Bargain Hunting

epharmd

Hi everyone! I’m finally almost finished with Bargain Hunting and uploaded it for beta testing earlier this week. It is not yet daily eligible but I expect it will be soon as I am running through it fairly regularly to find things that I need to change/fix/add. I am completely willing to trade reviews, and will automatically search for quests that you’ve made to try out if I see a review posted (I was doing that for my other foundry quest for a long time but it hasn’t been possible to keep up for the past week or so!).

It is also worth noting that this is not a Cult of the Dragon Contest entry. Rather than trying to rush to put something together for the contest I opted to finish Bargain Hunting, as I have been working on it for almost 6 months (long before I even started Frozen Folly).

QUEST TITLE: Bargain Hunting
SHORT CODE: NW-DNFK5E9HB
AUTHOR: epharmd

TARGET TIME: 15-30 minutes depending on exploration and interaction.
SYNOPSIS: A merchant’s flyer promises free wares to quick customers. Is this a case of overstock or a less than subtle ploy to bring in new customers? Only one way to find out! But will this jaunt into the seedier neighborhoods surrounding the market prove that they can be more hazardous than they seem?

Notes:
1). The storyline in this quest is firmly based in Forgotten Realms and Neverwinter lore/history, but is injected with a lot of what I THINK is humor. I do not expect everyone to get every reference, because there are a lot of them and some may be a bit of a stretch.

2). The story assumes that you have completed the Blacklake District questline and is set roughly one year afterwards. It seemed like a plausible expectation.

3). It is possible to finish in under 15 minutes. I did a rather lethargic speed run in 13 minutes (because I kept getting distracted by things I wanted to change) … my guess is that it can be completed in 11 but I did not want to punish players for exploring. One of the biggest complaints about Frozen Folly was that it was too long (which I find interesting as I did speed run tests on multiple characters in 15 minutes and the average duration is 39 minutes … I suspect this one will stay high as well).

4). There are three maps. I have placed “Notice Boards” at the beginning of each map detailing things that are not yet as planned. These will also contain logs detailing what I changed in that map each update.

a) Map 1: Done. Although I plan to add some side activities. Music is acting strangely, however, and I am working on that (but forgot to add it to the board).
b) Map 2: Story aspect is complete. This is the map with the most progress yet to go, however. It is an adventure zone map but the main story can be completed in under 1 minute here. My plan may be overly ambitious, but I intend to have a LOT of encounters, interactions, side activities, NPCs, and lore hidden away for intrepid explorers to find at their leisure. Some of them are done and enemy encounters are in place, but there is a long way to go before it is as I had imagined it.
c) Map 3: Custom map that is 95% done. This is where most of my time has been sunk lately. My goal was to have options. Lots of options. I think that I managed as well as can be done with the linear restraints we are given. Most encounters have multiple methods of success. Exploration can result in a great deal of backstory, humor, and alternate paths.

5). There is a lot of dialogue/text. A LOT. Little of it is obligatory, however, and I do NOT suggest that you try to do everything in a single playthrough. Actually … I don’t think that you CAN do everything in a single playthrough. My hope is that the alternate options allow for alternate experiences across multiple plays. I am not sure if I got it quite right, but it’s an attempt, at least.

6).I have tested it in live on all classes except DC (about to try that now) and it seems balanced so far but I have made some changes. The first encounter seems surprisingly tricky on some characters … I don’t currently intend to change it but I am debating it … I don’t want it to be too tough and drive players away from the quest.

Thanks all!

bardaaron

I would take you up on a review trade. I just posted my entry for the contest, and mine is also intended to be humorous, so I would be interested in comparing.

Name: The Dragon has 3 Heads...or 5...
Short Code: NW-DENWS4FHZ
Length: My live play-through came to 55 minutes (Less if you rush the dialogues or play with a party)

The Cult of the Dragon seems to be everywhere these days, and whispers about their plans and plots (and possibly schemes), are in every ear from here to Baldur's Gate. So, naturally, when a horde of music-loving barbarians pledged to a "Dragon Queen" arrives outside the gates of Neverwinter, they say that a hero can save us. You may be good at swinging a sword, or slinging spells around, but can you handle the perils of karaoke, environmentalism, and teen angst?

Make sure to bring healing potions, and leave at least 3 inventory slots open. Be careful at the end; it's easy to aggro extra mobs if you're not careful, and get overwhelmed.

Some encounters are optional, based on dialogue choices, so paying attention can sometimes keep you out of trouble (or give you the chance to earn more XP if you're looking for it)

bardaaron

When this is live, let me know so I can fulfill my end of our review trade.

epharmd

It has been live for about a week. It is in the "For Review" tab but for some reason I forgot to list the short code (it should be listed now). I have spent a lot of time over the last few days implementing side activities and encounters. It is much closer to where I had envisioned it than it was a few days ago. But I definitely still need feedback, thoughts, ideas and impressions! The most up to date version should be v.0.9.8.1 and it is now Daily Foundry eligible.

bardaaron

I see. Searching by title didn't work, so I'll try again searching the short-code

aldizzle

epharmd wrote: »

Hi everyone! I’m finally almost finished with Bargain Hunting and uploaded it for beta testing earlier this week. It is not yet daily eligible but I expect it will be soon as I am running through it fairly regularly to find things that I need to change/fix/add. I am completely willing to trade reviews, and will automatically search for quests that you’ve made to try out if I see a review posted (I was doing that for my other foundry quest for a long time but it hasn’t been possible to keep up for the past week or so!).

It is also worth noting that this is not a Cult of the Dragon Contest entry. Rather than trying to rush to put something together for the contest I opted to finish Bargain Hunting, as I have been working on it for almost 6 months (long before I even started Frozen Folly).

QUEST TITLE: Bargain Hunting
SHORT CODE: NW-DNFK5E9HB
AUTHOR: epharmd

TARGET TIME: 15-30 minutes depending on exploration and interaction.
SYNOPSIS: A merchant’s flyer promises free wares to quick customers. Is this a case of overstock or a less than subtle ploy to bring in new customers? Only one way to find out! But will this jaunt into the seedier neighborhoods surrounding the market prove that they can be more hazardous than they seem?

Notes:
1). The storyline in this quest is firmly based in Forgotten Realms and Neverwinter lore/history, but is injected with a lot of what I THINK is humor. I do not expect everyone to get every reference, because there are a lot of them and some may be a bit of a stretch.

2). The story assumes that you have completed the Blacklake District questline and is set roughly one year afterwards. It seemed like a plausible expectation.

3). It is possible to finish in under 15 minutes. I did a rather lethargic speed run in 13 minutes (because I kept getting distracted by things I wanted to change) … my guess is that it can be completed in 11 but I did not want to punish players for exploring. One of the biggest complaints about Frozen Folly was that it was too long (which I find interesting as I did speed run tests on multiple characters in 15 minutes and the average duration is 39 minutes … I suspect this one will stay high as well).

4). There are three maps. I have placed “Notice Boards” at the beginning of each map detailing things that are not yet as planned. These will also contain logs detailing what I changed in that map each update.

a) Map 1: Done. Although I plan to add some side activities. Music is acting strangely, however, and I am working on that (but forgot to add it to the board).
b) Map 2: Story aspect is complete. This is the map with the most progress yet to go, however. It is an adventure zone map but the main story can be completed in under 1 minute here. My plan may be overly ambitious, but I intend to have a LOT of encounters, interactions, side activities, NPCs, and lore hidden away for intrepid explorers to find at their leisure. Some of them are done and enemy encounters are in place, but there is a long way to go before it is as I had imagined it.
c) Map 3: Custom map that is 95% done. This is where most of my time has been sunk lately. My goal was to have options. Lots of options. I think that I managed as well as can be done with the linear restraints we are given. Most encounters have multiple methods of success. Exploration can result in a great deal of backstory, humor, and alternate paths.

5). There is a lot of dialogue/text. A LOT. Little of it is obligatory, however, and I do NOT suggest that you try to do everything in a single playthrough. Actually … I don’t think that you CAN do everything in a single playthrough. My hope is that the alternate options allow for alternate experiences across multiple plays. I am not sure if I got it quite right, but it’s an attempt, at least.

6).I have tested it in live on all classes except DC (about to try that now) and it seems balanced so far but I have made some changes. The first encounter seems surprisingly tricky on some characters … I don’t currently intend to change it but I am debating it … I don’t want it to be too tough and drive players away from the quest.

Thanks all!

Just reviewed bargain hunting, liked the little details, stray cat and Milfred. I have 3 waiting on reviews, Half Baked, my first one is short & sweet. The others, Chasing the Cult of Malphas and A Pirates Treasure are a little longer and tougher but less than 30 mins> Any reviews are welcome, thank you.

bardaaron

I just finished playing through your quest a little while ago, and I first want to say, I love the humor. It was very funny, and I see we have very similar senses of humor. I loved the references to The Princess Bride, Little Shop of Horrors, Mel Brooks, and more. (Also I think we stole some of the same jokes). I really liked how something as innocuous as bargain shopping uncovers a plot that with such far-reaching consequences. I trust there will be a sequel?

I mostly want to talk about your maps, as they were the source of both joy and frustration for me. Your maps are beautifully constructed, with excellent details, and I loved all the little explorable bits (you were very thorough, I can only imagine how many hours this must have taken) and as much as I enjoyed them, I didn't have the patience to explore them all, or in some cases, fully explore the ones I did (the journal for instance). And actually exploring the room with the sludge monsters ended up being crucial to my finishing not just the bar fight, but the boss fight at the end (I had to lure them back there where I had more help). Though as beautiful as they were, your final map felt very long, and I got lost at the spider webs where the map reach-point was confusing. Took me ages to figure out there was a passageway on the other side of the hall...

Some the spaces were so tight that my camera had trouble, which made it difficult to maneuver and target enemies (and especially to escape when I got overwhelmed). I got attacked by a trio of mimics and died because I literally could not navigate enough to get away from them. (my CW needed some range to not die while spell-slinging) I was just physically stuck. Another thing is that in a map this vast, with so many winding turns, having only one respawn point was a pain, since I died so many times & had to make the long walk all the way through all the winding hallways every time. While I know that the maps only ever allow you one respawn point per map, It might be useful to have it show up farther ahead, so that there isn't quite so much running if you die.

The rest of my thoughts were pretty much on the details:
*In (I think) the first conversation with the merchant there's a bit where he says: "...told people the he" it should be "that he"
*I loved the bit with Sergeant Knox & the beet juice/lemonade stand. Goofy, and bizarre, and quite funny.
*When talking to Frinko, he says "...somewhere on this side of the rive" where it should say "river."
*I really liked the meeting with Clariburnus. It was funny, and you handled the effects well. I really hope to see that thread played out in a sequel.
*Troll room: I like the optional stuff with feeding the troll (and the LSoH reference), but that's there in a corner, and there's this huge empty open space in the middle. It feels a little extraneous without there being something important there.

epharmd

bardaaron wrote: »

(Also I think we stole some of the same jokes).

I had been thinking the same thing when I was playing through your quest. I laughed a few times more because I had just used the same reference/line than because of the line itself.

bardaaron wrote: »

Took me ages to figure out there was a passageway on the other side of the hall...

I may need to revisit the placement, but I was worried about that and couldn't find a good alternative at the time. The issue I was struggling with is that I wanted to have several viable routes through that section. There is that longer, combat-filled path or a shorter teleporter hidden by a puzzle that both end up there. But since split objectives don't work very well I couldn't figure out how to get waypoints that would still make both routes viable. I will try to figure out a way though.

bardaaron wrote: »

Some the spaces were so tight that my camera had trouble, which made it difficult to maneuver and target enemies (and especially to escape when I got overwhelmed). I got attacked by a trio of mimics and died because I literally could not navigate enough to get away from them. (my CW needed some range to not die while spell-slinging) I was just physically stuck.

Sorry about that! The mimic encounter was tougher than I intended (and never really worked out properly because for some reason you can't scale their size with custom costumes) and that small alcove probably doesn't help. But I liked having it tucked away like that. As for the size of the rooms ... I tried not to have many encounters in side passages just for that reason. But the rooms are a concern as well because many of them are small. I will see if I can open some of them up.

bardaaron wrote: »

While I know that the maps only ever allow you one respawn point per map, It might be useful to have it show up farther ahead, so that there isn't quite so much running if you die.

That was a major criticism of my first foundry quest as well. I think that in the future my solution will just be to have smaller maps. I considered making a few doors into map transitions so that I could have more respawn points and more dynamic/scaleable encounters (I was at both the maximum encounter and sound placements long before I was done because of all the side encounters ... even had to take a few out to implement the boss fight). But ... I have a lot of things tied to dialogue options. I have dialogue options tied to dialogue options. Some things at the end you can only ask about if you have asked the right questions earlier, and there are ways to circumvent certain encounters if you made particular dialogue choices earlier. Map transitions would break all that. *Sigh* What I ended up doing was placing teleporters along the way. The campsite was connected to a room with several walls that disappeared as you made progress and teleporters behind those walls would take you to hidden rooms with levers that would open up a doorway onto the path. I didn't want to point that out in the quest, but maybe I should ... I suspect that it was not as helpful/obvious as I really wanted it to be. I might try reversing the side that the lever is on ... making it able to be opened from the pathway so that the campsite can frequently be visited.

bardaaron wrote: »

*In (I think) the first conversation with the merchant there's a bit where he says: "...told people the he" it should be "that he"
*When talking to Frinko, he says "...somewhere on this side of the rive" where it should say "river."

Thanks! I'll fix these as soon as I get a chance. My ability to proofread my own text seems to be inversely proportional to the amount of times I've read over it. And I've read over it way to much. So that help is very much appreciated!

bardaaron wrote: »

*I really liked the meeting with Clariburnus. It was funny, and you handled the effects well. I really hope to see that thread played out in a sequel.

Thanks! There are still a couple effects that I can't seem to get to work during the conversation, but I'm not sure it really needs them. As for Clariburnus ... he is actually directly from the Neverwinter Campaign Setting book (I tried to make him look as much like his picture as possible). I'm actually really surprised that Cryptic hasn't used him yet because there is a lot of potential there ... maybe in a future Mod.

bardaaron wrote: »

*Troll room: I like the optional stuff with feeding the troll (and the LSoH reference), but that's there in a corner, and there's this huge empty open space in the middle. It feels a little extraneous without there being something important there.

I was just thinking about moving the patrol in the hallway prior to that room ... probably doing something. You gave me an idea! I will move the patrol to the other corner of the room interacting with the clothesline. I had a few graphical anomalies fighting that patrol in the hallway anyway, and that removes another tight-quarters combat.

Thanks for playing through my quest as well as the thoughts! I appreciate the feedback and think that it will help quite a bit!

epharmd

After many, many tweaks and changes it is is now (mostly) done! I have just published Version 1.0 (still in the For Review tab) and it is daily eligible. Thanks to @Grimah, @Aldizzle and @Bardaaron for the feedback that helped me identify, fine tune, and fix a a lot of potential problem areas. I have added a note to the "Notice Board" on the first map thanking the three of you as well!

More feedback is always helpful, though, and I am always willing to trade reviews!

I have implemented everything that I had wanted to implement except for a few homes that I wanted to allow entrance to. The mechanics of teleporters and building underneath the landscape have proven a bit glitchy and time consuming for the moment. I am working on this for my next quest and may go back to implement those side activities once I have more practice with that particular trick. For now, everything seems to work well and there are tons of side activities even without the resorting to teleporters.

Thanks all!

grimah

This is a great quest, though when i played it, it was in its early release phase but the groundwork and the maps are crafted with great proficiency. I have no doubt it will be an amazing piece when all those edits and the tuning has been done.

epharmd

Now up to Version 1.1, with “Railroad Mode” for those who get lost when the sparkle path doesn’t work. And it won’t work. Because there are several paths past most encounters.

Disclaimer: Railroad Mode will likely be a strange and unpleasant experience, with little semblance of choice. The railroad will also not likely lead you on the fastest path, nor the safest. But it will lead you unerringly on a path. And you will get to the end. You may be left confused and alone, but you will be at the end. It may make NO SENSE WHATSOEVER from an in-character point of view, but that is the price we pay for linear gameplay.

Other updates since 1.0:
-Added many background NPCs and objects
-Music now plays more consistently on the outdoor maps
-Made the final encounter slightly easier by removing the Dark Justiciar (hostile Adventurer Cleric) from the fight.

Please do not be discouraged by the average play time. I warn against full exploration in one play through for a very good reason. Those who are ignore the warning end up spending 1-2+ hours exploring. This is viable, but not what I intended. It is easily finished in 15 minutes (I did speed runs on multiple characters including a GF and DC that ended up closer to 10 than 15), though you do have to be able to ignore the many potential side activities that can distract you.
Also, don’t worry too much about that one star review. I messaged the reviewer to ask what I needed to fix that made it “very glitchy” and everything he stated was a limitation of the Foundry tools, not a glitch. One star reviews are inevitable, I suppose, and even occasionally helpful, but frequently frustrating when they have little to do with the quest.

Anyway, thanks all! And I’m still playing through the quests of anyone who posts reviews it (it only seems like common courtesy, after all!).