"Don't Play With The Dead" ( 260107 ) by @Obscene

Arc Name: Don't Play With The Dead
Arc ID: 260107
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Obscene
Difficulty Level: Medium/Hard
Keywords: Horror, Custom Critters, Challenging
Synopsis: Investigation of an unregistered school for the dark arts leads you down a far darker path.
Face a variety of creepy custom critters, new factions in each mission.

New version of an old (well-rated) arc, taken down and republished after recent changes to custom critter powers. Now a little easier than it was before, but the final EB is made tougher by better support.

Don't Play With The Dead, #260107, @Obscene

A neutral arc. Always curious what makes an arc neutral - synopsis suggests 'antihero'. That'd be cool. Challenging, and horror, good combination. All 3 maps are unique - and amazingly, no Mayhem hospital! This arc's new but reborn, so should be in good shape. Open to all levels, which makes challenges hard to balance. My level 50 purpled controller usually does okay against Challenge, so in he goes.

The arc turned out to be almost everything I imagined. The contact is intriguing, the mission introductions are sharp and interesting, the customs are varied yet have much in common. It's a sharp arc. Many spawns are created with a boss, allowing custom animations that are very well chosen. Clues and dialog are light, but consistently so, which I felt gave the arc a good flavor.

The challenge seemed a bit easy. This is hard to get right for all archetypes and across levels 1 to 50. If this arc was limited to lower levels, the current difficulty may be approapriate, or powers or levels could be increased for a high level arc. Unfortunately I came in at the higher end.

The mission 1 ambush came too late to make a difference, but I think that comes down to the difficulty. I was able to finish the villain quickly. He could be given more resistance to last longer. The mission 3 ambush was way too late - but, no, it seems the mission ended too early. I hadn't even defeated the villain's group, and the mission introductions highlight that everything must be destroyed. In any case, I died soon after completing the mission, and couldn't get back in after going to hospital. If that's deliberate, awesome, but there could be something in the final sign-off or, even better, int the souvenir, to highlight the grim truth: I've left the seed of horror alive.

It happened, and perhaps it's implied, but you could make it clearer. The sign-off could finish with a little ambiguity: "I trust you eliminated all of the Dee Seed...". Or put it in the souvenir if the Contact has no idea... like the Freddy Kreuger who suddenly reappears at the end of the credits. This ending is kind of antihero, I did what I needed to get paid, but maybe I didn't do enough... I intend to pretend this is what happened, it does make for a really cool arc. 5 stars!

Cheers, airhead

M3 send-off: it's -> its (twice)
M3: Dee Seed needs a description.

Arc: 379017: Outbroken See all your old friends in the Outbreak Tutorial sequel!
Arc: Coming Soon: The Incarnate Shadow Shard of Fire and Ice Mender Rednem needs you!
Massively.com opinion poll: Please Help Save CoH!

Cool! My first forum review. Thanks!

I don't know what the solution to the difficulty concern is. I've done several revisions of this mission, and no matter how it's tweeked I get both "too hard" and "too easy" feedback. Maybe that's normal for everyone using custom critters?

Oopsie on the missing Dee Seed descriptions ... I'll add 'em if I can do that without taking down the arc. I wish I could better control boss/ambush spawn locations on that map; usually it makes for a more entertaining boss encounter, but sometimes they spawn too far from Dee Cain and show up late or not at all. It would be nice if we could set ambushes to spawn at the location of the boss instead ... and I so wanted that zombie-coming-up-out-of-the-ground animation for them.

I left destroying them all optional for buggy-game-mechanic reasons, but don't think it messes with the story too much since the contact explains going in that it's proved difficult to wipe him out since inevitably some scrap remains to regenerate again.