Quest Feedback: Goblin Valley revised

Swifty Willownall

Party: level 9 Paladin with gear tailored against goblins and an armor class focused build.

Quest area: I like it. It's much more open than previously but still has a valley vibe to it. It condenses down what the old quest has without losing it's identity. There's goblins, in the valley, and you gotta go kill their chieftain.

Optional area 1, camel guy: I enjoy that this is out of the way, but discoverable with a tiny bit of exploration. I enjoy what is there to interact with.

Optional area 2, what's black and white and read all over?: Another findable area and optional extra thing to do during this quest. It's neat, just had a couple of bugs. There is an NPC to talk to with some skill checks. The first time I talked to it, I failed the skill check and it seemed like the NPC was going to attack me. But they stayed blue. I talked to them two more times. On the third time, a 5th skill check option appeared, and a 6th non-skill option appeared as well. I chose the sixth option, but was unable to complete it. I am unsure if you need search for it, it sounds like you do.

Optional area 3, don't stick your head in it's mouth: Hooboy, I went into this section of the map with expectations and they did not disappoint. There is a clear warning telling you that it's optional and hard, and the sign isn't lying. This was my first time doing this quest, and so I actually left and rested before coming back in fully buffed. I know I'm not supposed to do that, but it was for testing purposes, and I'm kind of glad I did. My buffs would not have been enough alone, and I had to drink a few potions to survive the encounter. I believe that this encounter is deadly enough to warrant a rest before it, and since it's near the end of the quest a number of buff durations could expire before getting to it. And the kicker? The second part of the fight bugged out and didn't aggro onto me. They just stood still and watched my duel.

Now, I'm advocating for both sides here. I think this encounter, assuming all the things don't bug out, is way over the top and deadly for a 4-10 quest. Any regular party attempting this unprepared is probably going to TPK, and a party of people who have actually attempted this encounter before and has an idea of what to expect still has a very likely chance of TPKing. That said, I found it fun because my PC was built for things like this. I felt challenged and engaged, and it IS an optional encounter. There is nothing forcing the party to do it. I did find that the loot in there wasn't worth the threat of dying over however. It was more of the same that I found in the normal part of the quest. This was my first attempt, so I don't know the scope of what can drop. Perhaps I just got RNGd.

ShadowRealm

@Swifty-Willownall Is your feedback about the difficulty only on the optional area 3 part with the warning of it being dangerous?

Swifty Willownall

@ShadowRealm Yes. Difficulty is just focused on optional 3. The rest of it is fine. If anything, it may be a bit easier than the previous version due to the number of goblins being reduced(which also reduces the number of attacks, and the number of goblins that spawn with sneak attack) Liberal use of ghostly visage is very strong on this quest as per usual against small armed, green people. The design of the area for optional 3 is good as well. With how it descends, it immediately made me know that something dangerous awaits me there and had me cautiously approaching.

Edit: Sturdy is telling me that he and another party managed to do this optional 3 as well and they survived with his barbarian tanking some hits. He says he nearly died. He does however have roughly 160ish hp and was soaking 6 damage per hit he took. The party managed to focus the main threat down before anyone died.

Thinking on it more, it's one of those encounters that can turn south pretty fast, but things like haste and improved invis can help out immensely too. So it's a bit harder to gauge the actual difficulty of this encounter than I first thought.

Ultimately it was fun. 👍

Mr.Moloch

@Swifty-Willownall The bugs you're reporting, what version of the module was this? I found those in testing, and thought they were fixed. I'm assuming this is all recent.

Swifty Willownall

@Mr-Moloch Yeah. Current version. 8839

Eraamion

We did the quest the other day in a party of five or six, consisting of high level capable people as well as lower level newbies, and it seemed well balanced.

Mr.Moloch

Fixed the bug with the dialog encounter; working on a bug fix for the enemies that weren't attacking. Maybe I have it this time around....? 8340 Please report any problems as separate bugs, as this will get messy and hard for me to keep track of moving forward. :D

Mr.Moloch

@Swifty-Willownall Also big thank you for the review; this kind of post is extremely helpful!