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My first work is up.
therumancer23
Member Posts: 75 Arc User
After some initial problems I have completed my first foundry adventure and it's ready for review. It's called "A Bad Bid" it's a fairly simplistic dungeon crawl which I hope will last the 20 minutes to qualify for the daily missions so people will actually want to play it.
I've tested out sections of it, and it seems okay, but I find gauging combat balance within the foundry difficult to say the least (the test character vs. what actual players are likely to be bringing to bear) and I hope I've managed to make it entertaining for a well geared player without being too difficult, as I adjusted some encounters a bit after my basic testing.
I'm also tempted to take the waypoints out to make things at least seem a little more difficult (as the basic quest involves going through 3 relatively small dungeon levels to inspect objects... I kept it very basic) and maybe move
the targets away from the transition points.
I was tempted to place things so a rogue could potentially sneak through the entire dungeon, and inspect the items without having to fight, but it occurred to me that if trickster rogues were to speed run it, it certainly wouldn't wind up hitting the 20 minute requirement.
It's code seems to be NW-DORPT2TFR
At any rate, hopefully someone will take a look at it, and let me know what tweaks I need to make. Once I get this hammered out I'll probably work on trying something a little more elaborate.
I've tested out sections of it, and it seems okay, but I find gauging combat balance within the foundry difficult to say the least (the test character vs. what actual players are likely to be bringing to bear) and I hope I've managed to make it entertaining for a well geared player without being too difficult, as I adjusted some encounters a bit after my basic testing.
I'm also tempted to take the waypoints out to make things at least seem a little more difficult (as the basic quest involves going through 3 relatively small dungeon levels to inspect objects... I kept it very basic) and maybe move
the targets away from the transition points.
I was tempted to place things so a rogue could potentially sneak through the entire dungeon, and inspect the items without having to fight, but it occurred to me that if trickster rogues were to speed run it, it certainly wouldn't wind up hitting the 20 minute requirement.
It's code seems to be NW-DORPT2TFR
At any rate, hopefully someone will take a look at it, and let me know what tweaks I need to make. Once I get this hammered out I'll probably work on trying something a little more elaborate.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
At any rate, I do need more victi... err testers to help me here. I should have known better than to run it without testing after the changes. I have since double checked all my player spawn points.
The tester was having trouble finding the exit button under the mini-map.
That said I corrected the problem, and another one where somehow after publish the final item needed to finish the quest was somehow flying in the air. That said it's completed a post-publish test, complete with some editing of the starting NPC dialogue for a typo.
Perhaps if I'm lucky a few more people will run through it, the first test took 21 minutes. That sounds about perfect in order to get people to play it. Hopefully I'll get some more reviewers and be able to get my first experiment out of the review process before too long.
Impressions:
I liked that the quest started and ended with someone besides Guard Frinko, in a logical "real world" place.
The maps were pretty barren. Very large rooms with no decoration and a few widely-spaced villain groups. I would "dirty up" the sewer section in particular, especially since the transition flavor text to the sewers said "It stinks down here!" or something like that. These sewers were so clean I don't think they would stink.
I was able to bypass the majority of combat on my GWF (including an entire sunken room in the sewer section before you find the cup). When I did fight, the groups were fairly hard on my GWF, might be difficult for DCs.
Typo in end conversation with the speculator: "Your back" should be "You're back".
"purchused" = "purchased". Commas needed. Run-on sentences need to be broken apart. "... in pieces on some of his favorite, items" -- lose the comma there... Misspelled "purchase" again. Thayans, not Thyans. "Sadly, the chest turned out to be sealed by magic. After some research, I was able to discover discovered..."
Entrance to the sewer: "Press F to It stinks in here!". Map transition text needs changing to fit. "... enter the stinky sewer"?
Echo previous comments about large, bare rooms. Encounters felt generic -- not getting a sense of story.
Why are there Thayans in the Neverwinter sewers? That seems a little alarming, considering we're supposed to be holding them back at the Dread Ring. First map was short and fairly uneventful. The vanilla room builder makes huge rooms -- try splitting that up with obstructions, walls, whatever, and fill them up more.
The occasional respawn circle would be nice; missed the one on the first map, if there was one.
It's hard to fill up these enormous crypt rooms. Consider using the very smallest ones, or fill up the void with columns, sarcophagi, and so on. For a quick start, right click on the room in the editor and choose "Populate...".
Skipped most of the fights in the crypt portion. You can force people to do them by adding Kill Enemies nodes to your story.
No entrance to show where you came in, in the dungeon map. The encounters go from easy to very hard all at once.
"GREAT! You're back!"
---
Starred and tipped. However, it was pretty generic and fairly sparse.
If you could, could you play and review "The Sealing of Najena's Lair"? Short code in my signature. Thanks!
Sure thing, I'm about to head to bed and will be running my father to the hospital tomorrow, but I'll check it out when I get back. I also appreciate the input from you and Dark, I'll have to do some work editing it, it was my first attempt.
As far as the set up goes, it was a first attempt, and I was trying to keep it fairly simple. I used a lot of the big rooms and a room to room set up because I noticed the doors lined up with that well. Originally I was building with hallways and such but in checking my own design I was having trouble creating maps that worked, and every time I kept trying to place a door to force a connection I was winding up with a false door.
As far as decorations go, I will try the "populate" thing if I can get it to work, and look into monster spawn nodes (I tried to get some of the monsters to be more aggressive by setting ambush points in a few places with a quick edit but it didn't seem to work too well when I tried it) truthfully I didn't see anything like that in working with it, but I confess I'm really new at it and still learning.
When it comes to encounter difficulty, I've gotten mixed reviews. My very first run was from @LordofAmber (he didn't actually put up a review the first time, but did one on the second run through). He's the guy that got stuck. At any rate he was saying that he found the combat kind of trivial for a lot of it, as he was pretty much blowing the monsters to pieces with arrow volleys as a Hunter Ranger before they even got a chance to act. One of my first edits (along with the fixes to the spawn point, and the ending backpack being off the ground) was to add some tougher monsters into the mix, and the results varied to be honest. The first fight when entering the Thayan HQs seems to be the hardest during my personal testing, but was apparently just "needed some actual kiting" to a HR. I'm not 100% sure how to properly balance encounters to work well for all classes, but I suppose I can experiment with the mix a bit.
As far as the storyline goes, I was keeping it fairly bare bones, but my basic "idea" was that the Thayans were sneaking into the city via the sewer system (perhaps aided by magic) and assembling undead down there, probably prepping for an attack like the whole "Valindra Sieges The City" thing that Cryptic ran where people were getting the skeletal dogs. Some adventurers were sent down there to investigate generic "weird stuff" and died when they ran into the Thayans and their minions (undead, were-rats, etc...), the PC pretty much stumbled upon it as the adventure is presented, looking for the adventurers for totally unrelated reasons.
I have quite a "to do" list but if I can find a way to attach some flavor text somewhere, a journal from a Thayan or whatever, I suppose I could flesh out exactly what they were doing down there. It's not intended to be a really deep mystery... though I did put some thought into it in my specific choices of monsters.
At any rate, I'll get to editing it as soon as I can find time (and will check out your adventure next time I play) if anyone else wants to go through this in it's current form and leave freeback, I'd appreciate it. I already have a bit of a "to do" list here in fixes in embellishments, but I'm curious about some other things like the combat difficulty, I'd like to know what classes people played and what groups they had trouble with, what was too easy, too nasty, etc... for when I adjust the monster mix.
I'll also say that I don't particularly mind people avoiding groups of monsters if they really want to, to be honest I didn't think too much about it, since typically when I do a dungeon or whatever I try and clear the entire thing as a matter of course, but I imagine a lot of people don't think that way, which I will have to consider now in trying to set the content for the "20 minute average playtime goal".
I played it and left 3 stars. Also a tip as an encouragement to continue working since it's a decent start. Will play it again and review my rating if you do make an update.
Things that need fixing in my opinion:
- corpse in the air in the first sewer room
- enemies are just standing around there - since you have so much empty space, let them patrol around via looping patrol for example, will also make it more interesting for those of us who avoid unnecessary fights. Also you might play around with enemies spawning and charging you (please don't spawn directly on top of the player) once he enters a certain room.
- the enemy type changes multiple times without an explanation -> needs more story somewhere, either via NPCs (captured citizens maybe? or other clues)
- add more objectives throughout the dungeons maybe?
- add details like corpses and debris etc. - you have too much empty space.
as for your question: the difficulty seems ok. Played it with an unequipped level 15 GF and it took me a lot of potions towards the end. Be ware that the end is alot more difficult because of multiple encounters that are very close together. The difficulty in the first parts is "self-regulation" cause people can pull as many mobs as they want at once. I avoided most of them.
I liked the way you integrated you foundry into protectors enclave though. Good job on that.
As I said, this has potential, keep working on it
PS: feedback on my foundry would be greatly appreciated
Bar'thok Rising Part 2 - The Hunt - Work in Progress, not yet published
Thanks for the input, and I will indeed check out your foundry when I get a chance. @Tipa's was pretty cool.
Right now I am indeed editing my dungeon for a number of reasons, I just haven't done a new publish of it yet. I'm trying to add more stuff to the starting rooms (as mentioned) and adjust mob behavior, though honestly I am having some problems with that part of things for whatever reason. It seems half the things people mention I can't find or make work, but I'll get it I imagine. I am also going to correct an instance of bad engrish that was mentioned towards the end.
My plan right now is to keep things simple, since I don't want to scrap the entire thing and start over, I am going to adjust the flavor text on the inspect items to convey a better sense of story and progression. I am also adding a few things like false doors near the spawn points to represent what you just came through. In addition I am adding another map, cave themed, after the Thayan HQs to show where they were digging/sapping their way in. As I intended the HQs to be the most challenging area, this bit will mostly be for flavor, and to add a couple minutes to playtime in order to hit the 20 minute goal (in hopes after the publish it can make the daily foundry requirement so people will want to play my maps).
It should be improved a bit when I finish the edits and re-publish, which I hope will be later today, or tomorrow, a lot of it depends on time. I spent a good portion of yesterday at the hospital.
If anyone gets a chance to play through it, let me know if anything seems to be levitating or whatever, somehow that happened when I published before, in the foundry I haven't seen anything like that so far. It seems to mostly happen when the foundry publishes in 3 dimensional rooms and tries to set items at the level of the highest platform as opposed to at floor level, so I usually have to set "height at platform #1" if that happens again.
Once I tweak this version, it should be "done" hopefully.
As a lot of the monsters SHOULD be patrolling now, I might also have to adjust monster density, it's hard to say given the differences between real characters and the basic GF they give you to test with.
It's the best way to get things looking right -- top down view is good to get things roughly placed. I do most of my dressing in 3D view.
Durr, okay thanks. I missed being able to do that somehow. It came out looking like garbage and I've been trying to fix it. This explains so much.
Hopefully I'll be able to find time to fix it soon (servers down) and when I do all players will not have abandoned me.
NW-DORPT2TFR
Played -- Ran into a bug that didn't allow me to complete/review.
==============================
I like the ambience and layout of the first room in the sewers. The lighting is good -- a little dim and mysterious, but still enough by which to see. The debris piles are a bit disconcerting, however, floating in mid-air as they are (included screenshots for reference). Is this on purpose?
In first and second attempts, a bug occurred in which I could not enter the room after the first main sewer room.
It appears that there is a missing trigger event that causes the wall placed in the exit door to fail to disappear upon completing the objective. I'll be on the lookout for updates to run again to be able to leave a review. If you have the time I'd appreciate some feedback on a quest of mine.
Campaign: "The Making of a God"
Quests:
"The Divinity of Lankeshire" by @casmelak
Short Code: NW-DF7Y9QTCM
"A Time for Death" by @casmelak
Short Code: NW-DDVSHT5TY
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dialogue & Written Encounters
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Quest Overview:
"purchused" -> "purchased".
Speculator Zigto | First Encounter
"Purchuse" -> "Purchase"
Second sentence
Consider:
"I recently purchased a chest here at the auction, which once belonged to the famed dwarven wizard Frollo Kegstomper. Personally, I suspect he was mostly famous for being a dwarven wizard in a world unused to such things."
The rest...
Consider:
"Sadly, the chest turned out to be sealed by magic. After some research, I was able to discover that he engraved the password in pieces on some of his favorite items, which were, unfortunately, sold in another lot. A mug, a book, and a pack, apparently."
"The lot was purchased by a group of adventurers that detected magic on the cups - probably remnants of whatever method Frollo used to engrave them. As I heard it told, they felt rather cheated. These adventurers recently headed into the sewers at the behest of Sergeant Knox: some sort of investigation involving Thyans [Thayans?] wererats, and undead. Sounds like nonsense to me."
"Follow the adventurers, recover the pass phrase, and I'll share whatever is in the chest with you. Sound fair?"
Replies:
--Doesn't seem worth it.--
"Suit yourself" should have a period at the end.
Screenshots for reference.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5509/11871756854_e04ee08dfd_b.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7456/11872157996_ccf93b2e0d_b.jpg
I just fixed this, but will have to correct the engrish, the problem with the obstruction was I got too elaborate with the next room. After I hit "publish" for some reason it launched a lot of the debris I placed in the first room into the air (I have no idea why) and actually moved some things I put in the air down. What was blocking the door was an attempt for me to create a waterfall of sewage leaking down over the door so you'd have to walk through it as you went into the next room. For some reason it moved an entire wall-type section down over the entry passage after publish so you could no longer get in. I got a lot of comments about this, and I'm hoping people will give it another chance (it took 2 days to find the time to go in and fix it). Apparently with some work it was possible to wiggle through, and the rest of the room was a disjointed mess as well... I pretty much cleaned out the entire thing, I had it full of three dimensional platform networks and (easy level) wererat archers. It's now pretty empty again and has some different encounters. People seemed to like the challenge so I put in some groups of standard/hard enemies, but can adjust this if need be. They are now positioned so they are harder to just walk past as you could in the first versions.
You didn't make it as far as the "new" level but apparently that exploded even worse, so I turned it into one final cavern and re-designed some stuff to keep it simple. After some reviews I went too far in the other direction, and it seems my constructs got jumbled.
The catacombs worked out pretty well, and turned out the most like I envisioned, but I had to remove some fallen columns from the first room, I had it set up where you had the top portion of the columns still sticking from the ceiling and debris down below, but monsters were clipping through the debris, so I removed them and just left the columns hanging, it looks surreal so I guess it's pretty cool, but the original effect I had going was better.
At any rate, if you give it another run, let me know if you see any problems. I tested the maps again, but that is no guarantee that all the fixes work, at the very least there should be no door obstructions as I was careful not to put anything near them that could get moved over the entries.
The encounter balance should be more even on the "fairly challenging" level, it's also worth some decent exps, my dad's 49 ranger made over 4 bubs running this map when I got it to work. Given the praise I got (although the comments were mixed, the positive outweighed the negative) I left some of the nastier fights in the Thayan HQs as they were (confined areas, fairly tough monsters) to give people a run for their money. If I get mostly negative comments I can easily chill them out though, it was a tough choice, so I went with the preponderance of comments.
I do however wish I could find some way of creating a conditional Dracolich that would spawn specifically on the head of the guy who reviewed it as "Easy Peasy" and nothing else when a lot of people were saying otherwise.
At any rate special thanks to @Tipa for telling me about the edit function in the playthrough (I have no idea how I missed that) I am still admittedly having some trouble moving d
As far as checking out other adventures, sure thing, I like seeing what more skillful creators can do with the foundry. I'll check out "Making Of A God" when I have some time.
Oh, and it only needs to be 15 minutes for the daily, not 20.
The Corrupted Hammer of Kelemvor was invisible.
I was confused what the foulspawn were doing there.
I ran your quest A Bad Bid today. The story is nicely written, the plot flows along well. The varied interiors was interesting. Most of the combat was smooth, except for a few later fights that were too close to other encounters, making stacking of mobs an issue. All in all it is a good base and should be a good quest, once it is polished up more.
Things I noticed in my run ...
-Need to go in and put "Respawn" points on all the maps.
-All the rooms seemed very barren, little to no details.
-It appeared that all the encounters had default costumes, perhaps some custom costumes would help liven things up.
-On the main map in PE, before entering the sewer, it shows "2A Bad Bid" and "3A Bad Bid" on the map marker showing where to enter the sewer.
-First room upon entering - I was in a pit in a big room, but there didn't seem to be a door or sewer grate nearby, that I came though to get to that spot? There was a fake door on the wall behind me, but if that was the entrance, why was I in the pit and not up on the platform?
(suggestion) if you want them to start in the pit, put a sewer pipe overhead, with a grate on it, so it looks like they fell down from there.
-all the encounters were standing still, nothing moved. In case you haven't noticed yet, "wander then combat" is broken.
(suggestion) either give them all a looping patrol or at least an animation of "looking around".
-sewer door behind where you come in at - guessing this is a fake door, since it doesn't go anywhere. But, you can see out through it, maybe put a depth-fade black behind it, so it looks like it leads somewhere.
-drain pipe coming down from ceiling - it is hovering about 6-8 feet below the ceiling and in the middle of a intersection of boards.
-second room in sewer - lot of water coming down from the ceiling, but there doesn't seem to be a place for it to come from? No pipes or cracks in the ceiling etc. Also, several of the water drops are hovering about 10-15 feet below the ceiling.
-the beer cup is hovering off the ground, along with the nearby corpse.
-third large sewer room - soon as you enter the room, on the floor to the right, 3-4 feet away. There is a pile of debris that is half on the floor and half floating above the pit.
-same room - no door leaving rooms, as such, you can skip about 60-70% of all encounters in the remaining rooms, same thing applies to the crypt rooms and the cave.
-Crypt rooms and cave - several places where there are encounters too close to each other, normally that isn't really an issue, but in several of these, one group has a elite mob, plus several other mobs and the 2nd group too close has casters. Makes for a rough fight.
-Cave map - the hammer has the default name "Large Hammer 01" and it is either underground or in the wall, you can interact with it, but you can't see it.
When you have the time, please run my quest. Temple of the Winds NW-DM5JFJ3UL
[1] Devils in the Sewer
[2] The Summoning
[3] Temple of the Winds
Clan Ravenclaw
Children's Babble
Solstice Academy
Right now from the way it sounds things reverted heavily to the way they were before, I should probably see if I can play my own missions in the game after a publish. The mobs seemed to be doing okay when I just played through it, and the hammer was visible (I checked that specifically to make sure the map could be completed, especially since I moved the hammer, getting rid of another whole cave room in the process). I'm wondering if somehow my d
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I completed the quest fine, there was just no hammer visual there. I interacted with it like normal though.
What I found most useful in getting stuff where I want it was the other 'modes'. If you haven't seen them yet they REALLY help. Up at the top left, on the 3D editor toolbar, you'll see three icons. One with a compass point four arrow image, one with a circle image that looks like a 'refresh' button, and one that has two diagonal arrows parallel.
If you play around with those, again if you haven't already, it might help. I didn't figure that out until I was working on my third quest!
First: sorry my english! I just played your quest with my lev.60. GWF.
Some reflection:
- Map transition: Press F Neverwinter sewers -> Press F to go Nevwervinter sewers
Press F to Thayan HQ -> Press F to go Thayan HQ
- I think, if you go to the new map trough the door(or another entrance), when you arrive, a fake door or other fake entrance needed behind the PC. To my mind so more realistic.
- Too large rooms and too few details. More details recommended.
- Encounters: The enemies don't patrol just stand in one spot.
Very much stackable enemy, but if you wanted so, it is challenging!
- Enviroment: the atmosphere is a very important in a quest. I didn't hear any music or sound effect, I didn't see custom lights and special effects. Use these tools, not too complicated!
- Corrupted Hammer of Kelemvor: invisible and its name was: Large hammer 01
This is only reflection, not derogatory criticism! Overall, I liked it, it was good job as the first Foundry quest!