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Mount Hotenow is That zone
nonsensei
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Every game has one: that zone they were working on when the the lead level designer found out his wife was cheating on him, or read a mean forum post from some alpha tester who wasn't impressed with his work. The zone that turns out to be 15 times more annoying than the entire rest of the game.
Hotenow is a bland cavalcade of frustrating monotony. The landscape is an endless burning red with no variety whatsoever. Learning the lay of the land in hotenow is an exercise in futility, as one area looks the same as all the rest. Hotenow also sports the highest percentage of enormous monsters with giant hit point pools that are completely immune to all forms of CC, have several annoying abilities to dodge, and hit like a freight train if you don't. As if that werent enough each of them are flanked by no less than 2 lesser enemies that can spam teleport to wherever you run to and have just enough hit points that you cant kill them with one encounter ability. To top it all off the quests are nothing terribly interesting. Collect 6 of this kill 3 of that activate 5 of those.
The final dungeon area to complete the zone just goes on forever, and is punctuated by the most annoying boss: yet another giant with a monstrous hit pool with screen sweeping abilities that hit for death and little annoying things that come out of the woodwork.
If this zone were just cut out of the game, and I mean drag hotenow.map to the recycle bin and hit empty, absolutely nothing would be lost and the game would be no worse for wear.
Hotenow is a bland cavalcade of frustrating monotony. The landscape is an endless burning red with no variety whatsoever. Learning the lay of the land in hotenow is an exercise in futility, as one area looks the same as all the rest. Hotenow also sports the highest percentage of enormous monsters with giant hit point pools that are completely immune to all forms of CC, have several annoying abilities to dodge, and hit like a freight train if you don't. As if that werent enough each of them are flanked by no less than 2 lesser enemies that can spam teleport to wherever you run to and have just enough hit points that you cant kill them with one encounter ability. To top it all off the quests are nothing terribly interesting. Collect 6 of this kill 3 of that activate 5 of those.
The final dungeon area to complete the zone just goes on forever, and is punctuated by the most annoying boss: yet another giant with a monstrous hit pool with screen sweeping abilities that hit for death and little annoying things that come out of the woodwork.
If this zone were just cut out of the game, and I mean drag hotenow.map to the recycle bin and hit empty, absolutely nothing would be lost and the game would be no worse for wear.
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It wouldnt be so bad, if not for the dang Disciples that constantly jump back, into another group, that also jumps back, normally into a Magma brute that just spawned on top of you because an event just started.
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I like the place actually, and it suits how one would think an Active volcano would be.
it was actually one of the better designed zones in my opinion next to Vellosk.
My first time through, with my Control Wizard, it way pure Hell.
My second time through, with my GWF, it was much more playable.
My third time through, with my GF, it was, if not easy, at least not terribly difficult, except for the finial Giant, who gave me a bit of trouble (but still didn't kill me).
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
Try it as a Cleric, my 2nd character.....that was fun. Assuming fun involves cussing at your computer like a loon.
To be fair, it did help me get better. My third time through with my GF, it was like a walk in the park. Still id hate to see it go, stuffing mephits in jars is still a guilty pleasure of mine. muhahahahah
Had a similar experience. First character was a CW who hated Hotenow with a passion. Second character was a GF, for which pretty much the entire game was smooth as butter (didn't die a single time until I queued up for Epic Lair of the Mad Dragon, post-60). I'm sure part of the GF's relative success can be chalked up to my own increased knowledge/experience about the game, but with respect to Hotenow specifically, I think the CW is just poorly suited for the enemies in the zone.
As I recall, Hotenow is the first time the game starts to throw lots of CC-immune creatures at you. On the flipside, Hotenow creatures seem to use a lot of CC themselves. The CW doesn't really have an answer for that, except for mobility. The problem with mobility, though, is that it tends to require space, and if you try to use too much space in Hotenow, you're likely to draw unwanted attention from neighboring spawns.
I liked the atmosphere in Hotenow, though.
You would fight fire giants, run for the campfire but end up running into a wall. Then run around lost for a while until all the fire giants had time to respawn, and repeat.
Now that was serious fun!
It's definitely a tough road for a CW on level. Everything is resisted/immuned. There are quite a few fights where, if you have an actual control oriented build, almost everything you cast beyond your at wills will be immuned. This makes for rather long and frustrating fights in that specific zone for CWs. I did it with a CW, but not on level, and some of the fights were still a bit challenging due to the immunity issue.
Other MMOs have been through this and how un-fun it is for people to have to face a good amount of mobs that basically reduce them o white-level powers due to resistances, but that's how this zone is designed -- it's like the anti-CW zone.
"Hah! You are doomed! You're only armed with that pathetic excuse for a musical instrument!!!" *the Savage Beast moments before Lonnehart the Bard used music to soothe him... then beat him to death with his Fat Lute*
I remember that was a nightmare when I was leveling my GF. By the time I had killed the darn patrolling Hellfire Mage, another had spawned and I'd drawn aggro from the other 3-5 devils in the area.
As for my CW, she skipped Hotenow and went straight to the Caverns.
Good times, good times................
(Gnaws on straps of Strait Jacket)
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
My Cleric is currently living in a crude hut made of unopened Lockboxes in Protectors Enclave by the Mail Drop.
At level 23.
She continues to live only because she has a Purple Zen store Companion I bought in a last ditch effort to make her playable, and if she goes so does my Galub-Dur.
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
It's also much much better now that they removed that large rock from the final area. I got lost for almost an hour trying to find my way back to the quest NPCs. Between the unreliable quest marker, the unreliable map, the high HP mobs strewn in your path, and that damned rock, it used to be borderline impossible for a new player to figure out the way back to the quest NPCs.
"Hah! You are doomed! You're only armed with that pathetic excuse for a musical instrument!!!" *the Savage Beast moments before Lonnehart the Bard used music to soothe him... then beat him to death with his Fat Lute*
I quite like the zone, reminds me of the Hollows from City of Heroes...
A city to protect
innocents to save
"Why?" They ask "they hate you"
We're heroes it's what we do.
*patiently waiting on Paragon City*
...
...Mom?
Great line, but I didn't think Hotenow was by any means the worst zone. I've only played through it once (on a slightly over-level DC with standard companion and mount) but I found that, of all the zones in the game, Hotenow was the first to encourage a bit of impromtu grouping. In addition, the 'Scottish' dwarf voice-acting there seemed to be a shade less terrible than in other zones. I'd bin helmshold.map just to put an end Brother Satarin and his bizarre accent.
LMAO! You WON!
digest... group-play not necessarily gang bang -.-
LMAO :P
1. 1st character in mid beta. DC. Spent something like 3 times as long in that zone than I did any other zone. Much of it was looking for some completely random "Scrying Spheres" and simply navigating. Died more times in that zone than any other before I learnt the paths and used jumps to bypass mobs. Quest trails were completely and utterly useless. By time completed it, was almost level 60 and had outlevelled the Skirmish. Contained one of only 2 solo instances (the one containing the dwarf on a one-shotting mount) that I did not complete on my own.
2. 2nd character. CW. Still spent the longest time in the zone of all the zones, but this time knew the paths and Scrying Sphere tricks. Attempted the Skirmish many times. Groups failed many times until got two CW in group and we two just ranged down all 3 mini-bosses from a distance. All solo instances in the game were easy as CW.
3. 3rd character. GF. Discovered zone had many major changes with layout greatly simplified and far far fewer mob clusters. Quest trails all worked too. Had a Zen account-wide, maximum speed mount. Just zipped around the map completely ignoring mobs, never being dismounted and having plenty of breathing room, first time did Skirmish got a good healer and after a few deaths from trash, destroyed the mini-bosses easily. Solo instances as GF were not as easy whenever powerful minions were involved, so slower than CW but still all do-able and single elites were easier.
In short, if you think Mount Hotenow is hard now, you would have probably /wrists if you had seen the original version!
I personally wouldn't go quite that far! Especially when compared to a highly praised zone like Vellosk. But I agree it clicks together much better now and I enjoyed it too.