Official Feedback Thread: Castle Never

dextructoid · February 2016

Howdy All,

The revamped Castle Never dungeon is available on the preview server this week. Castle Never has been shortened and streamlined to bring the target play time down roughly 30 minutes. It also has all new enemies, bosses, and rewards.

We made a number of adjustments to the dungeon based on early Alpha feedback, but Orcus was not available to fight during the Alpha. This week we would like to make the Orcus fight the focus of the feedback. How was the difficulty of the fight? Did you understand the various mechanics Orcus uses? Are there any mechanics you particularly liked or disliked?

Castle Never is accessible via the queue list to level 70 players with an Item Level of 2000 or higher.

Features:

New boss fights: Tal'gath the Undying, Cthylar the Illithilich, Orcus
Shorter play time: 30 minutes
New rewards

Known Issue: The guards in the cutscene on the bridge often die before the cutscene plays.

We would love to get your feedback on Castle Never. All feedback is welcome, but there are a few items we’d like to focus on:

How long did it take your team to finish the dungeon?
How long did it take to kill Orcus?
Did seeing some of Orcus's mechanics earlier in the dungeon help?
Was Orcus too difficult? Too easy?
Are there any mechanics you particulary liked or disliked? Why?
Was it fun?

To report a bug (or just give your opinion):

Respond to this forum post.
Type: Bug/Feedback (Please only choose one)
Spec: (Please enter the spec that you are providing feedback for here)
Format: Please use “Bold” face text for the Type & Spec then type your feedback in the body of your post. If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use BLUE.
(Bonus: Concise Feedback & Screen Shots are much appreciated)

Examples:

Bug: Dungeon: Castle Never
Orcus did not reset properly after our party wiped.

Feedback: Dungeon: Castle Never
The patrolling death spheres need to move slower or have larger gaps between them.

Unknown · February 2016

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Unknown · February 2016

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Unknown · February 2016

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scathias · February 2016

Bugs

- first boss spawns under the floor.

- second boss: if the gravity shifts right as the boss dies the loot gets stuck on the ceiling, or the loot gets stuck on the ceiling somehow anyways

- joining or leaving CN made me disconnect using a private queue, i had to choose between a normal and safe login coming back in. ( i was party lead). this happened a half dozen times in a row even after using safe login (it kept trying to put me into CN) until i logged into a different character first. when i logged back onto the first character with a normal login i was trapped along in CN with no way to leave. i did not have a party i could leave so that i could get out. i had to GM help abort quest so i could leave.

- in the HE part where you need to prevent mobs from charging the death sphere it doesn't seem like the mobs will respect threat. They ignored my character even when i was the first person to touch them (using daring shout mark) and kept marching into the death sphere. The mobs should respect threat so that a tank can manage them.

- the special chest at the end of CN that needs a greater demonic key to open does not let you use a Legendary Dragon key to open it. expected result is that the legendary dragon key can open the special chest.

- my AD for completing CN as one of my first 2 dungeons of the day dropped as an item i had to pick up instead of automatically going into my currency bag

Feedback

It seemed like there were a lot of trash mobs but very few elite mobs, it would be nice to see some more elite mobs in there I think.

Insignias should drop BoA at least, there are so many insignias and since they do not drop all the time getting specific insignias that you need for a character is very difficult. making them BoA would be very helpful. Making them BoE though would be good so that we could sell the insignia on the rare occasion that we get one

mamalion1234 · February 2016

bug: dungeon: castle never:

- last boss orcus. armor penetration bug-dr bug( like this one at start of m6).
watch this : [3:19] [Combat (Self)] Your Guard absorbs 322848 damage from Orcus's Finger of Death.
[3:19] [Combat (Self)] Your Guard absorbs 97877 damage from Orcus's Bash.
[3:19] [Combat (Self)] Orcus deals 24469 (611729) Physical Damage to you with Bash..
this happened on gf with 80% damage resistance i gone down 2 shots on guard.

i want to ask other testers to go in without annointed army and bubble ( they can be in pt but without those dailies ) and test vs their damage resistances because i did another run with paladin and he stayed alive because perma divine protector and reseting the encounters with the bugged echoes.

today combat log vs orcus guardian fighter 90% dr character sheet. pt with cleric.

[Combat (Self)] Your Into the Fray absorbs 2452 damage from Orcus's Finger of Death.

[Combat (Self)] Your Guard absorbs 64218 damage from Orcus's Finger of Death.

[Combat (Self)] Orcus deals 16054 (827244) Necrotic Damage to you with Finger of Death.

damage in () concern me 827244 and the most times is 600000. boss attack many times in the same minute 600000 guardian gets 90k damage on block. even if he has 160k he will die.

today: dungeon castle never.
any boss distracted from companions and boss never turn on players. player revive the pet if dies with the bell so you clear the dungeon just hit boss.

matiagronx · February 2016

Feedback

Second Boss: Fight is just so uninspired. The great illithid sits there doing no damage, spawns a few circle tentacles that are so easy to avoid and the whole room flip idea is a very very bad feature. No actual threat and the whole transfer between the 2 realities is a real dissapointment. Its been a month and nothing was done, literally NOTHING to CHANGE it. Change the whole boss fight, be creative, its a great ILLITHID.....

AFter second boss the castle finally got a serious REVAMP, till now its SO uninspired and sad to see. The areas after second boss are very well designed and thought through. However after you pass all the rooms with the green spheres and enter the door, you just walk the classic big spiral stairway, then walk a bit more, ALONE, and you just end up at boss door. And you actually managed to leave out the MOST interesting and INSPIRED part of CN, all the parts and corridors leading from second boss to Dragonlich. Are you seriously considering to introduce the first 30 minutes of old CN as the WHOLE CN experience? How can you leave out these huge OPEN corridors with such an original DnD beautiful design? And shadowfell? CN cannot possibly be so lazy revamped, i never EVER thought you would be so ignorant towards it.

Last boss at least is quite hard and will certainly DEMAND a BUGGED paladin in party, will you PLEASE fix the easymode BUBBLE PERMABUG first? Cause if not, there will be DOZENS of parties fast running CN with a PERMABUBBLE paladin, TOTALLY DESTROYING the whole experience, playability, loot prices and game, again.

dextructoid · February 2016

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll take a look at the boss spawning problems, Cthylar's loot drop, and the key chest right now. I'll get one of the systems guys to take a look at the armor penetration problems.

Regarding the mobs in the death sphere, they are currently set up to ignore taunts until they have lost 25% of their health. At that point they then follow all of the normal aggro rules. The intended gameplay here is to have control wizards slow/repel the undead away from the sphere while the other DPS classes take a chunk of their health and then the tank can pull them away and finish them.

scathias · February 2016

dextructoid said:
Thanks for the feedback.

I'll take a look at the boss spawning problems, Cthylar's loot drop, and the key chest right now. I'll get one of the systems guys to take a look at the armor penetration problems.

Regarding the mobs in the death sphere, they are currently set up to ignore taunts until they have lost 25% of their health. At that point they then follow all of the normal aggro rules. The intended gameplay here is to have control wizards slow/repel the undead away from the sphere while the other DPS classes take a chunk of their health and then the tank can pull them away and finish them.

ok... so what if you don't have a control wizard? there are mobs coming from every direction so if you don't have a CW to provide ranged control while other DPS can beat on them then the mobs just walk right by? I have only played through this once, so I have limited experience.

I am just wary of a dungeon concept that seems to require a specific class. I am sure that your data shows you the Demonic Escape heroic encounter in IWD/DR/WoD is the most failed HE of those 3 in the game, and this dungeon mechanic copies the Escape HE mechanic, except that this one is harder because in the DE HE the mobs respect taunts etc immediately (except for that one mob that always ignores it).

So far, the people you have running CN are very well geared, very experienced players so they are entirely capable of dealing with this mechanic. I dunno, i guess people will just have to learn. but please watch the data on this part of the dungeon once it goes live and see how things are working out

beckylunatic · February 2016

scathias said:
So far, the people you have running CN are very well geared, very experienced players so they are entirely dealing with this mechanic. I dunno, i guess people will just have to learn. but please watch the data on this part of the dungeon once it goes live and see how things are working out

And to elaborate on that, "dealing with" the mechanic by burning the mobs faster than they can escape, not actually following the intended design at all.

uptondarkdiamond · February 2016

Some of the old timers might not like to hear this (I have been playing since Mod 1) but I actually like the new Castle Never. My only real gripe is that the dungeon as whole seems a little short, but I'm not really sure it’s that bad. Below are some of my thoughts that could be used to improve CN.

1. When proceeding to the first boss and the players have to clear the abyssal portals before proceeding. The difficulty could be increased by adding 1 more "mini" portal (so each player has one to clear) and then having a center portal where there is a "mini" boss that can only be accessed once all the mini-portal are closed.

2. For the boss 2 fight I think the difficulty could be increased when the fight switches to the ceiling by giving the players a timed debuff. This debuff would be there because the players world just got turned upside down and they are now fighting on the ceiling. So it would take some time for them to re-orientate to the new reality while the great Illithid continues it's onslaught unperturbed.

3. The lighting in this dungeon is amazing (good work all) you really do get the sense that you’re not in Kansas anymore as you traverse CN. I especially like the undead that seem to come out of nowhere while you’re in the darker parts of the dungeon. I really think this would be a great addition to future dungeons and in fact would like to see lighting sources required for certain dungeon runs. The light would not necessarily have to be from a torch, but could emanate from some of our magical equipment and let’s not forget that some of the races have different abilities to see in the dark i.e. most elves have infravision.

Keep the good work up all and I look forward to seeing future dungeon creations with the same inspiration.

blinxon · March 2016

dextructoid said:
Thanks for the feedback.

I'll take a look at the boss spawning problems, Cthylar's loot drop, and the key chest right now.

Plz. Dont forget the Feedback from the GF that Orcus deals way to much damage on our GFs..
I too think this boss got the old arp pen dr bug. He deals ridiculous damage and kill GFs mostly instant...

adinosii · March 2016

I just posted a note in the maze engine thread about an issue I had there (problem getting out of yesterday's bugged daily quest). That is relevant to CN, because I got out by queueing up for CN, and ran into a problem there - Tal-Gath the invisible. See the screenshot of us in the other thread, fighting that invisible boss. Moreover, it seemed as if none of our direct attacks had any effect on him whatsoever - only AoE attacks and (some) DoT attacks. The invisible Tal-Gath was much, much harder than the old, visible one on Owlbear during the Alpha test. Moreover, my Astral Seal had ho effect at all, and even went off in the "wrong" direction - towards the end of the room, not the center.

Something is wrong.

hustin1 · March 2016

Just finished a CN run.

Important safety tip: after you defeat Orcus, don't go through the narrow door to the side with the shimmering stuff. You fall below the world and land on an invisible plane. Then, when you use /stuck --> defeat me, you wind up all the way back at the beginning of the castle and can't get through the magical barrier. You can exit to the Sleeping Dragon Bridge, but there is no exit from there to the outside world (and you can't go back in the castle from there either). Your only recourse at that point is to abort the quest.

At least I looted the end chest first...

As far as the fighting went, we dealt with the bosses pretty handily (except for the first one, since it was bugged and most of us couldn't hit it). However, our party was vastly overpowered for the dungeon: at least two 4ks (one being my 4.2k HR). Our party was composed of 2 GWFs, 2 OP, and my HR. There were a few drops (me being the least--grin) but with my crazy-high defense I was able to revive people pretty readily (unless someone else got there first).

One suggestion I have is that the popup about Orcus drawing power or something should persist for a lot longer. It was there and gone before I could read it. I saw a rift and guessed at what to do while the others fought, but it wasn't clear at all whether I should go to the rift (which I did) or help kill him before the kill timer expired (and I still have no idea what would have happened if it had).

I really like what the devs did between the second and final boss. I think it should have been longer, though, with perhaps more diabolical surprises

I also would suggest a miniboss in a side area, with perhaps some sort of special chest (something that drops interesting things like BtA dyes or transmutes).

adinosii · March 2016

We had the "Invisible Tal'gath" problem, and I saw they did too on the live stream, so I expect that fixing this will get a pretty high priority. As it is, the boss can be killed, but it is way too hard when half of players' powers don't work at all.

Anyhow...the green rolling spheres are nice and the undead-charging death spheres as well. Keep players on their toes and force them to adjust their tactics.

Orcus is nicely done - a properly hard fight (which we unfortunately did not finish), but that's really how it should be against a new final boss. I think that to kill Orcus on a first try you either need a very powerful party (say, average TiL over 3500) or a party which is very used to working together.

Later it will be like Valindra....very hard initially, but became easy after everyone had learned the mechanisms.

So, overall...I think you got the balance right....once you fix Tal'gath, that is. No, it's not really a replacement for the original CN, but it is a worthwhile end-game addition.

warpet · March 2016

some damages are to high for gf to be used as tank I played with op as tank in team so it was a bit easy ty to perma immune for everyone but think teams with gf as tank will have huge problems in finishing it since there wont be big use of kv and gf will die in seconds as well .If it stays like now i think ppl will just ask for op tank or dc with ap gain and anoited army daily for teams
first boss is invisible only some skills could hurt him and he has some invisible aoe skill as well which 1 shots ppl if u do not have op as tank ,

firdraing · March 2016

Hello everyone

I've been trying to do the new CN last few days. Well, honestly, you're liars. To make it clear, I would put at least 2500-3000 IL requirements for the current state of castle never, because now, people simply forget the requirements and try to arrange a 3000+ party (The party I've done CN with was out of 5 people of 3,2k-3,8k), but even more important is this.

Why do you give us only a single chance to do castle never? Because when you die at the end boss - Orcus, you respawn at the start of the dungeon and cannot go on, or if your party wins the fight - claim the prizes. Why? because there's that dumb wall in your way.

http://postimg.org/image/kpis7kxap/

Found another bug when fighting Orcus, he leaves the arena, the green orb appears, enemies start coming and they dont stop, the boss doesnt come back, so we wipe the dungeon, the next time we come in:

http://postimg.org/image/hmjipj0mt/

two30 · March 2016

Bug: Greater Demonic Key
The Greater Demonic Key's tooltip has not been updated to describe its use in Castle Never. It only mentions Throne of the Dwarven Gods, Prophecy of Madness, Demogorgon and Epic Demogorgon.

mamalion1234 · March 2016

the damage from orcus is still high. i can block 1-2 hit then i need a healer or a fast pop up fighters recovery and spam aggregrative strike. the question is the 700k attacks are as intended so the pt must have healers-tanks?

evalira · March 2016

As it stands now, due to the last boss, GF's are not going to be welcome in a party, or will get kicked at last boss since their is nothing they can do.

As soon as I go anywhere near the boss I am one shotted, or can take one hit with shield up and killed on the next. Then the GWF dies because he is melee too, and only ranged can survive.

So looks like it's back to mod 2-5 with 4 CW's (maybe SW's) and 1 DC. Or Bubble OP / AP DC.

Something must be done otherwise GF will never get to run/finish CN . If you don't have any quick solutions/fixes then at least make the loot/insignia's BtA so I can run with another class and give the gear to my GF.

volgera · March 2016

All right, first thoughts of CN, wow! It's truly awesome! Anyway, onward to the practical info:

feedback:
During a CN run with one of the devs, I noticed that the gear score minimum for this dungeon is really low in comparison to how difficult the dungeon actually is. We ran with a 2.7k+ group (1 HR, 1 CW, 1 SW, 1 GWF, 1 OP) and we had a really tough time defeating all enemies. Even the HR and GWF (which was me) weren't able to deal all that much damage. That's why I think it would be nice to crank up that minimum gear score up to 2.5k instead of 2k. This gives players with a 2k-2.4k GS another 'milestone' to complete, and it also filters out a lot of hassle which would come with individual queues (which often went wrong as there weren't enough high GS players in the party so everyone would leave after 5 minutes again).

just a suggestion of course, but it'd be nice to see the minimum gear score required cranked up a bit as the dungeon is pretty darned difficult

(and I would love a more difficult dungeon for the higher geared players out there)

hustin1 · March 2016

Finished a CN run with Commander Ander. We only had 4 as the queuing system for some reason wouldn't give us a fifth (the devs are working on that, we are told). We had few issues dealing with everything up to Orcus, though CA did bring in some "extra help" later on. I'm not sure that we needed it, but it was still really cool to see. In Sean's defense, though, we had no CC and little tanking ability. The Orcus fight, however, was definitely impossible without some extra-special super-double-secret dev help. Orcus was OSK'ing us for 500k or more on each swing. As we didn't have a paladin, there was no way to handle that kind of hit. As it stands today, an OP is mandatory for that fight, and we didn't have one.

I wish I had taken a look at everyone's ILvl during the run. I can only speak for myself: I played my 4.2k HR, complete with 22k defense and 65.5% DR. As such I had few issues, though my soulforged did activate quite a few times. My offense is only mediocre, however, and the biggest benefit seemed to be that I was usually still standing when an occasional AoE attack took someone else down. Even so, even I needed a revive several times.

There were at least two cases during the second boss fight where there was no red-area warning before the room flipped and dropped us into spikes. Even Sean noticed it. Lag or bug? I can't say.

izwor · March 2016

BUG, was reported ingame
Final Boss fight.
Death Sphere phaze is not possible to complete. Both blue and red bars stops during fight and we couldn't proceed. It did not metter if we let adventurers go into sphere or kill them, both bars did not move at all.

After few reentries we decide not to use any kick/knoc/push powers. It helped an we were able to finish the dungeon.
It apperas that if undead adventurers enter death sphere and at the same moment get kicked out by players power blue/red bars buggs and do not move at all.

mamalion1234 · March 2016

I have a question developers tested orcus before it go live ?
1: ANY companion get attention of the boss.
2. meelee players die from the strong meelee attacks. AND THIS boss has 99% meeleee attacks.
3. only 1 attack is for all ranges and it doesnt kill anyone.
4. with my blink dog i can solo orcus since he will attack my companion ( he will never move to me ) and if i wear shield on tab the range spell he does it will be like he did on me a scratch.
5. tank heal-gwf? who need them companions will tank for the range

. come on what is that?
6. or no we need healer and tank . for buffs. we will send companions on boss and then tank-healer will just buff.
7. i can go to sleep for 1 hour and come back and orcus will still attack blink dog hahahahaha

AND i said it again and with scorpions on live server when companions had permanent aggro and some answered : that is the job of the companion. FINE i will accept it and i will make my farm too.

hustin1 · March 2016

I was in a CN group with Commander Ander. He definitely knows about the 700k damage that Orcus was dishing out, and said he'd bring it up to the designer. Whether anything will come of that, who knows, but for our group it was definitely an impossible fight to do legit. Even my poor 4.2k HR, complete with 22k defense and 65.5% DR was no match. Whenever Orcus looked her way, she died.

mamalion1234 · March 2016

hustin1 said:
I was in a CN group with Commander Ander. He definitely knows about the 700k damage that Orcus was dishing out, and said he'd bring it up to the designer. Whether anything will come of that, who knows, but for our group it was definitely an impossible fight to do legit. Even my poor 4.2k HR, complete with 22k defense and 65.5% DR was no match. Whenever Orcus looked her way, she died.

+ did you read my post above? COMPANions make useless any meelee player. if you can bring that too to developers try it by yourself summon a companion and stay in range.

matiagronx · March 2016

Captain obvious to the rescue. 2 days left for the new mod to go live and the BIG CN BOSS fight is exploitable with buggy bubble paladin and/or any companions which perma aggro boss and due to Orcus delayed attacks they keep autoressurect and keep aggro. A SINGLE ranged class with a crappy companion can solo CN boss...absurd, outrageous and other words can fit in perfectly here.

darkstarrfoff · March 2016

hustin1 said:
I was in a CN group with Commander Ander. He definitely knows about the 700k damage that Orcus was dishing out, and said he'd bring it up to the designer. Whether anything will come of that, who knows, but for our group it was definitely an impossible fight to do legit. Even my poor 4.2k HR, complete with 22k defense and 65.5% DR was no match. Whenever Orcus looked her way, she died.

Exactly. My OP with 66% DR on preview was only able to survive due to the bubble. This is certainly not a 2.5k dungeon. Unless you have a good OP and an AP DC. Which means everyone is once again tied to an OP.

mamalion1234 · March 2016

darkstarrfoff said:

hustin1 said:
I was in a CN group with Commander Ander. He definitely knows about the 700k damage that Orcus was dishing out, and said he'd bring it up to the designer. Whether anything will come of that, who knows, but for our group it was definitely an impossible fight to do legit. Even my poor 4.2k HR, complete with 22k defense and 65.5% DR was no match. Whenever Orcus looked her way, she died.
Exactly. My OP with 66% DR on preview was only able to survive due to the bubble. This is certainly not a 2.5k dungeon. Unless you have a good OP and an AP DC. Which means everyone is once again tied to an OP.

sorry to say this fight is for range classes. i am afraid poeple will not invite even the bubble cause they dont need if they are ranged.

bitt3rnightmar3 · March 2016

Bug: Dungeon: Castle Never
Orcus did not reset properly after our party wiped.

Everyone else was in a demonic rift- I was alone with my tank companion. Soulforge pop- Boss healed to full health. I then wiped and person in rift was forcible exited the rift. Death Sphere kept ticking up and down. Boss would not come down from the ceiling and we could do no more damage to him when party gathered and tried to do boss fight again.

polaris1986 · March 2016

@dextructoid

mamalion1234 said:
the damage from orcus is still high. i can block 1-2 hit then i need a healer or a fast pop up fighters recovery and spam aggregrative strike. the question is the 700k attacks are as intended so the pt must have healers-tanks?

When Orcus gets power from portals it becoming very hardcore and it;s buff not removes after timer ends or portals get closed and even after party was wiped!! So if you trying restart to fight him you'll getting around 700k damage on few first hits.

There is ACT's screen of outgoing damage from Orcus (already after first wipe). Sorry I mostly playing on RU server and some words are сyrillic but look on numbers please.
http://s23.postimg.org/bcn0f5lgr/2016_03_21_21_48_58.png

I can add video but my DC doesn't getting damage often and you will not seen red numbers so often.

Official Feedback Thread: Castle Never

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