Newish Foundry Author

cristakat

Hi. I'm kind of new to your ranks but I'm totally addicted to the foundry. (not sure how I'm going to limit myself to 15 quest slots lol)

Would love it you could check out my current 3 (I'll post the fourth if the foundry publishing ever starts working again). I'm going through posts and making note of those who need reviews for hubby and I to run later. Thanks in advance.

Murch's Tomb - NW-DJW4P7HZP
This is really the first of a set but I haven't finished the others yet.

The Secret of the Village - NW-DU3HQZ5MN
This is challenging for solo but can be done. The npc's and bosses are named after RL people for various reasons but it would make me immensely happy to know others were taking them down too.
Also this should qualify for a daily if I can get enough reviews.

Thanks in advance. I'm going to bookmark the thread to check back later. Hope you enjoy my creations. I am new to this process but I think they are getting progressively better. (also if you have any trouble finding just search author name cristakat)

orangefiree

Sure, I will check your quests out next time I need a break from foundry editing. Since you are making notes of who needs reviews, this is what I am currently looking for feedback on.


Campaign: The Planar Conflict: NWS-DG4CX25DT

Quest one: The Shadowfell Disciples: NW-DEBISCCCR

After A day of adventuring, your vision starts to grow cloudy and you hear voices inside your head. Perhaps you should rest at a nearby inn and wait for your mind to clear.


Quest two: The Demonweb Game: NW-DHBGM6VVC

Guard captains Thearous and Nerthos informed you that a wizard named Brizax could help you, perhaps you should go ask him about the strange events of late.

This is probably more combat focused then the others but still advances the story quite a bit.

Just to warn you, the campaign has a total of five parts planned so the storyline won't finish with just these two.

orangefiree

I just played "The Secret Of The Village".

The storyline was interesting and unique.
I noticed some "Go to next map interactions and objectives that you might want to change.
I also noticed some "Press F to interact" interactions that you might want to put some more detail into.
The final map was called "The Hidden Village (Duplicate)", you might want to change it to just "The Hidden Village".
Some more customization on the enemies might be nice to make it feel more unique.

I just played through "Murch's Tomb"
First of all, undead are very common in the foundry, that doesn't mean they are bad to use, but it does mean some customization on them is even more important then usual so the player is not fighting the same undead they have fought everywhere else.
I am curious why the undead were there in the first place, was there a necromancer I didn't find? You said it was part of a campaign so I am assuming more details on that will be included later.
Why were zombie hulks throwing axes, that would make more sense on a skeleton or something.
And last but not least, Murch was labeled as a lich, however, he was not at all like a lich. Liches are undead casters where Murch used Melee, also, liches have a phylactery which must be destroyed otherwise they just come back after a couple of days. I would recommend changing him to a wight as that is much more like how he fought.

Oh, I forgot to mention, there were some go to next map transitions here as well.
I am going to play through your last one soon.

cristakat

Thanks for the feedback. These three were the first three I'd made. I think I fixed most of this in the next one (which I still can't publish). As soon as publishing comes back up I'll do some editing on these.

I made note of your quests. I've been up all night working on my most recent creation. I really need a nap lol. Good news is that you'll get 2 for the price of 1 with us, as hubby runs with me and always reviews. We'll run them later tonight when my eyes can focus again.

Oh yes and in the Murch's Tomb. There are a couple of times where it is stated that these souls were bound to the earthly plane, trapped within their withering shells, under the curse of their previous disgrace.

say1o

I also went through both of those. You could still add in so much more. You can use the Place markers to trigger sounds, NPC's, chests.. The Village must of took allot of time. I would suggest spreading out he story among more NPC's. When I entered the area I got a room but wasn't told where or what number it was. Then Flo asked to meet in my room, but I didn't even know where my room was. Simply adding this to the quest train to guide players in a normal routine, and placing none Quest objective NPCs telling the story and answering questions can help make the NPC spend more time in the nicely laid out areas.

I also noticed you use yellow text everywhere. Try and save that for specific details you want to point out. Like Search for the Key... In the Tomb of XYZ... blah blah blah.. find the Crown. Save it for the power gamers to skim and the role players to enjoy the story and flow of the adventure.
I have 2 new builds up for review if anyone has time. They are short and my first with this toolset. Both are very short and geared for low levels in the combat side.
NW-DRUDWDQ3V Grey Society Introduction
NW-DDGLMRIJZ Following the Grey Society 1

melinden

Say1o I sent you a PM with a review so I won't take over someone else's thread.

cristakat

orangefiree wrote: »

I noticed some "Go to next map interactions and objectives that you might want to change.
I also noticed some "Press F to interact" interactions that you might want to put some more detail into.
The final map was called "The Hidden Village (Duplicate)", you might want to change it to just "The Hidden Village".

Fixed in all quests the go to next maps and f interacts. Fixed map name in The Village. This down time is giving me plenty of time to adjust so this is very appreciated

I just played through "Murch's Tomb"
First of all, undead are very common in the foundry, that doesn't mean they are bad to use, but it does mean some customization on them is even more important then usual so the player is not fighting the same undead they have fought everywhere else.
I am curious why the undead were there in the first place, was there a necromancer I didn't find? You said it was part of a campaign so I am assuming more details on that will be included later.
Why were zombie hulks throwing axes, that would make more sense on a skeleton or something.
And last but not least, Murch was labeled as a lich, however, he was not at all like a lich. Liches are undead casters where Murch used Melee, also, liches have a phylactery which must be destroyed otherwise they just come back after a couple of days. I would recommend changing him to a wight as that is much more like how he fought.

Added some extra conversation to explain the story that you were confused with. (hopefully) Fixing the Lich thing now.

Thanks for all the input. This has all been very helpful in creating the one I'm waiting to publish and it is so customized at this point I'm not sure if there's much left to mess with lol. Remember changes won't take effect until the foundry let's us publish again. ugh.

cristakat

orangefiree wrote: »

this is what I am currently looking for feedback on.

Quest one: The Shadowfell Disciples: NW-DEBISCCCR

Just ran this. very pretty. Great mobs. Minor issues. your "cave entrance" is floating off the ground. And in your last room I would add a door for exit and your current 'f' interact still says call mysterious figure back instead of "leave"

Quest two: The Demonweb Game: NW-DHBGM6VVC

We went into this and it looked promising but for some reason there was no "first portal". when the objective came up nothing sparkled. we checked them all. Also your paths are a little difficult to get from to the rock platforms. might just need to line them up a bit better.

cristakat

By the way I am leaving starred reviews for people who do the same for me. Thanks.

orangefiree

cristakat wrote: »

Just ran this. very pretty. Great mobs. Minor issues. your "cave entrance" is floating off the ground. And in your last room I would add a door for exit and your current 'f' interact still says call mysterious figure back instead of "leave"



We went into this and it looked promising but for some reason there was no "first portal". when the objective came up nothing sparkled. we checked them all. Also your paths are a little difficult to get from to the rock platforms. might just need to line them up a bit better.

The Shadowfell Disciples had a publish failed issue preventing some of the fixes such as floating things, though not all of that stuff was done so thanks for the review.
You are saying The Demonweb Game didn't have a portal to Lolth's first trial, this is weird as that was an issue I had fixed, published (Before the glitch.), and played through fine. I will give it another try before jumping into the foundry. As for the web bridges, I will see what can be done about them, but they are hard since none of the invisible walls line up good without rotation and it is hard to see where the collision is, I will look at some improvements for them next time I do some edits to that quest though.

Edit: The portal worked fine for me, (Other than a go the next map transition that I forgot to fix, but no issues actually going through it.) you say it "wasn't there", that sounds more like a glitch on your end.

say1o

Cristakat i also sent you a PM with some longer notes. Keep improving! You're on a good start!

Orange, i will look at yours too here soon.

I like all criticism, good or bad. Even spelling mistakes, we become blind to them! Thanks everyone who takes the time to review!

cristakat

orangefiree wrote: »

Edit: The portal worked fine for me, (Other than a go the next map transition that I forgot to fix, but no issues actually going through it.) you say it "wasn't there", that sounds more like a glitch on your end.

yeah it might have been. I'll run it again later. Now that foundry seems to be up and running correctly again maybe other glitches will be gone too lol.

Just finished my newest. Gonna make a separate post for it in a bit. Want to run it with hubby first before I post it here lol. I like to run my own a couple times to tweak stuff and make sure it's all working IN GAME correctly too.

cristakat

say1o wrote: »

Cristakat i also sent you a PM with some longer notes. Keep improving! You're on a good start!

Thanks I saw it. I'll send you a reply in a minute. Tried to run yours and the mobs were aggroing through the doors so we couldn't interact with objects and it became impossible to get anywhere. Will try it again later on my own. (hubby got a bit frustrated)

melinden

Hideaway Rescue

I played with a level 60 cleric.

This quest isn't quite ready for a starred review yet. You have the basics down for foundry like making maps, setting music, and putting costumes on encounters so you have learned the hard stuff. The next steps would be to spread out the encounters or take out some of the empty rooms, make the encounters more active by having them patrol or wander, and putting more details on the maps.

Currently you don't have much of a story with this quest. Not all quests need elaborate stories but explanations for what the players encounter helps. So my questions were: Why did the three go into the keep? Why are goblins, gnolls, orcs, Thayans, and devils all in the keep? What is the keep, exactly?

I'll be happy to play a later draft when you have the chance to republish it.


Play through notes
-I thought it was a little odd that "Time to explore" meant I needed to search for a rubble pile in PE. Part of that was because I was in the Winter festival when I took the quest so I was searching the overworld map looking for the location of the keep. It took be awhile to figure out I needed to go to PE first.
-a little more background to the keep would be helpful. For example, it would be great to see the outside of it. I was also a little confused that Brella said "down here". That statement and the place I entered made me think I might be in some ruins beneath PE?
-Quest Objectives are always a little difficult. You want to give the players some indication of what to look for but they can't know -exactly- what they are looking for. So the first objective of "Find the Body and Read the Journal" seemed a bit too specific to me. Maybe "Look for Clues" would be better in this case? The quest path leads the players where they need to go anyway.
-the book has the default name of "Book-Open 01"
-you have a number of encounters stacked, meaning you have a multiple of encounters in the same area that attack at the same time. This is generally frowned upon unless you are purposely creating a "hardcore" combat dungeon.
-after finding Todd the "Gnoll Enforcers" were wearing goblin costumes
-you have an NPC Deathjump spider who is not set for "Ignore All" so the orcs are beating on it

cristakat

melinden wrote: »

Hideaway Rescue

I played with a level 60 cleric.

This quest isn't quite ready for a starred review yet. You have the basics down for foundry like making maps, setting music, and putting costumes on encounters so you have learned the hard stuff. The next steps would be to spread out the encounters or take out some of the empty rooms, make the encounters more active by having them patrol or wander, and putting more details on the maps.

Currently you don't have much of a story with this quest. Not all quests need elaborate stories but explanations for what the players encounter helps. So my questions were: Why did the three go into the keep? Why are goblins, gnolls, orcs, Thayans, and devils all in the keep? What is the keep, exactly?

I'll be happy to play a later draft when you have the chance to republish it.


Play through notes
-I thought it was a little odd that "Time to explore" meant I needed to search for a rubble pile in PE. Part of that was because I was in the Winter festival when I took the quest so I was searching the overworld map looking for the location of the keep. It took be awhile to figure out I needed to go to PE first.
-a little more background to the keep would be helpful. For example, it would be great to see the outside of it. I was also a little confused that Brella said "down here". That statement and the place I entered made me think I might be in some ruins beneath PE?
-Quest Objectives are always a little difficult. You want to give the players some indication of what to look for but they can't know -exactly- what they are looking for. So the first objective of "Find the Body and Read the Journal" seemed a bit too specific to me. Maybe "Look for Clues" would be better in this case? The quest path leads the players where they need to go anyway.
-the book has the default name of "Book-Open 01"
-you have a number of encounters stacked, meaning you have a multiple of encounters in the same area that attack at the same time. This is generally frowned upon unless you are purposely creating a "hardcore" combat dungeon.
-after finding Todd the "Gnoll Enforcers" were wearing goblin costumes
-you have an NPC Deathjump spider who is not set for "Ignore All" so the orcs are beating on it

After creating several other foundrys I agree with a lot of what you are saying here. This one probably won't survive the eventual cut to make space for more. I've attempted to tweak some of it but it really was simply a first attempt (well second but the first was real garbage lol). I will say I did that with the spider just because it amused me lol. Walking into that room and watching a bunch of orcs chasing that spider is just too funny to me. Thanks for the input. I have a new one out I'm going to post soon. Just doing some last minute tweaks. I think also you'll find The Secret of the Village and Murch's Tomb more updated. Of course they were built still on the learning curve but they are far more detailed.