The Hands of Jorath - My First Foundry Quest

zagnar1

Hello all! This is my first time publishing a Foundry quest and my first time posting on these forums. I just finished up my first attempt at a foundry quest. Any reviews and (honest) constructive criticism is greatly appreciated. My goal is to eventually make better quests and eventually a campaign. Here is my quest info:

Title: The Hands of Jorath
Code: NW-DSJ437GPU
Decription:

A local miner uncovered something ancient and unholy in the hills, the tomb of the Death Knight Jorath. In life, Jorath was a fierce warrior, heart as black as coal. It was said that those slain by his hands had their very souls consumed. Neverwinter Scholars believed that this warrior had access to great magical weaponry and that due to the nature of these artificats, that they might have a link to Kelemvor, the Lord of the Dead.

The priests of Kelemvor and a contingent of guards were sent out to uncover the secrets of this tomb. However, since their arrival they have had very little success exploring its depths.

Type: Combat, Exploration
Difficulty: Solo or Duo (Adjustable Difficulty)
Approximate Length: 15 Minutes
Version: 1.0
Note: This is my first attempt at a foundry quest.

bigglesvii

Ill give it a go in a moment

swordsworn

Going to try it right now as I can never get anyone to try my first 2. Depresing to put all that work in if no one sees it. will reveiw when done

swordsworn

okay typing in here as I play. Loaded in when in kicten and liked the music mad me want to come and play. Chose no gurad. first room is done nice. like the statues. pick hard mode first fight was fun 23 great sword w/cleric pet. used 2 pots and cleric went down right at the end but with alot of aoes i pulled threw. good chalenge.
next room again nicly laid out. again i chose hard mode this fight was rather easy for hard mode compaired to the first. still having a good time. Hall way into the next room good fighting. the loot fight was much harder the the hard mode fight. hard mode fight was easy. other fight had to rallt my clric twice and i looked like a pin cushion, but i would not make it easier instead hard mod fight should be increased imop. So far I realy like it. I like more chalagin maps. So far much of the dev content has been boringly easy.

still goodness up to door for portal. its odly red and bighter then rest of map for no aparent reson. npc after portal is broken chosen hard mode fails the dialog. and now tried easy mode again fails dialog can not continue. you need to fix this. fast. sham as i was injoying this more then bills tavren when i tried it. going to review up to this point and not give u a negitive for the broken npc. k... never mind... the door despans the npc. still this imop is broken as it seems that your failing the coversation and can repeaditly pick hard mode easy mode.
going into next room. well its a hall with hard fighting and love the lighting!

End fight nicly done. Your mob plament and encounters were chaling yet still fun. Good map for a greatsword warrior.
Recomend anyone who tries it and is cofident in there skill to pick all hard mode.

mobs 5
map 4
story 4. -npc after portal seemed broken to me as if qwest would not advance but he was not. Story is short but hard mode choice bump it up a notch.
dificulty 5. -hard mode was esactly the chalenge I like.

if this is hard to read sorry was tabbing in and out every room and not a good speed typer. but I give you a 4.5 overall. 5 if you fix the 1 npc so hes dialog is not repeatable. One of the more enjoyable foundrys I've tried. A solid first atempt.

bigglesvii

Just completed it, great story and mobs were certainly challenging. Here's a few things I spotted:

- Quest had 0 plays when I started it. Always play the quest through when you publish incase it cant be finished. Sometimes it bugs when publishing.

- If you can make all doors open away from the player then the push animation works well. The first door has an invisible clicky but it's too far back to be chosen without opening the door in the normal fashion.

- Sarcophagus, F to interact. If possible see if you can reword to search or something. Interact makes it look like you haven't bothered with it.

- On entering the room with the circle of light in the middle there's a mixture of Spirits and Skeleton Archers. Not sure if your plan is to have a Skeleton,decrepid skeleton and spirit mix. Personally I would just have spirits, it looks weird fighting spirits and skeletons at the same time.

- Respawn points, The direction on a respawn point is reversed so it needs to be facing in the opposite direction to where you want them to spawn. I respawned with my back to the door.

- Once the teleporter has been used it would be good to make a teleporter available at the respawn as it was a ridiculously long walk to the teleporter. Might be worth relocating the respawn point to 2nd area as the 1st part wasn't too difficult and if someone dies before reaching the respawn point they go back to the start anyways.

- After speaking to Jaroth the 2nd time and entering the door, there is a group of zombie encounters that need relabelling.

-Boss fight I found quite difficult but after killing Jaroth the first time and killing the adds I died and respawned right near the next objective so i didn't have to complete the fight. For a solo having the boss and minions and then the boss respawning is a little excessive although I ran out of potions before the boss fight lol.

- Alot of players miss this but at the end of the quest setup and exit like a door or something otherwise the chest becomes the exit.

All in all a fantastic quest, good story, heavy combat. I will replay again to see the improvements over time. Excellent for a first foundry.

swordsworn

okay decided to add how to fix the npc since I know how. You have him set to disaper when the door is opened. instead. set hit to disapear on a dialog. now this is important! You will never get to see the dialog he disapears on as the chat interface is closed the second you reply to the dialog leading to this one. so were you have responce "hard/easy mode active" and a new dialog named hard/easy mode set. tell npc to disapear when this dialog is reached. hmmm wait this might not work. in your case as you have dialog branches. you could set him to disapear when the two difrent dialogs are reached but I dont think he will unless both dialogs are reached...you just have to make him an objective I think.

zagnar1

Thanks for the input everyone! I just published an updated version which addressed the NPC which failed to disappear. I finally figured out how to loop conversations back which allows me to have a common prompt at the end of the conversation that triggers multiple events (door opening no matter which difficulty you "pick" etc). More changes/tweaks coming soon.

zagnar1

Looking for more reviews if anyone would like to try out this quest. Constructive criticism is always welcome. I will edit the original post with updates to the quest as I post them.

atiaxi

It's rare for a dungeon crawl to have backstory like this, so that was a pleasant change. Overall, an enjoyable quest! My notes as I played:


- All the guards in the entrance room is a nice touch
- I like that the difficulty can scale, but "anger the spirits" doesn't tell me much
- Door's labeled "universal - wood 01". Also, I opened it, but the 'open the crypt door' objective didn't update. Interacting with it again completed the objective, but closed the doors and I can't get past. Had to drop and re-start the quest. Worked fine the second time
- All of Jorath's responses are orange for some reason
- I changed the difficulty without meaning to. It'd be handy if the dialog told me it'd change the difficulty /before/ rather than after. I get that 'angering the spirits' does it, but, really, anything I do here is going to anger the spirits. I'm robbing their tomb.
- I found the left hand. If I hadn't checked both doors at the beginning, I would have wasted a lot of time going back and discovering it was locked.
- I got to talk to Jorath a second time, but it didn't change the difficulty (or, if it did, he didn't say so)
- I killed Jorath and had to immediately fight him again?

zagnar1

Updated my quest this morning. I am working on better integrating music and sound into the quest. I also changed around a few encounters, changing the enemy mix in a few places as well making enhancements to trap placement and AI node placement. I tweaked a bunch of the doors to use the default "visible" functionality for interior rooms (I was using invisible walls before).

A few people have commented that some of my hallways seem very easy - this is partially due to the fact I ran out of encounters. I am currently AT the encounter and AI node limit limit. I am thinking of splitting this quest off into two (or three) different maps with the same approximate layout. This will increase the total number of encounters I can place which, in turn, will give me more control over enemy AI and combat difficulty.

@atiaxi
I am thinking of putting in some more specific queues as to the degree of how angry the spirits will get. Admittedly, everything you do will anger them since, as you said, we are raiding this tomb The orange options are generally there when dialogue will change difficulty - since almost every prompt does this, everything is orange. I think I may add more options to the dialogues in white or yellow letters for players to get more background on the quest. If I do that, it may be a little more clear that anything in orange is going to trigger the next fight to be harder or easier.

Oh, and you are supposed to defeat Jorath twice - I wanted him to be a boss fight with "stages". In my latest version he changes red in his second stage. I am currently playing with some of the encounter types so that he second(final) stage has different attacks etc.


Thank you everyone for the reviews! All of the constructive criticism is genuinely appreciated. Looking for more reviews if anyone has time.

zagnar1

Shamelessly bumping my own thread because my quest needs more reviews.

zagnar1

Bumping this because my first quest still needs a little review love. I will update this thread with some screenshots.

lolsorhand

I will play this today Would be glad if you could play Part 3 of my campaign. (It's in my signature, in the campaign. The Trials of Five.) But i'll play through this anyway, I love Kelemvor

zagnar1

zbkolde

Just finished your quest. Pretty neat, i liked how you did the difficulty options. I'll send you my notes through our site.

jollygg

Not to sound like a **** or anything..but I can't seem to figure out how to do the Easy Mode/Hard Mode options...could you possibly point me in the right direction?