f13.net

I'd go search/post on the official boards if I could get to them, but this will do for now.  Since quests are so central to DDO I want to try to keep track of the ones that seem broken in some critical way, and compare notes if a quest seems broken for one person but not for others.


Kenebrooke's Basement I've already mentioned - I heard one report of it working right once and then being broken every time thereafter.  I haven't gotten it to work at all.  Anyone found a trick to it?


The Stormreach Sewers is the one I'm currently stuck on and will probably give up; it seems like in order to complete the quest you need to go through the entire dungeon (the "Waterworks") and kill every last thing you find.  It's marked as a level 1 quest, but one of the monsters is a level 5 troll, and after repeated attempts I can't even scratch him - his AC is astronomical and he does about 10 points of damage a hit.  And he regenerates.  Is this one that works better in a group?  I find it hard to imagine that even a full complement of level 1 characters would be able to take this thing out.  I did manage to get him stuck in a pit, but now that he's there I still can't hurt him.

Uh oh... is this the quest you need to open up the next area?

No, you can proceed directly to the next area without "finishing" the sewers.  But it looks like you get 600 XP for completing the sewer quest, and I'm guessing that once you've finished it the monsters don't show up there any more unless you choose to reset it.  So I'd kinda like to be able to check it off if possible.

I cant' say I remember that one.  What the official name listed on the you quest journal?

Kenbrook's basement worked for me, but i've only done it once.

Xilren

I don't think it's in the quest journal, which is a bit weird.  But when you go into the Waterworks, you get the little quest list gizmo indicating that you're on a quest.  Each time you encounter a monster, the monster shows up as an objective, and when you kill it, it falls off the list.  Clicking the "XP" button tells you that this is the "Stormreach Sewers" quest and that it's level 1.

Ah ok, it's not truly a quest them.  That not an instanced area, but more like a city area with a few mobs.  The sewers seem to be the closest thing I've seen to a more traditional "hunt around and kill stuff for exp areas" but what you earn seems pretty minimal.  There are also some sewers in the next area, as well as some under neath one of the guild/house areas.  You seem to have to travese these ares to get to the normal opening into a quest instance.  For example, have you tried the missing brothers quest yet?

Xilren

Yeah, I eventually gave up on the troll and went to try the missing brothers.  An acid trap got me when I tried to tumble past it.  (Is there any better way to deal with those things once you've found them?  They're almost never targettable so I can't see any way to disable them.)

I started a cleric and did that Miller quest... the very first one out of the zone where you start off.  It's not easy with those funny metal dogs and when I finished it, it gave me 23 xp.  That can't be right!

Millers swamped me as a bard, even in chainmail I'm having a heck of a time tanking. I definitely do best as a barbarian :P

I forget which quest I was on, I think it's the first quest after the newbie harbor area. I dropped down from some crates and entered a new area, there were two strength-draining traps there, drained me to zero strength. I waited for my str to return and then two metal dogs came at me. I quickly went from 27hp to 9 hp, so I turn and ran. Returning to the crates, I couldn't climb back up, it was too high. The metal puppies couldn't path into the crates, so they were stuck in the trap trying to come at me. They could still hit me, but with zero str I could barely scratch them (If I were math prone, I'd say it was about 5% chance to hit, I rolled a 20 I guess). So I exhausted my supply of newb arrows taking them down 1hp every 20th shot or so.

So...that sucked. I should've just use /suicide...

Yes, I have problems with crates, too.  Sometimes the same crate that I've climbed before is too high.  Also, it doesn't matter if you climb into the water or jump into the water, you always end up underwater... sometimes you sink all the way down and lose hps before you can get back up.  Swimming is really off.  You lose breath way too fast.  I even took some swimming and I still can't make it to anything door I find underwater, let alone open it.  Also, even though I spend brief amounts of time at an inn after I die, every single quest now resets when I'm solo... was it always that way?  I thought not, but I could be remembering wrong.

Sky, try tumbling around a lot.  Bards, like rogues, aren't really meant to stand there and take damage.  Tumbling seems to cut down on the chances of getting hit for us low-armor-high-Dex types.

Signe, what's your total Swim modifier?  Even if you're fairly strong and you took some ranks in Swim, your armor and the amount of stuff you're carrying can still drop you into negatives really easily.

I can almost guarantee that's a total illusion. The game don't have that much twitch and certainly not this early in development.

Oh right... modifiers.  That.  Umm... -23.  That can't be good, can it?  Maybe I should sell something.

After 3 levels, I'm pretty sure it's not.  If I stand still while I fight, I die very quickly.  If I tumble-strafe like a madman, attacks almost always miss, even if multiple opponents are trying to hit me, so I'm able to deal with most easy encounters on my own.  I figure my Mobility feat (+4 AC while tumbling) and full ranks in Tumble are a big part of what make it work, so YMMV depending on what skills and feats you took.

They did advertise that the combat would have a fairly high twitch factor, so this seems like it might be part of that.  Cal, can you confirm or deny?

I do tumble a bit. Don't like the control scheme.

I have noticed that mobs sometimes get themselves in a position close to you and you miss everytime.  If I back up a bit, I start hitting.  I'll /reportbug it if /reportbug will work for me this time.   Anyway, even as a warrior, I notice that moving around gives me better results.  Depending on what class you play, I think this game is pretty twitchy, actually.  Good fun in a group, solo... not so much.  There are already some quests, even extremely quick and easy ones, that you absolutely need a group to get anywhere. 

I need chat bubbles.  I never know when people talk to me.

/agree on the chat bubbles.  NPCs have them, why can't we?

Completely agree. Players should be keeping their eyes on the main window.

There's a chat box?

 :-D

The Quest of Shan-Tor-Whatever sucks donkey balls.  Xil, I kept searching the dungeon for a while after you and that other guy quit, and still no key.  Then I got stuck in a mushroom and logged out.

I suspect the objectives are broken - I noticed that it didn't check off "Speak to Greelix" after we'd spoken to Greelix.  Maybe that was the first sign that things were going wrong.

(edit)
Something is very fishy about that dungeon - I tried re-entering it alone to check it out.  There's a door on the upper level that's set high into a wall with no apparent way to reach it.  It's also completely impossible to get back to the upper level once you've dropped down into the main dungeon area.  I'm going to see if I can get to the beta boards...

I once made a Diku mud completely out of bread code.  You could eat your way out of anything.  All betas should do that.

The combination of this post and your avatar frighten me. Happy Halloween!

Yeah, last night was two borked quests in a row for me, both of them long drawn out affairs where we got to the end and couldn't finish.  Plus my system performance last night was right around "god awful" for most of the night.

Before we grouped, I was with a full group trying the "redhills" quest where you have to battle tons of night spiders, trolls, bugbears/hobs, eventually a drow party and giant fricking spider, and finally a series of hill giants.  We did it all, including a god awful huge jungle area we had to play "hunt the small bag we obviously missed earlier" for 15 minutes, and in the final area after we cleared the giant guards, a force wall was supposed to drop so we could take on the boss giant.  Only it never dropped....We had to bail out of that one too after an hour and half total.  Ugh. 

(On the plus side, had 2 wizards with that group and we effectively used positioning to setup groups of mobs for burning hands cones all night, and when fighting giants were able to have the caster and rangers attack from a distance while me, the other cleric and a figher tied them up.  I liked that intelligent use of tactics can make a nice difference.  And, got some decent loot; arrows of elf slaying, +1 pick of Human slaying, +2 shortsword, Sacred Darkwood shield.)

How long do you figure we spend on the caves quest including the sub quest for the helm inside it?  2 hrs+?  When they say "very long" in the quest log, they seem to mean it.

Maybe we should tackle some of the shorter undead quests I have.

Short synopsis; fun night, but ultimately frustrating.  Still, it's alpha; it's expected.

Xilren

Even when they're horribly broken, they beat the quests in SWG.   :-D

On the topic of missing bags: maybe when you pass by items and/or NPCs that are vital to quests, you should get a spot check to notice them, like you do for traps and hidden doors.  Same logic applies IMO - cuts down on the amount of tedious inch-by-inch searching as long as you bothered to spec out a "perceptive" character.