Beta reviews needed for "Frozen Folly"

epharmd

Hi everyone! I posted this last week in the review request thread but have yet to have any reviews/plays beyond my own testing runs, so hopefully this will help (apologies for the double post). Any suggestions/impressions are appreciated and welcome and I am happy to reciprocate the favor and review your quest(s) (I will automatically check for quests that need reviews if I see you review mine, or send me a message/respond to this thread).

Name: Frozen Folly
Code: NW-DEVSLU387
Average Duration: 15-20 minutes without exploration, 30 minutes for the more curious adventurers

Quest premise/start: The increased interest in Icewind Dale in recent days has revealed many surprises as traffic to and from the region flourishes. A dwarven expedition traveling through the Spine of the World has uncovered an uncharted barrow deep under the ice and has sent out a call for aid in its exploration. Will you answer?

Note: This quest is a short hack 'n' slash dungeon delve targeted at solo play. There is a great deal of back story and lore hidden away for those curious about the barrow and is intended to reward exploration.

Starts at: the Spine of the World (overland map)

Author tips/hints: I play-tested this using every class currently available on live and was able to finish it without too much trouble. The final encounter may be a bit challenging with some classes/play styles ... but there IS a way to make it easier if you are willing to explore a bit to find it. That said I found that the default fight (without utilizing the secret help) was fairly easy on my HR/GWF/CW and pleasantly challenging on my GF/DC but I did die once on my TR (who I will freely admit is woefully undergeared) though I was successful on a more cautious second approach.

Maps: It is a series of two maps, one short outdoor map (a portion of Kessel's Retreat that I felt fit the ambience well, though it appears to be a glitchy map so I was not able to make some encounters work the way I had intended) and a large indoor map for the barrow itself.

This was originally created to test out some of the foundry tools and see how well certain things work in practice for several other adventures that I have had in mind. As such, it is more combat than I would have normally used, but the project grew substantially from my initial plan and evolved into an actual story with a lot of lore and backstory drawn from my very dusty library of forgotten realms source material (I used to DM/play a great deal of Forgotten Realms D&D campaigns but it has been a few years since I have had the chance to make use of any of it).

epharmd

The great news is that “Frozen Folly” is now “Daily Foundry” eligible! Hopefully that will help incentivize some reviewers. Also, as I mentioned before, I will definitely review your quest if I see that you have reviewed mine or if you send me a message. This will hold true regardless of whether it is in beta as long as I am still playing Neverwinter (my wife seems increasingly determined to get me to quit and play something else).

On the downside … it is daily eligible solely from my own playtests. The one review is from a personal friend who doesn’t actually play the game (not much at the moment, anyway) and I would be the first to admit that it probably shouldn’t count. To be fair I’ve gone back into the foundry and tweaked things after almost every play through though I’m getting to the point, even as a perfectionist, that I am having trouble finding things to adjust. Has anyone tried the quest? I have certainly played through enough foundry quests (beta and otherwise) that had unclear or broken objectives and as many times as I’ve played through my own quest I cannot say for certain that the same isn’t true here … I may just be unaware of it because I already know where to go, but I that is something that I try to consider every time I playtest the quest.

Is there a better way to get word out and get people to test foundry content? Short of spamming gen chat, of course. I imagine that guilds are a good resource for that sort of thing, but they haven’t really been my priority personally. I started playing Neverwinter because I am a long time Forgotten Realms fan but on the rare occasion that I play MMOs I have a tendency to treat them as single player games … story over grind.

Anyway, my apologies for the meandering rant. I look forward to some feedback, hopefully, and thanks all!

kevaar

I haven't yet finished, but here's my quick and dirty review:

Overall, polished, good quality, nice job.

There was a LOT of combat. For some this is a draw, for me it tends to get old. HOWEVER! I enjoyed your trick with having the zombies rise up from dead bodies on the floor. (How did you do that?) I also liked that the encounters were challenging without being impossible for a solo character. (Though I would have preferred more respawn points, as my character was often in low health after each encounter).

I like the option of exploration, though I haven't poked my nose into a lot of corners yet. I'm enjoying the hidden walls and traps. (Though again, would prefer more respawn points for when I accidentally blunder over the latter.)

I love what I've seen of the story. It was intriguing and well written. My only wish is that there was less combat to wade through so I could get to the story updates sooner! (Or perhaps more story updates in general?)

Anywho, I'll try to finish it today and get yousome ingame stars. Could I bother you for a look at my own Foundry?

epharmd

Thanks for the input, and thanks to all those who reviewed it! It is now out of beta! I appreciate all the help and feedback … I’ve made a few changes to the final encounter based on some of the input. It is now adjustable as I intended for the encounter to be challenging but not overwhelming. I tried to keep the adjustments believable and in-character, so I’m curious what people think of those.

There was a LOT of combat.

I wouldn't normally use quite so much combat but I was trying to make sure that it would be daily eligible. Based on my own playtests many characters can finish it in right around 15 minutes without paying attention to any of the story. While I would LOVE for everyone to read through the conversations, search out all of the hidden story fragments and explore all of the side rooms/encounters I know that it's not very realistic. So the amount of combat was a necessary evil to maintain that eligibility. I tried to make some of the combat encounters varied and interesting though.

I enjoyed your trick with having the zombies rise up from dead bodies on the floor. (How did you do that?)

You can change the basic behavior of an encounter (ie, patrol, wander, etc.) and for the zombies I believe that I used "Play dead." I considered throwing in some NPCs dressed as zombies and sprinkling them around the barrow with the "dead body" activity set just to play with people but the map was getting fairly full as it was.

(Though I would have preferred more respawn points, as my character was often in low health after each encounter)

My apologies for that! I really wanted to add some more respawn points but each map is limited to one. I didn't realize that until after I finished the map itself ... definitely a learning lesson. In the future I will probably try to rely on several smaller maps instead of trying make one large detailed map.

And thanks again for the feedback! I played through your foundry quests and found them quite enjoyable! I posted some feedback and more detailed impressions in your thread.

kevaar

Ohhh, then that's a bummer, on both counts. Congratulations on getting out of beta, however! Next stop, featured?

And you're quite welcome! Thanks for your review, too.

melinden

I played on my 45 TR. I didn’t see any problematic errors so I would call this a good first draft. In general I would recommend you make the spaces smaller and add more elements to your story. The long indoor spaces make for long runs. If you add more interactive elements then you still have the players take their time but this means they are reading something of interest, not just running down a hallway.

You have a number of elements: Dwarves, Drow, the crypt itself. As the story is now none of them are connected to each other. Craghammer doesn’t mention any sign of drow, the thing that killed the one body I examined indicated it was nothing I had seen before (which would mean it couldn’t be Drow). You have a couple of places where you place interactive items but the clues are very difficult and don’t seem to connect (see my note below about Eldath for example). Since we don’t know the story you are trying to tell what might be obvious to you isn’t at all to us. Adding more items and context would be a huge help. Even further evidence that the dwarves went the direction we are headed in would help: backpacks, mining picks, fallen equipment. In theory we are there to track them, right?

Finally: who is buried in the crypt? How are they tied to the story? Answers to those questions will help keep the player’s interest.


Play through notes:
-the placement of the icon on the overworld map seemed odd. It was just on the border of the zoom in illustration of Neverwinter. I would think placing it in the northeast corner might make more sense, since there is no way to place the Spine of the World on the map as it is currently
-I do not believe the Battlehammer clan was in Gauntlgrym, but abandoned Mithral Hall instead. You may want to confirm this, but if so you may also wish to change Craghammer’s dialogue
-you might consider having the encounters either patrol or wander. The gnolls especially seemed to just be standing there waiting for me to kill their friends.
-I like the placement of the snow drift and snowy details inside the crypt
-after touching the crystal the first word should be spelled “nausea”
-I was a little confused, was the Eldath mentioned in the vision of the crystal not the goddess Eldath, then?
-I would also recommend moving the respawn point to the middle of the dungeon. If a player dies before they reach it they will automatically return to the spawn point of the map
-it is usually preferred in foundries to have an actual exit door instead of the “Press F to leave” option

I don't have anything I particularly need plays for at the moment so don't feel you need to run one of my quests. Good luck on your future drafts!

epharmd

Thanks for the input! Great stuff, and it will certainly help me make some adjustments. A few thoughts below (apologies in advance for the longwinded post, just a lot of substance to reply to!):

In theory we are there to track them, right?

Funny you should mention that … I will sheepishly admit that I was using the dwarves as a shallow excuse to bring players to the barrow. Not intentionally … I just got caught up in other things once I started work on the barrow itself. In fact, the bodies at the entrance were supposed to be the last of the expedition (I figured they wouldn’t have made it very far considering what is IN the barrow). But you bring up some very good points and I think that I will make a few adjustments when I get a chance, though that might be awhile. There really isn’t much incentive to explore further, and I know I would personally probably head back at that point. I will definitely have to give it some thought and remodeling! Thanks!

-the placement of the icon on the overworld map seemed odd

I was trying to position it south of Caer-Konig where the Spine of the World would be, but I admit that it gets a bit muddled as it is between both maps. I will definitely try to reposition it to a less awkward location on the map.

-I do not believe the Battlehammer clan was in Gauntlgrym

The Battlehammer clan is descended from the Delzoun dwarves of Gauntlgrym and I used them as a reference because they are fairly well recognized by players. Additionally, many of the Delzouns fled north so I felt it was a fair possibility (that and the fact that the art style is similar to that of Gauntlgrym).

-you might consider having the encounters either patrol or wander. The gnolls especially seemed to just be standing there waiting for me to kill their friends.

I actually tried getting some of the outdoor encounters to patrol and worked for quite a while trying to get some of the dwarves to follow and help out. After hours of frustration I concluded that there is an issue with the Kessel’s Retreat map … when you place points for a path the connecting line becomes vertical no matter where I placed the points. The result is a bunch of twitching, spinning character models that, while humorous to watch just weren’t functional. I gave up on trying anything particularly complicated on that map and focused on the barrow instead. There was a lot that I wanted to do with that map that just wouldn’t function properly but I wasn’t willing to throw it out because it seemed to work so well aesthetically. If anyone can get this map working properly or figure out a workaround I would love to hear about it!

Now that I think about it though your comment has gotten me thinking about tying more of the encounters to appear with location-based triggers. When I tried to get them to appear higher on the cliffs or utilize ambush nodes it just failed utterly.

-I like the placement of the snow drift and snowy details inside the crypt

Thanks! I found that I was adding one or two (or a waterfall, or snow effect, etc.) after every single time I played through it myself. It was the culmination of about 15-20 personal playtests. It looked pretty boring initially. I’m a little worried about adding more things at this point though because the map is already a bit too large and I have heard of glitches showing up with too many moving parts.

-after touching the crystal the first word should be spelled “nausea”

Thanks! I can’t count the number of times I’ve read through all of the text and at this point I think I just gloss over things. Frustrating, but that’s exactly why multiple pairs of eyes are needed! The embarrassing part is that of all the words that I could have misspelled that really shouldn’t be one of them (I’m a pharmacist … I see that word constantly).

-I was a little confused, was the Eldath mentioned in the vision of the crystal not the goddess Eldath, then?

&

who is buried in the crypt? How are they tied to the story? Answers to those questions will help keep the player’s interest.

Yes. Yes indeed. An earlier side passage has an encounter that explains that far more in depth. I intentional sprinkled a LOT of references and backstory in the side passages and hidden hallways. There are over a dozen individual items that players can interact with to learn about the barrow, its inhabitants, the drow, what the drow are searching for, how they got in, why there are undead, who they are, when they got there, etc. I didn’t really intend to make them that well hidden but I am curious as to just how much people have uncovered. There is one side encounter that is completely unrelated to the tomb and only for comedic relief … not sure if anyone has found it because I haven’t heard anyone reference it yet. I was a little hesitant to put that one in because I wasn’t really sure if it fit or not. As for the Eldathan connection … that is the most in depth of the side stories because it involves an NPC that you can enlist for aid in the final encounter.

I put very little of that story in the main path (aside from that crystal, which was actually an afterthought because I hated how that mob was in the middle of the room with no purpose … I wanted a way to make him less generic). Whether this was a good idea or not I’m still debating and would love input on. My intention was multifold:
1). I wanted to reward exploration because so many foundry quests have either a lot of unused space or feel very constrained to one path. Thus I did my best to put something unique in every corner that I would poke my nose in (being a very distracted and curious individual).
2). I know that many people just want to run through foundry quests from point A to point B. They just want to finish it for the daily and maybe get some drops (the waukeen event, fey blessing enchantment, etc.) while doing so. They don’t want to be burdened by “story.” As much as I abhor the mentality, I understand where it comes from. I wanted to create a daily quest that such individuals could use but not have to make it a *shudder* farming quest. I can say that I got an embarrassing number of waukeen bags while testing the quest (though similar to Sharandar, so I don’t think it’s an issue) and was able to get through it on most of my lvl 60s in right around 15 minutes. I wanted to provide a good story but not throw it in peoples’ faces.
Judging from the reviews, some people who were looking for story may have followed the linear path intended for those who didn’t want the story. Not sure how to help that. I could move some of the more important bits of lore to the main path, but I worry that it would detract from the motivation to explore. Definitely a conundrum.

-it is usually preferred in foundries to have an actual exit door instead of the “Press F to leave” option

I hadn’t even thought of that! I’m not actually sure where I would put it though … that is technically the deepest chamber of the barrow. Although I like the idea from another perspective … it allows a little more exploration. You had asked who was buried in the tomb in your post and the burial chamber/sarcophagus is actually at the bottom of the stairs. I highly doubt anyone has taken the time to go down there with the chest staring at them. Changes priorities I would imagine. An exit of some sort would allow them to actually interact with the sarcophagus. However … I am at a loss as to what to place … it was supposed to have taken the Drow a great deal of effort to get into … I will have to think this one over. Anyone have any ideas?

I don't have anything I particularly need plays for at the moment so don't feel you need to run one of my quests.

I will probably try one or more of them out anyway (if I haven’t already … the quests themselves usually stick out but the names tend to blend together after so many of them). I’ve been trying to play quests by anyone who leaves a review in game just as a common courtesy. To my knowledge I’ve kept up so far but it is getting to be a little hard to keep on top of now. I think that is a good sign but I feel terrible about the possibility of missing some. If you want me to review a quest, just send me a message! I’m happy to help out. And thanks again for the great feedback!

melinden

I did about half of the side material and then gave up for the following reasons:

-they are pretty far away from the main path. Since it is an indoor map you can't mount to run back through now empty halls. This is why I would recommend removing some of the connector rooms.
-I didn't find the payoff to be enough. There was the humorous "boss" that was fairly amusing but it doesn't connect to your story. The drow who was killed in the cave in sort of told me that yes, Drow were there but I had killed several so I guessed that much. The sarcophagus underneath the main path seemed to refer to the original inhabitants (or those who made a last stand then) but didn't reference the material from the crystal or anything from any Forgotten Realms lore I recognized.

Anyway, since I was pushing an hour at that point (stopping to take notes doubles the play time generally) I made the decision to just finish the quest and not fight things that were significantly challenging and taking up more time.

So my advice for the lore items would be to make them closer off the main trail, resist the urge to put hard encounters like the double iron golems defending it, and give the player more "payoff" when they get there.

I've had good results putting lore items just on the main path, even in a room with quest required items. Either the player can take the time to read them or they can ignore them. I try to mix longer pieces and shorter ones. Some people like lots of information and some people dislike reading long pieces.

Easter eggs that refer to Forgotten Realms books, other D&D material or even other fantasy worlds are often appreciated by players. I try to keep them subtle though. For example not everyone is going to get that my phoenix named "Guy" is a reference to Fawkes from Harry Potter and who, in turn, is a reference to the famous English traitor who wanted to blow up Parliament in 1605. The ones who don't, it doesn't hinder their enjoyment. The ones who do often say they got a kick out of it. I have several of those. I even managed a Super Troopers reference in the Silver Marches foundry.

epharmd

I made a LOT of changes today based on all of the great feedback that I've gotten ... used a lot of wonderful ideas and expanded on others.

1) - Cleaned up some of the dialogue to help clarify some things and fix a few typos. Added some dialogue options based on questions that people had.
2) - Added more dwarves/tents to the background areas of the camp to make the first map feel livelier.
3) - Attempted to change some behaviors of mobs on the first map but pathfinding on the map is definitely glitched ... I imagine that one day it will get fixed without warning and all of the creatures will start wandering around haphazardly and half the dwarves will start following you around. But hopefully I can address that when/if it happens. For now I tweaked some things to make it feel more dynamic and reactive with the limited capabilities allowed by the current map constraints.
4) - Added numerous additional interactive elements to the main path of the dungeon and adjusted some enemy locations to minimize long "empty" spaces.
5) - Moved one NPC to be more accessible ... I had originally had her spawn BEHIND a statue after an interaction in a hidden room. I thought I was being sneaky ... I suspect that I was actually just being mean. She now spawns from the same encounter but in a much more obvious location.
6) - Added two NPCs and several interactive elements to the barrow that will hopefully help clarify the back story a bit. It will make some current story points redundant ... but it is not realistic to expect someone to find every hidden story element and still remember it all to be able to piece it together. Hopefully this will reduce unintended confusion.
7) - Addressed concern about returning through long empty hallways ... I attempted to do so without actually changing the layout or adding combat (which I couldn't do anyway as the map is too large and I had already used the maximum number of encounters).
8) - Changed the exit strategy from "press f to exit" to enable exploration of the final room as was originally intended.
9) - Removed several traps from hallways that had multiple traps. It should now be easier to avoid them with careful observation. I admit that even knowing where they all were before I occasionally ran over one, so hopefully this will help.

Most of the specific changes were based off suggestions by Melinden (thanks again!) but there was a lot of great feedback all around and I really appreciate it! I hope these changes help address the shortcomings of the adventure and make it more enjoyable! I did not change any of the combat encounters this time around as the amount of comments claiming it was "too hard," "too easy" or "just right" seemed to be about the same. I think that might mean it is balanced? Hard to tell but I probably shouldn't change it.

Everything tested well in the foundry editor but I have not had a chance to test it in the actual game yet and will probably be too busy to do so for the next week or so. I also added a LOT of dialogue and while I proofread it all at least once nothing is ever foolproof. Feel free to point out any spelling/punctuation mistakes and I will address them as soon as I can (again, probably in a week or so). Thanks again for all the help!