So nice to hear this direct feedback!Thank you all for the feedback. Adding more monsters this week.
Update 69 Preview 3: Myth Drannor Wilderness Area
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Andu Indorin
Well-known member
Sorry I missed your post. Too busy running around the Wilderness myself!
That was a tricky one! The Temple was the triangular building north of the north crater, along the road east from Times Long Past. The entrance to the ruin is obscured by a bush. Then you have to hop up a couple of times to "touch the whirlwind" to get credit for the location.
Andu Indorin
Well-known member
As for farming mobs, the area around Seeds of Decay is fair game.
Thank you, I know exactly the location you're describing.
PurpleSerpent
Monster Hunter of Moderate Renown
Psychoblonde, Thorntoe and I have been collaborating on trying to get the rares list together, and I think we've found at least eight of them so far. (Two of them - a Purple Worm and a Fang Dragon - are purple-named fixed spawns, so technically not rare.)
I think the problem really is that the rares have a single fixed location, classic style, in a very big wilderness, and a lot of them so far haven't been near the quests, so finding them without a map is very difficult.
Buddha5440
Trainer of those who beat dead horses
It's almost like they are...GASP... RARE!!!
glass_jaws
Well-known member
OMG tell me the Fang Dragon doesn't permanently reduce your hps like the one in dnd does.
Phoenicis
Savage's Husband
Wow. That name is a blast from the past.
Was playing a MD campaign back in the day as a Blade-bard.
Put on a hat of many classes and picked cleric to toss a couple cure spells (bards didn't have cure back in that version) DM said cleric eh, what deity? Off the top of my head I said Shaundkul (we had just gone thru something about him and that was the first name than came to mind).
Guess who was stuck as a cleric, bugger stuck that hat to my head until I had re-established his temple...
Andu Indorin
Well-known member
Are you sure about a single fixed location. I'd swear I encountered two different rares (Thayan Red-Named caster and a Demon) at the same locale. ...
Kasanje
YouTube Creator
Oh that's great!
glass_jaws
Well-known member
That's amazing. My very first dnd character was a cleric of Shaundakul. It was semi late 2nd edition era around the time of Skills and Powers.
Flimsy Firewood
Senior Game Designer
Great swords are great. You could even say, the greatest.That's amazing. My very first dnd character was a cleric of Shaundakul. It was semi late 2nd edition era around the time of Skills and Powers.
Arthuvin
Well-known member
Is there a possibility of adding some side quests to be done in the wilderness in the style of LOTRO?
PurpleSerpent
Monster Hunter of Moderate Renown
Did the demon spawn out of a portal? There's a possibility that means the demon has multiple spawn locations, since (as far as I can work out) portal locations don't seem to be fixed.
Dragavon
Well-known member
Now, I might misunderstand you here, but how is that a problem? Sounds like a wilderness / explore area done right to me ?
PersonMan
Well-known member
I think they meant "problem" specifically only related to difficulty discovering all the rare encounter enemies for the purpose of documenting them.
Brakkart
Well-known member
So I've spent over 6 hours now running around the wilderness and I love it, it's massive and beautiful and is a really good mixture of ruined city and the wilds around it. It is a bit empty though, but apparently there will be more monsters added too it which it needs, as currently whole regions of the map feel deserted or very sparsely inhabited.
My main problem with the map though isn't it's size or the density of critters in it, but with variety. This comes in two forms:
1. Architecture. Myth Drannor is an elven city that was mostly home to elves yes, but it was also home to humans and dwarves. This gets a fair bit of mention and there is some alluding to this in the buildings, mostly notably the House of Gems which is very dwarven in style. The city was also home to Halflings and Gnomes though which doesn't seem to get mentioned anywhere. While the ruined city is stunning, it is also much too uniform. There should be neighbourhoods where humans mostly lived that might look a lot like Wheloon, others that might resemble Hobbiton and so on. Instead it's pretty much all elven architecture and it shouldn't be. Too many of the buildings are intact apart from superficial damage, Wheloon is much more ruined and thats a fraction of the age of Myth Drannor. Too many of the buildings are the same so that one area of the city looks much the same as any other area of the city. And it shouldn't.
2. Monsters. There are not nearly enough types of monsters, and I don't just mean different monsters but also different types of the same monster. Why are all the spiders in the ruins the same type? DDO has at least a dozen different types of spider so use them. And the city is a ruin and has been for hundreds of years, all manner of creatures should be there, some just lurking, otrhers having carved out a small territory for themselves either having entered the ruins on purpose or arriving from some portal from who knows where? More than any area in DDO this wilderness zone is a chance to use the full catalog of DDO's monster types, because they could have been brought there from anywhere and had to survive since.
I love the portals opening and dropping random mobs into areas, but there should be a HUGE list of mobs that could appear. Frost Giant raiding party that suddenly finds itself hundreds of miles from its glacier home? Tribe of Kobolds that suddenly appears? Rival adventuring group? Drow slavers? Bugbear Warband? Yes to all of these and a hundred more such groups please. There are random encounter tables in the old Myth Drannor box set for 2nd edition, please use them.
My main problem with the map though isn't it's size or the density of critters in it, but with variety. This comes in two forms:
1. Architecture. Myth Drannor is an elven city that was mostly home to elves yes, but it was also home to humans and dwarves. This gets a fair bit of mention and there is some alluding to this in the buildings, mostly notably the House of Gems which is very dwarven in style. The city was also home to Halflings and Gnomes though which doesn't seem to get mentioned anywhere. While the ruined city is stunning, it is also much too uniform. There should be neighbourhoods where humans mostly lived that might look a lot like Wheloon, others that might resemble Hobbiton and so on. Instead it's pretty much all elven architecture and it shouldn't be. Too many of the buildings are intact apart from superficial damage, Wheloon is much more ruined and thats a fraction of the age of Myth Drannor. Too many of the buildings are the same so that one area of the city looks much the same as any other area of the city. And it shouldn't.
2. Monsters. There are not nearly enough types of monsters, and I don't just mean different monsters but also different types of the same monster. Why are all the spiders in the ruins the same type? DDO has at least a dozen different types of spider so use them. And the city is a ruin and has been for hundreds of years, all manner of creatures should be there, some just lurking, otrhers having carved out a small territory for themselves either having entered the ruins on purpose or arriving from some portal from who knows where? More than any area in DDO this wilderness zone is a chance to use the full catalog of DDO's monster types, because they could have been brought there from anywhere and had to survive since.
I love the portals opening and dropping random mobs into areas, but there should be a HUGE list of mobs that could appear. Frost Giant raiding party that suddenly finds itself hundreds of miles from its glacier home? Tribe of Kobolds that suddenly appears? Rival adventuring group? Drow slavers? Bugbear Warband? Yes to all of these and a hundred more such groups please. There are random encounter tables in the old Myth Drannor box set for 2nd edition, please use them.
PurpleSerpent
Monster Hunter of Moderate Renown
It is! I much prefer this system to the approach of having hundreds of potential spawn points scattered around a massive area, because it often means It took me weeks of effort to find some of the rares in a couple of areas that did this (Wheloon was the worst offender by far, but Barovia and the Epic Orchard weren't exactly a walk in the park either.) I still haven't finished the King's Forest rare encounter list, although fortunately I at least managed to track down all the ones involving monsters.
On the other hand, it does generally mean that when the area is first released, finding the rare encounters takes somewhat longer, especially in a large area like Myth Drannor.
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