Easterden Horror, NW-DTIKVUOC3

arkanarge

"A friend of a friend of a friend's uncle's niece's brother, heard of a rumor said that a certain dwarf was setting up an adventuring company or whatever in protectors enclave. Out of curiosity and perhaps boredom, you decide to seek it out... little did you know, this would begin an unusual friendship and even more unusual adventures."

I finally finished the first quest for my Black Wardens campaign. Prepare your breechers because its a doozy....probably. Currently in the best section.

100% Custom maps. Surreal landscapes (sorta), INTENSE combat! Easy to follow story! (Yes, I know some of you don't like to read, don't worry me niether)
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Traverse a detailed sleepy city-scape



Curiosities in every corner


Enter-able buildings



Embark on an quest to find a little girls cat.

---Obligatory Copy Pasta---
The Black Wardens - Easterden Horror by @arkanarge
Short Code: NW-DTIKVUOC3
Mission Type: Exploration, Combat, ADVENTURE!
Average Duration: 40 minutes.
Amount of Combat: Heavy
Starts at: (NPC or location) Protector's Enclave
Mission Summary: Help sally find her cat! also various other things happen.
Author tips/hints: Teddy bear in Sally's house wards off evil.

arkanarge

Hordes of monsters in an endless onslaught, to survive you must put everything you know to the test in an arena type boss battle. This is a very difficult quest. That said, I ran through it with my 5k gs pally and my 7.5k gs warlock just fine.

arkanarge

Currently having guildies 4-8k gs running it for me since no one loves me. some parts are not as obvious as I thought so are in need of change. As well as perhaps combat assistance in the form of allies, an option for people who are not good at dodging.

arkanarge

Heck

melinden

Easterden Horror

General Notes: I played with my 12K DC. I was not able to finish the quest.
-maps are very well done with many details
-Chat text was clean and error free (this is a rare feat in foundry!)
-I appreciate that all the maps had sound.
I would recommend trying to reduce some of the map transitions, especially in the beginning when that might be easier without complicating your cut scenes.
-I was not able to continue after the MainStreet map, this may be why you are not getting plays?

Dusky Tavern:
-I like the customization of the tavern map. All the details were well placed.
-The extra interactables with various tidbits of information were good
-I feel like I may have missed the reference to the other adventurer’s guild in the bar that ends up getting into a fight? It may be from something I’m not familiar with or maybe your previous foundry?

Westerden:
-very nice details on the map, including the custom windows on the houses
--Irvin Wilhelm has a small typo in his speech bubble. It should read “I think the wheel’s broken”, you are missing the apostrophe.
-by their wagon there is a small visual glitch caused by the floor tiles overlapping. You can solve this by changing one of the heights 0.01 from the other one. Since I didn’t see any other glitching you may have done that with the others and just missed this one.

Sally’s House
-Since this building is custom made from details, you may want to consider using a teleporter for Sally’s door and then building the interior of the house on the same exterior map as Westerden. This will save your players from having two loading screens just a couple of minutes apart.
-this interior is well done, using the cup as a wall peg is very clever
-the fireplace is floating away from the wall slightly
-the items and interactables are well done and clever
-in the dialog with Sally, the response line “I have alot of spare time” should be “I have a lot of spare time.”

Westerden 2:
-this time I noticed some more visual glitches by the dancing Denholm NPC on the ground.
-when inside the tavern, looking out, the window on the right hand side is pushed into the wall too much
-I half expected to find cat HAMSTER in the flower bed
-In Pentha Hooper’s opening dialogue it should be “Who’s this you’re following around?” the apostrophe is missing on who’s

Easterden
-in the first conversation with Sally, in the line “Let’s get out of this rain” the apostrophe is missing on let’s
-When Captain Duncan says “…when they spotted him dragging the corpse away” it makes it sound like the killer dragged away the body that is on the street. Maybe change that to “dragged one of the corpses away”?
-some of the windows in the area around Duncan are floating away from the houses
-the item in the fountain should be named “A lot of coins”
-there is the guard who explains why the killer has to be in the area. He has a line that says “As soon as a patrolman orbbed in the attack” I originally thought this was a typo. I’m guessing you were going in for the fantasy version of “called in”?
Normal House
-again, nice customization of the map
-you may want to use the smaller campfire detail (under the dynamic light listing) for the fireplace

Sleepy time
-the forced perspective is very original, but you may be able to make this work on the map before or the map after? Essentially you can have all your appear when/disappear when set to those dialogue prompts. You are using some of that now but you could in theory do more. This would reduce the loading screens.
-the following scene is very good.

Dark Room
-the reach point text has a typo. It currently reads “nastolgic murmurs”, did you mean nostalgic?

Home?
-the Wilbread NPC who is standing doesn’t despawn when the dancing one appears
-the rug in the living room is pushed into the floor, it just needs to be lifted slightly
-when talking to Knox after the gifts the player’s response should be “I’m loving…” the apostrophe is missing

Awaken
-considering I had the bear (so in theory fewer mobs) that many mobs in such a small space (since I am a dodging class) is a lot. You may want to slow down or space those mobs out more.

MainStreet (did you want a space in this map name?)
-the only objective text on this map is “Go to Next Map” which I imagine you will want to change?
-I tried to get through this map for a good 10-15 minutes. There was an invisible wall across the tunnel and I could not figure out which trigger removed it. I couldn’t get on any roofs to climb over, I tried especially the ladder in the corner where the ghosts are facing. I could speak to the dog but there was nothing else on the map that I could see to interact.
-is it possible that the mobs who needed to be killed to despawn the invisible wall did not appear because I had the teddy bear?
-is Phillup the dog supposed to be in two places?

melinden

Update: After I left the map I found I could go to the next map via the overworld map

Gotta Climb
-this is the 3rd time the shaky-camera effect appears in this quest. It would be more effective if it appeared once, maybe twice at most
-I would recommend you reduce the number of encounters on this map. Fighting stacked encounters in small spaces over and over isn’t interesting to many players (it is why people get tired of endless trash mobs in dungeons). The maze here is much more interesting and that is your own work, not the stock encounters.

Roof Top
-in the first dialogue with the Painted Man “alot” should be “a lot”
-I would like repeat my earlier advice about using the shaking effect less and not stacking encounters.
-the exit door on the rooftop house is pushed too far into the house wall.

MainStreet
-after the conversation with Captain Duncan ends the old NPC does not despawn when the new one who follows me appears
-in conversation with Captain Duncan by the jail cells it says “…I was bested by thy fiend”, I think you me “the fiend”?
-when talking to Sally about the foundry, the line says “..obligated to atleast try it” I think you mean “at least”?

arkanarge

Thanks for the info! I went back in and fixed all that I could. Some changed the encounters up a little. I think I might try redoing sally's house into a teleport if I'm not lazy. I was toying with the idea, i might as well do it. I can probably delete the entire Westerden 1 map and save up alot of room. HMMM better make a duplicate just in case. Alot of the ideas I've had was just me messing around designing places and cool stuff before a story started to take place. In future quests I'll try my best to push every map to its limits and have more cool stuff.

melinden

I think your priority needs to be that first MainStreet map. My guess is that you intend people to go up the ladder the ghosts look toward. Ladder details can be a little tricky in terms of collision and which characters can go up them. Maybe a stack of boxes would be more reliable? I would also recommend adding another clue. Players are likely to give up pretty quickly when frustrated by things like that.

arkanarge

No, the barrier/invisible wall is supposed to vanish after a couple of mob encounters. I don't know why it didn't, so I reworked it a little to dissapear when other components die. I removed alot of the shakey shakes but kept some to last only a couple seconds to simulate a head ache coming in before the monsters start showing up. I removed some encounters and spread them out a bit but I really do like the hack and slash aoe numbers diablo-esq killfest the most in foundries, so I feel like I'm going to keep it in for the most part in this one. Perhaps the pacing in the next quest will be better. I've added summonable allies by use of the teddy bear before the fighting begins.

Making use of the guardian node so they spawn but stop swarming unless you get too close, they are all out of the way but close enough to beat you up if you miss step. Working on spooky custom skins. time for a trip to the sean's marsh to take some notes.

arkanarge

ugh rebuilding sallys house and then i realized i was building it for half an hour on the wrong map. quest will come up soon... probably, its withdrawn right now.

arkanarge

On a side note, here is a picture of "you" and Naurim stuck inside the belly of Goz'Maw the sea turtle queen on the outskirts of Chult. In Black Wardens episode 3. I didn't make 2 yet. HAH! I'll make it up as I go.

arkanarge

Quest is back up.

arkanarge

the deleting and remaking of sally's house/westerden map 1 opened up some space inbetween the corruption error so I was able to duplicate the tavern without the foundry crashing. I'm making an epilogue for it and moving the chest back into the dusky inn. There you will talk to naurim and give the 30% of your mission reward as a fee as well as put the quest into a close in preparations for episode 2, which may or may not be a short one. an intermission 9-15 minute quest to set up the story or atleast the hub inwhich the quests start? planning on using alot of special effects and cinematics for comedy sake. too much text is annoying so I rather have the situations play out visually.

There was a cool story based foundry of someone's OC, dracul something in the review tab the last time i checked. you followed a girl and the story unfolded in the background while you were in talking mode. it all happened through dialogue prompts, all cinematic like. You can really learn alot by snooping around in RP homes and other quests.