Dungeon Balancing

[Mournas]

As I see it, the dungeons were said to have gotten harder, though this is simply not the case, in fact the last time they were revamped ... it was really like a devamp ... made everything easier but put in a bunch of mobs with knockdown. It's easy to get past dungeons when their difficulty is based around a single cheese mechanic.

[Sypthe]

There are plenty of healers around. Healing is not a problem at all from what I have seen. Really, dungeon's don't seem to be made for power builds. Honestly, I have the weakest level 20 in the game and I can solo most places if I put armor on.

I definitely, definitely can't.

Blame my skill - I do it. But I really can't. At all. If it hadn't been for Adama's incredible mad healing powerz, Jo'd be a corpse in the new Argyle Keep.

[Saulus]

Classes have been buffed while some dungeons were debuffed. Some may need to be re-tweaked but it's a fine line -- a few people say it's too easy and another group gets slaughtered. If Whurest is not a true challenge I would be surprised, but it's not hard for us to increase the difficulty.

Icewind Dale is going to be around Whurest level (20+). Of course you have to navigate the spine first which is 16+ ish.

[Phantom Lamb]

As I see it, the dungeons were said to have gotten harder, though this is simply not the case, in fact the last time they were revamped ... it was really like a devamp ... made everything easier but put in a bunch of mobs with knockdown. It's easy to get past dungeons when their difficulty is based around a single cheese mechanic.

There may have been some mis-communication. I'm not sure where you heard they were supposed to have gotten harder. Very deliberately, it was the opposite.

The last major revamp was done by me last year. I was asked specifically to remake the monsters on a color-based system. The most common critters (white names) were designed to be push-overs, where a non-power-build PC of appropriate level should have been able to take on two or three at a time and still win without much risk. The model was, if you're going through an area and not going off the beaten path, you'll mostly face whites and greens and have almost no risk of death (if you're the appropriate level).

This was originally tied to GBX's "in the works" encounter system revamp. As that wasn't ready, the monsters were implemented using the old trigger encounters in the manner you see now. But the spirit was the same - make the average grinding encounter winnable and easy for non-power-builds.

Now there's a few dungeons out there like Whurest where people wanted that challenge restored, so it was brought back closer to the original difficulty. But most stuff is designed to be easy. Not sure where the idea that things were being made harder came from - this was the most recent major critter revision I know of.

[gbbishop]

be nice if there was a way to by pass the 16+ climb for higher levels. keep them from spawning large numbers of mobs and leaving them for those that should be there.

One thing's for sure we should not be setting difficulty based off Andelain. :P

[Valhalla]

be nice if there was a way to by pass the 16+ climb for higher levels. keep them from spawning large numbers of mobs and leaving them for those that should be there.

There's already 2 totally viable paths up to Whurest. One is just running up from the Caravan Outpost, up through the Cold Climb, etc. The other you just take the caravan to the Grizzly's Embrace area, then run through the Frozen Ruins. They meet up in the plateau right before the Cold Refuge.

e: Which means you'll see at most 1 spawn that both paths share.

[wangxiuming]

Im fine with the way the spawns are now. They are reasonably survivable even for non-optimized builds, which gives players more incentive to make Roleplay choices in their leveling. My greatest fear for these dungeons is that they will become too mmo-like, ie force people to optimize builds and requiring a tank, dps, healer tripod in order to make it through.

Thats just my opinion though.

[Lotus]

That's why they were scaled down: to enable solo play for those in weird timezones and so RP builds could complete them. However, I think we've gone too far in the wrong direction, given that it's pretty difficult to build a "bad" character on Sundren now (you're welcome).

[GodBeastX]

That's why they were scaled down: to enable solo play for those in weird timezones and so RP builds could complete them. However, I think we've gone too far in the wrong direction, given that it's pretty difficult to build a "bad" character on Sundren now (you're welcome).

I don't know that I agree. I think that what messed up is that the encounter difficulties weren't distributed like I intended by the design. I noticed this running around the server myself.

[Saulus]

What my level 20 commoner can solo the abyss?

[Orlitoq]

That's why they were scaled down: to enable solo play for those in weird timezones and so RP builds could complete them. However, I think we've gone too far in the wrong direction, given that it's pretty difficult to build a "bad" character on Sundren now (you're welcome).

Damn... Now I feel really bad that Anton cannot solo anything above Ixis. Then again he is a rogue...

[Laurk]

Well then just a couple of super challenging dungeons added to the mix that you really did need a powerful party with optamised members would be cool. I just don't feel like there's a lot of challenge right now. The groups I join pretty much stomp through areas without any trouble and rarley ever even need healing.

If I had my wish, more dungeons would have villians like those vampires you fight for the Blackwood Contract, save that they would have far less HP. Those things hit like freight trains, and if their HP and AC were lower, that would be a huge perk to support characters without reducing the need for tanks 1 ounce. Heavy hitters like 2-handers and barbarians would actually have a use. Healers would have a use.

To be fair though, groups mostly visit the same few dungeons, and there's quite a few I haven't even been too, so im not sure if Wurest, Mossdale and Argyle are a good representation of dungeons across Sundren. Those are the only 3 people generally take Abby too.

[Handsomeman]

One of those vampires in the Blackwood contract seemed a little bit overpowered damage wise. I saw one character with 330 hp basically get cut down in less than a second. The character claimed they did back to back crit damage of 180 damage. I don't think any healer could heal through that.

[wangxiuming]

They regularly do +200 to me

[Mournas]

One of those vampires in the Blackwood contract seemed a little bit overpowered damage wise. I saw one character with 330 hp basically get cut down in less than a second. The character claimed they did back to back crit damage of 180 damage. I don't think any healer could heal through that.

Best way to tank this guy is hit prevention - AC - Displacement - Mirror Image.