The creature spawns at the onset of this quest are incredibly difficult to weather, particularly if you have a larger party and therefore larger groups spawning. Outside of abusing the AI, this becomes a nearly impossible task even with the best preparations.
Lots of groups are doing it, and this is the first feedback about it. More people chiming in would help.
I have to agree that it is quiet difficult without specifically pulling one or two of them, without having like 30 endure potions, they chew through you and spit you out quickly. Not impossibly by any stretch, but difficult due to the close quarters.
It's a tough one but this is one of those quests where I quite like the challenge. Granted I've never done it with more than four people so I can imagine on the higher end of things it'd get pretty crazy.
Maybe drop the partyl cap to 4 or 5 instead of the higher ones to keep balance? I feel like that'd be a better balance than removing the challenge.
I've only done it twice. the big kicker was the instant wave of cone of cold spam that often catch new people off guard and result in near instant death. Otherwise the quest is not particularly hard or rewarding. >_>
The Cone of Cold spam is the only thing that needs changing in this quest.
I like the quest, and it's moderately challenging. The hounds at the beginning are ridiculous, though. I'd suggest just scattering that cluster alongside all the other spawns in the quest. Seeing as they eviscerated a high-hp barbarian within short notice, the only current roundabout is to use summons that make them deplete their breaths.
I, for once do not think that this quest needs change. I have done it several times without issue.
The fire quest, although, it's too easy on spawns and the boss was bugged with a stupidly strong summon the first time I did it. I have not checked if it was fixed.
Quote from: granny;412345I, for once do not think that this quest needs change. I have done it several times without issue.
The fire quest, although, it's too easy on spawns and the boss was bugged with a stupidly strong summon the first time I did it. I have not checked if it was fixed.
Did it recently, it was toned down quite a bit. :)
The cold breath/cone of cold cluster at the start of the quest with larger groups is a bit rough- even with elemental protections I watched an entire group go down in the space of about one quarter of a turn.
To reassert my point, the quest is more or less easy with little reward except for that beginning portion with the hound spam and the cone of cold. It just doesn't seem like a noteworthy mechanic. Every time I've done the quest and haven't cheated the AI in the beginning, it has resulted in a death or TPK. You either have to kite, pull them one by one, or metagame the quest and send a summon forward, none of which I think are very ideal situations for a quest to force or encourage.
I nearly finished this quest with two people, but had to utilize a lot of summons. and even then had many close call deaths! I think its difficult, but i rather like it personally, just need to be crafty, don't necessarily have to abuse the AI.
I just did this for the first time. We have a powerful team at maximum levels for it, lots of good summons, and everyone had multiple layers of elemental warding from first to third circles. It was still very painful from the sheer volume of badness and took lots of healing to survive while engaging tactically. Even with third circle wards blocking harm the volume of concentrated ice blasts all at the same time was hell on our beefy muscle men. This isn't a bad thing necessarily. If you don't know what to expect you'll get demolished without a hope, but if prepared with honestly a little knowledge of what to expect it is hard but doable.
What was found could use a little work, but there are some neat toys in it :) Looking at a certain mace that has spell charges and the Coldstone. Very fun thematic toys.
Having done this with a variety of people and numbers I can safely say that with 3-4 people it is a lot of fun and the spawns aren't too silly.
When I did it with 7 or so the spawns were hilariously huge and people were indeed almost dying as soon as they reached the first encounter. Everything after that was alright however.
The first few spawns do an intense amount of damage. If they can be scaled in such a way where they only one such monster appears in each battle, regardless of numbers, they would be much less deadly.
Then again, are you certain it should be easier?
As terrifying as it can be, there's nothing wrong with a good bit of life-threatening danger that convinces an adventuring party to step back and carefully reconsider their approach to wiping out an entire village of evil monsters.
If the flesh getting frozen off their bones doesn't scare them into caution or humility, they may be due for death.
I toned downed the nb of spawns at quest beginning.
I like this quest, but I agree, that first wave of Cone of Colds when you've got a lot of people is pretty ridiculous. It insta-fugued my dwarven fighter before at lvl 6 in 2 rds as I recall, so we're talking something on the order of 50 pts of damage/rd. It's easy enough to beat by drawing half of them, but yea, that's AI abuse.