TOPIC: DM Feedback

Ian Lee wrote: As I finally realized (I think) that DM Feedback is for Deadwill Mine feedback, even though most posts are about something not specific to the dungeon, rather than create separate post, just comment here.

Obviously, going to be pretty similar to 3a. In terms of differences that I had more interest in:

Rm1 - Making fight harder was good, multiple targets is often a good thing, save is still too harsh especially without bard lore even if the tech answer to it is interesting. Losing exploration, which I'm guessing was in all cases, was unfortunate.

Rm3 - I wasn't that interested in rm3 the first time around due to large numbers of saves, damage types that are not interesting. But, more undead = better. There are lots of tokens that associate to particular monster types, I'm increasingly interested in metaing for such things.

Rm3 - Didn't really care for anything about new rm3. Limiting in a way that comes across as arbitrary, especially for a nonelective combat (this as a rm4 combat option would work better mechanically but lose the clue giving). Didn't make much thematic sense to me on multiple levels. When not just shutting down players, could be ripped through easily. Not undead anymore, meaning one less Turn room (and other stuff).

Rm5 - The taking skull thing was my favorite part. Pretty neutral otherwise except not liking the notes. Well, the free placement was maybe a good way to encourage people to try something before time runs out while not entirely removing puzzle damage. Flexing 5 was best.

Rm7 - Sounded like this may have changed somewhat, but my runs were all over the place when it came to this room. I still think that scaling for party size should be an option for parties that aren't intentionally running fewer players.

Lots of undead is a good thing in specific dungeons in my mind as it makes tech runs more interesting. Same with lots of giants or lots of poison or lots of constructs or whatever.

There are way too many saves with far too harsh effects in both 2ab and 3ab. There are ways to speed up the resolution of saves, but I would cut saves down to at most two per room not to coddle players but to speed things up. That saves are a huge consideration for my builds is mixed bag. Pro is that it's not all damage all of the time. Con - there are entire classes I doubt I'll play at Epic anymore due to how much effort have to put into saves when failing saves is so severe and I feel sympathy for those who can't just focus on saves to the extent that some can.

One thing is to have Reflex for half be in a nonelective fight and switch that in for saves of other types that do awful things in elective fights. Damage doesn't stop someone from playing the game, and Reflex is too often being less essential.

Balancing different attack types' usefulness is interesting, so I appreciate the effort.

It is meant to be "Dungeon master" feedback, but your thoughts are welcome and valid!

This was written under the assumption that DM meant deadwill mine, not Dungeon Master. Our DM was overall pretty great.

Background: Player since 2014, wife and I usually do 1-2 runs each year. Gear level is HC+; We usually request HC, but if we're in a group that has the right gear and they REALLY want nightmare, we don't make a big deal of it. We're about 50/50 rares and UR tokens, we each have our class relic necklace (Rogue and Monk), kilts, and beads. No other transmuted gear of note.

The group we were in wanted nightmare, and had several loaner tokens to bring us up to speed somewhat, so we went with nightmare.

Puzzles overall felt really good. While it wasn't nearly as good as being able to experience the room, you definitely made the best of the virtual situation.

Combats: Our group took the puzzle option on group 5 so no clue on that one


Room 1: Felt okay, not a bad first combat encounter. The "save or do nothing" was a little rough, but the fact that it could be avoided if you knew the trick mitigated it somewhat.

Room 3: This felt REALLY bad. We found out afterward what the requirement was to hit, and we were not happy. The classes we play do not have access to a good option for weapons of the required "level", either due to them being out of print, or something that just wouldn't be ordinarily worth spending the transmute ingredients to get. Yes, every class can use the +3 throwing hammer, but there's pretty much zero reason a monk and rogue would spend for this item when they've got other options to put ingredients towards. We were lucky enough that two party members had weapons of the required level, so we did succeed, but half the party felt absolutely useless.

Room 7: This felt....rough. Not as bad as room 3, and we get it, last room should be a doozy. The biggest issue was time. Due to the starting monologue, even though we were able to down the necromancer, we just did not have enough time to kill the wights, so even though we killed the necromancer, we still got the taunt video at the end which....eh, again, not a huge complaint, just felt rough. Biggest complaint again would be similar to room 1, the whole "Save or be useless" thing. We actually rolled a 35 for initiative, and still didn't go first which set us up for failure in the long run.


My biggest feedback suggestion for future dungeons: Try to avoid having "nope" situations in every single combat, there were a lot of them.

By that I mean situations where a player is just told "Nope, can't do anything". We had two fights where it was effectively two dice rolls to attack: One to make the save to even act, the other to actually hit. In the room 3 fight, we more or less couldn't do anything unless we rolled a crit, by virtue of not having a shiny enough weapon token: This would be somewhat okay if we were live, doing puck sliding, because then you can have a measure of tactics and skill; people who can't hit can at least set up a backstop puck or knock someone else into the target. Being at the mercy of a virtual dice roller, the excuse of "Oh you could have hit on a 20" doesn't hold much water.

Instead of "Nope", it feels a lot better to have penalties. Something like a crazy damage resistance for the ghost in room 3 would have been better than "nope", or maybe lower the threshold of token required to something that doesn't need an out-of-print or extremely pricey weapon. Retribution damage, status effects, options that make it extremely painful to act, are all better than just being told "You can't do anything".

I agree that the weapon requirement for NM seemed off.

I would have expected:
Rare+ (lv 0 spells not work) for HC
UR+ (lv 0/1 spells not work) for NM
Relic+ (lv 0,1,2 spells not work) for Epic

I was always under the impression that, in terms of gear, HC was targeted for basically all Rare with a UR or two, NM was for mostly UR with maybe a Relic and Epic was UR with Relics, Ethereal and Legendaries, but I admit this could be my personal misconception.

NightGod wrote: I agree that the weapon requirement for NM seemed off.

I would have expected:
Rare+ (lv 0 spells not work) for HC
UR+ (lv 0/1 spells not work) for NM
Relic+ (lv 0,1,2 spells not work) for Epic

I was always under the impression that, in terms of gear, HC was targeted for basically all Rare with a UR or two, NM was for mostly UR with maybe a Relic and Epic was UR with Relics, Ethereal and Legendaries, but I admit this could be my personal misconception.

Agreed. Another solution might have been to apply a penalty if a player didn’t have the requisite items, instead of saying the attack failed entirely. So maybe -1, -2, -3 to hit based on how far off the weapon was, or 25%, 50%, 75% damage reduction. That way the player would still have a chance to contribute even if their weapon was below the requisite threshold.

The +3 or higher requirement on NM seemed particularly unfair to a NM player using a +1 weapon with an Enchanter’s Whetstone. It also hurt Rogues, who have two really good +2 weapon options. Not very NM player has a viper strike fang or a +3/+5 hammer.

BeLinda Mathie wrote:

NightGod wrote: I agree that the weapon requirement for NM seemed off.

I would have expected:
Rare+ (lv 0 spells not work) for HC
UR+ (lv 0/1 spells not work) for NM
Relic+ (lv 0,1,2 spells not work) for Epic

I was always under the impression that, in terms of gear, HC was targeted for basically all Rare with a UR or two, NM was for mostly UR with maybe a Relic and Epic was UR with Relics, Ethereal and Legendaries, but I admit this could be my personal misconception.

Agreed. Another solution might have been to apply a penalty if a player didn’t have the requisite items, instead of saying the attack failed entirely. So maybe -1, -2, -3 to hit based on how far off the weapon was, or 25%, 50%, 75% damage reduction. That way the player would still have a chance to contribute even if their weapon was below the requisite threshold.

The +3 or higher requirement on NM seemed particularly unfair to a NM player using a +1 weapon with an Enchanter’s Whetstone. It also hurt Rogues, who have two really good +2 weapon options. Not very NM player has a viper strike fang or a +3/+5 hammer.

Yeah for Rogue there isn’t even an upgrade path from +2 Assassin’s Crossbow which is arguably best in slot.

I also heard the argument that +3 weapons aren’t even available from TD right now. Besides Holy Avenger.

NightGod wrote: I agree that the weapon requirement for NM seemed off.

I would have expected:
Rare+ (lv 0 spells not work) for HC
UR+ (lv 0/1 spells not work) for NM
Relic+ (lv 0,1,2 spells not work) for Epic

I was always under the impression that, in terms of gear, HC was targeted for basically all Rare with a UR or two, NM was for mostly UR with maybe a Relic and Epic was UR with Relics, Ethereal and Legendaries, but I admit this could be my personal misconception.

I think lowering the requirements to the ones you suggest would have meant that the mechanic would have had had almost 0 impact on combats (outside of challenge runs), as a majority of players playing those difficulties are already geared like that. It would have just been a "screw the spellcasters" room (which I don't believe was quite the intent Jeff had, he seemed to want everyone impacted).

I think maybe the mechanic would have been good as-is for a room 7 combat, but not for a room 3.

For using this mechanic in room 3, there needs to be some sort of workaround available. Some way for the party to do something to help hits land (make the projection more vulnerable). Maybe there was a workaround and we all missed it.

Belinda's suggestions (different to-hit penalties or miss chances depending on how far off your weapon is) are good ideas for handling this kind of thing in VTD, where the apps can go ahead and do all the math. But I'd hesitate to go that route in physical TD as they'd likely slow things down a decent amount.

Reap wrote:
Yeah for Rogue there isn’t even an upgrade path from +2 Assassin’s Crossbow which is arguably best in slot.

I also heard the argument that +3 weapons aren’t even available from TD right now. Besides Holy Avenger.

That was my exact grumble on it. In previous iterations (room 7 v1) you got a spectrum, but the all or nothing for something that's not actively in print outside of the pali only weapon felt bad. We lucked out due to the generosity of others (Fiddy, Dan), but at least one of us would have been up the creek otherwise (I could have cast, but Mitchell(KermitKing) would have been 100% out of luck (unless he swapped to Pali).

Reap wrote:
I also heard the argument that +3 weapons aren’t even available from TD right now. Besides Holy Avenger.

I made this exact point in the epilogue of one of my runs. Outside Holy Avenger, there's no organic way for a new player to acquire a traditional +3 weapon. The last one available was +3 Hammer, which came with a Dex requirement. 2021 does have +4 Rod of the Meek, but that's not available yet and has its own drawback.

So, to get a weapon that will succeed at that combat, a new player needs to turn to the secondary market. You can't place a PYP order, do some runs/trades, and upgrade naturally. And that leaves a bad taste, because you either need to be a long time player or dive into the secondary market.

Often seems like spellcasting is treated as if it's equivalent to other attack forms, but spells are a limited resource. So, it bothers me far more when spells are messed with than attacks that can be repeated as many times as there's time for.

Sure, I find it difficult to run out of spells anymore, but spells are not interchangeable, either.

With VTD, I find myself doing a variety of runs and metagaming/teching for challenges to where, for instance, my last 3b run was wizard and I had +17/+17 to hit/damage in melee pretty much just to adjust to room 3. Keeping multiple runs interesting is something worth considering as many others also do such, but consider how many of the effects would impact someone running once. We specifically knew enough on a run with 3 complete newbs to TD that one of our experienced players was essentially not going to participate in room 3, so that went over fine, but what if that class had been one of the newbs or if this was our first run of 3b?

Even if there's a role-playing way to mess with the projection, that's not something everyone is going to think of doing.

Ian Lee wrote: We specifically knew enough on a run with 3 complete newbs to TD that one of our experienced players was essentially not going to participate in room 3, so that went over fine, but what if that class had been one of the newbs or if this was our first run of 3b?

So I do not fully support the way room three was implemented for numerous reasons but I will point out that normal difficulty had no weapon augment restrictions and hardcore only had a +1. If people are concerned about new players not having fun at higher difficulties then we really should stop pressuring players to accept gear and let them experience TD "vanilla" flavored for their first go around, treasure enhancers aside.

Again not a fan of room three and not making any other point than the argument against this room should not be hiding behind the shielded guise of "new players"

I would agree except that a +2 UR weapon should be adequate for NM runs, imo. We used to have a description of nightmare, somewhere on the website. I think the need for relic is not included in that description at all...though it might be no longer a valid description. I know I took both my groups down to hard core to play while we have been playing nightmare for a number of years now. 1 Group beat room 7 at the horn, the other group should have beat the final wight at the horn but we had issues. HC usually is just too easy for us so we play on HC. Though they are not all purpled and reliced out there is enough good things on the build that traditionally NM is the correct level for us. This dungeon I am glad we stepped back to HC, but that feels wrong when I look at the builds.

BeLinda Mathie wrote: The +3 or higher requirement on NM seemed particularly unfair to a NM player using a +1 weapon with an Enchanter’s Whetstone. It also hurt Rogues, who have two really good +2 weapon options. Not very NM player has a viper strike fang or a +3/+5 hammer.

A 5th level Monk has all Flurry attacks count as +4 Weapons. It helped me out in that fight.