Planar Observations

Talk about Neversummer 4 with your fellow players.
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Celorn
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Post by Celorn »

P. Fricebottle wrote: Well designed, my personal favorite is the Sea of Graves. The burial mounds in the Fields of Dead Harvest with corpses sticking out are very sickly sweet. However, in the Sea of Graves theres a few spots on the bridges that you can get stuck in.
OMG! yeah... some of the map work on the planes of ns4 really blows my mind... damn.

HALLS OF THE DEAD:

I do agree with fatz, we cleared HoD a couple times including Draco (tho the second time the server crashed (last night) right when we had teleported into Draco's room so we all got trapped --can something be done to fix that-- since you require draco's key to escape his room). Otherwise, a rounded party of 3 or 4 can do it.

General: using a ring of Brom I found which mobs were undead and which ones were not, once you know that it makes strategy a bit easier.

Skull havesters: they die easily to decent melee attacks, running from them is not a good idea. -- also sometimes they seem to not acknowledge you until they are attacked.

Reapers, winnowers, bleakborns: all very easy to take out, just don't turn your back on them, also the bleak's slow speed gives you a strategy to beat them after dealing with the others first.

Sentinels: The still seem to be braindead for the most part as far as seeing players, but occasionally they are firing that annoying range attack before you can even see them!! from an archer's perspective, those arrows are worth farming HoD since you can't buy them in the planar store (yet?).

Crypt Chanters: Yay for bards! Very easy to beat if you are a bard yourself, they actually have some very effective bard AoE spells that can be a real pain when combined with other mobs.

Phantom Guards: undead half-orcs with a nasty halberd, great CR - gives +6 generic drops!

Demiliches: VERY annoying, other than draco's guardians, these guys are the worst non-boss threat for a few reasons...

Blood Amniote: A few bugs with these guys -- they multiply if you don't deal with them quick, and we ran into a room of about 40 of them! Definatley a concern with lag and server crashing potential.

Plague Mummies: Wow... that's quite a fear aura, other than that these guys are decent.

Guardian of the Halls: I almost peed myself the first time I saw one of these giant bone golems! They come in 2's throwing hellballs and have great CR, plus they seem to always drop their lvl40 shields.

Lich King & Draco: Great bosses! Possible to kill and good xp, but I hope Draco actually drops something good one day and something should be done about getting trapped if the server crashes.

POSITIVE PLANE:

General: Once you know how the mobs respond, and what protections you need, you can clear the maps with a party of 2. Individually, no creature is too powerful, but certain combinations are nearly impossible to beat.

Lumi: I love how the paladins and clerics have epic warding, luckily a decent caster can still beat them in seconds, but a meelee type is gonna be in pain until the warding runs out. And if you're EVIL good luck not being killed in 1 or 2 hits by a paladin (again there are simple strategies to beat this that i won't get into).

Xag-Ya: Insane SR, concentration, immune to kd AND have epic warding, but once the warding runs out they're little more than a punching bag.

Aoa: Every caster's nightmare -- seemingly endless mords, dispells, immune to spells and a deadly anti-casting attack, I swear these things strip off earth gen abilities, bardsong and everything! But even unbuffed they are fairly easy to beat with melee.

Glimmers: Not much of a threat, just give 'em a beat down and that's it, but don't let them flank you for too long.

(orb chuckers): amazing AB and their ammo has a ton of elemental damage, these guys are not fun if you're dealing with another enemy as 2 or more of these are flinging 'energy orbes' at you!

BOSS: The most insane crits of all and cuts right through earth gen DR ;]

NEGATIVE PLANE:

General: Definately a few steps harder then all other planes, the mobs here have similar counterparts to POS plane, but they each have something that makes them a bit more difficult! Ebby rings and hod shields are very helpful here since you can't cast neg protectionspells. Also, most of them seem to have a HUGE sphere of awareness since just portalling into the plane and standing still can have at least 10 mobs close in on you in no time.

Death Giant Guards: Giant blackguards with dire maces -- 1 is deadly, 2 or more and you're gonna be hurtin'.

Xeg-Yi: Like their positive plane counterparts, they have warding, SR, etc... but add hellball to the mix with other enemies to hit you while you're down and it's game-over!

Death Archers: If you don't have high spot/listen you can be surrounded by a few of these before you even know what hit you! (I have yet to see anything drop from these, but I'm very anxious to see if they drop a +7 rapier or a nice robe!) The funny thing is, they have a bow if you're lucky enough to see them before they see you, but they immediately switch to their rapier and move in to melee -- but since they have death attacks, it's a good thing they don't snipe or they would be even harder.

Void Ooze: Yet again, similar to the POS plane Aoa, but these guys seem to have higher AC, AB and even more dispells! And like the Xeg, combine one of these with any of the other mobs and you're toast.

Death (greataxers): Probably the most managable mob here.

BOSS: umm.... 82ac and insane amounts of regen.......not good!

Anyhow... great work all around, but I would have to say neg plane could use a bit of a nerf -- perhaps just in awarness bubbles, or number of mobs spawned per zone, and allowing neg protections to be cast would be nice... the oozes will dispell it anyway so I don't see the reason you can't cast it. Also the neg boss is amazingly hard to hit, and even if you do he regenerates it shortly after... probably only a job for a group of high level clerics and mages? Perhaps a BG or PM summons could do well as well.
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Post by Amoenotep »

neg prot is meant not to work in Neg plane....the plane itself absorbes the magic.
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P. Fricebottle
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Post by P. Fricebottle »

I'm guessing you were doing these planes with Earth Genasi from your post Celorn. I'd like to remind you RK doesn't have Earth Genasi, so I'd like to see you say all that without an Earth Genasi. Or after they get hit in the face with a +20 nerf sledgehammer.

The only thing I'm asking (and a few others in-game) is a general CR increase in the mobs. You could go without increasing the outer creatures of HoD CR, but at least increase the Skull Harvesters CR. Their SR and AC are pretty darn high for a CR 32. We had Jester throw a Mord on it and he still couldn't get any spells through.

I've not been to Negative Energy Plane, and only went to Positive Energy Plane a few times so I can't comment on those. I think an easy solution to the Negative Energy Plane would be a huge increase in CR, so it could retain the deadly atmosphere the devs were obviously aiming for but at the same time give rewards well-worth it.

Edit: Oh yeah, I took a screenshot there from today...

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Those are heads in the snow.
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Post by Sparky »

Blood Amniotes divide based on the damage they do. Leave them alone too long with their aura going and you'll be in trouble.
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Post by CrazyJ »

Huh, I hadn't ever noticed them reproducing. That does explain that one time when 4 of us died in turn trying to do a rescue in HOD though...

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Post by kingfatzo »

on the contrary ricebottle,

My "Fatzo" toon (on both NS4-main and reflections) are Not Earthgenasi, and they fair well on the new planes....i just have to play it safe and not rush into a room full of mobs.... :lol:

regardless of the subrace...with any build that relies on buffs, once you get slammed with mords and spell failure , you are on your way up $hit$ creek without a paddle. :shock: :P

the best way to take any of these planes is with a small group of at least 3 or more toons.....
Sparky wrote:Blood Amniotes divide based on the damage they do. Leave them alone too long with their aura going and you'll be in trouble.
lmao...yes we found this out the hard way a few days back on reflections in hod....we thought dm-fire was playing tricks on us :P
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P. Fricebottle
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Post by P. Fricebottle »

You guys aren't hearing me. Its not that I can't handle HoD. If I couldn't and my group kept on dying, we would just go somewhere else. The problem is the CR. We struggle through multiple parts with dual scythers getting off crits, trying to take down a midget, etc. and the xp rewarded isn't very....rewarding.
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P. Fricebottle
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Post by P. Fricebottle »

Alright, I love the CR increase on skull harvesters. Today, we were hangin' out in the halls themselves. I have no complaints design wise, but something...happened. Something, somewhere went terribly wrong.

In addition to the innumerous Blood Amniotes glitch, we had a pure level 39 monk with 74 AC (fully buffed), bard song, clerical buffs, bard buffs, 50% concealment, and the 51 SR. She got dropped faster than a rock. What was sad was that it was by an ice storm. We all (except Chubbs the SD) died.
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Post by MLoki »

So last night we had several 36-40th level -Slave-, [DCN], and [DW] on the server. We decide with this many of us on that we should try Negative Plane again. Several people hadn't even been and others of us had had bad experiences there. After getting there we had to run off the first map so that we didn't get swarmed at the portal. We run into 5 Void Puddles and spent the next 40 minutes fighting these things off. I understand that they are supposed to dispel buffs ect, but why are these so much harder then even the Pos Plane Aoa? Just as we are finishing off the Voids a Death Giant comes in before we can rest and we spend the next 20 minutes or so just getting him to injured. This group was a well rounded party with at least 2 clerics, 2 Mage types, some melee builds and my 40th level Dragon Form Druid but all the buffs we had were useless against this kind of Mob. We also noticed endless dispells going off throughout the combat. Do they have a dispel on hit feature? It seems this was deemed too powerfull for PCs since the few abilities/spells that used to do it have been nerfed so why allow a mob to constantly remove buffs? Not sure if this would have been so bad if at least some spells remained during the fight but for a mob to be that powerfull and have constant dispelling power seems a bit much. Needless to say we left Neg Plane alive but very dissapointed.


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Post by TheBestDeception »

I think at once point I was seeing Alkapwn get counter-spelled constantly by the voids... didn't know it was possible for NPCs to do that.

Yes, the battle was absurdly long, and even with cycling the clerics to zone and rest / rebuff, nothing lasted for longer than a few moments with the amount of dispells that were being thrown around.

At the end, there was 1 loot pile, and it contained a Time Crystal and a few gems. Well worth the effort.
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Neg plain and HoD.

Post by Mestophalies »

Ok here goes my observations of last nights oddities.

Negative Plain;

1, We just entered the plain and were going to be overrun thus had to retreat to the next screen.

2, On the next screen were lovely Void Puddles. I counted 6 of them. No small feat for even our high level party of 7. Not to be redundant but, I concure with Guariands assesment. I am a monk and was being dispelled faster then I could make one swing. So I buffed, swing, buff, swing, you get the picture. :roll:

3, We did not even move forward and from off screen comes running in a Death Giant. The Death Giant seemed to be impurvious to physical attacks for almost 10 minutes, then within the next 10 minutes or so he became slightly injured. This was more then overpowering for most parties.

HoD;

1, The changes to the Plain as far as CR were definately needed. Thanks.

2, The Blood Amniotes bug is way over the top. I actually saw Guardian, Myself and one of the Slaves get an Anmiote to near death in two turns, then it split into three and none of them were even injured. :( This is definately not going to increase players participation in that area.
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Post by Bishop99 »

IDK what you're talking about... HOD is just awesome
Its probably the most fun and challenging hunt in NS4 (very well rounded- great job with it)
I love that if you leave any enemy untouched long enough you will regret it (bloods, chanters, demilichs and you definatly can't ignore the phantoms)


Pos energy plane is fun especially if you're evil but have freinds who aren't its just slow going and the fights are long...

Neg enrgy plane is even slower and doesnt seem to drop as much as pos plane and is therefore gets dull very quick. But still a cool proving ground.

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Post by Tinsicka (new) »

Went there with Bishop99 and 2 others and I agree, that place was a lot of fun. Challenging but well balanced and exciting.

Really enjoyed the drops also, too bad it was on Reflection and on Saturday not long before the server crashed so i guess we lost everything. :cry:

On the other hand, that means we'll just have to go back. :D

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Post by P. Fricebottle »

Halls of the Dead has been fine tuned to the point of perfection I believe.
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HoD

Post by Mestophalies »

Well, Frice take a look in the crypts and tell me how the Amnoites treat you. I'm sure you will be shocked at their multplication rate and horified to note that once they do multiply they become undamaged. Even those almost dead.

Hey, ask any of the seven members of the group that I had to resurrect multiple times. I lived the longest only because of Epic Dodge, good AC and SR.

I'm not complaining. For the most part the Plain is sweet. I am actually able to get around solo if I move slow and lure Mobs to me. I would never go into the Crypts solo however. The Amnoites will kill me and most players very fast.

If they would just devide a little slower perhaps they could be managed but, when you have a party of 7 (2 level 40, 2 level 39, 2 37 and 1 level 36) and your entire party is killed by being over run by Amnoites when their were only 5 in the begining. Thats a little hard to understand. It was insane. They multipled every 2 turns. Very scary stuff. :shock:
Last edited by Mestophalies on Tue Dec 05, 2006 7:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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