Temple of Elemental Evil: Round 1 Feedback

[The_Human_Cypher]

I keep hearing two quest, is that just code for normal version, and extended version? I would not call that two quest. Just like I don't call epic orchard a new update.

No, there is a TOEE Part I and TOEE Part II that have to be completed in order (both Heroic and Epic versions of Parts I and II).

[die]

No, there is a TOEE Part I and TOEE Part II that have to be completed in order (both Heroic and Epic versions of Parts I and II).

This sounds promising.. I am becoming intrigued. I will admit, I do feel like a kid at Christmas time. But I was knocked flat when Thunderholme came out. I was so stoked and then bam..Major let down.

[Ziindarax]

Since the Character Copy is busted, I could not bring my current live build from Lamannia, however, based on what I've seen rolling a new character, I shall separate the reviews into two. Note, I died from traps on Epic Hard as a Barbarian 18/fighter 1/fvs1 - Clerics love to spam negative levels.

Between the changes in how future loot will roll out (see the latest loot first look thread), and TOEE, it's clear that going forward, DDO wants to encourage players to play in groups, instead of as a solo team. On your own, you're very likely to die, and with the (nerf) to PRR from Heavy Armor, you're not going to be soaking up as much damage as smugly as before, which is actually a good thing because my current build on live completely breaks the game in that short of lag and red alerts, he simply can't die unless fighting powerful posses using irresistible magics.

On-ward to "Karagon" review -

Honestly, the Temple of Elemental Evil is somewhat of a pushover if not for the clerics spamming negative levels, and the traps that are well-hidden and peppered everywhere. Between large volumes of enemies that can spawn in a room, and the sheer number of rooms, it's clear that you won't be zerging this place (at least, not at first, and only with someone experienced [or a wiki map]). Zerging will land you in a hot mess.

As I've only made it a little bit into the temple before dying, I cannot, at this moment, testify as to how easy/difficult the bosses are. However, I do feel like the mobs could be challenging with them throwing trips and other strong tactics into the frey, once they get a bit of a buff to make them a little tougher (Ogre's felt about right though). The health, however, was a bit right, as I was dealing about 270+ damage a blow from my first-life barbarian, so the mobs will take a while to kill, which is another reason you shouldn't be solo'ing the Temple of Elemental Evil.



On to the Ziind Review -

As mentioned in the starting paragraphs, I am currently using a build that's completely game-breaking (Jormungandr, Hammer of the Gods - Eldritch Champion - Paladin 8, Cleric 7, Wizard 5), and the 15 points-shaved-off-of-PRR-nerf isn't going to significantly alter his near-godlike abilities (inspite of only having two epic past lives on his belt augmenting the enhancement bonus of his main-hand weapon). Based on what I've seen as the first-lifer, while Ziind might take a little while longer to kill monsters (since he's not dishing out mad damage like the barbarian to kill 15 enemies in seconds), he will be much more resistant to damage, and completely immune to negative levels, and frankly, just steam-roll a good chunk of the Temple (because on top of having yugo pots, GS health belt that adds a chunk of mana to his pool, and Divine Crusader [which, btw, is entirely too powerful compared to other destinies given that it offers waaaay too much self-healing too quickly, out-healing even EE damage on a heavy armor high prr build], Ziind also has access to Heal Scrolls, Greater Restoration scrolls, and res scrolls, all of which he can use without fail).

Oh, and he also has, what is very nearly, an omni-elemental warhammer (Fire burst included in the VON red Dragonplate) that does lightning, ice, and light damage (Fire on criticals/vorpals - on a regular hit with the red dragonplate). So even without the Thunderforge hammer in play, he'd still hit pretty hard!

A triple Epic-Completionist Ziind would have no trouble with this content what-so-ever, even on Epic Elite, which brings to mind an urgent suggestion - scale quests based on the presence of Epic Past Lives, not just by difficulty, or # of Party Members.

That being said, Temple of Elemental Evil can be fun with the great music (kinda wishing you'd be able to use some the music from the original Temple of Elemental Evil game), and lengthy hall-ways. However, my only concern is with the mobs being push-overs in terms of damage, and weak traps, it stands to be a very boring, and tedious module (on a high-powered character, with a little tweaking, the normal builds like the first-life build above will feel the pain juuuust fine.) - What makes TOEE so fun is that there's danger everywhere, and a high-powered character with a build such as mine is not going to feel threatened at all (thereby creating a dull experience in what should be a fun module [and it is if you play with a normal, true-to-PNP build designed to rely on a team of players. I certainly had a lot of fun playing on the first life character]).

Over-all, fun stuff. Look forward to playing it some more.

[moo_cow]

snip

Was this post just so you could talk about yourself?

[arkonas]

this will probably be edited a few times or ill just add new parts to it. i did this on en just to see what happens and most of the mobs are pushovers to just a basic toon with some of the items from the dojo's cabinets so yes some raid/named. the earth elementals in the temple of earth hit harder then everyone else on that lever. the harpy rare, gargoyle, lich i didnt see much of anything. the orc archers or trackers i think throw their arrows so work on the animation to get them like the orcs from stormhorns. so far this place is huge and i like that aspect of it. i actually look forward to what it will look like more polished.

earth there was a chest near a fire place that couldn't be opened.

Kelno the Prefect is there a save to is mind effect and is he not suppose to have a chest? im just wondering.

slag the magma brute fire should heal him. instead it was doing damage to him.



i am wondering about the inner temple in the 2nd part. is it going to be populated with mobs rares or anything besides her? by the way that end fight with her is very awesome. i enjoyed it.

owlbreak was he suppose to have a chest, xp or just orange name?

goristro barbarian fight in air temple. too easy since all you need to do is take the key and fly out. so maybe barrier or something

someone mentioned the barrier with living pool not dropping. i had no issue with that. i went into the side rooms and killed both water elementals. it dropped.

[The_Human_Cypher]

I had a chance to run TOEE on Epic Normal with several other people this evening, including a member of the Players' Council. There were about 10 to 20 Players' Council members on Lamannia early in the evening, running TOEE to generate constructive feedback for the devs.

The size of TOEE is its defining characteristic. That someone will not be able to rush through this dungeon makes it very immersive, much more so that any other quest in the game. TOEE is really an Explorer Area that has been combined with an expansive quest, with dungeon levels moving down and down, deeper into the depths of Greyhawk. The quest provides players with more of a pencil and paper D&D feeling than even the Haunted Halls or the Stormhorns which were both excellent updates.

I am really excited about this update and hope that it generates considerable outside interest in DDO among the gaming community. DDO has really accomplished something with TOEE and I look forward to more content like this in 2016.

[thaddeus9]

Jumped over some barrels and got stuck.

r2 lx1896 ly2024 i6 cInside ox255.55 oy223.47 oz-246.51 h101.3

Also frog keepers text reads "Bring me some spider eggs from a spider's next". I think this should read as "nest"

[Gothdom]

This area is HUGE!

I've copied my bard just to see, and I felt like there are too few shrines. Some doors don't open after killing bosses, and there's a water room with an orc spawning over the pool, so he keeps falling in and reappearing.
Moving from a place to another, or using ddoor, clears the map.

So far so good though. I like it and can't wait to see the gear.

[Steelstar]

I've copied my bard just to see, and I felt like there are too few shrines.

We definitely heard this from a lot of you yesterday - In Part One, we're adding an additional set on the west side of Dungeon Level 2, and another just before the end fight.

[Uska]

Since the Character Copy is busted, I could not bring my current live build from Lamannia, however, based on what I've seen rolling a new character, I shall separate the reviews into two. Note, I died from traps on Epic Hard as a Barbarian 18/fighter 1/fvs1 - Clerics love to spam negative levels.

Between the changes in how future loot will roll out (see the latest loot first look thread), and TOEE, it's clear that going forward, DDO wants to encourage players to play in groups, instead of as a solo team. On your own, you're very likely to die, and with the (nerf) to PRR from Heavy Armor, you're not going to be soaking up as much damage as smugly as before, which is actually a good thing because my current build on live completely breaks the game in that short of lag and red alerts, he simply can't die unless fighting powerful posses using irresistible magics.

On-ward to "Karagon" review -

Honestly, the Temple of Elemental Evil is somewhat of a pushover if not for the clerics spamming negative levels, and the traps that are well-hidden and peppered everywhere. Between large volumes of enemies that can spawn in a room, and the sheer number of rooms, it's clear that you won't be zerging this place (at least, not at first, and only with someone experienced [or a wiki map]). Zerging will land you in a hot mess.

As I've only made it a little bit into the temple before dying, I cannot, at this moment, testify as to how easy/difficult the bosses are. However, I do feel like the mobs could be challenging with them throwing trips and other strong tactics into the frey, once they get a bit of a buff to make them a little tougher (Ogre's felt about right though). The health, however, was a bit right, as I was dealing about 270+ damage a blow from my first-life barbarian, so the mobs will take a while to kill, which is another reason you shouldn't be solo'ing the Temple of Elemental Evil.



On to the Ziind Review -

As mentioned in the starting paragraphs, I am currently using a build that's completely game-breaking (Jormungandr, Hammer of the Gods - Eldritch Champion - Paladin 8, Cleric 7, Wizard 6), and the 15 points-shaved-off-of-PRR-nerf isn't going to significantly alter his near-godlike abilities (inspite of only having two epic past lives on his belt augmenting the enhancement bonus of his main-hand weapon). Based on what I've seen as the first-lifer, while Ziind might take a little while longer to kill monsters (since he's not dishing out mad damage like the barbarian to kill 15 enemies in seconds), he will be much more resistant to damage, and completely immune to negative levels, and frankly, just steam-roll a good chunk of the Temple (because on top of having yugo pots, GS health belt that adds a chunk of mana to his pool, and Divine Crusader [which, btw, is entirely too powerful compared to other destinies given that it offers waaaay too much self-healing too quickly, out-healing even EE damage on a heavy armor high prr build], Ziind also has access to Heal Scrolls, Greater Restoration scrolls, and res scrolls, all of which he can use without fail).

Oh, and he also has, what is very nearly, an omni-elemental warhammer (Fire burst included in the VON red Dragonplate) that does lightning, ice, and light damage (Fire on criticals/vorpals - on a regular hit with the red dragonplate). So even without the Thunderforge hammer in play, he'd still hit pretty hard!

A triple Epic-Completionist Ziind would have no trouble with this content what-so-ever, even on Epic Elite, which brings to mind an urgent suggestion - scale quests based on the presence of Epic Past Lives, not just by difficulty, or # of Party Members.

That being said, Temple of Elemental Evil can be fun with the great music (kinda wishing you'd be able to use some the music from the original Temple of Elemental Evil game), and lengthy hall-ways. However, my only concern is with the mobs being push-overs in terms of damage, and weak traps, it stands to be a very boring, and tedious module (on a high-powered character, with a little tweaking, the normal builds like the first-life build above will feel the pain juuuust fine.) - What makes TOEE so fun is that there's danger everywhere, and a high-powered character with a build such as mine is not going to feel threatened at all (thereby creating a dull experience in what should be a fun module [and it is if you play with a normal, true-to-PNP build designed to rely on a team of players. I certainly had a lot of fun playing on the first life character]).

Over-all, fun stuff. Look forward to playing it some more.

Hmm how are you getting 21 character levels? 8/7/6 to lazy to look up the build on my tablet but is it

8/7/5 right?

[Eryhn]

Hmm how are you getting 21 character levels? 8/7/6 to lazy to look up the build on my tablet but is it

8/7/5 right?

his build is so op he gets an extra level

donwloading lama client, this sounds like good stuff, if still raw

[Drwaz99]

There's a certain amount of "random" encounters setup here which may be the reason for some of these experiences. Monsters & bosses won't always be in the same places, but that does mean it can vary from playthrough to playthrough.

I'm all for random but is there any way we can avoid using the "instant dungeon alert" as some sort of difficulty enhancer? There should be no reason that there needs to be so many mobs spawning at once (if you've cleared the adventure completely up to that point. If you've zerg thru not killing anything - that's a different topic) to where one single spawn cause orange or red alert? It's not fun, it's gimmicky difficult at best, super annoying the rest of the time and can be in some instances create crippling lag and party wipes. Much if-not-all of Wheloon has suffered this since it's inception and is a major reason I detest (along with the Pepto haze) and avoid at all cost running out there. There has to be a better way.

[Vargouille]

I found many of the Mobs and Monsters were not dealing enough damage.

Running Solo with no hirelings with level appropriate characters
On HE I had many (most) mobs hitting my characters for single digit in damage with PRR of 32 (25%)
On EE with a PRR of 170 I had a few of the human mobs hitting my character for low to mid teens.

I did not feel threatened that I was going to DPS to death in TOEE
On the other side of the coin the Ogres seemed to hit for the appropriate amount of damage.

For monster feedback like this, it's extremely helpful if you can name the exact monsters you see (especially individual monsters who seem really out of line). "Most mobs" is a bit broad, especially for two quests that are so large.

1) a number of mobs are stuck in the walls. This happened several times.

If you can name the exact monsters and /loc where this happened to this will help us immensely. Given the nature of the random encounters in this dungeon it's very tough for us to manually check every possible combinations of spawns, so a little information here saves us many hours of time. Thanks!

Jumped over some barrels and got stuck.

r2 lx1896 ly2024 i6 cInside ox255.55 oy223.47 oz-246.51 h101.3

Thanks for the location, this is helpful.

I'm all for random but is there any way we can avoid using the "instant dungeon alert" as some sort of difficulty enhancer?

As a general rule we don't intend for a single spawn area to cause any dungeon alert, and certainly not red dungeon alert. This basically isn't ever a goal in our designs, so letting us know where it happened and with what monsters will help us figure out why it's happening when we probably don't want it to. (We also had some issues we are already looking at where some monsters had xray vision and would aggro when they shouldn't even be able to see you, but that might be unrelated to this.)

[Bolo_Grubb]

112 search skill and not able to find the secret doors in Temple of Elemental Evil part 1 on Epic Normal.

On a level 28 pure rogue, in shadow dancer, pretty well geared. I had a +11 int item, a +6 Int skills item, and a +20 search item on. As well as store pots, Yugo pot and Greater Heroism.

I don't think I could do anything to get my search skill any higher.

This was in the very beginning, Killed some harpies and a Harpy red named. Got the symbol for a secret door near by but could not find it. A few rooms later with some ghouls and another secret door, but could not find it.

[The_Human_Cypher]

If you can name the exact monsters and /loc where this happened to this will help us immensely. Given the nature of the random encounters in this dungeon it's very tough for us to manually check every possible combinations of spawns, so a little information here saves us many hours of time. Thanks!

I didn't take note of the exact location but I remember that all of the stuck mobs were orcs and that this always occurred on the first level of the Temple in Part One.

[Ziindarax]

Was this post just so you could talk about yourself?

Negative, just pointing out how Temple of Elemental Evil is a solid adventure pack, and amply challenging in it's current state as long as you're not rolling meta-builds and high-end loot. With these present, however, the quests become a bit too easy.

The reason I am talking about my build is because I wanted to show the devs how the Temple of Elemental Evil stacks against certain high-power builds, and the risk of their trivializing the content. Now that the Character Copy is back online, and Ziind is on Lama, I can verify whether my earlier report would be true, or not.


As for the part about my warhammer, I was just making a suggestion to the devs in relation to an omni-elemental weapon! *cackles*

[Augon]

I was in on EN and spotted a secret door but could not find it with a search of 106. I neglected to note where I was at the time though. I will pay better attention next time.

Also, when you move from one area to another and then back - your map is reset to blank. that is a pain.

overall its a great quest IMHO.

The secret door I can spot but not find is at loc: r2 lx1912 ly2024 i26 cInside ox7.60 oy187.31 oz-249.45 h271.4

It is in the room where you fight the harpies my search is 107 now.

I am in on Epic Normal

[Ziindarax]

Hmm how are you getting 21 character levels? 8/7/6 to lazy to look up the build on my tablet but is it

8/7/5 right?

Yes, a typo, sorry about that.

[Seikojin]

The living pool guardians do not scale into epic levels. 1 hit on ee and they died.

Most of the humans do not deal enough damage except their guard captains. If there were 3 times more, then it would probably be more appropriate.

[GoldyGopher]

For monster feedback like this, it's extremely helpful if you can name the exact monsters you see (especially individual monsters who seem really out of line). "Most mobs" is a bit broad, especially for two quests that are so large.

Running Solo on Epic Elite, running a level 28 Dwarf - 18 Pal 2 Fighter 8 Epic wearing Shadow Dragonplate Heavy Armor and carrying Epic Elite Bastion in an off Destiny (AC 157 - PRR 172 - MRR 102 - DR 30/Epic 15/Pierce

All Human Mobs I encountered, including but not limited to Arcane Tricksters, Roving Bandits, Temple Guards, Temple Clerics, during Melee Attacks did ~13 to 19 points of damage, on ranged attacks the damaged dropped to LOW single digits and zeros. With Deathblock and Deathward something the Human Temple Cleric cast gave me two negative levels, I could not find it in the Combat Log.

The Spiders I encountered did NO damage

The Mephits I encountered did low teens (~13 to ~15) points of damage

The Orcs I encountered did damage in the upper teens to high twenties in damage in melee (~19 to ~29), their ranged damage was in the mid single digits (~6 to ~9)

The Ogres I encountered did do meaningful damage (~75 to ~200)

The Earth Elementals spent more time trying to earth grab me than attempting to smack me around so I cannot give a meaningful number other than it was low.

With this character I went and stood in a mob of 8 Roving Bandits - 5 of which attacked the PC in melee and three sat back in plunked arrows, my Shield Riposte (1d8) actually killed all five melee mobs before getting to DR 60/Epic. I do have a golem heart so I was getting some incoming healing during the fight.

After playing an hour of only using a Golem Heart for healing I had finally used my four lay on hands and pulled a gold seal Favor Soul / Epic 4 (Andaro) and the incoming damage tripled fromt he Human Mobs. What was ~13 to 19 became ~45 to 49 and I was hit far more often, at least twice as often.

Is that enough detail.