Daffie
Dalayan Pious Diety
I kind of enjoyed the 2 deity quests I have done. To be honest, if the main quest and the faction quests are mostly done during the level up process, they probably are not horrible since you are getting xp.
Shards of Dalaya - Review
- Thread starter Nebi
- Start date
I kind of enjoyed the 2 deity quests I have done. To be honest, if the main quest and the faction quests are mostly done during the level up process, they probably are not horrible since you are getting xp.
Zapple
Dalayan Elder
Man, I've totally been missing out on 5 mans. Why has noone told me about these? Also, Deein doesn't quest, just saying.
It's that one that has 4 arms and usually becomes a 5man after you start it.
dracosf22
Dalayan Elder
that makes perfect sense now. Side note, good to see your alive, you and your exasperated sighs have been heavily missed.
I'm level 23 on my main at the moment. Although some of the early running around for the main quest was a pain due to dying to mobs I didn't expect to die to (guards at the entry arch to the docks in GSM wouldn't kill a mountain drake that was aggroed onto me, whut?), I'm thus far pretty pleased to be experiencing a Main Quest that is lore-focused, not overly crutched on combat, and which gets me going around to see the world and then gives me a couple of levels worth of exp for doing so.
I was pleasantly floored at how much exp some of the early lore runarounds gave me.
(I've also thoroughly enjoyed all of the more involved new-player-oriented quests that I've done besides that, such as the Fearstone Spies, Frilakh Bone Magic, and the group event in Fearstone that involves escorting an injured, hungover guard back to the zone-in after his buddies dumped him with pink-dyed armor as a prank. There's enough nice bits of scripting, and choice, involved in the quests to make them interesting and flavorful, and I really like that.)
darksabbath
Dalayan Master
Wow, they added some real cool newbie quests since I last played a low level. That escort sounds fun. Glad to hear you are enjoying the server as a lowbie bud
Daffie
Dalayan Pious Diety
You should write a candid review so we can get a new player perspective!
I'm never going to live this horrible WoW typo down, am I...
I am really glad you liked the new Kelethin quests. It is very hard to get feedback for low level quests, since the majority of newbies do not find the forums until they have played for a while.
If you have any suggestions or critiques of them or the other newbie quests, I would love to hear them via PM or another post!
Kedrin
Dalayan Pious Diety
The Quest [Scouting for Kerwyn] was really good in my opinion. I would love to see more quests like this one.
It's the quest that you have to kill spiders around the log.
I'm really glad I liked them too! I have surprisingly few critiques (which feels great to be able to say about any scripted quest rendered in this engine), although I do have one critique in particular that stands out.
This will be kind of long, and I apologize in advance if it's too wordy anywhere.
"Fearstone Spies" critique/feedback/bug report?
One thing that I think would help "Fearstone Spies" be more accessible without making it too easy is some sort of text notification/hint, after killing Guard Frusp "unsuccessfully" (i.e., with other Frilakh witnessing his death) when trying to do his step of the quest. Just a little informative something to let the player know they screwed up (without needing to do /cm journal active #) and possibly with an additional hint about how to avoid that in the future.
Frusp's step was the one step on that quest in which I encountered some weird scripting issues, and by the time I successfully killed him with what the game considered to be no witnesses, it was hard to tell which failures had resulted from bugginess and which were in line with what the quest designer intended.
First, some context - I was soloing this quest untwinked (though with a few pieces of early Adept gear), as a level ~20 magician, in a Fearstone that was mostly empty of players during the times that I worked on the quest. If I wanted trash cleared I generally needed to do it myself.
I took note of the disguised enchanter's recommendation to kill Frusp in the water to help avoid his death being seen, but there were a few other weird things that went on with that.
What I learned about Frusp and his spawn methodology over the course of doing the quest:
-Guard Frusp is a triggered spawn (only appears when someone on the appropriate step of this quest draws near) with four spawn points around the zone. (By the quarry near the hungover wood elven guard, by the footbridge west of the zone-in, near the tent with the "sleeping" Frilakh in the village/camp area, and next to the small wooden boat outside the blacksmith hut.) At any rate, those are the four that I found. Only one spawn spot seems to be active at a time (i.e., you have to go to the specific one he "happens to be at right now" and then he will spawn).
-If you leave Frusp unaggro'd for too long he despawns. The timer for this seemed variable, ranging from like a minute to five minutes. (I wasn't keeping a timer so this may be off.) Sometimes it seemed overly harsh.
-Possible bug here. It is apparently possible for Frusp to despawn even while aggro'd on someone. If this occurs he will retain them on his hate list if spawned again, and will rush at them as soon as his spawn is triggered, without the person needing to get into normal aggro range or pull him. (This happened to me once and I'm still not sure why it happened or if it was intended or not.)
-If Frusp despawns (rather than being killed), he can immediately be re-triggered at one of his other spawn spots in the zone by someone who is on the appropriate step of this quest.
-If Frusp is killed, he won't respawn for some length of time. (I'm not sure how long, but it seemed to be longer than a normal respawn cycle for the zone. I would typically log out and check back a few hours later since my schedule at the time permitted that.)
-Even after finishing the quest, I'm still not sure what the game defines as an unwitnessed death of Guard Frusp. It took me three separate occasions of pulling him into the water and killing him before I got the quest step completed. My winning pull involved pre-clearing a large area around the footbridge spawn spot, and then running around the zone triggering Frusp/waiting for despawn until he happened to pop by the footbridge. At that point i pulled him into the water nearby and killed him and got credit.
-Notably, I'm still not clear on whether or not it's possible to pull Frusp together with other mobs, kill the adds first, and then kill Frusp and still get credit for there being no witnesses.
A narrative of some of my experiences with trying to kill Frusp correctly:
My first encounter with Frusp was at the spawn spot by the quarry/hungover guard. He was loosely surrounded by other lizards, so I thought, "Okay, I'll clear the other Frilakh and then kill Frusp, no problem." I cleared the 5-7 other Frilakh from the area around him and he despawned right before I could aggro him (sadness).
Later I encountered him at that spawn spot again and tried killing him at his spawn without clearing the other Frilakh, but that didn't work either (none were aggro'd/assisting, but they were probably close enough that they counted as witnessing it - though I find that weird since if they were aware enough to witness it you would think they would come help xD).
My memory is blurry for a while after that, but basically I kept experimenting with killing him in various ways. Some of the failures were obviously my fault (like one time when I killed him while I had live aggro from other mobs).
The first time that I pulled Frusp into the water, I did it from his spawn point over by the smith hut / slaver caves area. (The spawn spot next to the small boat.) Unfortunately (since this Frusp spawn spot is somewhat congested) this meant I got adds, so I decided to try killing the adds first and then killing Frusp (killing all of them out in the water away from other witnesses) to see if that would update the quest.
Weirdness ensued. The quest definitely didn't update, and I think Frusp actually despawned while I was still fighting him, but somehow kept me on his hate list. I think that, because when I wandered over to one of his other spawn spots (the one near the quarry/hungover guard) a few minutes later, he spawned and immediately ran at me from far outside his natural aggro range, and I believe he was at less than max health as well. It was as if he had despawned temporarily as part of a raidboss mechanic and then respawned later with his hatelist still intact - just in two completely different parts of the zone and separated by a few minutes of running around by me!
syduck:Anyway, I guess this is topic-drift away from just reviewing the game. It might be better to split this part into its own thread, but I'll post it here for now and leave it up to moderator/admin discretion.
Some of this information might be worth me sitting down and wikifying since (last I checked) "Fearstone Spies" doesn't have entries on the wiki yet. I'll probably run through the quest again with my druid+bard combo that I'm bringing up, to solidify my knowledge of it better.
In general, I love the stealth/subterfuge orientation of this quest, and the use of illusions (and an enchanter serving as a mole behind enemy lines, and the player needing to meet with her in secret away from the place where she's working as an "orc") is just great. Very immersion-promoting - I wish more games and quests paid sufficient attention to these details!
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cian2
Dalayan Master
god im so glad youre back
I'm really glad I liked them too! I have surprisingly few critiques (which feels great to be able to say about any scripted quest rendered in this engine), although I do have one critique in particular that stands out.
This will be kind of long, and I apologize in advance if it's too wordy anywhere.
"Fearstone Spies" critique/feedback/bug report?
One thing that I think would help "Fearstone Spies" be more accessible without making it too easy is some sort of text notification/hint, after killing Guard Frusp "unsuccessfully" (i.e., with other Frilakh witnessing his death) when trying to do his step of the quest. Just a little informative something to let the player know they screwed up (without needing to do /cm journal active #) and possibly with an additional hint about how to avoid that in the future.
Frusp's step was the one step on that quest in which I encountered some weird scripting issues, and by the time I successfully killed him with what the game considered to be no witnesses, it was hard to tell which failures had resulted from bugginess and which were in line with what the quest designer intended.
First, some context - I was soloing this quest untwinked (though with a few pieces of early Adept gear), as a level ~20 magician, in a Fearstone that was mostly empty of players during the times that I worked on the quest. If I wanted trash cleared I generally needed to do it myself.
I took note of the disguised enchanter's recommendation to kill Frusp in the water to help avoid his death being seen, but there were a few other weird things that went on with that.
What I learned about Frusp and his spawn methodology over the course of doing the quest:
-Guard Frusp is a triggered spawn (only appears when someone on the appropriate step of this quest draws near) with four spawn points around the zone. (By the quarry near the hungover wood elven guard, by the footbridge west of the zone-in, near the tent with the "sleeping" Frilakh in the village/camp area, and next to the small wooden boat outside the blacksmith hut.) At any rate, those are the four that I found. Only one spawn spot seems to be active at a time (i.e., you have to go to the specific one he "happens to be at right now" and then he will spawn).
-If you leave Frusp unaggro'd for too long he despawns. The timer for this seemed variable, ranging from like a minute to five minutes. (I wasn't keeping a timer so this may be off.) Sometimes it seemed overly harsh.
-Possible bug here. It is apparently possible for Frusp to despawn even while aggro'd on someone. If this occurs he will retain them on his hate list if spawned again, and will rush at them as soon as his spawn is triggered, without the person needing to get into normal aggro range or pull him. (This happened to me once and I'm still not sure why it happened or if it was intended or not.)
-If Frusp despawns (rather than being killed), he can immediately be re-triggered at one of his other spawn spots in the zone by someone who is on the appropriate step of this quest.
-If Frusp is killed, he won't respawn for some length of time. (I'm not sure how long, but it seemed to be longer than a normal respawn cycle for the zone. I would typically log out and check back a few hours later since my schedule at the time permitted that.)
-Even after finishing the quest, I'm still not sure what the game defines as an unwitnessed death of Guard Frusp. It took me three separate occasions of pulling him into the water and killing him before I got the quest step completed. My winning pull involved pre-clearing a large area around the footbridge spawn spot, and then running around the zone triggering Frusp/waiting for despawn until he happened to pop by the footbridge. At that point i pulled him into the water nearby and killed him and got credit.
-Notably, I'm still not clear on whether or not it's possible to pull Frusp together with other mobs, kill the adds first, and then kill Frusp and still get credit for there being no witnesses.
A narrative of some of my experiences with trying to kill Frusp correctly:
My first encounter with Frusp was at the spawn spot by the quarry/hungover guard. He was loosely surrounded by other lizards, so I thought, "Okay, I'll clear the other Frilakh and then kill Frusp, no problem." I cleared the 5-7 other Frilakh from the area around him and he despawned right before I could aggro him (sadness).
Later I encountered him at that spawn spot again and tried killing him at his spawn without clearing the other Frilakh, but that didn't work either (none were aggro'd/assisting, but they were probably close enough that they counted as witnessing it - though I find that weird since if they were aware enough to witness it you would think they would come help xD).
My memory is blurry for a while after that, but basically I kept experimenting with killing him in various ways. Some of the failures were obviously my fault (like one time when I killed him while I had live aggro from other mobs).
The first time that I pulled Frusp into the water, I did it from his spawn point over by the smith hut / slaver caves area. (The spawn spot next to the small boat.) Unfortunately (since this Frusp spawn spot is somewhat congested) this meant I got adds, so I decided to try killing the adds first and then killing Frusp (killing all of them out in the water away from other witnesses) to see if that would update the quest.
Weirdness ensued. The quest definitely didn't update, and I think Frusp actually despawned while I was still fighting him, but somehow kept me on his hate list. I think that, because when I wandered over to one of his other spawn spots (the one near the quarry/hungover guard) a few minutes later, he spawned and immediately ran at me from far outside his natural aggro range, and I believe he was at less than max health as well. It was as if he had despawned temporarily as part of a raidboss mechanic and then respawned later with his hatelist still intact - just in two completely different parts of the zone and separated by a few minutes of running around by me!
Anyway, I guess this is topic-drift away from just reviewing the game. It might be better to split this part into its own thread, but I'll post it here for now and leave it up to moderator/admin discretion.
Some of this information might be worth me sitting down and wikifying since (last I checked) "Fearstone Spies" doesn't have entries on the wiki yet. I'll probably run through the quest again with my druid+bard combo that I'm bringing up, to solidify my knowledge of it better.
In general, I love the stealth/subterfuge orientation of this quest, and the use of illusions (and an enchanter serving as a mole behind enemy lines, and the player needing to meet with her in secret away from the place where she's working as an "orc") is just great. Very immersion-promoting - I wish more games and quests paid sufficient attention to these details!
It sounds like Frusp was bugging out a bit, and was not clearing his previous aggro correctly which would make even new Frusps remember you.
All fixed! Thank you, and I threw some fame your way. Next time, though, that sort of thing totally warrants its own post in S and R or QD!