Rescue in the Silver Marches: NW-DTSKK8OJ9 Review Trade

melinden

Hello everyone,

Finally finished my most recent quest. It took a lot longer since it was my husband's surprise birthday present so I could only work on it when he wasn't around. After Hunger in Icewind Dale I wanted to make something fun and a more reasonable length for everyone.

You get to visit Silverymoon and some other locations in the Silver Marches in addition to laughing at the folly of the young and inebriated. Hope you enjoy! Here's the official blurb:

It is term break and students are away from the academic commons. Unfortunately their poor decision making skills have landed them in trouble during their vacation to the Silver Marches. The Director of Security needs someone to go save the students from their own stupidity.

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Plain English: A lore-driven quest with two quest path options: one with less combat and one with more combat.

Continuity Note: This quest assumes Dalthu is alive after the events of Hunger in Icewind Dale.

Edited to add: The custom maps make the quest trail unreliable, just check your map if you are getting lost.

orangefiree

I will play this tomorrow. Any chance you could play through my newest quest "Part I: The Heroes' Tomb"?

josephskyrim

I'm up for a trade! I could use more reviews/plays on this quest of mine if you get the chance...

One Step to Darkness [NW-DNJC9SK7A]

As for yours - I've just finished playing it and holy torm that looks like a truckload of work and love you put into this mission, so much so that I decided to explore a lot of it for fun (I did the sewer part in reverse though). I'd recommend it to be featured for sure! :P

That said I did find 3 things you may want to fix:
1 - One of the orc rogues on the path is meant to have a "jumping in" animation? I'm just guessing because a second one does it at the same time. Said orc commits suicide though since the fall is too far. Quite funny, maybe intentional? :P

2 - One of the orc shamans near the final bend is named an "Eye of Grumsh Wader" ... (Warder?)

3 - A big one. I bypassed the near final objective with the orcs since there was no marker. This means I reached the exit before I was allowed to use it, and couldn't come back up the slope due to the way it was designed so I had to use /killme to actually complete the mission. Fixable if you just let players get back up that slope and/or turn on the path marker.

Otherwise, awesome quest!

melinden

Thanks for the reviews and corrections! I'll put your quest review in your threads.

-The Warder has found his missing R, poor guy.
-I moved the Rogues to the cliff edge so hopefully they will have enough sense to jump toward the keep. Orcs are not known for their planning, however.
-The place marker for getting past the keep is now larger and moved a little bit. To be honest I am completely baffled and rather impressed that you did not set the trigger on the Reach Point. Both the encounter and the students are inside of it. Outside of a weird game error I can only guess you are playing a ranged character and didn't get into melee and maybe didn't talk to the students at the end? Either way it is now very unlikely that anyone can get into the ravine without triggering it. I'm sorry you had to go through twice, did you try climbing out on the far right hand side? It isn't easy but that's the side I climb.

Thanks again and as always, you guys keep finding the errors and I'll keep fixing them!

orangefiree

Playing through now.

1.) The bandits acting like zombies was kind of weird.

2.) Some of the bandits look like Nashers.

3.) I like that gate, did you build that out of multiple pieces,

4.) You might want to change the name of the tomb spider since there are no tombs near by.

5.) The orcs could use some customization.

melinden

The gate out of the city from several sets, thanks.

You know, I was thinking about you when I was making my orcs. In the past you haven't noticed my custom costumes. I don't do each one like you, I do about 1/3 to 1/2 to mix in. But I thought....you had to have noticed for the first time outside of Vansi, that you were fighting female orcs a third of the time?

orangefiree

melinden wrote: »

The gate out of the city from several sets, thanks.

You know, I was thinking about you when I was making my orcs. In the past you haven't noticed my custom costumes. I don't do each one like you, I do about 1/3 to 1/2 to mix in. But I thought....you had to have noticed for the first time outside of Vansi, that you were fighting female orcs a third of the time?

Yes, I noticed that shortly after typing that message actually.

Edit: If you are not in it already, would you mind waiting a little bit on playing my quest? It turned out to be a little too short so I will probably be adding another map or something to extend it to 15 minutes or more which will likely need some feedback. If you're already in it though that is fine.

melinden

Darnit, I was probably in it as you posted. I saw it was at 14 minutes so I didn't mind getting up a couple of times to help the kiddo who bonked his head or switch laundry.

orangefiree

melinden wrote: »

Darnit, I was probably in it as you posted. I saw it was at 14 minutes so I didn't mind getting up a couple of times to help the kiddo who bonked his head or switch laundry.

No problem.

josephskyrim

melinden wrote: »

-The place marker for getting past the keep is now larger and moved a little bit. To be honest I am completely baffled and rather impressed that you did not set the trigger on the Reach Point. Both the encounter and the students are inside of it. Outside of a weird game error I can only guess you are playing a ranged character and didn't get into melee and maybe didn't talk to the students at the end? Either way it is now very unlikely that anyone can get into the ravine without triggering it. I'm sorry you had to go through twice, did you try climbing out on the far right hand side? It isn't easy but that's the side I climb.

I play a rogue actually. After deciding to take the path to kill all the orcs (I didn't notice the female ones... eek!) I got distracted by the lovely waterfall underneath the sewer drain... (eww) then I went back up to test the sparkley on the pipe, explored the sewer, came back out and avoided the final ogre encounter by simply running around them (I also initially bypassed the "wader"). Oops!

I tried briefly to climb back up but then I did something really silly and tried to jump past the exit - so I got stuck on the right hand side. (I was tempted to try jump down the cliff too on the highway man path because I'm silly like that). Since I was low on time I decided to checkpoint out of there and this time clean up the remaining enemies. :P

melinden

My husband is the type who likes to do things like that too. When on the mountain pass map he stopped, looked at the waterfall and said "I kind of want to jump down there."

I responded that he could but when he had to use /killme to get back I didn't want to hear a word about it When you jump off random cliffs you can't act surprised when you die.

tiborrus

I played your quest with my Lev.60. GWF tomorrow, but the forum server crashed again...:(

Fantastic quest! I think, the two island map was very hard work. I loved the "Moonlight bridge" puzzle! This is own maded map, yes?
The story was great, I kill all orcs, the fights are challenging! Maybe some ambient sound or music needed in some place.
Grat, and naturally: 5/5!

melinden

Thank you! I did have to make the map, but I can't claim to have made it up. Silverymoon is a very well known city and the Moonbridge is its most well known feature. I built it on the Ocean Expanse map as I needed a large trading river. It is a bit tough since most cities are traditionally built along rivers or coasts and all our rivers on the maps are small. We don't even get to see the river in Neverwinter in the game either, just Blacklake.

I'm hoping map-wide sound will be fixed soon. The city map has all 20 sound nodes on it although some ambient sounds are quieter than others.

I'm working on another river city in Thay and for that one I added the land and then added the water separately. We'll see which method works better or if it makes a difference.

Thanks again!

melinden

Some small fixes:

-teleporter in the mountain pass should behave a little better now (HA!).
-replaced one set of mobs in the abandoned church, it is still a struggle to find groups that aren't used over and over again, like drow.
-added a "safety floor" under the water plane under the outflow of the orc sewer pipe as people were falling through it.

tagaris

I played your quest with my level 60 CW. Fights were very easy, but that was to be expected when playing a DPS class on a quest that's supposed to be soloable by anyone. It is possible to adjust for this by only spawning encounters if the player interacted with an object that's only visible when being able to use arcana, but that's a rather complicated approach.

The city felt a little empty with all those huge piazzas. Some trees or buildings would make it more believable.

In your description you wrote that you have problems with the pathfinding. At least in your outdoor maps you could easily improve this by using invisible walls. Although, personally, I don't think that's really an issue.

I'm not a fan of lighthearted quests, but that's IMHO only my problem for playing it and no reason to give a lesser rating, because your quest delivered exactly what was to be expected and I'm sure many will enjoy more cheerful content. I really liked the pet dragon in the first map and the explorable rooms there, though.

melinden

Thank you for the review! I appreciate you rating it according to its intention. My previous quest was quite long and serious so I purposely made this one more straight forward and less serious.

I desperately wish we had more details for me to finish out Silverymoon (although it is a smaller city than Neverwinter) but I've used every single NPC, sound, and detail on that map. I built is on the "ocean expanse" so I had to add everything. Oddly enough, huge Thayan buildings cost only 1 or 2 details but human houses cost 7 or 9!

dtz

Just finished playing this one. Really cool! Definitely your best one so far. I loved how you gave the illusion of Silverymoon being a huge city. I also looked up where Dark Arrow Keep is in relation to Silverymoon, and ****. There's lost, and then there's LOST.

melinden

Yay! Publishing works again! So this is back up. I used the increased detail limit and some of the new assets to spruce up Silverymoon. I also added a few more lore items to reward explorers.

I found another typo and fixed that (I am sure there are more than have escaped me).

I'll keep working on seeing if I can the other ones fixed up and published. I am working on a new one as well.