Thoughts and ideas from a returning player: The Journal

Father Brandon

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Heya all,

I thought it would be interesting if I documented my experience playing MSC and visiting its locales after returning from a 12 year absence.

The game started with some brief tragedy, which was quickly overcome.

After connecting to a server and naming my character I noticed that I could be a dwarf. I researched it a bit and was saddened to learn that it was impossible due to bugs. Could the dwarf option be disabled until the issues are resolved? It seems like it might cause some potential new players to turn away.

It was finally time to explore Edana again but bloom trouble reared its divine ivory head as I was blinded by a pure white screen, which was quickly resolved after reading a bit more into the issue. Soon I would be blinded by the glory of Edana, how I have missed it.

The music opened a memory gateway and I was captured in visions of pounding rat skulls to a bloody mush with bare fists. I would be the ultimate rat exterminator again.

Soon my hand bones hardened and knuckles calloused from unleashing an epidemic of vermin brain damage and I decided to instead turn my ire towards all of boar-kind. A potion seller was kind enough to breed boars solely for adventurers to abuse.

Sometime after the 10th boar or so I decided to wander over to town and out the mayor as a traitor, which is where the true adventure started.

Some notes so far:

- I forgot to buy a backpack (don't know if I even had enough gold) before I ventured away from Edana. This felt like a huge mistake as the backpack is almost 100% needed. This was my fault but I feel like a backpack or weapon sheath as a starting quest reward would go a long way.

- Regarding weapon sheaths, I found a dagger sheath later on. I thought the weapon sheath was universal for all weapons. Do different sheaths provide different bonuses?

- I noticed that time of day was controlled clientside. It would be neat if it was forced on everyone for all maps. It could lead to some interesting revisiting of areas depending on the time of day and would make the world feel more alive. (this is only a tiny nit pick though. I don't mind it much)

Places new to me that I have fully (I think) traversed through:

Sept. 24th, 2017:

The Thornlands and Edana are still great! I got to bite an apple before giving it to the mayor's guard as a bribe again, that felt nice.

Edana Sewers - I think this map is really good. A decent amount to explore and not super hard once you've leveled up a few times. The sewer grate you need to break through to get the electric slime is sort of odd, first time I went through the sewer with a 3 man party it took 30 seconds or so to break with all of us hitting it using projectiles (stock arrows). Second time I went through with a 2 man party I punched it open in a few swings. Kind of wish it broke in one hit no matter what, had a crack in it to indicate its frailty, or had a switch to open it as I could see it being confusing to newer players (or I could simply be stupid).

I also like the fact that there is a semi-sunken ship down here. Was it magically transported or did someone flush pieces of a ship separately down here? It adds some nice mystery.

Discovered a torn piece of paper with 'of TIME' written on it. Still need to figure out where to apply this knowledge.

Chapel - I also really liked this one. More linear than Thornlands but felt like you could explore a fair bit. The music on this one is really, really good. Had another MSC veteran break the shelf in the shack to show me the dangerous monsters beyond.

It's possible that I missed something but I also feel this sort of secret could use more of an indicator (maybe the shelf was cracked and I didn't see). Like a note on the bed saying the owner had to block passage to his infested stockpile or the like. The stockpile area didn't really have anything besides the termite spiders: a skeleton with a note or journal (cliche, I know. But it can work if clever and short enough) would be awesome. I punched everything and looked everywhere in that room but maybe I missed more secrets back there.

later on, a giant bat wrecked me. Used a bunch of jagged arrows I had found earlier, dealing a massive 20-30 (I was pleased by the damage difference between stock and consumable arrows as you're rewarded for keeping a supply that weighs you down) something damage each time before I was forced back to the old 1-4 damage hits. Finally took it out.

The Chapel itself was neat. I liked the basement. Using the wall sconce down there and opening up some shallow closet spaces was odd; though, it did make me punch all the walls and find another secret with a pally skeleton behind it that murdered me. I actually really like a lowish level zone that has an optional side area you can revisit when a higher level.

At this point another MSC veteran (every other player I have seen is one) connected and kindly tanked the burial skeletons and we were soon on our way to another isle.

I enjoyed the music on the lost island and was surprised to hear it was a stock fruity loops tune. It fits the area, so no problems there. After looking into a flowing sand pit I then realized that I had to get up at 5:30 am and so ends my first session after 12 years.

I really had a blast and if you are interested, I will document what I experience as I continue to play.

Thanks to the devs and community for keeping this game alive!
 

Father Brandon

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Dear journal: Sept 25th, 2017

A fellow adventurer ('Ciervo' for any who see him in-game) I showed this mod to (he is not a returning player, and has never heard of this mod) joins me on my quest.

I decided to train with hammers and axes the majority of the time. I have heard from word of mouth that leveling up with blunt weapons allows you to gain the most health. After jogging down to the armor smith in Edana and picking up a plate helmet with my earnings from the last session I turned my eye to the fields of boar in the Thornlands.

I shove the helmet onto my nicely groomed, pointy-banged hair and spot a stun resistance related message appear (20% I think) as a boon. The only enemy that has stunned me so far is the ferocious boar (which only seems to spawn after slaughtering dozens of regular boars. It must be a collaboration of angered souls seeking revenge) but progress is nice.

Ciervo has a good idea about training all of our lower level weapons, so we make a stockpile of said weapons on ground in the middle of the boar breeding grounds.

I'm hacking away with a rusty axe, Ciervo with a sword. After some time we decide to go back to the pile of weapons and switch it up, only to find that they had been stolen (despawned/deleted over time). I press 'TAB' and notice no one else is playing, some evil magic is afoot.

Luckily I still had a blemish-free hammer with me and Ciervo had a staff. By this point I can charge up and stun enemies, which ends up being an interesting form of damage mitigation vs hard hitting enemies.

Now I stand, knee deep in dead boars. Blood stains the tropical green grass of the Thornlands but I am better for it. I also ended up going back to unarmed, because punching things (and now kicking things!) is really entertaining. I'm equipped with padded gauntlets that I received from the MSC tutorial jail-break map a fellow MSC player showed me and can do over 20 damage per kick. That's fast massive damage as far as I am concerned right now.

After a dialogue with Ciervo regarding our newfound powers we head to the 'H-A-U-N-T-E-D Forest' (or s_for I think). It's perfect for our level and health.

We destroy some skeletal chumps (after facing and kiting the petrified paladin skeleton from the chapel, this is easy). The real danger comes from getting stuck in the skeletons as they rise up and entrap you in a slapping circle, pecking away at your health fast.

The forest gets real dark and gloomy. Soon we are paranoid about the ground abruptly ending in a sheer drop as we can only see a few feet in front of us. After getting lost a few times we come to an opening and are greeted by more skeletons (and some dragonflies). Now there are some options for travel! We can proceed along the forest opening or enter a side-area through an opening in the cliff-side.

We decide to take the side route and soon come across a destroyed bridge and some ruins down below. We are now travelling to calruin2.

"Hello, you have 200 less health than the minimum requirement". I think for a moment and see a shambling rat in the distance called 'Corpse Eater' before launching an arrow at it and immediately rubbing back against the travel zone in a panic to get back to s_for.

Well, now we're sticking to the main path.

A waterfall and lake enters our view. Small islands with hubcaps on them are scattered in the water. I try punching and using them (this will probably be a recurring sequence for anything that looks odd) but nothing happens.

Fast forward a short time and we have braved the waterfall leap and are running across the very cliffs (after eating some spider webs and spiders) we saw while traversing the forest floor of s_for.

- I think this is good map design. I like seeing an area you can not access at the start that you get to travel through later. A nice preview.

Finally I see a steep drop that looks like you can not climb back out of, no other option is available to proceed. Ciervo suspects a boss monster at this point, a good estimation given the requirements needed to not 'cheese' enemies.

After breaking my ankles for the 10th time or so this game I see a giant spider looming at the back of the dark cave. I charge forward, hammer swinging and call for help. Ciervo joins me (breaking his ankles of course).

I can't tell where the green blood ends and my red blood begins as I bash away. Soon I am at 12 hp out of something like 150. I run to to the back of the cave in a panic and sit down (I have no potions). Ciervo starts tanking and casting fire dart. Now Ciervo is close to death and desperately chugs a potion (which starts recovering his health after he goes to 4hp). After I rejoin the fight and kick the spider around with some sick martial arts (dealing double the damage of the hammer), the fight is over.

Once we have finished contemplation regarding giant spiders over a sit-down we explore the cave. Ciervo finds another drop-down and I find some sort of stone staircase leading up and out.

Another tragedy strikes! I start climbing the stairs and Ciervo jumps out of the cave via the drop-down he found, thinking he can climb back up.

I am rewarded with a glowing chest and Ciervo is rewarded with swift death as strange, super high leveled wolfs gnaw at his bones.

We grind skeletons some more and head back to the Thornlands (a golden ring in my possession).

___________________________________________________

More gold is on our mind so we decide to sell some pelts to the crazy fellow who only eats carrots and has a giant pile of shit building in his outhouse cave. On our way through the caves to get to him we start hearing his desperate pleas for help: "Darrrg!", "NOOOooo!". Our pace quickens.

Crazy carrot man is found skulking around with a hunched back, a parade of tiny spiders follow his every move.

We save him and talk to him about the ring using the local chat. His posture straightens and he tells his tale! Sweet, time to give the ring to him. He immediately hunches again as if he has the runs and skulks around, pressing 'E' to use him yields nothing. The quest is doomed until we re-enter the zone.

We head to the caves map to check out something new, only to have my eardrums burst as the 'actor' NPC yells into my face.

- Besides the deafening screech in his intro sentence, I am pleasantly surprised that we get a fully voice-acted NPC.

Now we are facing an orc shaman in the first cave room that has an odd kiln thing in the middle. I die and die again before we lure it out to the shack. Too hard to cheese him with arrows, I die again peeking at him and taking pot shots. Finally the shaman falls and we are greeted with a torrent of fire (NPC actor doesn't seem to mind being engulfed in flames), Ciervo avoiding any deaths here.

I leap onto the oven in the shack, there is always a secret in these chimney/fireplace type objects. We climb down into the basement, break a wall, see some scary red sharp brushes and are greeted with:

"Future Transition Area".

Thus ends the session for today.

Edit:

Actually we went back to the Thornlands and grinded some spitting spiders with an adventurer our level called Aznboi and then the session ended.
 
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Father Brandon

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An addendum to my Sept 25th entry:

The fellow who lives in the Thornlands actually has vegetables other than carrots.

Sept 26th, 2017:

Back to the Thornlands for more (spitting) spider squashing. After 20 minutes or so we are joined by a low level adventurer appropriately named 'Spiders'. All three of us are killing more poison spitting spiders. Spitting spiders seem to short circuit and do nothing if you are a certain short distance away from them..

I end up showing Ciervo a strange vault-like room that contains a dangerous chest and mysterious music. We now both have old books (not sure what to do with them yet). Since we're in a new Thornlands instance I can now hand in the gold ring I found when rummaging through the glowing chest of s_for. With a new shiny "Perfect Skullblade" we go back into s_for to get a gold ring for Ciervo.

We have the ring now and I think a differently named spider boss from our previous attempt spawned before the chest, which is pretty awesome. On our way back to the beginning of the map we are assaulted by a giant bat that absolutely starts murdering us.

It might have been an easier battle if we could hit it more often but all the swooping and glitchy movements made the giant bat almost impossible to nail with arrows. I try jumping and swinging at it (with my sweet skullblade) in time with it swooping down to attack, with no results.

Soon Spiders offers to login with his leveled up alt character to one-shot this nuisance with an AOE spell and we agree. This boss battle sucked.

Ciervo now has a Perfect Skullblade and Spiders mentions that we can wrangle some canine companions if we'd like. We agree and start jogging towards Helena.

I am looking forward to seeing the muddy, orc sieged town once again (I only remember the 2004 version. One other thing I think I remember fondly in old Helena was grabbing arrows that were scattered around in the ground from attacking orcs and throwing them into the skybox to prevent crashing). Wow, I am pleasantly surprised to see a fully fleshed out, quaint looking town with great music.

Bandits arrive and we fight them off. We all almost die and it feels very rewarding. A discount is now offered by those villagers that were not slaughtered by bandits.

Ciervo upgrades his hide armor to knight armor using the majority of his gold and I am still plebbing around in hide armor due to being poor. I do have an almost useless helmet and training shield that he doesn't though!

We travel further beyond Helena to the orc infested Daragoth (this is my first time here). We stomp some Orc Warriors and almost die to the Orc Flayers. We try to take control of the orc village and have to run away from an ogre.

While running away from the ogre (I didn't catch the name, could be a troll or some other monster type). Ciervo and I hide in a spider infested basement.

Another adventurer joins the server! He is very high level and offers to tank some monsters and show us a gobin cave with a boss. We all jump down a super high waterfall into the caves below (this was a fun ride). The high level adventurer freezes the boss in ice while we whack away at it for quite some time.

This is kind of boring. Without the freeze, the goblin king boss would be almost impossible at our level (which is fine, I still like the idea of hard areas of low level zones to come back to later).

Without risk, I think encounters become meaningless.

We make our way out of the goblin cave and head out to Deralia.

I remember being mystified by screenshots of Deralia in the past as I had never been there before and it looked very atmospheric. Soon another high level adventurer joins and Deralia becomes crammed full of spell effects, bears, and skeletons. I'll have to get back here later alone and check everything out and talk to the NPCs. All 5 of us agree to travel to the Isles of Dread and then the server crashes.

Thus ends the session for today.
 

Father Brandon

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Sept 27th, 2017:

Ciervo and I rush to Helena to explore it more than last time we visited. I have just over 700 gold now, but still can't upgrade my armor (Ciervo was lucky enough to buy knight armor for under 700 gold). We find the basement of the Inn and figure out we will need to come back to it at a way higher level, the monsters hit hard.

I'm eager to see the Keledros Prelude I had made so long ago so we head there (we are also just under level 20 I believe, so we should be able to survive).

We smash some bandits and proceed into the cave near the beginning (I forget making most of that cave system). Soon I jump-crouch into an opening in the cave wall and cringe as I get sucked into a spider boss room (what was I thinking when I designed this?). I die once on the spider boss, but very shortly after Ciervo and I take it down. We were slightly confused on how to exit after getting to the chest at the end (surely we could not go back the way we came, too much suction right?). We try doubling back and are pleased to discover that we can leave.

The entrance to Keledros Keep is discovered and I remember that it would be way too hard for us currently, so we leave the cave. Now we are walking past a waterfall outside and fighting more bandits. We continue down the road and discover that it's a dead end, we look up and see a broken stone overpass.

I also recall the mine shaft area that leads down into a bandit cave and we avoid that since you can only leave if you die or defeat all the enemies (we need to level a bit more first). That bandit cave was another poor design choice on my behalf.

I'm scared to fight the stone boar as I forget how strong I had made it, but we brave it anyway. The fight ends up being pretty average and we are rewarded with less gold than what is dropped by a bandit. I also can't remember if I gave the stone boar reward chest a chance to give any good items.

Keledros Prelude is much smaller than I thought it was but Ciervo seems to have enjoyed it. I'm always going to be hyper critical of my own work however.

Onto Deralia again to sail to the lighthouse island (I forget the name).

Once arrived, we make the choice of going to the lighthouse basement right away. Entering the spider caves via a door with a black wall behind it was strange and slightly confusing but soon all the spiders were squashed and eggs broken. We find the old man in the lighthouse and we discover that the spider quest is broken because we completed it before speaking to him. Time to put a statue on the grave outback!

Fast forward and now we're in some goblin caves and exit into a cabin straight out of Evil Dead. Cool! Another voice acted NPC. We defend him and Ciervo heals and buffs with ice shield. We also almost accidentally kill him a few times but he forgives us.

I choose a lesser ice sword and Ciervo picks an envenomed axe as a reward. This has been the most enjoyable quest for me so far.

We make our way back into the goblin cave and I foolishly get myself slaughtered by the chief (I didn't notice that he was doing over 100 dmg per hit). During a second attempt, the chief gets stuck on some geometry and we turn him into a pincushion using our bows. I take his head and 'Spiders' along with another player (Kanta? Aznboi? I apologize for forgetting) join the server.

Soon the goblin caves are cleansed, which ends the session for today.
 

Father Brandon

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Sept 28th, 2017:

A shorter session for today.

Ciervo and I make our way to Helena for more purchasing/selling. I sell my Perfect Skullblade and pickup some platemail armor. We start descending into the basement to try to see if we can brave the ghouls and the one super powerful Diablo/Starcraft looking monster.

At this point another adventurer (super high level) joins the server and starts slaughtering the citizens of Helena. A few minutes later orcs siege the town.

Both Ciervo and I are challenging the horde of orcs while the high level adventurer creates healing circles under us. Ciervo and I die a few times to catapult fire before focusing on the catapult operating orc. Soon the orc tide is stemmed, but a lot of the merchant villagers are dead so we can not take advantage of the newly offered discounts.

The adventurer known as Spiders joins and the other high level adventurer leaves. Spiders, Ciervo and I head down into the basement of the Inn and enter the cultist temple.

The cultist enemies were very interactive during fights, jumping away, throwing daggers, and jumping towards us to start slashing away. My favorite enemy so far.

The Diablo/Starcraft looking monsters (Children of something) still wreck us but we manage to proceed. I can't remember if it was 2 or 3 other high level adventurers that joined at this point. The small corridors and awkward ladder descents of the temple made traversing slightly annoying with so many players, but made for easy enemy kiting (nice Resident Evil Licker models). I didn't get much more than 2 levels down in the temple (2 ladders downward) before the session ends.

The temple felt slightly above our level but we will come back to it sometime soon for sure.
 

Father Brandon

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Sept 29th, 2017:

Time to go back to the Mscaves since it has been a while and we should have no problem with the orcs now.

We rush past the actor in his shack (I think he is working with the orcs given his desired dwelling location) and make out way into the caves. The orc group with their shaman leader is easily dispatched and we continue running through the tunnels until we come to a rope bridge.

The most logical way to cross the bridge is to run and jump and jump again given the amount of times floors randomly break in maps. Thankfully, the bridge does not crumble and we make our way to Gatecity (my first time ever seeing this map).

The dwarf city is really quite neat. The outdoor area with the benches is great, adds to the atmosphere a lot. I also like the fact that there is another temple like the starting temple in Edana. Having a recurring location/theme like this really can help tie the game together.

We begin a discussion with the mayor and I hand in a goblin chief head, gaining 58 gold. The mayor brings up a issue regarding zombie dwarfs and he wants at least 150 dead. Why do so many dwarf zombies exist? It would be nice to take out the source sometime.

The long zombie farm begins and soon we have died a few times to the dwarf stun attack (which sucks you back towards them. That's pretty fun).

Finally, 150 zombies are dead (or re-dead I suppose). We proceed back to the mayor and Ciervo is handed a golden axe. I think Kanta was on the server at this point and he told us that the axe breaks (needing a new quest to repair it). Ciervo tried the axe out on a few zombie dwarfs, dealing around 900 damage. Soon the axe breaks and the session is over.
 

Father Brandon

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Sept 30th, 2017:

I am falling behind on these as I get more into creating Eswen Sylen. Which is a good thing.

I go alone to Keledros Prelude to farm some bandits and defeat the metal boar again. This time when I wander into a cave and kill a Fang Tooth, it drops a Fang Tooth dagger!

I start training my small puny arms until I can use it. Wow, it raises Affliction magic! Ciervo logs in and we farm the area again so he can get a Fang Tooth. Now we both have Fang Tooth daggers.

We kill the metal boar again and receive the same crap loot (A msworlditem_treasure entity not tied to a script seems to yield the same random crap). I wonder if this chest is tied to any scripts.

At this point, I think we are tough enough to fight that caged ice ogre in the bandit camp cave. It was a tough fight for us. Ciervo was pretty much healing me the entire time I was attacking the ice ogre. The ogre gave a ton of experience and like all the bosses in this zone, another unrewarding chest.

Since I was about 80 hp less than Ciervo. I decided to go buy a pole arm and train that to gain hp fast. This smaller session ends with me about 50 hp up and with a spear purchased in Helena.
 

Thothie

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Tips, tricks, and excuses in response to adventure blog...

After connecting to a server and naming my character I noticed that I could be a dwarf. I researched it a bit and was saddened to learn that it was impossible due to bugs. Could the dwarf option be disabled until the issues are resolved? It seems like it might cause some potential new players to turn away.
Yeah, we are, sadly, going to have to fix that by removing it for at least awhile. Kinda slipped in.

It was finally time to explore Edana again but bloom trouble reared its divine ivory head as I was blinded by a pure white screen, which was quickly resolved after reading a bit more into the issue. Soon I would be blinded by the glory of Edana, how I have missed it.
Yes, we will default that to off in the next full installer.

- I forgot to buy a backpack (don't know if I even had enough gold) before I ventured away from Edana. This felt like a huge mistake as the backpack is almost 100% needed. This was my fault but I feel like a backpack or weapon sheath as a starting quest reward would go a long way.

- Regarding weapon sheaths, I found a dagger sheath later on. I thought the weapon sheath was universal for all weapons. Do different sheaths provide different bonuses?
Come next patch, we're providing a "new and improved" small sack for new players that will indeed let you sheath a weapon or two. The Weapon Strap can hold several weapons, while the Backpack can hold nearly anything. There's a Quiver for ammo, and an Archer's Quiver, that can hold both ammo and bows. Spellbooks hold Spell Scrolls. Later, there's a Bag of Holding that negates the weight of items put in it. Sadly, the item sorting is still a bit haphazard, and it can be a bit tricky to arrange your packs in the optimal order to make sure things fall where you want them. There's various specialized sheaths, like the dagger sheath, which only holds smallarms, that are kind of holdovers.

- I noticed that time of day was controlled clientside. It would be neat if it was forced on everyone for all maps. It could lead to some interesting revisiting of areas depending on the time of day and would make the world feel more alive. (this is only a tiny nit pick though. I don't mind it much)
ToD effects just wreck some player's systems, so we give the option for the client to override them, in addition to a vote time system that's been there forever to deal with the silly merchant hours thing. Changing the day/night effects on your client does not affect the clock, however, so, for instance, wolves will spawn at night in Thornlands, whether you've locked your client's time to day or not. Some monsters and events do lock the visual effects into a certain state until they end/are defeated.

first time I went through the sewer with a 3 man party it took 30 seconds or so to break with all of us hitting it using projectiles (stock arrows). Second time I went through with a 2 man party I punched it open in a few swings. Kind of wish it broke in one hit no matter what, had a crack in it to indicate its frailty, or had a switch to open it as I could see it being confusing to newer players (or I could simply be stupid).
Might have been an effort by the original mapper to prevent you from getting your arse handed to you, should you be too weak to fight the slime at the top - can't recall. E-slime does hit a bit hard, but he's not exactly the meanest thing in there. Reminds me... We do need to replace that note with a proper book.

I also like the fact that there is a semi-sunken ship down here. Was it magically transported or did someone flush pieces of a ship separately down here? It adds some nice mystery.
Obviously it's an inflatable raft with foe-wood texturing. :p

We save him and talk to him about the ring using the local chat. His posture straightens and he tells his tale! Sweet, time to give the ring to him. He immediately hunches again as if he has the runs and skulks around, pressing 'E' to use him yields nothing. The quest is doomed until we re-enter the zone.
Coulda swore we fixed this... (Also I'm sure I've said that before...)

Once arrived, we make the choice of going to the lighthouse basement right away. Entering the spider caves via a door with a black wall behind it was strange and slightly confusing but soon all the spiders were squashed and eggs broken.
Meh, gonna have to look into that and see if I can figure a way to allow folks to turn the quest in anyways.
 

Father Brandon

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The dates are all blending together now as I play a little bit almost every night before I sleep and haven't had the time to make a big entry.

I've mostly been noodling around trying to complete the golden ring quest and I have some thoughts to share on it:

- I think this quest should start in Edana. Perhaps a new NPC outside of the Temple gives it to you. The reason I say this is that I think most new players will miss the cabin in the Thornlands. The Thornlands is a central hub and having an out of the way NPC give you such a vital quest I feel hurts the quest overall.

- I would never have known that I would have to go back for a 2nd golden ring AND have a Perfect Skullblade in my inventory without be told what to do by another player. It may be that I missed some NPC dialogue but I don't remember any conversation about going back for a second ring.

- When I finally got the mace for the NPC outside the mines to further the ring quest he said that another NPC knows more about the ring and then he disappears without telling me a location to find the said NPC.

I say that the golden ring quest is vital because:

1. It gives you a direction and forces you to complete many minor quests (some that give nice items for beginners).
2. An item that allows you to see enemy HP is great reward for a vital quest. It changes how the game is played pretty much.
3. Scales nicely with your level (so far anyways, I have not completed the quest).

I looked up the quest online to find the next location in the quest. I went to the foutpost and lost to the invading orcs, landing me in jail. I then escaped the jail to a transition zone that said I would be travelling to 'Edana' only to end up in 'Phobia'. I thought it was pretty humorous to escape a jail only to end up in an even tougher jail.

I did all right in Phobia (419 hp currently). Dying only to a giant hulking orc, 2 eagles raping me at once, and a bandit elite that dealt fire damage. I had to leave before getting further and so ends my quest so far.
 

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That level change to phobia is novel, but it really shouldn't exist. The two maps are vastly different in difficulty.
 

Thothie

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Yes, I made this complaint when Cal first made the map and asked it be connected that way, as yes, even if you can complete Foutpost you may not be prepared for Phobia, and certainly aren't if you can actually fail it. I suppose, in the future, we may have some imprisonment situation on a higher level map, and we can then move the connection there, assuming he's okay with that. Making it part of a high level quest in Verath, should it ever see the light of day, might be an option.

I dunno what Dridge would think of us tweaking up msc_tutorial to a mid level map and using it as a replacement prison at that point.

The Bloodstone ring quest is deliberately a bit vague to force you to ask around and know the game well - be nice if it were a bit less buggy though. Everyone finds Olof eventually, and you gotta sink quite a bit of time into the game before you're prepared to deal with the whole quest line.

Do need more quest lines out of Edana - and more serious ones. Eventually gonna have to work out a continuous "main-line" quest series that'll probably have its first few stages there. Still a bit uncertain if I wanna do the amnesiac apostle test program plot-line though. ...and then there's that damned dynamic quest system.
 

Father Brandon

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MSC Developer
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Yes, I made this complaint when Cal first made the map and asked it be connected that way, as yes, even if you can complete Foutpost you may not be prepared for Phobia, and certainly aren't if you can actually fail it. I suppose, in the future, we may have some imprisonment situation on a higher level map, and we can then move the connection there, assuming he's okay with that. Making it part of a high level quest in Verath, should it ever see the light of day, might be an option.

I dunno what Dridge would think of us tweaking up msc_tutorial to a mid level map and using it as a replacement prison at that point.

The Bloodstone ring quest is deliberately a bit vague to force you to ask around and know the game well - be nice if it were a bit less buggy though. Everyone finds Olof eventually, and you gotta sink quite a bit of time into the game before you're prepared to deal with the whole quest line.

Do need more quest lines out of Edana - and more serious ones. Eventually gonna have to work out a continuous "main-line" quest series that'll probably have its first few stages there. Still a bit uncertain if I wanna do the amnesiac apostle test program plot-line though. ...and then there's that damned dynamic quest system.

I agree with one huge quest that leads from away from Edana while becoming progressively harder, stopping somewhere endgame. New players could start with that and branch off to other quests/explore along the way.
 
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