EFU:R Existing Content Polishing Project

[Howlando]

I have some time for the toolset and, prior to starting or finishing work on new content, would like to spend time on improving, tweaking, refining, and generally polishing existing content. It would be helpful for me if players would make suggestions on what needs some attention. For example:

- What quests are too rewarding or unrewarding?
- Which quests feel stale or are boring? Repetitive fights or boring loot?
- Which random/exploration area themes are too common or boring? [to clarify: is there a boring random that always seems to show up? a set of random types that just aren't very interesting?]
- Which wilderness or Dunwarren areas need some changes to feel more interesting?

 

[Howlando]

This is a suggestion for area improvements, not class balance or scripting work.

[Kotenku]

When solo'd, the Malfunctioning lightstone machine quest in the House of Knowledge is too easy for combat PCs and too hard for non-combat PCs. Toning down the spawn rate, decreasing the spawn HP and damage would help a lot here.

Last I checked, the four doors on the upper tier of the House of Knowledge don't lead anywhere, when they used to go to a lightstone chamber, a theatre, a hall of music, and a hall of art.



 

[Kotenku]

The instance of the Garbage Pit where the hungry rats spawn is crazy hard. Hungry rats have in the neighborhood of 15 HP hit for d4-1, and spawn in really large numbers. They give no XP, and are much more dangerous than monsters you find at comparable levels.


 

[Nuclear Catastrophe]

When solo'd, the Malfunctioning lightstone machine quest in the House of Knowledge is too easy for combat PCs and too hard for non-combat PCs. Toning down the spawn rate, decreasing the spawn HP and damage would help a lot here.

Last I checked, the four doors on the upper tier of the House of Knowledge don't lead anywhere, when they used to go to a lightstone chamber, a theatre, a hall of music, and a hall of art.

The four doors in the House of Knowledge actually do lead to four places!

It's just a peculiar quirk of the hak I am afraid, you don't 'click' on the doors you just walk through into the areas, if you know what I mean.  But I agree it does at first appear that you can't go into any other area.
 

[Knight Of Pentacles]

Zurkhforest near Mur is kimda too open. The far hills near the windy canyons have good landscaping but might need a boost of some sort to encourage more people to go there. Maybe resource nodes? Feels like the narrow tunnels above Dunwarren should lead somewhere

. Dunwarren explorables are almost always a camp of moderately difficuot bandits who have no reward even in the form of explorable xp.

Sparklimg cave in far hills, hook horror quest in far reaches, twittering tunnels in the narrows rewards don't match risk. Necromancer quest in canal cojld use a reward boost given difficulty. Stingers quest at Magnatz doesn't scale well making it too easy for large groups, could use more spawns in general. Underwater quest risk matches reward but just running around underwater for 15 minutes is extremely boring. Would make it shorter and perhaps a little more intense throughout rather than one big battle at the end.

[Random_White_Guy]

Some lower-based ideas:

Add ambient spawns to the tunnels beneath lower be it kobold bandits/etc, smugglers, NPC bandits, etc. The same could be said for more Goblins in the sewers or some Non-Rat-Non-Chosen NPCs like sewer bandits and the like. These areas have long had the same handful of spawns and PCs are always encouraged to run around down there so I think some NPC presence could go a long way. Ghaunaduran fanatics, sewer-town hold outs, scrapper NPCs heading out to Dunwarren, or the like. Just a few ideas of course but some more substance to those regions.

I'm not sure how much unique dialogue and stuff falls into this catagory but a lot of the NPCs in Lower are just "There". They don't offer any unique dialogue/etc. to the location and don't really spread any purpose or reason for existing aside from showing the ascension being present, etc. Some cycle some older rumors and the like but a lot of NPCs you click on give you no dialogue options and basically just feel like they're put there as an afterthought. I can compile a list of the NPC names/etc that fit this criteria if it's wanted.

Lastly with the Silverbrands gang gone I'd say move the Tyche worshiper back to the wishing well and move the female NPC and her bodyguard away from the Maimed Minotaur. This used to be a very commonly traveled seedy and dark alleyway where PCs would come and go for reaching the Volts quest or even the new low level quest there and it just screamed a place where a PC gang could set up shop and do some shake downs and tolls with multiple areas as potential exits and so on. With four static NPCs there the entire area becomes off limits and to me none of those PC bring overly much to the server's population. Making it back into a PvP free alleyway would polish the region a lot I'd hope.

[Spiffy Has]

Bloodtail cove is a 3-8 quest that roughly rewards 30 gp a person and doesn't drop anything worthwhile, just some s tuff you can give to Dort Weasenburry. Haven't done part 2
 

[Fuzzy Lumpkins]

There is a quest in the narrows that is very rarely done due to both the difficulty and the reward. It's located a bit further into the narrows. Spawns are mites and "armored mites" or something to that effect. Could probably do with an overhaul or just removed all-together.

[Spiffy Has]

Only done the Mite/armored mite quest once and found out it wasn't at all worth it given how much damage and how numerous those bastards are. Maybe just up the gold reward.

[Spiffy Has]

Steam Vents rewards smaller groups better than bigger ones. If there is any possible way to encourage people to bring more people on this quest, like, a pile of gold for each person who comes or whatnot, it would be grand. Otherwise, bringing more than 3-4 people becomes pointless.

[PintSizedSaboteur]

Seers dispel ghosts should just go and never come back. They're incredibly resilient and hard to kill, they act in really infuriating ways, and they're a recent addition that is just there to make the quest way harder for Mag's spellsword. They're concealed, they spam dispels on people, when confronted in melee they run to other groups of NPCs and you basically have to wait for them to come back because chasing after them is suicide. They turn what is already a difficult quest into a slow plodding nightmare. I think it would also be thematically appropriate for the quest to possibly make a 'Turn back while you still can' option before the boss that still rewards some quest EXP but less and allows you to turn back before confronting the final boss.

I'd take a look into the 'Strange Portal' quest in Lower. That thing was way hard when I last did it (which admittedly was a couple of PCs ago) it was rather painful and rewarded nothing of note.

I'm honestly unsure why Clowns was moved to the Inbetween and not Zif Uroti.

The Chosen variation of the Aux Sewer Quest makes me cry every time. Way too many Greater Chosen.

[Mia]

Just a few oddities around Sanctuary proper.

[Hide=Old NPC for a caster event. Up for Removal?][/Hide]

[Hide=Door-transitions are mostly gone, but not all.]
[/Hide]

[Hide=This Hatchway can be unlocked with ranks in the open lock skill. Inside an area can be accessed that can't be left][/Hide]

[Hide=Old revolution propaganda. Seems outdated][/Hide]

[Hide=Old flavourful poster that seems inappropiate with the new Director Mouldercrest.][/Hide]

[Hide=Hanging obelisk][/Hide]

[Hide=EFU1 Transition that was forgotten. To be deleted?][/Hide]

[Hide= Leaving this bench leaves you stranded behind an impassable fence.][/hide]

[TheAux]

I'll be the one to say it, then, The Lowerdark Crypts, specifically, the high-leveled one. There're a /lot/ of ways to die very quickly, and I believe that recently the difficulty was increased. While it's doable and, with the right group, can be rewarding, I'm heavily reluctant to take on the end boss, or depending on the characters in the "party", do the quest at all given how easy it is to suddenly die. That being said, it's possible to take on and win, but usually with a death or two, or occasionally repeated deaths, and I don't think the "rewards" reflect this given the addition(s?).  My suggestion would be to either increase the variety of the /type/ of items found, as currently, it's unlikely that a Lawful or Good pc would find a large portion of the rewards as an option to use, for one reason or another. Maybe the end boss found artifacts of neutral or goodly alignment, and wanted to see if he could corrupt them, but never found the time? Regardless, without actually saying any spoilers, I don't think i could get much more specific, i'll jump on IRC and pm you if you want more information, but I do believe some revision could be done.

In addition to that, as I tend to quest a lot, I noted one thing that always got on my nerve when doing the Randomized Purple Crystal quest, the Nyth version. As a result of the fact that you have to fight 5-6 of them at once, and that they spam the exact same spell, it's a killer for any character that cannot render himself immune to that spell. The Rewards, occasionally, are good enough for the effort in light of a few additions to the loot table that i've seen, but if you can't make yourself immune, you have to run to the exit, through all of them, which can kill you very quickly, especially as a low level of any class. Perhaps moving the exit, or changing the area so that you don't have to fight them all at the same time?

That's what i could think of, thanks!

[efu1984]

Seers (Lowerdark Crypts) is easily done by any group with even /modest/ preparations, the boss can be dangerous I suppose, but you guys are crazy saying its too hard. Even the addition of dispels was a fairly minor increase in difficulty. The only thing wrong with it is lado filled the loot table with his plot junk. :)