[UGC] The Halls of the Forgotten Campaign - Act 2: Ask Not Whence the Thunder Comes
Quest:
Ask Not Whence the Thunder Comes
Author:
Ellindar
In-game handle:
@ellindar1
Quest type:
Outdoor epic; Balanced quest with time spent on presentation and balancing story, exploration and combat.
Recommended party size:
1-2 players (Solo is TOUGH but doable, 2 is ideal)
Duration:
Average play time is 30-40 minutes
Quest Code:
NW-DUGJKXYE8
This quest is UNLIKE anything you've seen before!
ZERO map transitions. An entire custom built 900 foot Ice Fortress built into the map with every level painstakingly detailed to immerse you into a world of giants! There is something for everyone here:
Combat: Ranging from wildlife to giants you encounter combats that are straightforward and combats that have you on the edge of your seat! Prepare for well planned encounters that will make you sweat!
Exploration: Want to see what's in the outlying areas? Give it a shot, you may find some gems out there! Maybe some lore! (not to mention the 500,000 Astral Diamond worthy easter egg hunt if you've got the itch! See below for details!!!)
Humor: If you are a foundry creator, you can NOT miss the battle of wits with the Juan'Sta troll atop his toll bridge! Its one for the history books.
Story: Continue your trek to enter the Halls of the Forgotten, entry way to hell where Vraylech has taken to gain power once again. Confront the Mad King Fallon!
Environments: You won't believe your eyes as six levels of hand built block by block ice fortress is yours to explore! If you can see it you can go there! From the fourth level enter the battlements and don't forget to look out to see just how high up you've come!
This is one quest you don't want to miss!
CAN YOU SURVIVE... THE THUNDER
Version 1.0(5-27-2013)
The initial release is finally here! Please use this thread for feedback, bugs, etc.!
BUG FIXES
1. Just now moved two clickables down and made them bigger that folks were having trouble with (includes blacksmith teleporter and entrace guard click)
2. Typos and more typos! Thanks for all these submissions and I've corrected a ton. Let me know if you see any more! (5-28-2013 12:27am CST)
3. I renamed some objects that I missed with default names! (5-28-2013 12:27am CST)
4. Corrected the Winter Wolves so they don't despawn until they are supposed to (5-28-2013 12:27am CST)
5. Changed the spawn point of the Winter Wolves so they don't immediately attack the seers (5-28-2013 12:27am CST)
6. Fixed the floating reward chest (5-28-2013 12:27am CST)
7. New roaming wolf encounters are standing still and not following patrol points (NOT FIXED YET)
ENHANCEMENTS
1. Changed the Half Drow Giant to a much tougher mob that comes with some fellow imprisoned humans (they don't last but he does) (5-28-2013 12:27am CST)
2. Enhanced the Beast in the cave to be a little tougher. May increase it from there as well if feedback is its still too easy. (5-28-2013 12:27am CST)
3. The boss fight is now far more epic! It is three waves where the king participates in all three and shows off his true master stormcaller abilities! (5-28-2013 1:30pm CST)
4. Changed all of the "spawn on top ambush" encounters by the wildlife back to roaming encounters with better pathing. Much more realistic and much smoother to play! (5-28-2013 1:30pm CST)
OFFICIAL GAME TRAILER:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elzPaRoHYMI&feature=youtu.be
Enjoy some screenshots!
Comments
In ASK NOT WHENCE THE THUNDER COMES is a very special explore easter egg hunt. The WINNER of which will receive 500,000 astral diamonds!!!
Here are the contest rules!
1. You must have completed the quest and given an honest review! (juan'sta trolls won't be receiving anything)
2. You must post a screen shot of the easter egg and tell us what it is. (incorrect answers don't win!)
I'll warn you now, it is not easy, there are hints throughout for those willing to look.
GOOD LUCK TO ALL!
I'm assuming there's actually something that says :you've found my easter egg ingame.
I found a spot where you can fall through the ice to the ground below. While this is an intentional area (it's decorated purple and blue...), the teleporter to get out puts you in the middle of the keep, and you can do this before completing the reach the keep quest.
No problem and actually I can, I tested a lot of the walls but there are definitely some edges I might not have. I will line them the best I can with invis walls (elevations can make it darn tricky!) Thank you though for letting me know!
Was "mispeled words" meant to be ironic? I didn't know whether to laugh or be pedantic. :P
Was I supposed to climb up the "anvil" to get to the portal? Didn't feel intended.
The "arena" seemed very tiny for an arena, especially for 500 ft tall creatures.
The seer wolf challenge proved interesting. Thankfully I had kited them away inadvertently. There was not really much of a break for the next challenge of mobs had I not after that super stacked encounter.
Interesting usage of NPCs for the impaled effect. (Dead manwich, lol)
I fell off at the dessert scene, all the way to the bottom. Mobs followed. Crashed to death. Works for me.
Reward chest floats.
Was able to use same tactic as above to kill everything but king. Seriously gimped king. Easy fight after that.
5 stars, noted in game.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
I really appreciate this. I have been talking in vent about a few of things you just mentioned. I'll be changing up the king fight just a bit tonight and tomorrow. I'll post when I have it. Fixing the floating chest now. (the chance of falling off the platforms is definitely intended with some knockback mobs in there on purpose
I definitely did 'mispleled' on purpose He does even mention it lol. I did know it broke immersion a bit, but I did want to have one little bit of humor for my fellow authors.
The arena is supposed to be only a betting arena, where they have their minions fight and they bet, the giants don't normally fight there. I will try to make that a bit clearer.
I love my dead manwich! lol
Again, thanks SO much for taking the time to post this, and I'm getting on these fixes straightaway!
There are several typos, word choice errors, and capitalization errors (9th Circle of hell..., leased -> leashed, a missing period.) in the conversation with the ghost.
Popping up encounters on top of the player is bad practice (road bandits). You do it all over the place outside the fortress.
With the ice giant seers, several winter wolves are on top of their cages.
More 9th circle of hell capitalization issues with the ******* son.
The ******* son is so large it completely blocks the camera while following you. He needs to be smaller, much smaller. It's cool to have a giant guarding you, but the camera issues are so bad with him I couldn't possibly recommend anyone getting him. That should have been terribly obvious in testing.
You cut off the entrance via invisible wall, but since you can get inside via teleporter via falling through the ice over the section you made for the cave, you can't get back out to reach the initial quest point, forcing quest abandonment.
The purple fog used for this cave extends over the cave roof, so you get the purple fog while exploring outside the fortress, telling you there's something going on there. Problem is there's nothing going on there because you're not in the area that is supposed to be purple, but over it. That means players will wander around looking for the reason why everything turned purple.
The troll has nothing to say about my killing his brothers in his sight if you go to him before collecting the head.
There is no need to collect the troll head at all, the troll can plainly see that I killed his brothers from his position since the "cave" is open air.
The invisible wall blocking you from walking past the troll is pointless, as talking to the troll is a quest objective and so must be completed.
There's no reason at all for the troll summoning to be main plot, it's not required to interfere in order to reach the fortress.
For an unknown reason, the solo bear past the ice giants who are eating disappeared right in front of me as I approached it.
A bit west of the entrance, there are numerous floating rocks, though this may be part of the prefab map.
South of the entrance, there's a whole grove of trees hundreds of feet off the ground. You can easily see this as there's a lookout point that directly views it. While that's probably built into the Cryptic map, it's fixable by you since you can block the view with something, and in fact, you blocked the circling path that forces the player to go to the lookout point with that view.
With the front door guard: "Hallsof the Forgotten".
The quest's dialog needs to be copied out to a word processor, as there were other errors.
There needs to be a visual indicator of where the start of the ramp is, the area is dark and the arc of the ramp is not visible in a typical camera angle players would use, plus the sparkly path can't deal with the layout..
The Beast was trivial to defeat, I beat it in about 5 seconds. The giants talk like it's really tough...
The anvil is "Icespire Shrinem Enlarged 01".
"Drop the supplies off with the northern guards". There are no "northern guards", there is an interactable. The interactable is "Bag - Sack - Spicebag 01" and it's press F to interact with no animation for it.
When defeating the battlement guards, the patrolling guard walks right up to the battle. The patrolling guard should have been replaced with a hostile patrol when the battlement guards attack you. Since he sees you being attacked by the other giants he should not be neutral to this.
The winter wolves disappear at some point from their cages, only to reappear when the shamans call them.
The arena champion token you are given is not taken when it's no longer necessary after you show it to the shaman.
Defeating the winter wolves is trivial because they attack the shamans.
Next to the chief, one of the 'crystals on a stick' decor is off the ground.
The quest chest is buried in the ice, only the top shows.
I'm under the impression that you are part of the Dungeon Master guild on Dragon server, and that you folks hang out on irc and critique and play each others quests, so my expectations are higher. Presumably you had them play this before announcing it here. That doesn't give me a good impression of that group.
The area design is impressive, making that was certainly a feat. But on the other hand it has way more bugs, logic problems, and bad design (popup encounters) than most every other quest I've played both on an absolute number and on a issues per minute of gameplay basis.
Well, we've already had a run in with you previously... you've pretty much been an *** before and continue to be. I'm just glad you put the real reason you had to come in here and bash and basically ****** it up when you said "I'm under the impression you're part of the dungeon master group'. You're and idiot. Sorry to say. I'm sure you just wait for the chance to get all over one of us eh? lol.
(Oh and btw, the giant following you isn't an issue if you just look up a bit while running. If you don't want him, you don't have to get him)
And typos will be fixed as I go.
You're one real gem brother.
(you'd have been better off giving a juan'sta, its what we expect of you anyways lol)
Awww, that hurt a little bit. :-(
Well there is a bright side, he did point out a couple of ACTUAL fixes to be made lol. No matter how many times you scour your items for naming, you always miss some
Yes I understand, I'm the one who told you how poor form it was in the thread you tried to get closed of ours. So I completely understand why you'd want to single me out. If you thought neither of those quests "you enjoyed" had no typos in it, you're terribly mistaken lol.
So with that said, I'm going to actually answer each of your points, to show you just how silly you actually are.
Thanks Kamaliicious. I can't speak for the stream, but the guild is for all foundry authors, good, bad, or just wanting to learn.
Back OT. I do want to check out that map sometime this evening.
We don't co-build, we don't go through the quests with fine toothcombs or playtest them until they're perfect, we check them out and just give advice and feedback. With members of the guild or those who just join the stream, all we're here to do is to offer pointers, but our word isn't gospel and opinions will differ from one person to the next; even members of the guild. Ultimately a Foundry creation falls on the shoulders on the author, both the good and the bad. I'm not sure what levels you believe "The Guild" (as if we are Borg who speak with one voice...) espouse, but our knowledge and capabilities with the Foundry are pretty advanced, but that doesn't mean we sh** diamonds and everything is perfect straight away. We try to help people and offer critiques to those that look for them.. some people just seem to have a major problem with us doing that as if we're putting ourselves up on a pedestal. We just want to help people make better quests.
So you can dislike Ellindar's quest and that's cool, it's your opinion, but it just comes across as pretty weak when you try to take cheap shots at the entire guild.
I hope this helps put you back on track with this being the best quest ever built! (chili, that was my thunderspank for ya)
Smoke@stonedbill - Mindflayer - 60 Rogue
Thanks so much! If it goes on for a week with no winners, I will add some new hints!!!
Quest I
The Mysteries at Fang Ridge!
Short code: NW-DGTN72HYL
Being that I have been seen as an aggressor in cases of my "perfect world" notions, I am not really one to be able to say much here. I will say, however, that both of you are highly out of line.
Kam did, at least, offer a lot of feedback referring to issues you might check out in the quest. I am sad he did not bother to comment on the clear amount of time you put into the instance to see some gold beneath the murk. However, your retort will afford you a reputation with others that might make them wary of reviewing your instance.
Tis just an observation.
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
(That's because you don't realize kam is also wuhsin who is also thunderspank. And its also because you don't realize that kam had attacked us in another thread in the general forums and when I replied he was in poor form he wanted to go at it.)
Map - Map was awesome and huge really liked it. First foundry mission I've done with this large of a map and no porting.
Humor - I am guessing you are in your late teens to early 20s. The quest humor definitely shows there with the dialog and names of the two trolls who follow you. Did not down rate for this just simply was not my cup of tea for humor.
Difficulty - The difficulty level should be up a little bit more. To test the maps difficulty on quests that recommended 2 people I usually solo with no potions and I was able to. That being said there was a bit of a jump in damage taken from everything before the king which is nice that the damage is increased then for an interesting fight.
Guards - The guards that open the gate to the seers just above the ring can be cheesed off the edge. Not sure if there is a way to gate them so they cant be cheesed but made the fight less fun.
Stairs - The stairs that lead up have a few spots that you can get caught on. Not sure if this is a foundry limit but would be nice to have them smoother.
Boss room - Boss room had several spots that I could not blink with my control wizard due to sharp edges. If there is a way to smooth those out would make for a better fight mechanically.
Easter Egg - ???
Overall Impression - Very good map which seems to have been the focus. Story was ok tho i could not get into character as ever NPC referred to my triefling as a human. Maybe changing that to match the person in the quest or maybe a more interchangeable name like Adventurer.
Final score - 4. There were a few things which I pointed out above that would not allow me to rate a 5 but also things that I could not take more points off just because they don't strike my fancy.
PS. Was not trying to bash you just trying to give my most honest opinion.
Stuck a lot where? Were you easter egg exploring? If so, then yes I imagine you will but there's not much I can do about that. The quest straight through you shouldn't get stuck on anything at all, so I'd have to ask please be specific where you've gotten stuck so I can look into it.
3 and half is LOW low for where I feel this quest is, so I'd love to know what brought you to the conclusion. Any specifics are great.
I don't realize that. Doesn't make me change my stance. Doesn't make you wrong, either. I support one defending one's self and one's guild/group/friends. Some fights just aren't worth bothering with, though. Kill em' with kindness...
Short Code Copy/Paste: NW-DJC4R9H3R
Anyways I'm in dungeon masters but no vent infos
Quest I
The Mysteries at Fang Ridge!
Short code: NW-DGTN72HYL
I appreciate the feedback! No, I'm not teens or twenties... forties yes. lol. However, that said, I'll try to answer each point.
Humor: you're the first person to pick up on the trolls, some people don't even know they're there. They are sort of an inside joke with co authors. And yes, I get that's not everyone's humor and I would never expect it to be (i appreciate honesty) As for the troll, the writing with him was *very* specific for authors of foundry here. It was representative of what the community outside the foundry is like and how they 1 star trolls like to attack. It will be loved by some, hated by others (and I'm ok with that!)
Difficulty level: I'm really surprised it should be upped but it seems all over the board. I've had several solo 60's say they've solo'd with 4-5 pots and a couple of close calls, yet mid levels say it was easier. Could I ask what level you were?
As far as the edges there are some things I can do that I have already done, I will look into improving it more. I did want it to be treacherous will possible knockbacks off the ledges so its a give and take.
There are a couple of steep spots on the ramps, and it is an architectural nightmare in there to design lol. I have tried to lower them the best I can.
I will look into smoothing out the floor for the boss fight, that's great feedback.
Easter Egg is tough, but there are those who can give you answers. I really appreciate you spending the time, I'm going to make these changes you've found. Hopefully you get to run it again after and I can earn a 5 from ya!
No, unfortunately that little pop in those mobs do is always done. Its just if they are spawned already you never notice it. Its a game limitation
I love him and you. LOL
*oh and to my defense, I did tell him thanks for the actual issues he found!