test content
Logo
What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Official Feedback Thread: Spellplague Caverns (Master)
dreadnaught
Member Posts: 19 Cryptic Developer
The new endgame dungeon, Spellplague Caverns (Master), has made its way to the preview shard, and we need your feedback!
In the Preview Only tab of the Wondrous Bazaar, purchase the test item, Bane of the Far Realms. Then go to the Epic Dungeon section in Queues and queue up for Spellplague Caverns (Master).
Format:
Please use boldface text for the Type, and then type your feedback in the body of your post. If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, and if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use CYAN.
Access
You’ll need to be on the Preview Shard to test these features.In the Preview Only tab of the Wondrous Bazaar, purchase the test item, Bane of the Far Realms. Then go to the Epic Dungeon section in Queues and queue up for Spellplague Caverns (Master).
Feedback Desired
- Is the content challenging? How difficult are the bosses relative to one another? How difficult is the dungeon compared to Fangbreaker Island?
- Are the boss mechanics clear?
- How is the aesthetic? This includes environments, boss animations, FX, audio, etc.
- How appealing are the rewards? Do they incentivize you to participate in the content?
Format:
Please use boldface text for the Type, and then type your feedback in the body of your post. If you are listing a bug please have this text in RED, and if you are posting an opinion or feedback please use CYAN.
<font color=cyan>This text will display in cyan.</font>
<font color=red>This text will display in red.</font> Post edited by dreadnaught#5263 on
0
Comments
The way I see it, this provides both continuity and novelty, satisfying both needs. Can CN receive the same treatment, pretty please? Valindra's dracolich story hook is presently unresolved except by watching YouTube videos. Level-60 3-player retro CN might basically operate like an extended CTA, but it still belongs in the game, if for no other reason than completeness.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
Illusionist's Gambit (Master) - 150 abandoned treasures (hundred million damage, ten minutes)
Logics?
Fight needs way more depth to it other than a boring gimmick mechanic. The tank agros it, the boss does baby attacks to it. There's nothing else to it other than a cheap petrify attack.<\font>
― Clint Eastwood, Heartbreak Ridge
Guild Leader of Ardent Justice HQ: Always recruiting People not Pixels.
FOUNDER and OWNER of the SKT3K Channel: SKT Only Content 3k+. http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1228278/skt-content-for-the-non-elite-video-links-provided
The only time any of us really died was due to a cheap petrify and being the target of the boss. Not a very threatening boss when she's only dangerous when you're immobilized.
1) If you chained to someone else, kill an add so a lava ball appears and melt the chain with the ball.
2) If you chained to a ball, make the ball collide with the boss to break his invulnerability.
3) When the entire party is chained, kill the adds and melt the balls.
4) When the boss says perish in flames/other stuff, lava appears on either the outer or inner ring of the arena, depending on where the boss is.
5) The boss has a chain pull/anvil combo that hits for ~180k damage.
^^ These mechanics are easy enough to pick up from observing the fight and are well illustrated, no need for them to change.
The second boss is like this:
1) Aoe Cone attack that has a small safe spot next to the boss. Can be dodged.
2) AoE knockback with a pulsing red circle. To survive stand on the side of the red circle with the most distance to the pit.
3) Petrify ability, you must face away to not be stunned. The stun cannot be prevented by CC immunities. If someone is stunned the boss grows in size and if nobody is stunned he shrinks+does not do the AoE knockback? Not sure on the last bit yet, I think companions also count to the stun.
4) AoE groundslam that throws everyone up in the air, can be dodged.
I really like the mechanics of the 2nd boss, they are fine as is and are suitably punishing to people who don't pay attention.
This is what I have gathered from the last boss:
1) She has a petrify ability like the 2nd boss, face away to avoid, she says, "be still!" as a telegraph.
2) When the laser portals appear stand close between 2 of them to prevent being hit by any of them.
3) When the tentacles spawn, I *think* you are supposed to kill the 3 tentacles and then the 3 tears in the rifts.
Where I am lost is here:
1) At the last phase, the boss says, "oh no, the key" or something like that and a bunch of tears+portals spawn. We have killed all the tears and used all the portals as well as killed none+used none and either way, the boss does the 1 shot ability. The 1 shot ability during this phase however, does appear to be mitigate able by AA.
2) Sometimes the boss randomly says, "you have doomed yourselves" and you all die.
3) There is a stacking DoT which sometimes gets applied called rampant curse.
My questions are as follows:
1) What are you supposed to do at the final phase to prevent the 1 shot called Planer Prominence.
2) What is the condition to avoid the, "you have doomed yourselves" line?
3) What applies the DoT and how can it be removed, I have seen 99 stacks on my toon of this dot at 1 point.
Feedback: Last Boss Mechanics.
I feel like none of those 3 mechanics I listed are adequately explained, at least, as of yet I have not been in a group where anyone actually understands what they supposed to do. It feels like a cheap 1 shot without any explanation of how to avoid it. If there is anything hinting at how to survive it, it is too subtle as nobody I have ran with has picked it up yet. Also, the mechanics of this fight seem buggy, in some instances, they seem to bug out and you can just burn the boss right down to 0, in other instances, you go through all the phases and then get hit by the cheap 1 shot that isn't explained at the end.
Feedback: Remainder of Dungeon.
As far as the rest of the dungeon is concerned, I thoroughly enjoyed it, more than the original version in fact. It was the type of dungeon that I as a CW was really wanting to have. The difficulty seems more or less where it should be, although I would slightly increase the boss HP to make it less of a melt fest for strong groups. I am assuming the loot table is still being worked on, so I will refrain from commenting on that.
I feel like the trash mobs in the dungeon aren't quite dangerous enough, they are much easier than fangbreaker island, I would slightly increase their damage output. The boss mechanics are much more challenging than FBI though and I expect much raging at the 2nd boss.
I really enjoyed the hunt for the shifting key and the general environment, you can give yourselves a pat on the back for a job well done.
As a small hint, I will say that Nostura's petrification ability is in fact avoidable. I'll leave the how up to everyone to discover.
We've had this issue during some internal playtests, but as is often the case with these sorts of issues, when we unit test the mechanic it works perfectly. We're currently investigating the issue, thank you for the report, and I apologize for the inconvenience. The huge portal over the arena features prominently in the story of the dungeon, Nostura is trying to force open a portal to the Far Realm and channeling her energy into that, when it finally collapses because you have interrupted her concentration enough, that's when Planar Prominence occurs.
Normally this happens at a certain percentage of her life and is supposed to be avoidable via the steps indicated in response to your first question. However, this happens early when Nostura uses Feywalk and you send your party through to the Feywild but simply DPS her and ignore the mechanic of forcing her back to The Material Plane. Although she has health regeneration when in the Feywild, it is possible to overcome that regen with sufficient DPS and interrupt her concentration to the point where the portal collapses early.
You must push her life down by a significant percentage (around 20%) from the time that she begins using Feywalk for the portal to collapse early, so this should not be something that occurs accidentally if for instance she is hit by stray AoEs or being fought by the tank as the DPS focus on the planar tear mechanic.
This mechanic, Rampant Curse, can in fact be removed. As we are not tracking any bugs related to this mechanic from our internal playtests, I believe this should be working as intended, so I'll leave it up to you all to discover how to remove it. I will give a hint though, that you may have to react differently to some of her powers in order to remove the effect.
----
Finally, I'd like to thank you all for your great feedback so far. There will still be some additional tuning before the fight goes live, so we're taking into account how difficult these encounters are for various groups, as such your feedback is invaluable. (Even more valuable if you post your group's composition and item level when you describe the difficulty.) As the entry requirements match Fangbreaker Island, I would like to make it clear however, that the bosses are not meant to be more difficult than Fangbreaker, but more or less on the same level.
2) Group composition varied, we didn't run any, "perfect" group compositions and normally had 2 dps. CW in every party, since I play CW. DC in every party, because DC is the strongest support in the game in terms of boosting damage. We then had either a GF, an OP or both, depending on the group. Last 1 or 2 spots were filled by general DpS (GWF/TR/HR/CW/SW). I would say that due to the sheer number of adds and the fact that many of CW's abilities have no target caps, CW is the strongest class when it comes to clearing this dungeon.
3) When I say the bosses are, "more difficult than FBI" what I mean is it is a different kind of difficulty. SP's bosses are mechanically difficult, where as FBI is more about avoiding burst damage. The mechanics of FBI are not hard to grasp and are fairly simple, furthermore, most can be simply avoided through various sources of mitigation (for example AA, or using CW shield+some other mitigation) where as the mechanics in SP cannot be avoided through mitigation. This means that the mechanics in FBI are optional where as the mechanics in SP are not. I think non optional mechanics are a good thing and would rather the mechanics in FBI were made non optional than SP was made easier.
Most of the difficulty comes from how the group deals with the second bosses mechanics, if they respond well to the mechanics, it is easy, however if they fail to respond to the second bosses mechanics, the group is pretty much bound to fail. The second boss is the point in the dungeon that determines whether or not the group will fail or succeed, not the final boss.
4) As I just noticed you did ask for feedback on loot I will say as it currently stands the loot tables are not rewarding enough. Given this dungeon takes us twice as long to run as FBI, it should be roughly twice as rewarding. Currently, it gives less campaign currency than the skirmish, it doesn't give companion gear (at least I haven't received any) and the items that do drop are bound to account. Comparatively, items that drop in FBI are BoE. I don't really foresee anyone running this for the loot as it currently stands, although I will definitely run it often for the sheer fun of the dungeon (I enjoy it more than any other dungeon in the game.)
Second boss is actually easy. When it does the AoE push attack you have to stay close to the center of the circle and you don't get pushed at all. I two manned it with an OP, it took probably fifteen minutes (my HR is not a DPS monster) and I was never pushed. The OP was able to tank the boss without any help. Still a really cool fight with a lot of movement and dodging.
On the final boss I agree with Sharpedge (by the way I closed the dungeon with him and three other players after my previous group left at the final boss due to IRL issues). There is no strong theme or, if there is, it's not strongly conveyed. I think more clear visual hints are needed. I know a lot of players that cannot (for various reasons, me included sometimes) use sound while playing and most of the hints are actually sentences from the boss. Drufi for example is much better in that sense, as every power can be easily detected by looking at her animations. The first boss is also easier to "read".
By the way there is no battle tactics entry yet in the log for the three bosses.
Rewards as far as I understood don't look that great for something which is longer and more difficult than FBI.
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
Bug (?): First Boss Final Attack
I'm not certain this was a bug or not, but on the first boss, there was a bug one of our runs encountered wherein some of the team couldn't melt the chains of the final attack (the part where you ned to kill the fire archons to create a fireball to melt the chains).
I'm wondering if it's a bug or intentional, since we has 2 players trying to melt their chains from the same fireball, but only one of the players was able to melt their chains (despite the fact that both players were knocked down by the explosion).
Feedback: Second Boss
This is easily the most annoying boss of the dungeon.
The petrification attack I know you're supposed to avoid by turning your character around or by running behind the boss, which, difficulty wise, is fine.
However, there were times where you would just get stunlocked, getting frozen over and over and over with barely any time to respond or react to the boss' jumping attack, which is frustrating.
Speaking of the jumping attack, I know that the difficulty/mechanics were that you need to constantly position yourself so you don't fall into the pit of doom. That's fine.
The annoyance came from your companions: some companions will not have the brains to stand where they will avoid falling into the pit of doom. As you know, a lot of players base their build around their companions and it's frustrating to see a large component of your build disappear but not be able to do anything about it because the companion AI isn't the smartest. Perhaps tweak the companion AI so they can figure out where to stand?
Another thing I felt was unclear were the mirrors: I know there there for something (because of the voiceover clip), but what exactly are you supposed to use it for and/or how are you supposed to active it?
I would assume your tank needs to get the boss to use the petrification attack on the mirrors, but I'm not certain.
Overall, I think that adding a new section to the "battle tactics" to eSP in the journal would help us out with this a little bit better.
When the boss reaches the final phase where you have to kill the tears and enter the portals rampant curse should automatically be removed, as it is no longer possible to remove it by being hit from the petrify ability.
(group ilvl about 3.8k with dc,gf,support cw, pala, gwf)
We completed the Master version after about 35 minutes. Some of us got a R8 and unrestored relict gear from fbi(?). None of us got epic equipment as reward.
If you consider that spellplague master needs at least 10min longer to clear as FBI and the rewards are exactly the same I dont see a reason for running spellplague. You should be rewarded with at least 2 epic equipment parts every run.
We didn't get access to the secret boss so can't really tell how much loot it drops.
------------
Feedback: Trash Adds
(group ilvl about 3.8k with dc,gf,support cw, pala, gwf)
80% of the trash adds were not really a challenge. They had very low hp and didn't hit very hard. We even could pull a lot of groups together and it still was not a challenge (I blame AA for it). Compared to FBI the adds are a lot easier because you can CC the spellplague adds. I like the idea of not-cc immune adds but I think they should have more HP and hit harder so if you don't have CC the adds will become a problem.
I didn't write my comment above for starting a discussion or that I need to justivy myself so I simply wanted to told my impressions. cya o/
Born of Black Wind: SW Level 80
And I would raise that as feedback again. The option to buy the unlock for Demogorgon on any character on your account after you had unlocked it via campaign progression once is the hands-down BEST implementation you guys have ever done with content that has to be unlocked. It is utterly fatiguing to go through an entire campaign multiple times just to unlock a dungeon, worse when you're trying to catch the initial rush of interest. This is a huge factor in support class shortages, as many players do have DC/GF/OP alts that they are happy to bust out to help their friends on a run, but might not have the time or fortitude to slog through a campaign for weeks or months just to get into the dungeon. If they could unlock it because of their work on progressing their main, this wouldn't be a problem. Abandoning alt-friendly content unlocks was a terrible idea, and one that you should remedy ASAP for Fangbreaker, Svardborg, and now Master SP.
Preventing players from accessing a new trial or dungeon for several weeks after a release due to timegating is already cause for resentment, since this is the main thing a large cross-section of your players care about, the campaign just being the means to that end. But most of us are willing to accede to the timegating once because you've got your reasons, it fits the story, whatever. We'll live with it.
But making us go through it over and over again in order to take turns filling different roles in the content. Ugh.
Remember when a State of the Game post acknowledged how alt-unfriendly Neverwinter has become? Take a very hard look at your prerequisites for content unlocks and how long they take when you need to perform them for several characters.
Neverwinter Census 2017
All posts pending disapproval by Cecilia
When i went to SS i went with a temploc so the DC had more freedom and still saw some 1 shots, damage from mobs t player is fine.
Feedback:
There should be a battle tatics lore for SS master, it's not clear at first, i had to do it solo to understand when happens this and why happens that etc....