Underused Enemies

The_unpronounceable_one

The_unpronounceable_one

Member
Greetings, individuals!
Seeing as how I have not seen a post like this yet, I want to know what enemies you think are underused in DDO?

In my opinion, I feel like there aren't enough horned devils encountered throughout the game. Aside from that one in devil assault, I find the rest of them fun to fight.
 
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woq

Well-known member
Horned devils are great indeed! Good call. In general I feel like most of the monsters in the game are already somewhat well represented.

Of existing creatures, I wouldn't mind seeing more Hags and Doomspheres - getting blasted to smithereens or being debilitated to misery is always a hoot.

Edit: I thought about it a little more and realized that Hags are incredibly well represented, I just like them too much I guess.
 
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PurpleSerpent

Monster Hunter of Moderate Renown
Ah, now this is my sort of question! I've had a look through the wiki page on Monsters by race and assembled a shortlist:
  • Dragonborn (2 monsters): Weirdly rare compared to other player race monsters. One shows up in the Cogs, and one's the end boss in Members Only; five years later and we've never seen another one.
  • Dream Reavers (4 monsters): Significantly rarer than other types of Quori (I'm discounting Karalaq Quori like the Devourer of Dreams since those are supposed to be extremely rare.)
  • Angels (12 monsters): Given the amount of Shavarath-themed content you'd have thought we might have crossed swords with Angels a few more times. Eberron's a setting with shades of grey, after all, and heaven knows we've got enough content involving Demons or Devils as enemies.
  • Evil Eyes (5 monsters): Did you know the first one of these to show up had nothing to do with the Lord of Eyes? Since then, though, they've only ever shown up in Daelkyr content.
  • Ghosts (6 monsters): Compared to their very common cousin the Spectre, ghosts only show up in The Haunted Halls of Eveningstar and one rare in Thunderholme. Still, Myth Drannor has a very good chance of including at least a couple.
  • Vargouille (2 monsters): I understand that these are largely confined to Ravenloft content, but at least one semi-official pen-and-paper adventure has them showing up in the Mournlands.
  • Armored Beholders (4 monsters) / Frost Beholders (2 monsters) / Shadow Beholders (3 monsters): @woq mentioned Doomspheres (6 monsters) above, but I'd also like to put my vote in for these three, even rarer, Beholder variants.
  • Hellcats (7 monsters): These are still weirdly rare given both the prevalence of Fiends among DDO's roster of enemies and the fact that they have a Monster Manual entry which needs you to kill 6 different versions.
  • Cinderspawn (technically 6 monsters, but I'd argue 4 of them are essentially identical): The fact that five of these six very cool monsters show up in one adventure pack (Necro 4) which is over a decade old is a bit of an indicator that they've been almost completely forgotten.
  • Storm Giant (3 monsters): Giants are cool! Storm Giants are very cool. Unfortunately, unlike every other variant of Giant they've only ever been used as boss-level enemies, and it's been over 10 years since even that last happened.
  • Clay Golem (6 monsters): I'm not sure why these have received so little attention compared to other Golem variants. I'd also appreciate them showing up in a new location since they're currently a complete pain to farm for the Monster Manual.
  • Death Knight (4 monsters): In my opinion the 5E version of these are one of the coolest monsters in the current edition of the game, and I reckon one of these would make an ideal antagonist (of a quest, at the very least) if DDO ever returns to the Dread Domains.
  • Salt Mephits (5 monsters) / Dust Mephits (8 monsters) / Sand Mephits (8 monsters): Very underused compared to their Air, Fire and Ice mephit cousins. I suspect this is because they don't slot into one of the Eberronian planes quite as neatly.
  • Yugoloths (8 monsters): Ten years after their introduction we still only have one of the many types of Yugoloth, despite a selection of sub-races nearly as broad as Demons and Devils.
  • Taken (3 monsters): OK, these got their spotlight in the Missing chain, but I'd still like to see more of them. (Even if it's only because I want to photograph one.)
  • Sphinxes (1 monster): I've generally left more recent monsters out of this lineup (that's why I haven't asked for more Balors or Blink Dogs, since they haven't really had the time to catch up yet), but it seems a waste that the only Sphinx monster to ever show up is a skippable fight right at the start of White Plume Mountain. (I know there have been a few NPCs but it isn't really the same.)
  • Ice Spiders (6 monsters) / Phase Spiders (7 monsters): Ice Spiders are one of the first monsters most players will ever encounter, so it's sort of a shame that they hardly ever show up again past Korthos. I'm also a big fan of the design of Phase Spiders, although I'm aware a lot of people find fighting them a real pain.
  • Minotaur Skeletons (5 monsters): It's a skeleton of a Minotaur! It must have taken ages to animate! Why are these only in Ravenloft and two Night Revels challenges?
  • And finally: Shadow Dragons (1 monster). It's literally just Aurgloroasa, and in my opinion she's one of the coolest enemies in the game. Surely there must be a way to include at least one more of these? (If SSG are repeating the trick with purple-named wilderness bosses in Myth Drannor, one of these feels like it would fit right in.)
 
Xgya

Xgya

Well-known member
PurpleSerpent said:
Ah, now this is my sort of question! I've had a look through the wiki page on Monsters by race and assembled a shortlist:
[snip]
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Interesting post.

Great points abound in that list of yours, because many monsters with few representatives ALSO have few in sheer numbers (e.g: there's a total of 8 killable Cinderspawn split between 3 quests, but by doing the 7 quests there are Taken in, you can kill a few hundred, despite the fact there's only 3 "distinct" ones), but the feeling that some monsters could be more present is a mix of multiple factors, and that list is just one.
 
mbartol

mbartol

Murder Hobo
woq said:
Edit: I thought about it a little more and realized that Hags are incredibly well represented, I just like them too much I guess.
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I won’t give into the temptation to make a comment regarding your s/o. 🫢
 
  • Haha
Reactions: woq
Ungermax

Ungermax

Master Artificer
Illithid. Yes theres those four quests from the invasion. But their moment has passed, the only memorable Illithid is Fred.

I think a legendary return to Korthos where you have to fight the illithid trying to control the dragon could be interesting. That or Fred's evil brother Derf
 
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PurpleSerpent

Monster Hunter of Moderate Renown
Ungermax said:
Illithid. Yes theres those four quests from the invasion. But their moment has passed, the only memorable Illithid is Fred.

I think a legendary return to Korthos where you have to fight the illithid trying to control the dragon could be interesting. That or Fred's evil brother Derf
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Not so sure about this one - there are 36 Mind Flayers in the game, and they serve as common enemies in several of the Xoriat-themed chains, plus incidental encounters in a fairly wide variety of other quests. Also, we're probably getting another set of Illithid Invasion style quests later this year since they're doing an improved version of Illithid Invasion in the autumn, which means we're about to get a bunch more of them anyway.
 
Aelonwy

Aelonwy

Well-known member
I wish they had used the Sphinx more, very under represented since being introduced in 2018.
 
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Blunt Hackett

Well-known member
There's definitely not nearly enough spiders ;)

In seriousness, I hope we see a few more dragons in Myth Drannor, even cooler if they're metallic.

Their are other inevitables in D&D, but we only have a handful and they're all maruts.

It would be nice to have a few more quests with warforged titans to fight, particularly in quests levels other than levels 18-20 and endgame.

+1 to more sphinges. I need more opportunities to use its weird plural.
 
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woq

Well-known member
Shear-buckler said:
We need more monsters that are unique to certain quests not less.
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There is certain truth to this as homogenisation where every quest feels the same is a risk. It does take away from the epicness and wow factor if there were rare mythical turboenemies in every quest, only scaled down.

In general though, uniqueness can be made by giving a base monster type unique features specific to that quest and something being super cool and unique in completely outdated content loses value, and having a similar enemy 15 levels later is perfectly fine as we get to 34 cap I reckon.

Gish is just a gnoll. He's super cool and quite unique though.
 
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Blunt Hackett

Well-known member
Shear-buckler said:
We need more monsters that are unique to certain quests not less.
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I agree with this. It's why I didn't suggest a balor or vrocks. But there are monsters that are underrepresented that don't necessarily need to be that way. As much as I like the sphinges in White Plume Mountain and The Endless Revels, we don't have an evil one. I don't think there should be mobs of them enough to justify a monster manual entry, but a quest where one was the main baddie would be awesome.
 
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