Update 69 Preview 3: Myth Drannor Wilderness Area

[glass_jaws]

Great swords are great. You could even say, the greatest.

I mean Shaudakul's favored weapon is the Sword of Shadows. He knows a good weapon when he sees one.

 

[Andu Indorin]

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.

No portal. If memory serves me correctly, it was a healthy male red-named Hezrou, appearing on the porch of a building with a soon-to-be-plundered chest. I think I was galloping along Eldonsyr's Ride at the time, between the Temple of Labelas Eneroth ("Times Long Past") and the Temple of Shaundakul.

 

[Andu Indorin]

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.

As someone who has kicked about Myth Drannor in pnp, I am having a hard time trying to figure out when this expansion is set. We know that Myth Drannor originally fell in 714 DR; and that the Srinshee had earlier departed Myth Drannor in 666 DR, hinting at difficulties ahead. And,
according to the Grand History of the Realm, the Srinshee (as a baernorn) returned to Myth Drannor. This marked the re-establishment of Myth Drannor as Elven city-state, and there followed over a century of rebuilding and modest prosperity.

Thereafter -- according to Ed Greenwood, aka "you know who" -- Myth Drannor fell a second time in 1487 DR. In this instance, Thultanthar,
the Netherese "City of Shade," was grounded by Elminster with calamitous results.

Hopefully, the Srinshee's messages scattered about the Wilderness may shed further light on this matter, when (and if?) they are all found. But as you are familiar Myth Drannor, I was curious if you had any guesses as to the Dale Reckoning date of this expansion pack.

Also, I agree with your comments regarding the architecture evident in the ruins. But I think it is fair to say that more variety in buildings would require considerably more design and coding. As such, more variety might require us to wait another year or so for Myth Drannor to come to fruition.

 

[Br4d]

Any chance that the Myth Drannor wilderness could be scaled (Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite, ReaperX?) This is one of the lowest hanging fruits out there for making wildernesses valuable to all players instead of just flyover country.

It probably was much more trouble than it was worth to do this 5 years ago however since then player power has crept to the point that wilderness monsters just run up to the average player and fall on their swords instantly.

 

[Brakkart]

As someone who has kicked about Myth Drannor in pnp, I am having a hard time trying to figure out when this expansion is set.

Hopefully, the Srinshee's messages scattered about the Wilderness may shed further light on this matter, when (and if?) they are all found. But as you are familiar Myth Drannor, I was curious if you had any guesses as to the Dale Reckoning date of this expansion pack.

While I can't point to a specific year in Dale Reckoning, the Forgotten Realms we have in DDO is firmly set during the games 4th edition era. I would presume that applies to Myth Drannor as it does to Eveningstar. Mystra is dead (killed by Cyric & Shar) which resulted in the Spellplague and in this time we have the Darkening and such. Myth Drannor was retaken by the crusade army of Evermeet near the end of 3rd edition and began to be rebuilt under the rule of it's Coronal Ilsevele Miritar, and then along came the Spellplague and other calamities and as such the elves are now masters only of a fortified enclave in the ruins, the rest of it having fallen back into the monster infested wilds.

DDO is a sort of hodge-podge of stuff from D&D's long history. The Eberron content we have is rooted in that settings 3rd edition origins as is the game engine itself, but by the time the Realms was added the pen & paper game had progressed to 4th edition, so we have 4th ed Realms. This then continued as the Ravenloft we have is based on the 5th edition module Curse of Strahd. The Isle of Dread comes from the BECMI edition of Basic D&D, yet the version we have in DDO is an island that can move through the planes, which is it's 5th edition incarnation.

 

[Mornyngstar]

Based on the number of rare encounters in Kings Forest that never show up, it seems like they exceeded your wishes. ?

After many years I completed the rares in Kings Forest on Thelanis with my toon Seldissan. She currently has 58%+ of all current Slayers/Rares/Explorers done. (I am doing serial Epic Reincarnations on her so get bored with questing.)