AQ3D What dungeon is your favorite?

We sort of do have checkpoints, but not really. I think in Darkovia Clock Tower, there's a pressure plate you can stand on, and it's also the place where you get the 'Commendable' title. It helps other players get to the boss easily, but you end up having to sacrifice yourself (unless you have a form, then you can actually jump to a platform instead of the spikes; not sure if the Sprint cross-skill can cheese it as well, but maybe). The thing is, that checkpoint only lasts so long as you're on the pressure plate that activates it.

It'd be nice to have permanent checkpoints. You hit a lever and the checkpoint path always opens for you. They can do it, because they've done levers that open gates in other dungeons before (I think they've done it in the Crypt dungeons in Doomwood, and they've also made tree roots that players have to open up to progress). I'm not a fan of temporary checkpoints as much, especially if they drag people behind (e.g. one person waits in the boss area for everyone else to catch up, just so they can battle the boss without dying to the boss).

 

I don't think so; they tend to emphasize parkour without the use of a form, and using a form tends to make parkour trickier at times (overshooting certain jumps)... but it does occasionally allow you to cheese certain parts. From my perspective, the lack of a checkpoint just makes it frustrating for both types of players, those that use forms and those that don't. Even if you own a form and made it passed the parkour while the other person who doesn't own a form gets stuck, that doesn't mean that you gained anything for being first to get through the course; you might still need to defeat a boss (and in that case, you pretty much have to wait for other players to catch up). I've even seen players struggle with parkour while using forms, so I don't think there's really an advantage (unless you're speedrunning a course / racing against someone).

 

But even in dungeons like Xenoscythe Spaceship, a form doesn't guarantee success for the dungeon objective. You still need to take down some monsters to progress far, and I found that it's hard to progress through the dungeon with a form alone (if you're only dodging the monsters to reach the lever room). It's easier to progress without a form by spamming heal skills and Health Potions while dodging monsters (and you can't do that while in a form). Where a form is most useful is in a vast, sparse or vacant map like the Isle of the Dead map. Dungeons are often too cluttered with monsters that it's not worth using a form, unless level scaling just doesn't exist (in that case, you don't take as much damage, if you're a higher level than the monsters around you).

But most likely, in a dungeon, you're going to go up against a monster with a level similar to yours, because you're most likely going to do a saga/story meant for your level (unless you somehow leveled up to level 29 and skipped all of the lower level story).

 

But it's rare to see dungeon rooms that are all about traversing, especially a room where you can benefit greatly from traversing. And needing a form isn't really a problem even for those types of rooms. For instance, in Screaming Woods, people with forms will use their form to open the branches and go through the room quickly... and newer players (without forms) can just wait near the portal while the person with the form do all the work. And if nobody owns a form, people will just traverse a bit slower (doesn't take away too much time). Even if those newer players fall behind, they can use the 'go to' feature via the party system.

That's not to say that forms are useless for dungeons... people still use forms to scout for chests quickly, but the point is that people without forms aren't disadvantaged. They have the ability to teleport directly to any player most of the time and they amount of time they might lose isn't too significant.

 

I like those easy ones with Rare drops. Hahahaha. I'm stressed out at shrade x. Can't even get the uwu mask.

 

Less people are playing it because of several factors:
1) Map is level-scaled and monsters are too difficult; pulling levers when area isn't cleared spawns XenoGuardians which takes forever to take down and easily frustrates players.
2) People are cheesing the dungeon and rejoining, and sometimes their spot get stolen when they're trying to rejoin, which isn't fun for everyone.
3) Not enough people most of the time, so people usually just leave the dungeon and do other things.
4) People don't know how to cheese the dungeon.
5) Dungeon is too buggy. Not everyone wants to play by cheesing the dungeon, and doors don't open properly as you get stunned by an enemy.

And there are other reasons out there. Only thing keeping players farming in that dungeon is the mask which has a significantly better drop rate than any other monster. If not for the mask, nobody would care, and that dungeon would essentially be dead for upcoming Friday 13th events.

Honestly, I would rank the Shrade X dungeon at the bottom of my list of favorite dungeons. It was rushed to begin with, and even when AE realized how broken it was during its release, AE updated the dungeon but didn't really fix the map with an actual solution; they just made it more tedious and inconvenient that it discouraged more players from playing through it. Despite how bad the dungeon is, if you really want the mask, I would still encourage doing the dungeon since you have significantly better odds of obtaining the mask there, even if it takes 15 minutes just to complete the dungeon.

 

yeah, its kind of frustrating when in endless farming you still dont get it and suddenly your friend who ran it for first time luckily obtain the thing :/
Thank goodness most of rare thing is just for cosmetic purpose

 

Even being familiar with the map isn't enough, because you'll sometimes lose to monsters because of their stacked poison or because of Shrade X. My tip for the dungeon is to use a form (and Paladin class, if needed), and whenever you're running low on health, exit out of the form and use Paladin to heal yourself, and try to find a safe spot (usually on the pipes at the side of a dungeon corridor or in a corner). Other tip would be to avoid XenoGuardians the best you can, even if it means running into the Xenoscythe monsters instead, since you'll take less damage from them.

For all that trouble, the helm should have stats. Anyway, it sucks that the drop isn't global. When your friend gets the helm, but you don't, they'll just forever leave the dungeon being glad that they don't have to farm for the helm ever again and let you farm by yourself. AE could have been more generous about how the helm drops by making it global (drop for everyone in the dungeon) instead of local (only one person).

 

The Son of Braken/The Bow dungeon is my favorite because of how different it is from the other dungeons. Instead of just killing some mobs and moving to next area and repeating that is done in the older dungeon, this one had different conditions to advance at each stage and you will be kicked from the dungeon if you die. I have fun playing it.

But i didn't like the grind to unlock it lol.

 

But for someone with knowledge of the dungeon trying to solo the first part of the dungeon, they'll definitely struggle a couple of times, maybe even more depending on luck and how they traverse, and the people that are with them. It'd be a lot better to have at least two players, especially one player that can stall the monsters while you run through the doors. Or even better, have a full team that'll split up to the two different rooms so each team can work towards unlocking the Engine Room quickly enough.

Often times, I see players just camping at spawn, letting one person do all of the work, and it often takes a lot longer to complete the dungeon because of that, especially dying over and over again to monsters. Sometimes that player has to kill some Xenoscythes just to make it easier to traverse, because of lazy players. There's nothing in the dungeon that discourages players from camping; even an AFK kick for inactivity isn't enough because they aren't inactive. It'd be more helpful if those players tried to help in some way, even if they don't know anything about the dungeon, because they can act more like shields to help other players. It's really more about strategy at that point.

 

Mine is cave of cure

 

I would assume he could be talking about Deepclaw Caverns since its the only dungeon in Darkovia with anything collectible (Hunter's Stake). Shadowsong Crypt doesn't really have anything good.