Area/Creature Balance

[shadeogrey]

Just a little thought to the encounters in Dasaria 2 so far...

One of the main attractions I find in fantasy settings is the types of creatures involved.
So far we already have two or three humanoid-related areas (not counting Da Hill), two humans-related ones, one undead crypt (nicely done too), one lycanthropy (is that a word?) den and one rather small elemental-infested area. And these are all in addition to the open fields where the nasty animals roam...

Perhaps things can be spiced up if we find more varieties somehow. No need to get every entry in the Monster Manuals cramped in, and no need to have an area for each, but meeting a giant spider in the goblins (like in the OC), or encountering a gelatinous cube taking residence in a corner in the troll caves may just be the little surprise we need.

I'm not asking for a Dragon (!) though.

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Not yet


And just curious : purely in the spirit of RP, what favoured enemies have the rangers taken in this game?

.
Yar

[daniel.alcantara]

is a quest very hard but provides little XP, is an area just poorly designed, full stop?

I think(and probably the party i did the quest today with) that the xp reward from the Trolls quest is not high enough.
I also assume that the loot chests arent totally set, since we found a lot of coffins and weapons racks but almost no itens.

Other than this minor thing, the dungeon is veery nice and really gives a chance for warlocks to show off

[Kazak]

If you find "open" chests with nothing in them, it's a bug of the lag loot. If someone before you looted the chest while they were laggin, it would leave the chest in place and wouldn't respawn it. So destroy the test and come back in 15 minutes.

[daniel.alcantara]

Thanks for the explanation Kazak.

Regarding the new Shai area -
(as it might contain spoilers, i'll post it in black)

The place is just great till the last "dream" area. Nice level of traps, great mechanism to "enforce" grouping, nice touch regarding resting, great enemies and etc

I just dont know about that SF...what is the % of that? 80?90? I might have been unlucky, but that was just killing (literally) us....

Besides, i enjoyed it very much. Great *huge* addition.

edit: as my background came out grey, i put in this color to make it a little harder to read

[Evelond Formos]

Code: Select all

Thanks for the explanation Kazak.

Regarding the new Shai area -
(as it might contain spoilers, i'll post it in black)

[color=grey]The place is just great till the last "dream" area. Nice level of traps, great mechanism to "enforce" grouping, nice touch regarding resting, great enemies and etc

I just dont know about that SF...what is the % of that? 80?90? I might have been unlucky, but that was just killing (literally) us....

Besides, i enjoyed it very much. Great *huge* addition.[/color]

edit: as my background came out grey, i put in this color to make it a little harder to read

That would make the text invisible.

Sorry, getting off track here . . . go on with the discussion.

[seethings]

Soloing is fun and so is party play. In fact party is more fun becuase you get to role play. Primarily it is the ooc fools who put you off parties the most and the time to organise etc.

I think there is a major problem (suggestions??) in that powerbuilds are rewarded, they can solo things and doing so get greater xp. When you try to develop more character based builds that leave you weaker but more diverse and interetsing ...you rely on joing parties to quest, but then you get a lot less xp per creature. At the end of the dungeon conversely you can pick up 1000xp even if you just tagged along and contributed little!! My PB progresses easily, my other three char based builds have a really hard time of it. What can b done to reward build risk taking... role play.???? This seems to me to be the next step in the development of all exisiting quests, other tweeks to xp and toughness are a side issue as generally all quests work/fun/scare nicley overall. A scripted mechanism to reward rolepay( asking the impossible?) and weak characters that will tend towards party play... will dsicourage the oversimplifed cliche powerbuilds. A re thinking of the large amount of quest xp at the end?

WHAT OF THIS: ? Divide the quest xp by party size/levels? this might encourage more balanced parties, to few members and you will struggle, to many and you will not get much reward.

having 50% of any quest xp based around a skill that shuts out players i think is great. For example the locked stone wall at the end of Khalems to the xp item is GREAT. When I solo that i just have to leave it, similarly in the RATS... I know that if i find a theif to join the party then there is more major xp to be had. Most of these occasions so far are trap/lock based... but what of the BLUFF option, the Disarm feat? or a ressurect npc required situation so that when forming parties you know you need diversity. I also think you could expand these from small rooms to as much as 30% of a dungeon... class or skill dependent. I like it that the world is not 100% permeable to my character, that if i make a different char or join with others, there are differnt things that will become accesable?



SOLO PLAY: it would be nice to eventually have a large wilderness area with random spwns and a range of difficulty of creatures. An area to go a wnader in and give your character a 'run' without complications of parties or the need to compromise dungeon quests. XP can be relatively low so that it is not farmed, even creatures sparce... but somwhere large to wander and bash in. It is still fun to hunt boars worht 1xp, just to be in the wilds, and not focussed on a quest. Would be especially cool if there were very rare random encounters... like the spider suggestion someone made...etc

[k9burn]

Thanks for the explanation Kazak.

Regarding the new Shai area -
(as it might contain spoilers, i'll post it in black)

The place is just great till the last "dream" area. Nice level of traps, great mechanism to "enforce" grouping, nice touch regarding resting, great enemies and etc

I just dont know about that SF...what is the % of that? 80?90? I might have been unlucky, but that was just killing (literally) us....

Besides, i enjoyed it very much. Great *huge* addition.

edit: as my background came out grey, i put in this color to make it a little harder to read

It is less than 50%.

[daniel.alcantara]

edit: mistake

[daniel.alcantara]

]Most of these occasions so far are trap/lock based... but what of the BLUFF option, the Disarm feat? or a ressurect npc required situation so that when forming parties you know you need diversity.

I just think these are excellent suggestions. Given the number of feats, spells and special abilities, one could create a thousand mechanisms to affect a party formation.(a pressure plate that is across a gap and you have to summon something there and etc)
You may not know, but theres already a "device" in the new content dungeons that really encourages to form parties.

It is less than 50%

I got a PM explaining the maths...i was just having bad luck