AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

This is a new quest, that has finally gone live after... a year or more. I welcome player feedback. It starts in Shadowscape and that's all the direction I'm going to give.

things to know going in

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It is meant for a PARTY of level 20-21. The dungeon has challenges that use different skills. While no certain class(es) are /required/ to complete the quest, having a varied party will certainly make your life easier (and more interesting).

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It is the Plane of Shadow - there is no light! I have made concessions to this, but if enough of the community and DMs feel it is still too dark it can be tweaked some more.

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The creatures are things you have never seen before (at least on Amia). They have special abilities based on grapple, improved grab, and custom auras. All are counterable and with things most every PC on Amia already uses.

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Again, it is the Plane of Shadow. One of the largest challenges of the dungeon is the ability to get lost. It is COMPLETELY EASY to NOT get lost, if you use some common sense, and think about what you are doing.

The dungeon, overall, is meant to be an experience, and not a circle grind. If you want to just haste and run in circles whacking shit - sucks to be you. <3

But seriously, I do welcome all feedback. I am certainly open to tweaks, especially if it comes from the balance team or DMs.

Cheers,
~ AnaBananaFoFana

I'm gonna repeat what I said in Skype, for record's sake:

Details:
- PC used was Level 30 (21 Monk/6 SD/3 Rogue---yes, it has blind fight)
- Hunting party consisted of four people, including myself
- Three Level 30s, one Level 28
- Other party members: KC/SD/Rogue, Bard/SD/Rogue, Monk/Fighter/WM
- Buffs included: Negative energy potions, ghostly visages, mind blanks, usual animal buffs

The only glaring bug I found was the fact that the transition from Whispermere -> Black Rift teleports your entire party to you, even outside of your immediate hunting party
I think the reward is pretty cool and novel
The atmosphere was really great, flavor text was awesome, mobs were scary af
Not too hard. It was only me getting lost with where to go but apparently that's on purpose! So not a big deal
Also very intriguing with the end in the room with the random portrait, the page of musical notes, and the opening bookcase was really cool
I have no idea what that was about and we tried to run around and use the pages on things but we couldn't find it out, so that was very nice to follow an interesting story with the quest
I particularly enjoy the aspect of unraveling the story being your goal in this quest as opposed to grinding

Yeah I just ran it myself and I have mimic Sams report of it being very atmosphere focused and neat.
The only bug I had was the same with the transition from Whispermere -> Black Rift teleports your entire party to you.

So going back there with a bard to learn more about the musical notes.

Thanks folks! Keep em coming!

No spoilers here about the notes pls if you figure it out. Feel free to shout at me privately though.

As for the Whispermere transition, I know what's wrong, but don't have Internet to send an update... in the meantime. SURPRISE Shar claims all yer asses. Lolololol

Did it, was fun and enjoyed! What others said about the atmosphere of the place.

(Tested using the Sirrush EMD for battling the spawns.)

However, it seemed after the first person goes through the south gates they lock behind them stopping people using em (They can be picked though, after which they can be opened... until used, as they lock again)

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but the grapple/grab effect some of the monsters use didn't seem to respect freedom when used from an item (I believe freedom stops it in PnP, but I have no idea if the grapple we have set up is meant too or not.) Thought worth mentioning at least or if other things are meant to counter it then.. this can be ignored!

A lot of 'area affects' the monsters use are nice, but it did seem that they took preference of spamming the several uses they had of them and getting slaughtered before many could put any potential victims in harms way, rather than fighting back. But that may just be a quirk with the monster AI rather than anything. The spiders also seem to enjoy trapping themselves in darkness where they can't see.

Everything else seemed fine save that, though!

Rigela wrote:

However, it seemed after the first person goes through the south gates they lock behind them stopping people using em (They can be picked though, after which they can be opened... until used, as they lock again)

Fixed! Thank you. This was an overlooked script change from when the dungeon was in closed testing.

Rigela wrote:

I don't know if this is intentional or not, but the grapple/grab effect some of the monsters use didn't seem to respect freedom when used from an item (I believe freedom stops it in PnP, but I have no idea if the grapple we have set up is meant too or not.) Thought worth mentioning at least or if other things are meant to counter it then.. this can be ignored!

Certainly worth mentioning! I need to know which effects or which creatures to check for sure. If it is strictly related to the grapple, I will need to poke FW or BH to look at those scripts. That's a system created by Glim, and not something I implemented.

Rigela wrote:

A lot of 'area affects' the monsters use are nice, but it did seem that they took preference of spamming the several uses they had of them and getting slaughtered before many could put any potential victims in harms way, rather than fighting back. But that may just be a quirk with the monster AI rather than anything.

I had noticed this on my local machine, but not on the server. Again I need to know which montsters to know if it's something I did with their settings, or if it's the AI/features need to be removed.

Rigela wrote:

The spiders also seem to enjoy trapping themselves in darkness where they can't see.

Bwuahaha OK, we can't have that.

Thanks so much!

On top of other monster concerns - the monster swill likely be receiving a pass to look at their AB to bring them more in line with other creatures of their CR.

Made a pass through with Rashad last night, no problems. Made one with Tukson earlier today, no problems. Decided to comb it more thoroughly with Rashad again because I like finding things and everything was fine until he tried to go past Whispermere. Everytime he did (15 times), he ended up in the Lost Swamp. He had done nothing weird or strange or different than his previous pass and Tukson's previous pass earlier the same reset period, so I'm confused if it broke.

I had never hit that area (Lost Swamp) before, so figured it was RNG, But 15 times in a row seems too broken to be RNG. So maybe the transition fix (if one was put in, that is) broke it this way. I was unable to get past Whispermere/Lost Swamp to the next area and gave up.

Did a bit of testing to see which monsters it was! The following seemed to have a grapple/grab that ignored freedom - intended or not. Didn't find anything else that triggered such a thing when spawning them on in.

- Canoloths
- Cloakers
- Dark Ahuizotl
- Dark Tree

Canoloths also seem to summon a NWN standard succubi sometimes, which isn't really of any use.

I couldn't actually see any using an over abundance of abilities, when testing them out again. It may have just been that they all tried to do things together or something and I was going in at too high level - I don't have a more appropriately leveled PC to test out afraid.

Welp... that's almost everything that uses grapple. It must be the base code. I'll have the scripters look at it!

Tormak is looking at a way to fix the canoloth & mezzoloth summons to keep the lore flavor without either spamming and doubling the spawn, or calling something completely useless.

I really appreciate this folks!

Anatida, you outdid yourself on that area. While we didn't get through the entire thing before the reset occurred, we did get to a majority of it and we -loved- it. The details (and the gore in a certain room, heh) were phenomenal. Seriously; kudos!

I didn't get a chance to test it on an appropriately leveled pc, but those hounds out in the wastes can be pretty lethal if their on hit blind triggers, they actually killed Gerald that way. If it isn't I'd recommend that onhit be set to trigger on a 50% or lower just so parties aren't doing like flies there. It looks pretty sweet though.

I'll give you more feedback on a party in range when I bust out Drogvar

Doors locked. Had to pick the lock to get to him.

Got the quest from him, did it, he won't let me turn it in.

http://i.imgur.com/KmIW017.jpg

Bonkers

oh and i found his doppelganger in the shadowscape spook store and he won't accept it either. same dialogue.

*Sigh* The rollback of B must have took out all of the quest stuff. If that is the case the quest will be "offline" until B is updated again. :cry:

I know it was mentioned before but tonight the transition from Whispermere into Plane of shadow: Lost Swamp snagged 3/4 of the party, which were not even close to the transition (read: they were in the underdark). It didn't snag the person that was in Endir's Point, though. Not sure if this was supposed to have been fixed previously

Unfortunately the fix for that was rolled back several months ago, with the previous mentioned B shenanz. I have no idea when they will get the finalized quest in. :/

FEEDBACK: Shadow of Shadesteel quest

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