Vaylan crypt / goldfeather quest

[O-louth]

The quest is nice, overall. However, long story short, the searing light used by the mobs is unblockable, and the way the spawns are designed, means that there is alot of spammed damage that cannot be blocked with any known means.
The only way to block the damage, is with a lvl 4 (min 7 lvl) spell, which makes no sense for a lvl 6 maks quest.

My suggestion would be to change the mobs to corrupted versions, and change the damage output from divine to negative energy instead, or to magic missiles (in short, somewhich which CAN be blocked).

The only way to complete it ATM, is to soak up the damage, heal ALOT, and hope to survive.

[Acemvi]

Can confirm, it's very painful. Especially when you're spawning 4 at a time as a group. Weirdly enough, the mobs will focus fire one person at a time instead of spreading the damage around, which makes it even harder.

It was hilarious, but it's probably not balanced too well atm.

[Zool]

Do they have see invis? do they have good spot? can you get around it using none conventional tactics? (anything but run at with sword etc? - which is what I use 99.99% of the time admittedly?)

What are thier HP? AC high or low?

If they are glass cannons, I could see this potentially being ok, as you could use some kind of AoE to smash them before they get shots off? what about disabling spells/items?

I am asking cos I literally have no clue what this is.

[HellzYeah]

A lot of these questions are answered with "It's a 4-6 quest, so probably not and also it doesn't matter" and one screenshot.

Invis and stealth are not helpful because it does not solve the big problem with these encounters. That being that they all seem to activate at the same time and pick the same target (whoever is closest, anecdotally) to just spam this spell at while all casting simultaneously. There's no save associated, so you're just eating unblockable divine damage from 5-10 sources.

I'm not really sure what "none conventional tactics" means unless you have a secret way to kill upwards of 10 mobs without being visible in a 4-6 level range. Do please let me know if you do, I would very much love to use it all the time.

With how low HP ranges are, each of these encounters very nearly killed whoever it targeted in our party.

Which brings me to the second half of this- It's not worth doing because of all the damage you inevitably take while doing it. We ate through multiple serious and moderate healing wands during this quest just trying to survive the next volley of Searing Lights and ended up getting a bunch of useless flowers, a bad umbrella, and a bunch of re-branded Cure Light Potions. (Side note, can we not put these in quest loot? The last thing I want is a bunch of different potions that all do the same thing but don't stack and all look different for no reason.)

[O-louth]

@hellzyeah Agreed.

I am all for conventional tactics. Now, I made this suggestion as a courtesy, because I do not want to see the valuable time of an Admin spent on something that PCs will never use. Thats counterproductive.

My lvl 6 paladin, can take on just about any low lvl quest with EASE. And I quest for EXP, loot and prestige points (and fun). If my choices are between this quest, where I spent about 20 cure serious healing potions, just to stay alive, and a shit ton of healing potions between fights, or any other lowby quest, where I earn more than I use, I will simply do them. There are plenty of quests to do, after all.

Can I run through them with invis? sure. But is that what was intended when you made the quest?

[Zool]

@hellzyeah Wow, actually got some lucky low rolls on some of those hits too. 37 unblockable damage in one round is a tad on the nasty side (and it could have been 80!!!)

Like I say, I have no idea what this is as I've been (and still am) inactive so I was guessing.

I would say there need to probably be lower numbers on the maximum number of mobs that can spawn from this (these?) trigger(s?) at the absolute least.

I would also perhaps, make a new version of these motes of heaven, which also have a protective spell (even if it sucks) which would make the AI likely to cast that at least some of the time, splitting the damage up between rounds somewhat in most instances.

Invis plus AoE damage might handle them if they have low HP and no magical resistances.
Sending in summons as a sacrifice could also work.
If they are low HD, and not immune, sleep could be effective.
Darkness? though I dont really know how that works anymore as it seems to have been changed from the old version which gave HiPS and stuff.
Any AoE disabling spell potentially

Not to say any of the above precludes this needing a second look.

I think making two versions which it spawns from, one of which has a protective spell might be a good plan, along side probably reducing the maximum number that can spawn in a single room/line of sight.

[Acemvi]

There was a brief discussion in Discord and consensus seems to be "let's reduce the mobs and see what happens." Will be happy to give it another go.

[toportime]

@zool After the Discord discussion there are extremely limited tactics that could be used in the 4-6 range to overcome this, I talked about them in the chat and won't put them here, if I could think of it others can to. I haven't tested this myself but from everything I have seen posted here and in discord, I think this quest would be fine at a higher lvl range, even 7th lvl opens more options other than the extremely few you get currently. Just my 2 cents.

[HellzYeah]

After some thought, I think maybe going back to the drawing board with the enemies here is probably the best solution. Increasing the level range doesn't really solve the problem that this quest is just 50+ of the same problematic enemy plus one boss mob. Adding more variety in spawns doesn't solve the problem of the damage these enemies put out being almost entirely non-interactive.

The underlying design just doesn't work in my opinion, and I think starting over entirely when it comes to the enemies is going to yield more positive results than trying to make a bunch of unblockable divine damage work for a 4-6 quest.

It's okay to try new things, but I just don't think this one works.

[Zool]

@hellzyeah One or two in a group is probly ok. Whole groups of them is a bit dubious probly

[JoeKickAss]

I did this quest, and I found it easy enough with stuff I found IG, a depleted spellbook, no DM, faction loot/perks. The quest is nice, and pretty quick - which is an underrated quality in quests.

A couple of things:

• The risk/reward for this quest is pretty dire. The loot is miserly even by current setting standards and pretty much every other quest in its range is better to do since XP gain is also bad. I would probably do this quest, ignore all the moots and chests, until the second last room. if you can't do that, I'd probably just avoid the quest. Seems optimal strategy, and you'd save more on healing.
• At the end there's a "reset quest" icon. This should be labelled more clearly. I assumed if you touched that, you had won, but you had to clear the mobs before you do it.

[Puffy]

Reduced to 1-2 spawns per room, loot tweaked.

[Puffy]

Fix confirmed