devs desired.
For Challenge reasons, The Penalty box should be re-enabled ala original shroud release here, on epic only.

New Lieutenant A)
The Mistress of Pain (CR44 Epic Succibi Queen of Shavarath) (Secret objective that never got added to the tower of despair) I bet you guys already have her profile started, so finish her off and put her in. Whatever you do, make her nothing like the current succubi in the game - eg: Ultra weak and unchallenging.
Give her an unresistable charm ability that lasts 3 minuits. It's impossible to remove and has no recurring saves, but she can only have it active on 2 people at a time, and only works on male characters. So the strategy would be to send the females after her =)
She would additionally have ultra fast cast DC50 dominate person, which works on females, but we would use the protection from evil spell to prevent it.
Damage wise she should have maximized empowered and quickened delayed blast fireball and cone of cold.. Succibi do not engage in melee combat.
Her special ability taht she grants to the other luitenants would be haste or similar.

New Lieutenant B)
Gula from Sins of Attrition.. Epic Gula!
This gula ate all the bacon and tasty ham the shroud had to offer.. So he's insanely fat, and powerful. He should be a much rarer spawn that basically means you automatically fail the raid for 99.9% of groups, he should be that hard =)
10x the HP the other lieutenants gets (which would all be insane like 500,000)
10x the str.. So he hits for 300 per swing...
Luckily he's so big and fat he swings very slowly (give him and all his nearby allies Gula's Glutteny, -50% swing speed perma debuff lol)
Additionally like most orthons, displacement and cloudkill would be effective against him. So while he hits like a truck, he can be tanked.. Barely.
Epic Arm-mounted Bolt Launcher that fires lightning strike bolts (very high proc rate, say 10% chance per bolt) =) So melee him, or die. He only uses this weapon if you dis-engage from melee.
I think he should eat the other luitenants if they die too. No ghosts, but if they die before he does, he eats them and gains +1000 strength, then smites the whole raid

Phase 3
Timer until the wall appears? Not on epic. Prismatic wall appears IMEDIATELY. And moves 10% faster then normally. All puzzles are 5x5s and there are only 5 puzzles. Each puzzle also has water elementals atacking constantly in the pools. They respawn after 3 minuits if killed, but may be CC'd. Cleansing the pools with the holy water will dismiss them. Locks may not be picked (actually theres no levers on the inside in epic, only on the outside) However each room has 5 runes on the walls.. Epic runes. Each requires near the maximum possible stat to activate (no con rune). 75 for strength, 50 for dex, 46 for CHA, INT and Wis) Activating any one of the runes opens the door. Once on the other side the levers on the outside may be used normally, they are not locked.
This suggestion removes the arbitrary requirement for lock pickers or people with knock to ensure success.. But still keeps an element of challenge in escaping the puzzles, without taking the route which prevents you from getting the extra chests.
As normal,the crystals that may be smashed to escape would still be there, and not scale up much in HP But doing so would lose you access to 2 chests,, which in epic should drop some pretty good stuff.
Inside the main central safe area are several epic devils that must be cleared before you can access the fountain to get waters. (preventing 1 skilled person from doing all the work, as he would need help getting there at least)

Phase 4:
Double the amount of scouts.
Gnolls have tremendous healing abiltiy. If they are not killed within 30 seconds, They heal Arraetrikos for 20% of his lifebar. Gnolls have decent hitpoints, 2k maybe 3k. But low saves, so flesh to stone and mass hold would be effective.
Attraetrikos meteor swarms are truely death from above. They deal 400+ damage with fire resist 30 on.
Epic Arraetrikos casts hell ball - the epic spell. Making firestorms greaves not such the elite killer they are now, as it deals everytype of damage. 100+ acid, fire, lightning, cold all in 1. 400+ damage total, (but each may e reduced by resistance spells/items)
Additionally he sometimes likes to cast mass dispell (actaully he already does this 1% of the time on normal, but on epic its more like 20% of the time), removing all the melee's buffs around him (not anyone staying back at range)
He also has his part5 ability - teleport other here. So he will occasionally grab a healer and bring him into the blades for some fun =)
The scout wave is simply timed, not required kills as now. You have 30 seconds to kill them, then arraetrikos lands and attacks.. Regardless of the scouts being dead or not, preventing any type of respite to drink mana pots while 1 last devil is stoned or whatever. Non-stop action is what the epic shroud is all about.

Phase 5
Arraetrikos isn't as dumb as he is on normal. He attacks immediately, along with all his lieutenants! He is invulnerable until they are all dead, but will ravage the party relentlessly.
If you thought it would be smooth sailing after the lieutenants go down, you were wrong. The portals that now spawn blades, will instead spawn the same things they spawn in part1: Troglodytes, followed by devils, followed by named enemies. This won't be a fail condition, but will provide some serious challenge to the caster in the group to keep these enemies CC'd while the melee focus on the 5 bosses. You may kill the portals, they wont respawn, but they have tremendous hitpoints.
Sound bad? There's 1 good thing:
The SP pools,, are epic SP pools =) So while this encounter will be incredibly taxing on the healers, they shouldn't require too many potions. The pools restore large amounts of mana (50-150 per tic). But they do dry up eventually, so high DPS to kill them before they dry up will be the key to victory.

Phase 6 (Yea phase 6, ofcourse there's a phase6, it's epic shroud)
Just when you thought it was over.. Arraetrikos teleports away to his throne high above the shroud. And a new mysterious portal appears. (Remember to get the epic shroud noobs to click the exact center!)
This takes you to a secret stronghold high above the shroud.. Where in lies..
Arraetrikos, wounded and battered at his throne.
Suulomades.. Epic Suulomades.
Epic suulomades is the ultimate boss of epic shroud.. But you cannot defeat him, not yet anyways. He has DR100/Epic. So any attempts at killing him with standard weaponry will fail. Ideally you'll be using a Epic Mineral3 weapon.. But obviosuly the first grousp to do that won't have them. So they will have to settle for other epic weapons, which bypass the DR100, but he still has DR15/Silver+Good.

His spell list will include mass dispell, mass energy drain, wail of the banshee and trap the soul, DC50. So no your deathblock won't save you. Fail the willsave, your a soulgem. Tho this spell would be his rare special attack, that has a special animation and he says something before he uses it, like Playername, I command your soul into my gem! If you save, he gets really ****ed off and casts haste and rage on himself. If you fail, he is happy so he doesn't buff. He only casts this on the person with agro, so a high will save main tank will be critical. Deaths will heal him, ala horoth in ToD.

Like the tower of despair fight, trash devils will continously spawn throughout the battle. You may flesh to stone them, but they have massive saves and regenerate negative levels extremely fast, so you may need to kill them. They do not suicide like the tower ones however. That's not epic.

At 5% health he will teleport away and send waves upon waves of epic detanator bats at you. These can't be killed, they just suicide asplod on your face. So if your healers aren't prepared, you all die. But if they are, you heal thru and he comes back down for the final battle. For the last bit he casts his chain abliity almost continuously.

What do you get for winning this epic raid?
4 chests and access to the altar of ultimate devastation. This is where you upgraded your epic greensteel weapon to tier4. Regular greensteel weapons wont fit into the altar.

EDIT: Bonus idea since guild housing is coming:
After Suulomades falls. Arraetrikos topples from his throne, battered and bloody from the epic battle. You may talk to him, but not attack. Only the party leader may speak with him. (pass the star around if you want someone else to handle the task)
He finally surrenders and pleeds for his life, you have 3 options:

(DC20 strength check) (Slice off his filthy devil head!)
Accept his surrender.
(Diplomacy DC80) Accept his surrender, but demand tribute for your victory.

-If you fail the strength check, he teleports away in agony and the raid completes.
-If you pass the strength check, his head flies off and lands on the ground with a nice "plunk" sound effect. Only the party leader may pick this up, it binds to account , or to "guild". This is a guild housing item, you may mount it on your airship =)
-If you accept his surrender, he simply thanks you teleports away.
-If you try the diplomacy option, but fail. He says no and teleports away. After 1 minuit while your looting your end chests, he reappears to seek vengence once more for your greedy demands! He regenerates 5% health, summons 4 elite orthons to aid him and attacks you once more! Killing him completes the raid.
-If you succeed on the diplomacy option, he agree's and provides you with an addtional chest, then teleports away.

Now diplo really does get you better loot

Chests:
4 epic chests and 2 of the chests have raid tokens and 2 have dungeon tokens. They have a small chance of dropping these items:
http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Item:...ic_Energy_Cell
http://compendium.ddo.com/wiki/Item:...plintered_Horn

As you can see from the descriptions of those items, you need to sacrifice an existing tier3 to start down the road to epic greensteel.

How epic greensteel should work:
You place your tier3 weapon, an epic energy cell and a epic horn into the altar of ultimate devastation. This utterly destroys the weapon's enchantments, but provides you with a fresh Epic Greensteel blank to upgrade again.
Epic Greensteel Blank stats:
Base dice increased as if the weapon was 2 size categories larger then a normal GS (Which are roughly equivalent to large currently - so Garguantuan)
For Greataxe that means:
Greataxe 1d12 (normal) 3d6 (Greensteel) 6d6 (Epic Greensteel)
Crit multiplier increases:
Weapons with 19-20 crit threat or better gain +1 multiplier
Weapons with 20 only crits gain +2 multiplier
Critical Threat increase:
None. (Perhaps for Tier4 Tempered tho)
Damage Types:
Evil, Epic + Type normal for that weapon (Epic Greensteel has no slots, so you cannot add an Epic Crystal, it's already epic)
Hardness and Durability: Per a lvl20 weapon of that type made of steel.
Minlvl: 20

Upgrading the weapon works as normal for tier1-3, however it requires double the normal amount of ingredients. This is accomplished by requireing 2 identical shards + the epic weapon + regular energy cell in the appropriate altar. Can be done on any difficulty. (Therefore double shard t3 require 4 shards, but you combine 2+2, so in the end you put 2 double shards in + weapon + cell)

Tier4 requires epic ingredients to upgrade. These only drop on epic. Upgrades work as normal, but enchantments are all massively increased.

Few potential double shard enchantments:
Mineral 3:
+20 hardness, +400 durability
Metaline
Aligned
Wounding
Ravaging (5d8 bleed damage every hit)

Lightning 3:
Epic Lightning Strike:
1500 damage and disorientates and briefly dazes the target for 6 seconds. (Target cannot act, but is not auto-crit)

Ooze 3:
Epic Gargantuan Slime Summoning and Guard. 1 click to summon, and 0.5% chance to proc summon.
Slime is CR30, 2000 HP, deals 50 blunt damage per attack +4d6 acid. Sunders enemies on every attack. Can be split by slashing and piercing attacks. Splts up to 10 times. Split version have 1000hp each, and deal half damage.

[Xyfiel]

I have a simpler idea, everyone has binding chains the whole time, mobs have 4x the hps, and harry has a permanent antimagic field around him. Bye bye buffs and healing if you want to melee him.

[phalaeo]

They better make Epic Mnemonics if they want Clerics to run that.

Shade, what do you think the rewards should be to have run Epic Shrouds?

[Arcticwarrior]

I like everything except maybe the suulu fight because DR 100/epic? thats a lil rough. Maybe DR 100/epic if he was weakened by araetrikos for taking all the eclipse power. So maybe: DR 100/epic with half normal health?

[xTethx]

All good ideas, except for the epic crafting. Enough people complain about regular greensteel, epic greensteel would just push them overboard. I know not everyone will be completing this, but the simple fact will be; the rich get richer. Otherwise, I love the ideas, especially the part 5 one, could be fun.

[Khurse]

What would you do for non melees who decide to run Epic Shroud?
The weapons look nice froma melee POV, but I'd assume healer's and some Arcane's aren't going to be interested in ultimate melee weapons.

Improve Concordant Opposition? Gear that allows them (yet) higher DC's? More SP's?

I really like the idea of a permanent(ish) debuff aura around Harry as well.

[Beherit_Baphomar]

Or instead of yet another revamp of a quest we've been running nonstop for years they could give us a new raid to upgrade our greensteel.

We don't have to revisit The Shroud to upgrade greensteel, do we?

[Monkey_Archer]

Only the most powerful group fully equiped with tier4 epic GS weapons should have a chance at killing their way thru.

lol

a bit out of context, but still funny

Lots of good ideas here... except the constant fast respawns.... Turbine would need completely new servers to even consider it...

[dranreb]

They better make Epic Mnemonics if they want Clerics to run that.

Shade, what do you think the rewards should be to have run Epic Shrouds?

Epic Mnemonics: Coming soon, but only available in the DDO Store!

[Cashiry]

Don't get to overhyped about the Epic Greensteel... all I see them doing is the following:

Uping the Damage output. I.E.

Greensteel Great axe goes from 3D6+5, Crit 20/x3 to say 2D12+6, Crit 19-20/x5 and adding a RED augment slot.

Ligtning Strike would be pretty nice with silver on it.

That is how I see weapons being made, not sure what they will do for items though.

[Arcticwarrior]

yes epic GS would be awesome

[knightgf]

Forget it. People have a hard enough time doing shroud on normal, and a good 75% of the time, it gets only to part IV, and even then, theres still a good chance of failure. Imagine doing it on hard or elite, let alone epic...

Its going to be very difficult to convince Turbine to release an update that only a very, very small amount(Probably 1%) of the population can do on higher difficulties.

[Cashiry]

Forget it. People have a hard enough time doing shroud on normal, and a good 75% of the time, it gets only to part IV, and even then, theres still a good chance of failure. Imagine doing it on hard or elite, let alone epic...

Are guild runs elite all the time.. its not that hard of a raid. the problem is that new players just aren't geared out for it and or make mistakes and not listen to instructions(I'm not saying all new players, but most do not listen)

[Vorn]

Or instead of yet another revamp of a quest we've been running nonstop for years they could give us a new raid to upgrade our greensteel.

We don't have to revisit The Shroud to upgrade greensteel, do we?

Concur here...would much rather have a quest that follows on after the ToD story line that would end up in upgrading greensteel. Can't see Sulu helping Harry much--Sulu threw in with Horoth. But, in general, I liked the ideas of some things that would be challenging and the epic Gula in a raid would be hilarious!

[Sweyn]

They better make Epic Mnemonics if they want Clerics to run that.

Shade, what do you think the rewards should be to have run Epic Shrouds?

If you're talking about on 2oth, 40th ect... it will be the same as normal shroud. Just like VoN and DQ. For there to be a separate rewards list for epic completions, there needs to be a way for the game to know how many completions on epic you have done... but with the current system, an epic completion just counts as a normal completion towards 20.

[sirgog]

Forget it. People have a hard enough time doing shroud on normal, and a good 75% of the time, it gets only to part IV, and even then, theres still a good chance of failure. Imagine doing it on hard or elite, let alone epic...

Its going to be very difficult to convince Turbine to release an update that only a very, very small amount(Probably 1%) of the population can do on higher difficulties.

I've pugged Elite Shroud many times.

It's easier than Epic Offering of Blood, which is very puggable.

[Pyromaniac]

Is it long enough for epic tokens to be included in the pack?

[Delacroix21]

I am gonna say it= I COMPLETELY agree with Shade on Epic shroud!


Why?
Because the shroud finally gave DDO players the chance to make items THEY wanted, and players will finally have items that are "truly" Epic. I believe Epics should be hard for regular players, but they should lose a good degree of difficulty to Epic geared characters. Most of the current Epic items dont achieve that as they are barely better (or worse) then current game items.


That and you would HAVE to finally make greensteel handwraps, as not even Epic ToD rings would compare.

[Shade]

Its going to be very difficult to convince Turbine to release an update that only a very, very small amount(Probably 1%) of the population can do on higher difficulties.

Not really. They don't need to be conviced as some of this I didn't make up. The items are in the compedium, click the links for yourself.

So it's being worked on and will be released, you can count on that. When is the only question.

And 1% of DDOs "million plus" is still allot of players.

Also only part 5 and 6 should be too hard for 99% of players. Thats the beauty of the shroud. Part1-4 will still give excellent rewards, so if you fail at part5/6, no problem. You'll still be gathering epic ingredients and part4 should probably give you a small chance at a +4 tome as well.

[Shade]

lol

a bit out of context, but still funny

Lots of good ideas here... except the constant fast respawns.... Turbine would need completely new servers to even consider it...

It would be part of the challenge for the casters. Enemies that aren't dead don't respawn, so flesh to stone and dreamspitter to prevent lag, deaths, and ensure victory =)
Casters are pretty boring in the shroud otherwise, all u do is insta kill.. But on epic you cant even do that, thus the suggestion.
If they don't respawn fast, melee will just kill them and casters wont matter.