Mage Masher: Solo or Group Dungeon Crawl

anrix2 · May 2013

Hello, First I want to thank everyone in Dungeon Masters for their feedback on my original crawl. I implemented a lot of the feedback with some of the techniques you taught me.

Mage Masher is a Dungeon Crawl, there are non-objective items around the dungeon that will fill in the back story if people care to read them. There is also some key usage and locked doors, but nothing too difficult. For those that want to complete the dungeon quicker, I included a teleporter in the beer room next to the larder. Additionally there is another shortcut from the second floor of the crypt after you pray at the altar.

Also one boss has group stacking on solo, I advise focusing the adds to make that fight easier. There is also two Deathlocks group in the crypt, one is standing near a ledge, I suggest punting her off of it. Other than that it should be a reasonable hack and slash adventure.

The play time should be around 20 minutes group(2 to 3) or solo.

Typical room inside the guild house:

This is the shortcut, you will not fall through the fences:

Mages in jars and floating brains...yes it gets weird:

Please leave feedback, especially if combat needs to be toned down. I've tried to make it challenging without being punishing. I really hope whoever runs this dungeon enjoys their experience.

If by some reason searching by name doesn't work here is the shortcode: NW-DKYGGYPUE

Thank you

apocrs1980 · May 2013

I would give this one a go! Lots of fun and is a great challenge for solo play very fun with 2 people

anrix2 · May 2013

Thanks for the positive review. I did get some feedback from level 60s and split some of the fights up to make it fair for higher levels. It is tough balance to appeal to all levels.

Now I think I only need 3 more runs and it becomes eligible for the daily.

Thanks to everyone who ran it so far.

I don't normally trade, because I run a lot of foundry quests anyway, and most people I've come across say they trade but don't reciprocate, so I am not going to outright promise if I can't 100% commit. But there is a good chance I will run everyone's foundry who leaves a comment, I just won't be announcing it. That said don't let it sway you from reviewing Mage Masher honestly. I am ok with 1 stars reviews if that is what you feel it deserves, it doesn't mean I'll retaliate with a one star review for your foundry quests unless it deserves it.

BTW I ran Ravenloft and The Cragsteep Crypt. Both were amazingly detailed and extremely fun, each had an identifiable uniqueness to them that separates them from the rest of the foundry. Its obvious you don't settle for less than perfect.

apocrs1980 · May 2013

thanks anrix, your quest is definatly a fun one, I plan on checking out all the changes you made a little bit later on today! Can't wait to see what you've done with the place since we last went in.

anrix2 · May 2013

Into obscurity I go

anrix2 · May 2013

I only need two more people to playthrough then Mage Masher becomes eligible for the daily, any takers?

nezroy123 · May 2013

And now you only need one more playthrough!

typos:
First dialogue: ...my master has setup *a* [an] evening... step through the door on your right to *being* [begin] your ...
Ted Jones diary: ...I cannot remember *the, the* [?] voices are...

other:
Right before Padric there is a chest/invisible clicky, but it has no interact (and I can walk through the chest). Umm...? If this is supposed to be a secret thing, more feedback that I don't have the secret thing would be good.

I accidentally knocked Padric through the back wall, though I was able to get him out eventually. All the walls in that room seem to have odd/problematic collision. I assume something to do with those set pieces, but consider adding invisible walls to help with this.

In the room with the campfire/electric arc effect, you have a couple of wall segments at an angle. The seam between those wall pieces is off. Consider hiding the seam with a column of some kind.

In the fight with Shapeshifter Gromwhathisname, consider making the first phase a "fight to submission" with a linger/defeated text that more gracefully transitions into the second phase.

In the room with the Shapeshifter fight, I clicked on a portcullis door and.. nothing really happened. I wasn't paying close attention to the interact text so I don't know what was supposed to happen but, yeah. Might just have been me not paying attention.

Lvl 60 T2 GF. I would consider removing one blood hulk from the 2nd wave of the Thanos fight. It's a really tight room.

In the Thanos fight room, you need more light. Maybe not before/during the fight because of the neat FX you're doing, but after the fight for sure. Lots of great detail going unseen because it's too dark.

In the room shortly after Thanos (bone golem), the text for the statue interact is too long (breaks out of my UI). Break it up into two pages or shorten it.

The golem following is surrounded by bone decals on the ground. These exhibit a lot of z-fighting. Overlapping decals should have slightly different y-values (offset by 0.01 or so) to prevent this.

In the big room upper balcony, I knocked one of the necros off the platform, then had to go down there to kill her after as I was still in combat. Then I had to run all the way back up to get the key. Not that this is a bad thing, just FYI the fall is not far enough to kill her at lvl 60 scaling.

The last bridge with a thoon hulk before final boss is very dark. Might be darker than you realize (see my rant elsewhere about monitor calibration/darkness).

Final thoughts:

Two things really. First, though I mostly pay attention to story, I still have no idea why I was killing all those mages. I don't mean this from an overall story perspective (it made sense in the end). I mean, from a motivation perspective. Why in the world would I keep killing mages after the first one attacked me? Why wouldn't I just get the heck out of there? Bill's Tavern is a good example of a quest that addresses this problem in a humorous way. There are lots of ways to approach it though. A simple fight to submission with post-fight dialogue for the first mage where he pleas for help, sanity, aid for his friends, ANYthing, would be enough of a hook to make me think "OK, that explains why I didn't just high-tail it out of this deathtrap".

Second thing... this won't make me popular, and though I think your various rooms are amazing, I think there is too much detail in some of the early areas (the regular sized human interior rooms). They are simply too busy for their small size. Too many lights, etc. For the size of the rooms there is just a LOT going on. I know you explicitly went out of your way to add more of these details after the video review/twitch stream commentary, so I'm not knocking this. Still gave it 5 stars and the environments are great. But I definitely feel there is just too much stuff to appreciate in these rooms and it ought to be toned down. But this could just be my personal aesthetic so take that with a grain of salt.

anrix2 · May 2013

Amazing and valuable feedback. Thank you for pointing out the typos. I am terrible when it comes to proof reading because I see what I expect to see not what is there.

I actually ran into a couple more cases where mobs ran through walls, or doors even though they shouldn't. I am going to be using the last few assets I have to wall up a lot of locations.

I'll take a look in the diviner's room, that is the one with the campfire, electricity and the walls. I will be touching up the decor in there. I am of the same opinion, I think I added too much dynamic light in there, and while I am in there I can either better match the seams or cover them up with something.

I'll add three submission fights, one for the botanist, which is the first fight, I'll make sure he gives the player proper motivation. I'll add a second for the shapeshifter so the transition into the second phase is smoother, and likewise for the blood mage.

On the topic of the blood mage, I worry because of the difficulty slider; I am almost forced to make the second phase of the blood mage too tough for solo, or too easy for group. I only have the condition for on objective complete. I wish I could have a condition for on objective complete and if dialog option selected. But I guess I will be getting a lot more solo play, so I will tone down that encounter. But I have the same concerns about that fight which is why I even point it out in the description.

The door you couldn't open was a trap door, if you interact with the portcullis it tells you there must be another way around. At that point you can go the long way by grabbing the item in the grain bowl then fight the old man in the foyer as you make your way to the guild hall, or you can shortcut it through the beer room.

Thanks for tip with the bones. I was trying to manually do it and it was coming out terribly wrong so I threw in the towel

Additionally, the hall with the thoon hulk is meant to be dark. I have a heavy black fog in that hallway and in the final room, kind of like a curtain revealing the surprise at the end. But I'll play around with light and medium fog and see if that makes things better.

I'll also add a torch or two to the dungeon.

All this input is valid. I am going to get to work on implementing it. Thanks for running it, and if you didn't feel compelled to give it five stars you shouldn't have. I spent a lot of time on it, but time alone should warrant the five star review.

But I will make it more compelling with this feedback. Thanks again.

nezroy123 · May 2013

anrix2 wrote: »

On the topic of the blood mage, I worry because of the difficulty slider; I am almost forced to make the second phase of the blood mage too tough for solo, or too easy for group. I only have the condition for on objective complete. I wish I could have a condition for on objective complete and if dialog option selected. But I guess I will be getting a lot more solo play, so I will tone down that encounter. But I have the same concerns about that fight which is why I even point it out in the description.

In this same room you have a bunch of cells. So why not have a condition on some doors/invisible walls to the cells to disappear after the first phase ends. Then you can use the initial difficulty conversation to spawn extra mobs in those cells. If in solo mode removing the walls/doors won't do anything (cells would be empty), but in group mode the mobs in there would (hopefully) aggro on the player.

anrix2 wrote: »

Additionally, the hall with the thoon hulk is meant to be dark. I have a heavy black fog in that hallway and in the final room, kind of like a curtain revealing the surprise at the end. But I'll play around with light and medium fog and see if that makes things better.

I don't think that bridge is TOO dark; just wanted to make sure you knew how dark it was. Since there's not a ton going on there it works fine though so I don't think it needs to be lightened up at all.

anrix2 · May 2013

I implemented a lot of the feedback. I was considering the whole cell spawn but I don't have any free encounters left, so I couldn't spawn two different types of encounters based on the difficulty setting and then unlock all the doors on the phase shift, so I just reduced the number of hulks from 3 to 2. If a player fights on the more difficult setting there is an additional three hulks that start with the blood mage, so there is a potential for 5 hulks in the second phase for that setting. Additionally, I am not sure if people can see it but the cages the hulks burst out of have prisoners in them. The phase shift is suppose to imply they transformed. My biggest concern about downgrading the fight was losing the encounter type, but I found the same type just with two mobs instead of three.

I also couldn't make the blood mage fight to submission. I forgot he is apart of a larger group that I had split up, but the shapeshifter, and the botanist both fight to submission. In defeat the botanist will writhe on the ground for about 20 seconds(if I shorten the time he says nothing), and then spout something about how he and his elk plan to destroy everything, then specifically mentions how all that you love will also suffer. So hopefully that coupled with the idea that we are all heroes of a sort, is enough to motivate a player and insure the masters' plan is not fulfilled. If not I can also make the imbuer say something in defeat. Also the fighting to submission blocks the botanist from exploding into a swarm of spiders, which I am ok with, but thought it was worth mentioning.

Additionally, I added six torches to the dungeon that will ignite when the second phase of the blood mage is over.

I actually lost the first objective after my last publish and it threw my story and map into chaos...so much so I was about to throw in the towel, but I re-wrote the first objective, and rewired everything, so his dialog is slightly different and hopefully has no typos. I also split up the plaque in the crypt and edited the botanist's journal.

That closed chest with the sparkles was a dead mimic. I put him in there to break up the uniformity of the other open chests. I can see how that is confusing, and since I could not box him out properly or remove his sparkles, I just substituted him out with a tipped over chest that looks like it is spilling books.

I went back and revisited that trap door in the larder, I created a dummy object and assigned it to the door, so clicking on it will always result in failure and a message telling the player to find another way around.

Also, I moved those bone decals with the technique you mentioned. I think some of them still collide, I'll tweak that a little more, but they do look layered and a whole lot better.

Finally, I am down to less than 10 unaccounted for assets and I need to put in a few invisible walls, so I need to do this carefully. Which wall was it that the enchanter flew through? Was it by his desk or was it the wall with the giant fractured disk, or was it the wall with the door?

Also, to your second point, I was thinking about redoing the floors completely in the guild hall and the alchemists room...I won't if I feel they look bad, but if they don't, well...sorry

Other than that I think that covers all the feedback. Thanks again, my goal is to make this as fun as possible to as many people as possible.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot, I did add additional columns to the tilted diviner room walls. The art doesn't line up so I had to hide it, but I think the columns add to the Feng shui feel I was going for. Additionally, I pulled out some light sources, so hopefully that room is less overwhelming.

nezroy123 · May 2013

anrix2 wrote: »

Finally, I am down to less than 10 unaccounted for assets and I need to put in a few invisible walls, so I need to do this carefully. Which wall was it that the enchanter flew through? Was it by his desk or was it the wall with the giant fractured disk, or was it the wall with the door?

It was the wall with the giant fractured disk. I noticed that I clip into it quite far, which seems odd and I assume is how he got stuck. The walls perpendicular to that wall also seemed to have the same clipping issue. I wonder if that particular custom wall asset has offset collision and maybe rotating it to face the other way will fix the clipping? I may go try that myself in a standalone map just to see because I remember using that same asset and not clipping into it nearly as far.

Anyhow, that was the only place on the whole map that I had any issues with putting a mob through a wall.

anrix2 · May 2013

Extra walls are in place, and now the quest is eligible for the daily. Thanks everyone that helped me out with feedback.

anrix2 · June 2013

Floors are done, details are maxed out, and I think I am finally happy with it enough that I will be leaving it alone. Getting it to eligibility status was my goal, so thanks to everyone who helped. Time to give the foundry tool a little break while Cryptic improves the catalog

mrthebozer · June 2013

Giving this thread a much needed bump after finishing the quest today. Holy smokes, anrix, this was sweet! I was too busy enjoying myself to take any notes this time - but it all works out since it looks like you've settled on this as your final version, and I can't think of a single thing to change. The rooms are well polished and obviously thought out. The lore object text is downright chilling. The abilities and tactics of each encounter fit their concept perfectly and provide a great deal of variety. And I loved the Alchemist reference.

Please don't take too long a break from the Foundry.

anrix2 · June 2013

Thanks, I think you are one of the few to officially catch that reference aside from the one review I got that simply says Heisenberg

If you play the multi-player you can see my interpretation of Tuco...unless that breaks some sort of ToS then they are just arbitrarily named lol

I got a lot of feedback, the dungeon would not be nearly as polished had people not let me know what they really thought and where it needed improvements. That is pretty much why I am reluctant to trade reviews. I am worried people will tell me what I want to hear so I feel obligated to return a high rating instead of saying what needs to be said.

I pre-screen every dungeon before I offer a trade, so the fact that I gave you a 5 and asked you to trade means it is genuine. Btw I did recommend Bonderleaf's Thorough Aggregator to a few friends, and it blew them all away. I do hope you get featured one day, it is a solid quest through and through.

zahinder · June 2013

How doable is this for a not hardcore 60 cleric?

anrix2 · June 2013

Hopefully it is very doable. I run it as a level 60 CW, I also know of a level 60 GWF and GF who completed it solo. There are no stacked encounters save 1 on the single player mode, and that encounter is not too tough. I even split up some single encounters that I felt were too tough. Additionally, where ever I felt a player would take a lot of damage, I put a portal back to the campfire so they can recharge quickly and head out again. If you hit a wall let me know, though hopefully you shouldn't, I'll go in and re-evaluate the encounter.

EDIT: I should probably add, my gearscore isn't even over 6k...so I guess I am pretty casual and still able to beat it at 60, but again, I play a different class, and I haven't heard from any level 60 cleric specifically, so I am open to re-tuning encounters if need be.

I just ran your quest to get an idea on what you might consider doable. I will say, if you can solo your own quest you should be able to solo mine.

anrix2 · June 2013

My quest Mage Masher disappeared from being listed in the catalog last week. I don't know what caused it, there are quests that were published around the same time this one was, who still remain in the catalog with similar or more amount of reviews. It had really begun to trend before it disappeared so I thought maybe it would need to timeout but that doesn't seem to be the case.

I am expecting something magical to happen at a 100 reviews because that is where the weight on the adjusted rating changes. It is my hope that hitting 100 reviews will somehow get this quest re-listed again.

I am at 80ish reviews, I need 20ish more, and I was wondering if anyone in The Foundry community would be interested in helping me out with this experiment; be it curiosity, kindheartedness, or trading.

If most of these 20 reviews are trades I will review-trade as quickly as possible, but getting 20 something reviews in a short amount of time may not be possible. So please be patient as I get through all of them. Additionally to those who want to trade, feel free to keep it simple, I do not require any extensive written review, just a word or two in the text area so I know who I am trading with.

http://nw-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?353242-My-quest-semi-disappeared-from-the-catalog

Thank you

apocrs1980 · June 2013

I would help you out if I could, alas I have already played and rated it so I am one of those 80

loved all the work you put into this. Great job man and a bump for prosperity.

celestarion · June 2013

What a great adventure!

Your sceneries was really impressive. You manage to have each room with a unique ambiance.

Lot of good ideas and event. The teleport during all the quest was very clever.

Just one thing, at the begining, the fight against the Hidden Mage was pretty difficult due to the narrow corridor. The behavior of this monster demands a lot of space for the player.

You were right when you recommended me your quest. I really loved it!
Some references to Lovecraft and maybe Stephen King (the repetitive text like in "Shining")

I give you a 5 and all my AD

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Mage Masher: Solo or Group Dungeon Crawl

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