Arelith

This morning I got a few people together and we did 3 of the 4 new Underdark dungeons. Our party was comprised of a level 10 sorcerer, a level 11 favoured soul, and a level 10 fighter with a scimitar, along with a zombie that the favoured soul summoned. We started with...

The Wormworks
+Pretty looking with good performance. Maintains a grungy, slummy atmosphere without killing your loadtime through placeable/fog overuse.
+Lots of monster variance
+XP rewards are probably good for its level; we weren't getting much but we didn't struggle either
+A good amount of useful resources like sand, coal, or malachite
+Has the tophat mane ringmaster model in it
+Plenty of monsters to fight. I never felt like I was just walking through tons of empty space.
-Despite there being a lot of different types of mane, they all look pretty much the same aside from the (Ringmaster). I realise that this is more the fault of the limited hak resources than a true design flaw, but at a glance you're just fighting a big fleshy blob.

It was advertised as a level 5-9 dungeon, but really I think it fits more in the 3-7 range, sort of like the Bonefields or the city sewers -- which is fine, as that level range is pretty limited dungeon-wise in the UD. I'd like to be a little more detailed here but it's a pretty short little place and we were clearly a few shades overleveled, so plowed through it like it was nothing.

Urae-Slananis
+Lots of cool little side areas with the various tents, and different entrances/approaches. It's a nice touch.
+Generally, monsters are challenging without being overpowering and give good XP.
+Flavour text is a tiny addition that makes a big difference; it comes with a very "D&D" feel to it. The "larder" room, as an easy example, wouldn't be nearly as atmospheric without it
+The big areas are big, but they're not Sibayad Tombs big. You're covering a lot of ground, but it's not excessive and it's broken up into enough areas that I don't think you'll have to sit and wait outside for respawns like you do with places like the aforementioned Tombs. I went in expecting this in particular to be a lot worse than it was, so you can imagine it was a rather pleasant surprise.
+Plenty of loot chests and things like that. Some of them even have their own specific names and models that fit in with the surroundings, like the "moldy wood chest," which is a cool touch.
+There's a portal part-way through, so you don't have to complete all the dungeon if you can't or get bored of it. This place is one of the longer dungeons on the server period, let alone at its level range.

+/-First floor feels really disappointing on a lack of spawn density, but every floor thereafter feels great and full of monsters to fight. Maybe I just got unlucky?
+/-The putrefying egg traps have weird ranges. Some of them trigger a lot further away than others, so it's hard to predict when you'll have to run through the stinking clouds or not. It doesn't feel like intended behaviour, and I like the concept behind them a lot otherwise. It definitely feels like the sort of nasty trap stinky frog-people would leave.

-Red slaadi in the later portions have epic dodge for some reason? This one feels almost like a bug. It's weird. They are the biggest monsters in the dungeon except for the Toad boss.
-Cave stirges are going to be really, really, really tedious for parties without magic missile or something similar -- I get what they're trying to do, but even with my magic missiles it was a definite "grind to a halt" moment as my party members missed attack after attack after attack on pretty offence-bereft creatures.
-Pod priests use lesser dispel, which punishes resource-scarce low level characters a lot more than it would characters with more levels. A level 20 guy can easily afford a dozen bull's strength potions without any worry, but somebody at level 7 has to ration them out much more. Same goes for spell slots.
-The pod queen has Acid Sheathe, which hits really hard -- for in the mid-20s of damage, which is a LOT at early levels. I think it should probably be scaled down to Death Armour or something, as right now it just hurts way too much; trying to fight that without spell breach would've been impossible.
-The hak model of the toad boss at the end is fine when the toad is really small. When it's really big, the low resolution of the model is really evident, and more importantly the animations of the thing look extremely weird. When it attacks sometimes it hops backwards, so the giant size of it makes it leap forward a ridiculous distance in a ridiculously short period of time. It's kind of hilarious to watch, but it's kind of out of place against the "tree full of corpses" that it's stationed next to.

Aside from a few quibbles, this is probably my favourite of the bunch. It feels rewarding and doesn't go crazy with things like traps, the areas are big but not too big... it hits a lot of good notes. I like it. It's best suited for players on the lower end of its range, though. I think if we waited until 12 to come here it would have been way too easy, and even at level 10 we had no real trouble at any point (but would've probably wasted a lot of heal kits if not for me having spell breach at the Queen boss)

Troglodyte Citadel
+Tons of enemy variance, both visually and mechanically. Some troglodytes are red, some are green, and they all have different weapons. You can easily tell which monster is what without needing to press Tab.
+Nice dungeon length & area sizes. It's actually quite quick to go through.
+Some of the areas are really cool looking, like the one prior to the Throne Room is especially nice looking. It reminds me a lot of the kobold sewer dungeons from DDO.
+Some of the traps do more interesting things than "roll reflex or you take xd6 damage."

+/-Speaking of traps, this place has a LOT of traps. Parties with a trap-disabler will be fine, and that person will feel really useful. Parties without will not have much fun at all and are probably better off to avoid it altogether.
+/-It also has a lot of climb checks. I don't know how much content is behind these checks, as none of my party had the skill.

-The Corpse-Eater monsters cast Greater Sanctuary. It's pretty annoying to have to wait out the duration of that spell, especially as they rarely use the time to do anything interesting with it. When it ends a lot of the time they're not doing anything but casting Protection from Elements or something.
-It's kind of annoying to reach, nestled up in a labyrinth of ramps and cliffs and attached to a weird specific northern transition from an area that has three different northern transitions right next to one another.
-The Shark Pit trap near the beginning is weird because it feels more rewarding than punishing. It's actually faster to clear the dungeon by falling through to the pit and taking the ladder at the end of it than by going through normally. That probably shouldn't be the case.
-The ending boss fight is pretty rough. She has a phylactery AND acid sheathe (which I went over earlier, about the bullywug queen) AND other spells. The dungeon isn't that hard altogether, but the boss fight is a massive difficulty spike. She also doesn't have a unique description, sharing one with the aforementioned Corpse Eaters.
-The XP could probably be tuned just a sliver upward. It's not totally awful as it is, but it is less than you'd expect it to be, which is disappointing.

This one is easily my least favourite of the lot. It has a lot of weird bugs, like how the second map doesn't have a minimap (it's all just white space instead for some reason? really odd to look at) and the first area literally has a sky. I think it could be interesting, but as it stands it's hard to get to and feels inaccessible to any party without a trapmonkey. I like the idea of traps that send you to other places instead of just doing damage, but the way they exist now feels kind of disorienting.


I'm really glad that the server is getting this kind of rapid-fire content in general, not just the UD (though the UD needed it quite badly!) and I had fun testing all these things out. With all that said, I'm hoping to make another post here in the next few days about the other new dungeon as well! I'm just not quite high enough level yet.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely act on some of this tonight.

A few things though, regarding the troglodytes...

First off, the traps. I'm using a new feature in that dungeon, which I won't reveal, but it's possible to avoid all but 1 of the traps, and the shark pit, and it doesn't use climb (that is just for escaping the pit more quickly). Careful exploration will reveal the route.

As for the dungeons isolation (location) I added a new destination portal right outside.

And with bosses? I feel they should be very challenging. There is an escape route and she moves extremely slowly, so can be avoided.

Anyway, really loved the feedback. I hope you get the chance to visit other two new dungeons.

I've explored most of the new dungeons with a lvl30 PC (but made sure not to interrupt anyone else)

I really liked them!
The troglodyte stronghold has already many different mechanics from the dungeons seen so far, and it surely seems promising for when it will be fully completed!
I really loved the first level in the stronghold especially, as I'm an exploration freak and HAVE to check all the doors and interactable things

I enjoyed the stony boys dungeon too, with all those minerals and not a single chest, makes the atmosphere really authentic. Loved the soundtrack too!

Finally, the Focal Stone.
Short, but full of different enemies, me likes! Not sure why but the living spell didn't really spam spells on me. Are they supposed to cast them often or just when they hit?
I struggled a lot in the final fight, though. Together with the boss I fought two crystal golems (greater) (or what's their name), and those guys hit HARD. I only remember seeing a +46 attack, which sent my fighter flying on the ground. Maybe that could be tweaked a bit (not sure if they were meant to be two, or if they are just normal rare spawns).

Overall, 12/10, looking forward to the upcoming ones!

Tried the new Focal Caverns today, and the corresponding writ with it.
+Lots of enemy variety, the idea of a bunch of different living spells that all look and do different interesting things is really cool.
+The area is, generally, pretty easy and has good monster density, but has other hazards like the high faezress tag.

+/-It's sort of miffing that you have to backtrack. You can argue that it's not a big deal because the dungeon is so short (personally, I feel this way myself) but some of my party members didn't agree.

-The creatures inside have WILDLY different CRs. You'll kill one, and get over 30 XP, and then one-shot another for less than 10. I don't really like this, because it means a dungeon can either be worth doing or a disappointing waste of time depending on how the chips fall, which as much as somebody could be tempted to talk about how that's a sort of interesting "realistic consequence of the adventurer's trade" really just equates to time I could've spent doing other things on a video game. I think these ought to be more equalised; the weaker monsters should just be made stronger, generally, like the Fear ones and Combust ones are weaksauce.
-The Crystal Golems are really hard to kill. They have over 40 (!!!) AB, hit for close to or over forty damage a hit, and have HUGE AC. The rewards they give are really disappointing, too, and I audibly went "that's it?" when we finally brought them down.
-The writ's XP reward is pretty disappointing, only 1250 XP. I got 250 more XP from the Temple of Slime writ. I get that it's a pretty short quest, but it's also a lot harder and higher level.

?I guess this is more a bug report than feedback necessarily, but the Living Spells didn't seem to really do anything spell-related. They just seemed like oozes. I'm not sure if they have abilities they're supposed to use and didn't, or if their weapons have on-hits that I just didn't notice. But I didn't see any lighting flying around when I fought a bunch of Chain Lightning ones.

I'll probably want to come back here sometime, because this one felt like I didn't really get the correct experience due to bugs or AI quirks. Otherwise I think "short dungeons" like this are actually a quite neat idea.

OK, this morning I did the Stone Orchards.

+Plenty of monster variation; different Galeb-Duhr have different abilities, and are still visually distinct due to their differing sizes.
+The difficulty seems well tuned. Despite being crit immune, they don't have a lot of dangerous spells or super high AB, so it never feels overwhelming -- but it's challenging, too, since with a typical party it will take a while for the enemies to die. Enemies also have vulnerabilities and resistances that make sense and reward players for "correctly" approaching fights, which is more interesting and fun than something basic.
+Writ reward is satisfying. It doesn't feel slightly undercooked like the Living Spell one did.

+/- Dungeon is really short. Like "has two areas and if you go fast you can finish it in under 20 minutes" short. This isn't bad on its own, but the mid and especially upper teens level in the UD is still struggling badly from a lack of variety.

-It's pretty light on resources and loot, despite the writ instructing you to "plunder the peaceful Galeb-duhr for their resources." There just aren't much resources to plunder. The lower level dungeons had a lot of useful low-end materials, and here there were a few marble/granite nodes, a diamond node, and maybe a malachite node. It's possible I just missed it, but there's only so much ground to cover.
-It's really minor, but the Living Rock creatures are marked as Constructs, and I feel like they should probably be Elementals.
-The XP seems a little undercooked. In a group of 4 with all of us about level 20, I'm getting less than 20 XP per kill. They've got decent chunks of DR and they're crit immune, so you can't blow them apart as fast as you can regular creeps. It does feel a little unrewarding there. I know how finnicky the CR-to-XP system can be, and I don't think they need a big boost, so I wouldn't advise bumping them up by more than 2 or 3 ranks.

I liked it. I think certain character builds here (monks, namely) would do really well here, and the Petrified Forest definitely needed more excuses to exist, so this dungeon is pretty cool. I'm also quite a big fan of more "Evil Dungeon" options; the writ makes it explicit that the Galeb-duhr are not really evil or a threat to Andunor's security, you are simply being hired as an evil band of raiders and plunderers to steal things from a village. This is a really cool approach, and I hope in the future we'll see more things like it in the UD (svirfneblin dungeon when?) and on the surface, maybe with Sencliff, where you can raid island villages and stuff.

And I believe that's all 5 of the new dungeons covered. Great work Irongron (and Bat)! You guys did a great job here with this new content, it's a very welcome addition to an Underdark that sometimes quite nakedly shows its age.