* spoilers * Wondering if a swamp scene quest is too hard for beginners

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Pebbles, Jul 7, 2017.

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  1. Pebbles

    Pebbles Avatar

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    Last week and over the holidays I spent some time revisiting my task list and trying to complete all of the open quests on my list. Some were very old and seemed to be some of the very early quests for new avatars.

    By far, the hardest ones for me were the ones inside the East Perennial Trail Scene. I had a very hard time navigating the swamp scene, especially when I first entered and it was dark. Between getting lost in the tall grass, stuck between rocks deep in the tall grass, and the whole mushroom disorientation it was getting frustrating enough to just abandon the whole thing.

    I finally turned on SotA Map and used it for the very first time in game. (Which was super awesome, by the way, I have only used it in the browser before.) I found an abandoned house right away, but kept wandering around trying to find the abandoned farmhouse for the quest. Eventually, I looked on the forums and realized it was the same thing. (Should the naming convention be mroe similar? Or have others been easily able to connect that the abandoned house was the farmhouse we are looking for?)

    I'm a newish player, have been playing less than a year, and I am more of a townie / crafter type player, so maybe I am not the typical target player. (If Steam is correct, I have played for just over 1,000 hours.) My typicical adventures are 3 skulls on my own or 5 skulls when adventuring with my husband. I have played mostly forest, mine, and desert maps so the swamp map really threw me for a loop.

    As I kept running into mushrooms and getting lost and stuck in the tall grass, I couldn't help but wonder if starting out in a swamp scene (rather than a forest, plains, or desert scene) would cause new players to give up or lose interest? Especially if they don't have an awesome light spell or night vision to help them when it is dark out?

    Again, I might not be the ideal demographic or player style, some players might be thrilled by the challenge, but I just wanted to mention that I noticed how much more difficult and challenging this scene was for me to navigate, even though it is labeled as a one skull scene. I am definitely not arguing for information to be spoon fed and the quests dumbed down, I am just wondering if the challenges in a swamp scene might be a little too difficult for newer players.

    Just my quick two cents.... :)
     
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  2. Numa

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    if this is tbe object retrieval quest given to you by a refugee in the Soltown bar then the main challenge (before Port introduced hallucinogenic mushrooms into the game) then was finding the house while evading the skeletons. It was fairly doable back then.

    I'll check it out again and see what's changed. Maybe you can request this thread be moved to the R43 feedback forum since the mushrooms (i think) appeared in this release. The devs are closely watching that forum for user feedback.

    The Purify spell in the Life tree clears the confusion effects of the mushroom spores.

    Looping in @Elgarion
     
  3. Numa

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    I tried the Ledger quest on the East Perennial Trail again. Once you step into the scene turning immediately to the proper direction (left/right/straight - take your pick :) ) will bring you quickly to the abandoned house where the quest object is. This is the shortest path to the goal and it bypasses all the noxious mushroom gas fields in the area.

    Note that you should time your entry into the doorway - wait till the poisonous gas in the picture subsides.

    [​IMG]
     
  4. Beaumaris

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    When I started a character East Perennial essentially was a starter scene.

    Sounds like its difficulty been amped up recently?
     
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  5. Pebbles

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    When I was working on the quests, I was working on two at the same time in East Perennial Trail. One was get the specific weapon from the undead and one was find the farmhouse. Unfortunately, I don't have a screenshot of the quest and now that I have completed it I no longer have a record of it in my journal so I don't remember the exact wording.

    I think I might have found the Abandoned House early on, but I walked through it and it did not seem like the farmhouse I was looking for (mostly because the name wasn't quite a match), so I moved on. This could be an error on my part, but I am wondering if it is possible that other players would make the same error, especially brand new player. I did find the weapon fairly easily but walking around the mushrooms and getting lost in the tall grass when it was pitch black was not a lot of fun, even with my light source spell and night vision.

    Because I didn't think I had found the correct place, I kept looking everywhere for a farmhouse. That was when I finally opened SotA Map, saw that there were just a few tents and one house, and then searched in the forums and discovered that the Abandoned House and the farmhouse I was looking for was the same thing.

    It's possible that I was just confused in a way that won't happen for other players, but I just wanted to mention my experience because I have been trying to think of things that could make a New Player Experience a little better. It's fun to connect the dots and not be spoon fed everything exactly, but because the names of everything always match exactly what the quest wants, I wanted to ask it there was a way to add the word "Abandoned" somewhere in the task description to make that "aha" moment a little easier for someone that is consuming a lot of information at once? Or if my little walkabout was maybe just specific to me? And my awful attention span? LOL! ;)
     
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