Doc_Wormwood

Guess I'll have to be happy with your 3 star, then, because while I can add writing... they're medieval guys with swords outdoors. Maybe the concept just doesn't work for AE and I fail, I suppose.

Heh, yes, 'maninate' is intentionally mangled 'animate.' Cyclops am not smartee.

I'm hoping I've tinkered with balance/settings enough that I can concentrate on fleshing out some of the writing, particularly in mission 2.

The recovery of weapons/armor all spawning in the same place started as an accident, and then I realized it made perfect sense as 'this is where we store the loot'/armory kind of thing.

The czarodziej are a little on the weak side presently, but they've been tinkered with a lot. They are stronger if they have a good solid group with them. The problem is that dark powers can quickly veer between 'push over' and 'OMFG I can't hit... dead! DANG IT'

I could make the czarodziej EBs. mMmm. But in the later arcs they are standard bosses... maybe make two versions? Well, that's one reason there's generally two bosses; the czarodziej in the first arc aren't very tough enemies, just informative/story ones. Their danger is more organizational. (Oh no! Middle managers!)

The desiccated husks are property of the Scarpaw Goblins, is what I meant by it. Perhaps I should change the group name to 'The Scarpaw'?

Thanks for spelling/typo notes!

Other notes:
Yeah, I can't do anything about the boulder > rubble, rubble being DE thing. At least, not that I'm aware of.
I wanted to have more 'dwarves digging with pickaxes' in 1&2, but unfortunately weapons screw it up -- a mob that has a weapon will toggle 'drawing the weapon,' thus interrupting any other animation. This is very annoying.

Personally I find AE missions a lot more fun and I don't have to run all over the place to do them.

Do what you find fun.

The original campaign this is (very loosely) based on was a bit more original, but one of the major races were centaurs and, well.

I figure hydra work as part of the fungal race because they are more like 'slime molds,' vs. the mushrooms of fungoids. But I can understand the iffiness.

I've changed czarodziej to be necro/fire armor after a lot of tinkering.

I debated Huge dwarves of small stature, but they come off a little goofy looking and it then sticks me with 'female dwarves?' (I could make them Huge but beardless... eh)

Yes, I need to write-up the documents. Glazius made the same point. I AM jammed against the size limit, but I should be able to put SOMETHING in. Still thinking on what to do. Originally it was somewhat of a McGuffin, but it should be more of an opportunity to explain what is going on.

The Vines being low XP is because they are underlings. They are there almost entirely for atmosphere, and I hope folks are willing to indulge me.

Apprehend the truth. One of the definitions of 'apprehend' is:
to grasp with the understanding : recognize the meaning of
(Merriam-Webster)

But I've seen this complaint leveled at the word usage in other arcs other folks have done, so I suppose that being right isn't worth being confusing.

I thought the boulder and cobra hatchling names, and a few others, were appropriate enough, but a few folks have said otherwise, so I'll work on that.

Blacktooth: H is cut off? Son of a ... yeah, I'll fix that.

Text: Is I17 going to have larger size allotments? Excellent. All of my arcs are jammed at the 97-99% mark, so that'd be a great help.

Side-note: Screyan names/titles are Polish.

Oh, and Arc 2 is rather different from Arc 1 (for one thing, only one of the missions is in a cave), and Arc 3 is pretty different from Arc 1. And the subsequent arcs have no goblins.

The reason for the level 41 thing:
Fungoids are found in the 20s and then 30s-41.
BP zombie guys are 40-54
Minotaur/cyclops is 35-54
Rularuu are 41-54

41 is pretty much the only level I can have all that stuff, and eliminating one group doesn't really expand the window all that much. In addition, having a fixed level makes for less redundant repurposed mobs (I don't have to have low-level boulders or whatnot because they will never appear), which saves vital space.

That's why. Yes, it looks weird.

One way to do the ally to make everyone happy... make it clear it's optional.

In several of my arcs I make a point of saying 'if you need help, find so-and-so.' If you need the help? Grab the ally. If you don't want kill-stealing? Don't.

FWIW, I've adjusted my custom enemies to avoid all use of 'custom' power selection. I'm tinkering with czarodziej right now, moving to 'standard necro' and, probably, standard fiery aura. There will still be -tohit, but not as insane as it is now.

I'd love customizable minions, though I suspect they aren't in I17 or the devs would have said something vague about it.

The only way to do dual pistol right now with custom enemies is use the Thugs MM set and do a custom power selection.

Which stinks because XP will be terrible for them. (At least until I17 drops)

Another thought, re: czarodziej... are they much more difficult than CoT death mages?

Thank you for the rereview!! I greatly appreciate it.

The restriction to level 41 came about after a LOT of wrangling with my entire trilogy. It comes out of several bands of enemies I wanted to use. The simplest exclusion is: Devouring Earth mushroom guys' max level is 41, Soldiers of Rularuu (which I HAD to have with those eyeballs!) are 41-54.
I contemplated eliminating the mushroom guys, but there were other mobs I wanted to use that didn't cap much higher. And mushroom folks, IMO, really help highlight the weirdness/fantasy element.
The secondary advantage of this is that when I'm making a custom group of standard enemies, I don't have to fill it with standard enemies at other level ranges, eating up space that isn't going to matter to any particular user.

A clue as to what the documents are. Der. I don't know why it didn't occur to me, thanks.

With respect to the custom power selection, I'm kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place with that one.
The Champions are missing Build Up and the shield powers Phalanx and Grant Power (from Hard, or extra power from Standard, depending).
The Rune Maidens have Irradiate instead of XRay Eyes.
Czarodziej have all Necro except life drain and soul extraction, powers 2-7 in dark miasma (no twilight grasp). Basically, avoiding the boss healing which makes a dark boss go from irritating to OMFG WHAT.

Unfortunately, I'm a little screwed here until I17: if I use the default standard/hard power lists, the enemies become stupidly hard because of the different way NPC versions of these powers work. If I use carefully selected powers, the enemies give little to no XP.
Right now I'm hoping the gameplay is better enough for people to stomach the XP until things improve.

As for Runemaidens in general... they are glass buff/debuffers. Basically, take them out first, which isn't hard, and the rest will fall more easily. Which I think is an acceptible role for a lt.
The red wizards, I may have to give a simple standard necro element. I fear that might make them a little toothless, but the to-hit penalties... mmm.

Comment about Valentin's desc: Good point! I'll make the mysterious stranger a bit more mysterious.

Fourth mission: Not a coincidence. Something cool I noticed with 'unconsciousness' animation.

Way marker vanishing: hmm, yeah. Good idea.

I like the idea of making goblin minions lighter. Will do!

My Epic Fantasy Trilogy (dun dun DUN) just got a major make-over due to reviews, I hope you'll give the first a whack!

In my sig...

My trilogy is revamped and looking for trouble.

May want to redo the first arc: 1.1 is relatively unchanged, 1.2 is somewhat changed, and then it's rather different after that.

I have extensively revamped my trilogy. It is back in the 'looking for feedback' category. Thanks!

Seriously.

I want to be able to work on something on a save file and push it to update an existing, published arc.

I have lost SO much time trying to remember everything I edited when I republish and (as often happens) there is some unflagged error so it doesn't take.

And if I try to save more often, I run into problems where I keep getting older versions of what I worked on.

And if I unpublish, work on it, and republish, I have all those problems (loss of ratings, loss of comments, confusion from folks who might want to see it, confusion from people who don't want to play stuff they've played for or DO want to check out stuff they've played before, etc.)

Please?

And while we're at it, maybe a UI that doesn't do hinky things in the text box? If I paste text into a box, I shouldn't see the pasted text interleaved randomly with the existing text. That's just... weird.

Or have to paste text 6 times because, for some reason, the first 5 times only pasted part of the clipboard.

I don't know, but I imagine it would make custom enemies even harder to fit into the 100k we get.

I love the idea, mind you, but ... the space, lordie, the space!!

This is why I don't worry about rating.

Because it's only as good as the folks giving the rating.

I have the utmost sympathy.

All I'd suggest is go do something else to recharge, and... MA is something nearly unique in MMOs (and the only other example I know of is apparently even buggier).

Please hold off on War Against the Undying One 1/3 if you see it in WiP status (I plan on doing some big changes with it, in light of GlaziusF's review)

I could swap rad for fire control... what do you think? If that's still bad, any suggestions?

Woops, I forgot that it was only the lichen, not the vines... yeah, sensible enough, changing that. Der.

Design: Well, it's pretty much a 'dungeon delve' oriented arc, so it's going to be caves. Though the last two caves... yeah, that I missed -- I had been swapping a lot of caves trying to find one that was long enough but not too long. Arachnoid, maybe one of the spider caves. Mmm. The CoT tunnels get used later, but may be worth using them earlier. Thanks for tips.

Gameplay: As for build-up, fair enough. I had heard horror stories of what happens to XP if you remove things (at least until I17), but perhaps I worried too much.
As for the warriors (dwarven minions), they don't have anything but straight standard shield set.

The champions (dwarven lt. fighter types) have phalanx fighting and grant cover. Would removing build up be enough, do you think, or do they need to drop phalanx/grant cover?

Defense debuffs on rune maidens and alchemists are rough, but they are glass debuffers. So to speak. I'm hoping that comes across as 'tactical' rather than 'screwjob'?

Detail: Good points. I had been going down to the wire on arc size when I originally designed it, and had focused on other things. I'll try to flesh things out a lot more.

And fair enough, there isn't much setup for who or what the Undying One is. Mmm. I'll have to think on how to integrate it more.

Thanks for the review!

While I don't think highly of Venture... HA HA HA HA. Please.

'I didn't get these names from Buffy' is an outright lie, which is extra funny given Defenestrator's astonishing inability to figure out what 'character choice: Jessica' meant and then call Venture a liar. ??? Uh.

I didn't click the link to Jessica, and it doesn't really matter that much for the review.

Also, anyone who uses poorly announced or unannounced timed missions deserves a 1 star unless the arc makes me weep for joy at the sudden understanding of life and love.


Venture's criticisms about spawn size and map bugs are a load of dingo's leavings, but sounds like the rest of the arc is more than enough to justify the rating.

I think you mean gears. Cogs are the minions, gears are underlings (and about half or 1/4 their size)

Create a 'rescue captive' spawn with Single enemy, it auto-completes.

Create an ally with Single and betray when first objective completes... you now have an 'ally' that will aggro the player the instant the player is close enough.

Awesome, thank you. Forgot about some of the underlings, cogs, and so forth!

What's the smallest mob available, and is it smaller than minimum custom character size?

Smallest I can think of are redcap minions.