Today I made the mistake of replaying The Pit and was reminded of why it's the worst dungeon in the game and I'm never playing it again

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WDS

Well-known member

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Okay, I can't say with confidence that it's the worst. But it DOES have, by far, the largest number of huge problems and obviously horrible ideas. It's practically a checklist of every bad idea that ever made it into any DDO dungeon:

- Automap so bad and worthless that players had to make their own map in MS Paint and put it on DDOwiki and that's what everyone uses instead;
- A "Lights Out" puzzle;
- Enemies that infinitely respawn while you're trying to do puzzles;
- Puzzles (more than one) that are basically impossible to solve unless your camera accidentally happens to be in just the right place and pointed in just the right direction;
- Spending two hours to get 99% of the way through only to be unable to finish because you didn't bring a specific thing that the dungeon description didn't say you needed and which no other dungeon needs (I learned my lesson the first time but I'm still reminded of it every time)
- Traps that can't be disabled;
- A room where you have to flip OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAND switches to progress
- etc.
 
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Elfishski

Well-known member
The Pit is certainly polarising, and everyone hates it the first time or three... Personally wish there were more quests like The Pit, or Spies, etc, that require a bit of learning but are a lot more fun than run of the mill "clump of enemies standing in corridor" quests once you do learn them. Do it a few more times and you'll come to love it too... :)

Curious what special item you think you needed?
 
Bjond

Bjond

Well-known member
The Pit is definitely designed with reruns in mind. It's exceptionally fast and easy for folk that know every pixel by name, but for new folk on their first run through? Yep, exactly what you said.

I don't run it much, but I kinda like it. Wiki has some nice maps/solves that you can use to do it quickly.

I wish they'd fix the jumping/hitching issues in the game; parkour puzzles would be so much more fun.
 
PaleFox

PaleFox

Well-known member
It's a nice quest when you're on a beefed up monk.
My two annoyances:
- that lever room with no indication which lever(s) you should pull or not
- furnace 3, no way to solo and jump timing
 
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Lillentle

Active member
1. The map, the lights outside the room tell you where to go, green means room done orange means do this room red means room locked. This took me about 5 years to learn but once I did made it so easy. So map problem is fine.

2. The puzzle thing is annoying when soloing, but if you're soloing you should be strong enough for it to not matter, and the puzzles are easy.

3.Idk what you mean by this, maybe the room with the wheels? that does take some time but is easy. Also the symbols are always the exact same, so you just spin the wheel the exact amount it needs each time.

4. What specific item do you need?

5. Yeah the traps I agree are annoying, always have been, but on the other end traps nowadays mean nothing, rogues only disable them for extra XP.

6. The switches room you can normally just stand ontop of the bubble and pull the switch, otherwise just keep pulling switches lol.

The pit is a hard quest with an awful reputation, but if you're in a group with people who know how to run it, it's amazing XP.
 
paddymaxson

paddymaxson

Deliberately obtuse
I like the pit but like all complicated DDO quests it has a very specific DDO problem in that there's 3 ways to play it and only 2 of them help you learn it:
  • Run it solo very slowly to learn it
  • Run it on a public party and have everyone else who also doesn't know it stare at the back of your head so you feel anxious that you're the idiot here and take just as long as solo
  • Run it on a public party and not learn it because the guy who runs it every life joins your party and solos it while you're lost and he gets annoyed you're not there to pull levels for him in Furnace 3.
I've finally been doing some endgame raids recently and just sort of pretending I know *** is going on in them, mercifully a lot of them are easy to follow.

Edit: Obviously there's the 4th way when you become the guy from the third way, being annoyed at the people who don't know it who are there is optional
 
Last edited:
nicholas

nicholas

The Titan of Shadowdale
WDS said:

-​


Okay, I can't say with confidence that it's the worst. But it DOES have, by far, the largest number of huge problems and obviously horrible ideas. It's practically a checklist of every bad idea that ever made it into any DDO dungeon:

- Automap so bad and worthless that players had to make their own map in MS Paint and put it on DDOwiki and that's what everyone uses instead;
- A "Lights Out" puzzle;
- Enemies that infinitely respawn while you're trying to do puzzles;
- Puzzles (more than one) that are basically impossible to solve unless your camera accidentally happens to be in just the right place and pointed in just the right direction;
- Spending two hours to get 99% of the way through only to be unable to finish because you didn't bring a specific thing that the dungeon description didn't say you needed and which no other dungeon needs (I learned my lesson the first time but I'm still reminded of it every time)
- Traps that can't be disabled;
- A room where you have to flip OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAND switches to progress
- etc.
Click to expand...
I agree the Pit is Very Long a Tedious to run
 
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Ebondevil

Well-known member
paddymaxson said:
I like the pit but like all complicated DDO quests it has a very specific DDO problem in that there's 3 ways to play it and only 2 of them help you learn it:
  • Run it solo very slowly to learn it
  • Run it on a public party and have everyone else who also doesn't know it stare at the back of your head so you feel anxious that you're the idiot here and take just as long as solo
  • Run it on a public party and not learn it because the guy who runs it every life joins your party and solos it while you're lost and he gets annoyed you're not there to pull levels for him in Furnace 3.
I've finally been doing some endgame raids recently and just sort of pretending I know *** is going on in them, mercifully a lot of them are easy to follow.

Edit: Obviously there's the 4th way when you become the guy from the third way, being annoyed at the people who don't know it who are there is optional
Click to expand...
Best way (5th way?):
Dual Log it with a pair of hirelings on each account
One character with evasion takes top half (For switches room), other character takes bottom half (saves a lot of running back and forth)
Stand hirelings on top of the two valves that activate air jets in furnace three on passive
Use the 3d Wiki map which has the order and locations listed on them to easily identify where to go (Orange crystals also help)

Edit: Hug the walls while traveling the spirals after the traps are activated, let's you avoid most of the traps
 
Talzor

Talzor

Well-known member
PaleFox said:
It's a nice quest when you're on a beefed up monk.
My two annoyances:
- that lever room with no indication which lever(s) you should pull or not
- furnace 3, no way to solo and jump timing
Click to expand...
I can solve one of those. You don't actually need to search for the right lever to pull. If you stand in juuust the right spot on top of the blue bubble you can pull the final level. It take a bit to find it at first, but when you get used to it it's really quick.
 
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Wrensel

Well-known member
The Pit is a polarizing quest, like many non-traditional DDO quests. You either love it or hate it (or hate it and grow to love it). It is also a very weird quest in that it is the amalgamation of about 10 smaller quests that got merged into a single quest, which is why it has so many piecemeal parts to it.
 
Terranigma

Terranigma

Well-known member
Talzor said:
I can solve one of those. You don't actually need to search for the right lever to pull. If you stand in juuust the right spot on top of the blue bubble you can pull the final level. It take a bit to find it at first, but when you get used to it it's really quick.
Click to expand...
The spot, for reference.

PaleFox said:
It's a nice quest when you're on a beefed up monk.
My two annoyances:
- that lever room with no indication which lever(s) you should pull or not
- furnace 3, no way to solo and jump timing
Click to expand...
The key to doing furnace #3 solo is to jump into the bottom floor air jet. Your jump adds to the air gust vertical motion to give you a super burst upwards.
 
Mokune

Mokune

Well-known member
Terranigma said:
The spot, for reference.


The key to doing furnace #3 solo is to jump into the bottom floor air jet. Your jump adds to the air gust vertical motion to give you a super burst upwards.
Click to expand...
The floor air jet will shoot me all the way to the top about 10% of the time. The other 90% it drops me just a little bit above one of the lower pipes which is an easy enough route to take providing you have a feather fall item and Jump skill of 40+ (NEVER ignore Jump skill and always have jump and heroism/g.heroism pots, clicky, spell or scroll to get you to 40)
 
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