The Lands of Arda

Gupps · Joined: 07 Feb 2007 Posts: 485

Looks very nice, very atmospheric. Very good level of balance with the mobs outside of dungeons.

(although i did suffer some dreadfull bugs last night with my bloody character, same old, as other areas.. KD while wearing bowguard, suddenly character behaves as if she is wearing no items, ac gets stuck at 20 rather than 80, epic dodge stops working, hp decreases by 150, everything in combat isnt applied to my resists and i take full damage..bugged character i guess)

Very nice the way mobs will run at you from a long way out and have good AI. Fun in a group, just doable solo if you are carefull.

The main palace afraid the maze is truely horrible, spent 2 hours there with 2 others finding the way, afraid its far too big for my likeing and now we know the way 9/10ths of the maze will never be visited. The DC on the death magic in it is a bit high for my likeing especially with all the dispells and the Shadow shield stone bug. It is very nice xp and again soloable, with caution. The areas after the maze look pretty and are indeed a challenge lots of good mele hack and slash fun and soloable, if you can solo Minas morgal, id take MM orcs over the shear amount of these guys any dya though. Nice anti camping code on the boss, and its a nice fight, not been too hard and soloable, a nice reward for putting up with the maze. Drops are a tad disapointing with only forge parts dropping for me so far.

The mini dungeons are really nice and short, no messing about, simply walk in and get started on boss. Not only is a group needed but a good group of id say at the very very least 3 (for the easier bosses). I do think there are a few too many spells which have unrealistic saves against them and the onhit implosion on the druid is a bit over the top and relies on chain rezzing of each other ( you will roll a 1 if you hit him 100 times).
Also i hate been changed to a chiken lol but that isnt going to be a prob for most characters.
Havnt seen the megadrake yet but ive heard hes nasty. The onhit wof dragon is really really annoying and i think this may be better if it was an onhit blind that didnt last as long. Basically you will be woffed for the entire fight, there is no need to keep casting it, the duration of the 1st wof will still be on you at the end.

Drops in general seem geared towards forge items , I dont know if all mobs share the same drop loot table ( I hope so, would be annoying if one bit was rarerer than other as it was dropped by the druid or megadragon.) I have only seen one item drop that wasnt a forge item, a nice pally cloak.

All in all nice addition to the game, go grab a party and take a look. You will only be frustrated if you go with less than 3 of you. Maybe go as 2 and just explore but dont even try the megabosses as 2.

Just a quick note the spawns are very large and come at you fast, while this is fun, do yourself a favour and reeboot your computer when you enter, if youve been playing a while. With the nwn memory leakage you will jerk around all over the place if you have been up for a long time. I couldnt move when i first went there, i had been online for 4 hours playing previous to loading into it. (spec is quad core dual 512mb ati cards and 3 gig of ram sata2 hdd)

If the attack on the player city ever happens I think some of the spawns that run at you here and the slickness of how a largae amount of this area has been implemented is a very good starting point. An area 1/2 the size of the isle for player housing, with the ideas discussed before the stone/wep item blowup would truely feel like you were under attack and have you rallying.

oulu · Joined: 31 Jan 2007 Posts: 188 Location: Finland

Gotta say that i like the new isle very much. The warriors look pretty cool as well the surrounding. ( Maybe too much trees. Makes my old pc lag Smile

)

You said that this place is somewhere between mordor and far south but i gotta say that mordor other than MM is easier. And between MM and South this place is much nearer to MM than far south. Maybe because the high attack bonus of the enemies which means they hit the normal arda str build withouth concealment nearly every time. And if you stray from your path and confront the wildlife you can easily get you ass handed to you if you dont know who you'r messing with. Nonetheless i really enjoy the place being hard and thus rewarding expwise.

The maze was very annoying on first time Smile

... to speak the truth we wandered there for more than two hours and before finding the right way i logged off frustrated ( tho had other duties which limited my playing at the time ) First thing that came to mind while wandering there that you (serra) wanted to make a maze where you could get lost yourself Very Happy

Onhit properties on mini dungeon bosses are annoying. Even if the implosion had a low dc it tends to get those 1's at the same time resulting whole party dying. I would have rather seen these hellballs flying about followed by Ruins but after that just good old melee smash and not some laggy spell firing off twice/second. 100 damage/ hit is much nicer as dying results from slow healfinger rather than bad luck.

Mamadragon may be too hard. Tho while i fought her we were only a party of 3 but i think we dealt about less than 500 damage to her before her ruin gazes got us.

1 more thing. I think the droprates should be upped a bit. Last run there we killed Malezer, Honey druid, both lesser dragons and the main dungeon bosses ( Ancantar, Commander by tents and Commander before Ancantar ). These all together dropped 3 forge pieces ( 2 from
Ancantar) and the Celebcollo - cloak from ( from tent captain ). Which means minidungeon bosses which are by far the hardest bosses dropping only 1 forge piece. Not really the 2 per boss as you hinted. Id like to see these go up or then relocate the dropping of forge pieces to easier bosses as it is hard to come by a party capable of dealing with these guys ( Especially now when the server is torn in two factions )

Concluding my review with a schoolgrade of 9- ( scale 4-10)

Ps. Nice work with the other fixes. I really appreciate the work ( other than the weapon swap fix ) you've done. And fix the boots ! Twisted Evil