Assassin Contracts

[Sofawiel]

Just some general Feedback and a question

Questions First: Does the xp/gold payout increase with the tiers? Does the difficulty of the mark increase at all? Is this based on tier or PC level?

Feedback: If difficulty of the marks doesnt scale Id strongly consider scaling the difficulty. If it does scale, tweak them some

tweak the map list where things spawn. For me personally I would exclude any map within one screen of a portal node.

I like the idea of needing to get a party together to do some of these, especially at higher levels/tiers but its a narrative let-down if after slogging through kohlingen in its entirety the mark lasts a flurry. Same goes for locations that are too accessible, imo. If you can just portal in to something, it feels like burning crafting points, just a thing to tick off the list.

Suggestion: Link in to Liareth's new Lieutenant update somehow when generating the marks

[msterswrdsmn]

There is definitely a difficulty curve, but I have no idea how its graded.

The only other person i've seen take out a contract in front of me got an unarmed noble in the Cordor sewers. Easy!

I step up for mine and get....a high level mage in the "untended pit", an area that almost no one had heard of. I had to slog past a ton of high level enemies with help from Artemis and stumbled upon the area by complete accident. The mage then immediately dropped an elder fire elemental on Artemis and warded up with elemental shield and premonition. Still killed them, but if I hadn't used Artemis to distract the summon, dropped darkness and dealt enough damage to chew through the premonition buff...that would've ended really badly.

My second one spawned inside the Obsidian Asylum. It took me the better part of an hour trying to figure out just how to get in. The spawn was also capable of casting premonition, but I killed it before it could do much more than that.

Fairly certain the two i've taken out thus far are a fair bit harder than "unarmed noble in the cordor sewers", both in terms of actually getting to them, as well as the npcs mechanical strength/level

Difficulty curve aside, I DO like how it seems to take into account whether or not your character is a surfacer, underdark race, or outcast. All of the contracts i've done thus far seem to be to the benefit of my respective area/starting town

[Artenides]

I can confirm that the strength of the target npc scales with the level of the assassin. There are four tiers to support lower level assassins as well as higher level assassins.

These quests were designed to be soloable, you will not be needing to party up. The payment and xp for these contracts are the same until you become a master assassin. At that point you can continue taking the contracts but no xp will be given, only a slightly increased amount of gold.

[msterswrdsmn]

Ok, a little more feedback now that i've done a few more contracts

The biggest issue I have thus far is the horrific lack of direction with these areas. I know i'm not the only one running into this issue, as I know I saw another topic somewhere where someone got a contract for "The Underdark: Cave". Which is potentially (and literally) the entire underdark.

Perhaps adding a little context to some of these locations, like "The Underdark: Cave, east of the Floodplains (example)" . I'm not asking for a step by step sort of thing, but just some context, like how the writs are written with their directions

Right now I have "Underdark (Upper): Behind a Waterfall. All the waterfalls i've seeen in the upperdark go over the edge of a cliff into the abyss. I've been at this for a few hours now and am just spamming invisibility and running around randomly at this point, from as far as the upperdark trading post to the boreal area with the mycoinds and formians. No luck. This is torture

At first I was checking areas where there were rivers/waterfalls. After an hour or so I gave up and just ran around the upperdark. Still never found the area.

I know theres the "ask ICly", but some of these areas are areas that no one has ever heard of (ex: The Untended Pit. That one took hours and sheer dumb luck to find), or have heard of, but have no idea how to access. Not every area is soloable 100%of the time regardless of level , as some of these areas are actually straight up impossible for certain builds to access as well (ex: the Obsidian Asylum is impossible to enter without magic/umd/lore) or the way in is considered an IG secret and people who do know will straight up refuse to tell you ICly.

For context, this is still a 1st tier clipper quest. No idea how this changes as you progress. As of right now, literally one sentence added to the location section describing where said area is would make a huge difference

[Diegovog]

Don't be discouraged! "Behind the Waterfall" is an area that's not too far from a portal. Most UDers should be able to direct you.
Some areas are hard to find but it was interesting for me so far, the "Untended Pit" I just followed my instincts and after a while I found it exploring. Got me to places I never explored before, I was pleasantly surprised.

[msterswrdsmn]

Don't be discouraged! "Behind the Waterfall" is an area that's not too far from a portal. Most UDers should be able to direct you.
Some areas are hard to find but it was interesting for me so far, the "Untended Pit" I just followed my instincts and after a while I found it exploring. Got me to places I never explored before, I was pleasantly surprised.

Ironically, I found a "behind the waterfall" cave....in the middledark. Wrong "behind the waterfall" cave.

[Dr. B]

Did my 5th contract day. I am obviously very lucky, because once again, it was on the crystal path.

[Wuthering]

I like the idea of needing to get a party together to do some of these, especially at higher levels/tiers

I disagree on that. I think they need to be solo-able. Difficult, sure, but possible.

A lot of assassins- especially on the surface- can't exactly be open about their trade and getting a party together to take on a difficult contract is not really possible. Not to mention the other members wouldn't get anything out of it (no bonus XP and the split pay's not enough to entice epics to give up an hour of time.)

It's barely possible for me to get people to go on a run for something that everybody needs like adamantine on my outgoing character. That's someone who's in a decent sized faction and hangs out in a busy settlement and I still have to beg and plead and plan on Discord days ahead to get a solid party of four together. I can't imagine my typically shady assassin having reliable help to solve a series of dozens (presumably? I don't know how many total you get) contracts.

Anyway the assassin is stereotypically a loner not someone who drags an adventuring party with them. I'd rather getting to the mark was difficult-- Look to Hitman or Metal Gear, maybe there's extremely difficult bodyguards and sentries you have to sneak past/ disguise past/ choose to kill at just the right time and the mark themselves could be an easy kill when you find them. I know that's probably difficult to pull off in NWN but it's just an example.

Now if you mean getting a party of assassins together, okay, that's something, but in that case maybe there should be shared contracts that encourage teamwork.

[Zan]

Yeah just got "Cave" as a location too... and so the search begins