Dungeon Balancing

[thaelis]

Party Composition: 16th level EK

Dungeon/Area: Cold Climb/Plateau/Ruins

Feedback: Was a little disappointed that this area is no longer the danger-filled wilderness it used to be. No more barbarians, only weakling winter wolves and like 3-4 Wraiths instead of a horde.

At the very least I would like to see the ruins with the wraiths made a bit more scary again >< Its nice when not everything in an area is scaled to your level...just makes things feel a bit more realistic.

As a side note, are random encounters possible within the NWN engine? Like 70% chance of Winter wolves, 20% chance Mephits, 9% chance of barbarian, 1% of Giant ice troll. I think it would be cool to not always know exactly what you are fighting when you run in. And the 1% monster could be so tough that it would provide a real challenge to a party of 4-5, drop something special, and soloers would have little choice but to run.

[Cornuto]

Party Composition: 16th level EK

Dungeon/Area: Cold Climb/Plateau/Ruins

Feedback: Was a little disappointed that this area is no longer the danger-filled wilderness it used to be. No more barbarians, only weakling winter wolves and like 3-4 Wraiths instead of a horde.

At the very least I would like to see the ruins with the wraiths made a bit more scary again >< Its nice when not everything in an area is scaled to your level...just makes things feel a bit more realistic.

As a side note, are random encounters possible within the NWN engine? Like 70% chance of Winter wolves, 20% chance Mephits, 9% chance of barbarian, 1% of Giant ice troll. I think it would be cool to not always know exactly what you are fighting when you run in. And the 1% monster could be so tough that it would provide a real challenge to a party of 4-5, drop something special, and soloers would have little choice but to run.

I think the encounter blueprints got updated here, but the encounter triggers did not. (This means the triggers are trying to spawn creatures that no longer exist -- resulting in no spawns). Area likely needs fixing.

[Seheren]

Char: level 3 rogue
Place: Aqueducts
Result: Death.

The CR of the crystalline entities below the main city seem a bit low. The CR must be 2, as I got 20xp for a kill, and they have +6ab and hit for 6-9 damage. For a level 3 that spells death. I don't think they are too strong for a group, but the CR I think should be at least 3-4.

Of what I killed, no loot.

[Catastrophe]

Thanks everyone for the input, we all really appreciate and are taking your suggestions to heart and working our best to make things balanced.

[Delexos]

Protagonist:- Ignus Pyre - Level 21 Warlock

Location:- Whurest(sp?) Mines

Feedback:- I never tried this place, pre-sundering, mainly because I distinctly recall all the horror stories of how insane the place was, but I was bored recently so decided to give it a crack. Overall the dungeon seems well balanced, if it was not for Retributive invisibility (or rather the 50% concealment bonus) and a good bit of luck and patience I know for a fact that I would not have survived. In fact my first attempt was in a party with two other epic level characters and one of those died twice in the attempt.

There is a noticable level of difficulty between the various coloured mobs, the white thralls being easy to pick off with generally none of them really ever breaking through my concealment, the green named mobs have a higher chance of success especially the axe throwers who didn't really seem to care about my show off invis skills and were happy to bury axes in my face all day.

The blue named mobs hit much harder still, with plenty of attacks to their name they have the highest possible chance of getting past concealment and with a fairly low ac it tends to lead you to playing smart, there's no real way to rush through this dungeon which is nice to see. Throwing the ancient dwarven constructs in is also a great buffer against caster classes as I soon found that my main powers had no effect requiring me to either try and avoid the dwarven golems or risk hand to hand.

The first mini boss that I found was some kind of Dwarven smith, using two hammers being backed up by a couple of constructs. Due to wielding two weapons he tended to have a fairly unsuccessful time hitting me, though when he did the damage quickly added up and almost sent me to the fugue, coupled with what appears to be a fairly large bank of hp it makes him quite a difficult opponent to handle. So far I have run this dungeon a couple of times over the past few days and this boss has drooped a piece of adamantine ore and most recently a piece of silver ore, whilst dropping ore is certainly appropriate for a smith, a single piece of ore seems perhaps a little anti-climactic for the potential challenge he poses.

The final boss is thankfully a nightmare, with more hp than he knows what to do with, the ability to cast Mords disjunction, a swarm of self buffs, turning unlucky party members to stone oh and I hear (though thankfully have not yet been on the receiving end of) that he has an almost instant kill move, where if he hits you with a hand to hand attack there is a chance he can grab you and if he hits again he pretty much sucks out your brains. He also comes complete with several summon spells (some kind of winged outsider woman and a death knight most notably) and a host of mobs that guard him.

Killing the final boss is certainly an achievement, he drops a key to a secret treasure chamber and occasionally will drop an item, although to be honest the item drops have been rather on the weak side for the sheer magnitude of the fight, I think I have mostly been getting green named weapons and armour from him usually of the +1 stat variety, or more often simply just the key itself and nothing else.

The treasure chamber once found has been a little too random to say for certain whether or not the drops are good, most of the time you get multiple stacks of around 150-300 gold with a couple of items, I have been able to get my hands on two blue named items from the treasure room and a bunch of lesser greens so I guess it is not a bad final reward.

Overall this dungeon is a good challenge for higher level characters and can quite easily lead to pc deaths if the players become too complacent thinking that their high level means they are immortal.

Hope that helps.

[Cornuto]

Protagonist:- Ignus Pyre - Level 21 Warlock

Location:- Whurest(sp?) Mines

Feedback:- I never tried this place, pre-sundering, mainly because I distinctly recall all the horror stories of how insane the place was, but I was bored recently so decided to give it a crack. Overall the dungeon seems well balanced, if it was not for Retributive invisibility (or rather the 50% concealment bonus) and a good bit of luck and patience I know for a fact that I would not have survived. In fact my first attempt was in a party with two other epic level characters and one of those died twice in the attempt.

There is a noticable level of difficulty between the various coloured mobs, the white thralls being easy to pick off with generally none of them really ever breaking through my concealment, the green named mobs have a higher chance of success especially the axe throwers who didn't really seem to care about my show off invis skills and were happy to bury axes in my face all day.

The blue named mobs hit much harder still, with plenty of attacks to their name they have the highest possible chance of getting past concealment and with a fairly low ac it tends to lead you to playing smart, there's no real way to rush through this dungeon which is nice to see. Throwing the ancient dwarven constructs in is also a great buffer against caster classes as I soon found that my main powers had no effect requiring me to either try and avoid the dwarven golems or risk hand to hand.

The first mini boss that I found was some kind of Dwarven smith, using two hammers being backed up by a couple of constructs. Due to wielding two weapons he tended to have a fairly unsuccessful time hitting me, though when he did the damage quickly added up and almost sent me to the fugue, coupled with what appears to be a fairly large bank of hp it makes him quite a difficult opponent to handle. So far I have run this dungeon a couple of times over the past few days and this boss has drooped a piece of adamantine ore and most recently a piece of silver ore, whilst dropping ore is certainly appropriate for a smith, a single piece of ore seems perhaps a little anti-climactic for the potential challenge he poses.

The final boss is thankfully a nightmare, with more hp than he knows what to do with, the ability to cast Mords disjunction, a swarm of self buffs, turning unlucky party members to stone oh and I hear (though thankfully have not yet been on the receiving end of) that he has an almost instant kill move, where if he hits you with a hand to hand attack there is a chance he can grab you and if he hits again he pretty much sucks out your brains. He also comes complete with several summon spells (some kind of winged outsider woman and a death knight most notably) and a host of mobs that guard him.

Killing the final boss is certainly an achievement, he drops a key to a secret treasure chamber and occasionally will drop an item, although to be honest the item drops have been rather on the weak side for the sheer magnitude of the fight, I think I have mostly been getting green named weapons and armour from him usually of the +1 stat variety, or more often simply just the key itself and nothing else.

The treasure chamber once found has been a little too random to say for certain whether or not the drops are good, most of the time you get multiple stacks of around 150-300 gold with a couple of items, I have been able to get my hands on two blue named items from the treasure room and a bunch of lesser greens so I guess it is not a bad final reward.

Overall this dungeon is a good challenge for higher level characters and can quite easily lead to pc deaths if the players become too complacent thinking that their high level means they are immortal.

Hope that helps.

Very much so --- sounds like we need to up the rewards by a lot, but keep the challenge about where it is (or lower just a tad).

[Saulus]

I've been literally the only one editing the loot tables, it should at least be dropping the unique items you guys made for the different zones, like the privateers and spittlefist, necropolis etc etc.. If not gbx has to take over, its his system and I setup everything according to him.

[Cornuto]

I've been literally the only one editing the loot tables, it should at least be dropping the unique items you guys made for the different zones, like the privateers and spittlefist, necropolis etc etc.. If not gbx has to take over, its his system and I setup everything according to him.

http://www.sundren.org/forum/showthread.php?t=19306

Saulus, check out the last few posts here.

[Saulus]

There's an assload of encounters with loot tables, what gbx is talking about is the xp gold system, nothing to do with the loot system.

[roguethree]

Going to try to run Whurest tonight with Brendig to get a second opinion on it. Got some theories.

[Phantom Lamb]

The current monster levels for white and green creatures will be toned down shortly. Unfortunately, what's live and what's in the toolset are not in sync right now. So, feedback on Whurest or other areas might be outdated by the time it becomes useful. I'd suggest holding off till you hear from Saulus about a new push-out of content. But thank you for trying

[Delexos]

Protagonist: Ignus Pyre 21 Warlock

Area: Mossdale (through the forest to the Armoury & Temple of Gruumsh)

Report: Having heard how difficult the area is supposed to be I decided to try pushing the area to see what would occur, once again my warlock powers of invisibility saved my ass, the white named Bloodmaim Ambushers, I think that was the name, the ones who come out of stealth and unleash a storm of arrows on you were nuts. Ignus would find a random single green named Bloodmaim and take a swipe at it with a blast when suddenly a group of ambushers would suddenly de-cloak from numerous areas and fill me with arrows, I was able to survive most encounters with approximately 30%-50% health and that was whilst under the concealment bonus of retributive invisibility, obviously that might sound a little overpowered to some people but considering that area should be run with a party which would spread damage somewhat due to multiple targets, I actually think the balance of spawns/potential damage vs. Party is pretty much spot on, although I would welcome a full 4 man party effort to see how it really plays out.

So I work my way into the Armoury and through to the entry level of the Temple, everything seems pretty much how I remember it, the Warlocks are white named and I suppose rightly so, they only happened to give me a fair amount of grief simply because they could use the warlock ability "See the unseen" which meant my personal invis no longer had quite the effect I was hoping for

I had also been encountering Bloodmaim Berserkers by this point, much in the same way the mini boss in Whurest operated, these green named mobs with two weapons had a fair bit of success passing my concealment due to sheer numbers of attacks.

I hit the transition to the next map zone which is a tiny piece of corridor between the two temple levels, it was commonly used as a rest spot for groups between the floors although you first had to clear the initial spawn out before that could happen.

In here I spawned 2x Bloodmaim Beserkers and 1x Gruumite Temple Guard

This fight was tough as hell, the cramped space meant not much room to move, the beserkers again were able to get a large number of attacks off against me and the Temple Guard seemed like a solid tank, having a decent ac and a fair number of hitpoints, I almost died because I foolishly decided to focus on the Temple Guard first, determined to take out the Blue mob first, this left my flanks open to the onslaught of the Beserkers, though thankfully a successful concentration check let me shape change and gain control of the battle and eventually win.

The second true level of the Temple is the run up to the main hall where you fight the boss "Vuragdish the Chosen". Here I noticed something odd, as I pushed into the area I started spawning a bunch of Necromancers some Beserkers and more of the Temple Guard, however they were all white named, from that point on until I finally got to the boss it was the same story.

In the final encounter you generally face off against the boss, a handful of skeleton archers and a few Temple Guard, all of them were white named including the boss, so it seems as though the second level of this dungeon has not yet been brought up to the colour coding of the rest of the game yet, which is handy to know for you guys I hope.

However if it's any consolation that boss is still an absolute bitch to take down, at least for a single warlock, The skeletons were less effective at shooting through my concealment than the ambushers or whurest's axe throwers, then again they are by far one of the weakest mobs in the entire dungeon so it sort of makes sense, and there appeared to be a fairly noticeable difference between the blue Temple guard I had faced in the rest spot and these white ones in the final stretch as I didn't really have much of a problem with them at all, the only real difficulty was the boss and that was more of an inconvenience than an actual challenge.

He carries two spears and has a plethora of spells at his disposal, but I personally found that unlike every other dual weapon user I have so far faced, he generally didn't seem to care about swinging at me, the battle really just became one long combat sequence where I would chip away at him, stripping his magic buffs as and when I could and then blasting him with my invocations, when he got down to around 30%-40% of his health he would cast a heal spell and I would start again, after I think 3-5 heal spells he was reduced to using mass cure critical spells and I think after another 5 or so of these he was eventually whittled down to death, he also uses a x3/day haste spell, I know this because when he cast it the spell name read as (x3day) haste.

Knowing that the area isn't yet up to date with the rest of the colour coding might make the loot report redundant, however I did fight a fairly large number of green named mobs on the surface and the first level of the temple plus there was the blue named Temple guard too, so here it is a list of items looted on the run from the start of Mossdale (where the old legion barricade was) to the final room facing Vuragdish:

1x Kama (basic weapon)
1x Fresh water
1x Bone wand
1x Scroll of cure critical wounds
12x Demihuman skulls
1x Demon Blood Vial
1x Hide armour (basic armour)
1x Thieves tools +1
1x Halberd (Basic weapon dropped by Blue named Temple Guard)
1x Scroll of endure elements (dropped by Vuragdish)

Hope that helps.

[roguethree]

Characters: Dain Tornbrook, 23 Paladin; Tigen Amastacia, 19 Spirit Shaman

Area: Whurest

Challenge: The challenge felt about even with the place pre-update; that is, a five-person group might wipe if their composition or tactics are poor, but a two-man group might clear it ably if their classes complement well and they approach each fight intelligently.

Loot: Nada. I think Ignus solo'd the dungeon (Warlock Pit Fiend form OP) a couple hours before we went through, and the loot containers repopulate slower than the dungeon does. This was a common problem when the area first released and more groups were tackling it; if you're not the first group of the day, you get less loot or none at all. The gold piles only ever have loot once in a day; they never refill after being looted. The drops in the place range from very good (+4 stat items are possible but extremely rare) to "Why is this dropping in an area for PCs of this level" (Greatsword of Burglary). Red items have never dropped in Whurest, and the Purple Worm still has no drop. Notable drops from the enemies are Duergar Hearts and Bloodstones (they're the wrong kind and have to exchanged with a DM), and they're both very rare. The rest of the drops are garbage, like stacks of 15 gold.

Suggestion: Suggest improving the loot throughout, a new system for end-of-dungeon loot rewards to make sure not-first groups don't get stiffed, and leaving the challenge exactly where it is. Doesn't need toned down, IMO.

[Cornuto]

My fear with the treasure room is that people would just camp there and wait for chests to respawn so I made them intentionally have a very long delay.


I'll see about trying to script around this concern.

[The Butcher]

I have been following a few characters through the dungeon as Ramza, an epic level Red Wizard, but I cannot contribute save for buffs. I simply tag along to become an extra gold multiplier.

Looking at the encounter, is it at all possible to make the loot inside the chests spawn the instant you use the key to unlock the door, or on the event of the Mind Flayer's death? I don't understand how loot scripting works, but I think that would solve your problem.