Regarding the Balancing of Areas and Their NPCs/Interactions

[Glowing Mushroom]

There is a tremendous amount of effort built into every single area of Arelith. Details with sound, light, secrets, lore, you name it. But many areas unfortunately suffer from poor design flaws that encourage people not to visit again.

The Jungles near the Crow's Nest, and more particularly, the Mound:

The jungles are great. There is beautiful lightning and hand crafted sound, and the Mound is a great place for lower level characters to grind.

However, it is badly marred with some serious design flaws. One of them being the ridiculously oversized snakes. Often these snakes are so large that they become bugged, and they float in the air. Because of this, it makes it impossible to target anything else, and so you're stuck with targeting them. After killed, you will then see comically gigantic bones and blood fall from the sky over top of everyone. These snakes need to have their size reduced, or they should be removed altogether.

Additionally, the debuffs that enemies like Dark Nagas or the Yuan-Ti throw out to players, especially at lower levels, are far too powerful. Lower level characters should not have it expected of them to carry around full Restoration spells or scrolls at all times. The level drains, stat damages, and curses, are greatly overpowered for an area that caters to such low level characters. Even in the jungles themselves it is possible to experience these things, and it is too great a challenge for a low level region.


The Lost Desert:

These areas are vast and beautiful, and again, they are filled with many secrets and details. The notion of sand getting into your boots and slowing you down was fun and immersive the first couple of times. But it soon became obnoxiously excessive. Not only does it last too long, but it is far too common. These "sand traps" should last only one round at most if they are going to be so numerous, but they should still be reduced in number. They become nothing more than a nuisance and it discourages players from returning to explore again, which is an awful thing to do, considering how much effort goes into these areas.

The "Slow Trap" is something that is highly prevalent throughout Arelith. Dungeons everywhere use it, and it can even be found in low level areas like the Jungles with lizard mages and so forth. While it can be an interesting addition to RP, mechanically, it just becomes frustrating. When a player becomes frustrated Out of Character, their RP suffers, immersion breaks, and most importantly, it's not fun anymore.

I hope things like these will be toned down in the future, and that the current implementations can be, frankly, nerfed a significant deal.


Thank you for reading!
Burin.

[AstralUniverse]

Additionally, the debuffs that enemies like Dark Nagas or the Yuan-Ti throw out to players, especially at lower levels, are far too powerful. Lower level characters should not have it expected of them to carry around full Restoration spells or scrolls at all times. The level drains, stat damages, and curses, are greatly overpowered for an area that caters to such low level characters. Even in the jungles themselves it is possible to experience these things, and it is too great a challenge for a low level region.

The Mound is my of my favorite old-school dungeons. It hasnt been updated for a while and I can even remember an older version of it somewhere in the far back of my head. In it's current iteration, still love it, and I go there on almost every character because the writ is very rewarding and the loot drops are decent for the struggle. I dont mind seeing it reworked but really no rush.

It is not a place any character can solo. It used to be even more annoying with dispels and damage shields but those are gone and thank god for that. Now you can actually solo it on some classes, before we even said it should be solo-able. From my experience, good preparation against ability decrease and clarity potions can pretty much carry you through the entire place. Still, it is by no means an easy dungeon and the reward is appropriate.

[Cataclysm of Iron]

I agree on the jungles - really like them thematically but gosh they're hard compared to other areas levelled about 8-12. If you go there, even in a party, on the low end of the levels recommended by the writs you'll get wiped out on more or less any build.

The Yuan-Ti could do with a little scaling back, the abilities are powerful (especially the signals, they do so much damage with the combust spells!) but also just the raw numbers, they have very high AC and AB, and the tainted ones/lobotomised warriors especially hit like a train. Jaguars too feel super high powered for the level but they at least tend to be deeper in and I think are rarer spawns.

I do agree the anacondas are annoying interface wise but they're not too powerful imo, but yeah it would so cool to have the jungles chilled out a touch because they're such cool places and I think fairly underexplored on the server, but super dangerous to go to until you're at a level where 1) your ROI for loot/XP isn't level-appropriate and 2) you're concerned with interfering with spawns/drops/writs for the characters the level is ostensibly aimed at.

[Glowing Mushroom]

Also, side note,

The desert should be freezing at night, not burning as it is during the day.

[Best Rich Face]

As a note, I specifically avoid the Lost Desert because of the slow traps.

A well placed slow trap here and there is just fine, but like any spice, please use moderately. The ones in the lost desert are so prevalent and unavoidable, it just becomes a slog.

Yes - unavoidable. An individual player can avoid them, but if another player runs across them, it affects EVERYONE in the area of effect. Additionally, this game is almost 20 years old. We've had time to realize how bad the pathing is for PCs, but also for summons. While the summon tool helps, companions (especially if you have more than one) are well known for deciding to REEEEEEE across the area and trail mobs, traps, and other trash behind them like tin cans and a Just Married sign. This triggers slow in an area too, and it's bad for all the people at the reception.

This makes no sense, as if you get caught in a spot of rough sand but I'm standing on stable ground, why am I slowed too?

Kill it with fire.

EDIT: (Oh yeah, the armor piercing slinger nomads with binoculars/eagle eyes kind of blow too, but at least you can justify those in character.)

[Entre Laberintos]

One thing that kind of bothers me about the npcs in arelith are the homeless people that live under Cordor and that the low-level adventurers have no option but to kill and rob without sparing them too much thought. I know that the moral of fearun shouldn´t be the same as the one from the real world...but I just feel like a murderous bastard every time I walk around the sewers.

[Nitro]

As a note, I specifically avoid the Lost Desert because of the slow traps.

A well placed slow trap here and there is just fine, but like any spice, please use moderately. The ones in the lost desert are so prevalent and unavoidable, it just becomes a slog.

Hot tip, they only spawn on raised up piles of sand. Inform party members and micro your character/summons around them.

[Drowboy]

One thing that kind of bothers me about the npcs in arelith are the homeless people that live under Cordor and that the low-level adventurers have no option but to kill and rob without sparing them too much thought. I know that the moral of fearun shouldn´t be the same as the one from the real world...but I just feel like a murderous bastard every time I walk around the sewers.

The fact that Cordor and Andunor have essentially the same sewer spawns is hilarious but might need a look at eventually.