Tower of the Shuttered Eye (Spoilers)

This is a review of the Tower of the Shuttered Eye. It contains spoilers.

Disclaimer: If you can't handle critical to the point feedback, you're in the wrong place. The following review is intended to help make the game better, not to celebrate a low bar or ignore the elephant in the room.

Spoiler

I just "finished" the Tower of the Shuttered Eye. I must say this is without a doubt my favorite quest.

I love the books, I love the fact that I can actually read the books without being attacked by hordes of monsters. At least that's how the first floor works.

This dungeon gives me the chance to actually study things, and think about things, and it make the game very VERY immerssive. Thank you for that!

In fact, here's a song you can play while walking through the first floor that really sets the mood of how I felt in the game during this time. Relaxed, intrigued, happy!


Unfortunately the rest of the tower is not like this, it's a hack and slash fest of monstrous proportions.

Here's a song that you can play that gives you a sense of how I felt during the rest of my exploration in the tower. Disoriented, confused, scatter brained...


You see, the moment you hit the second floor of this tower, you're immediately attacked by EVERYTHING in the tower. They all just start coming down the stairs after you and chase you until you go back onto the first floor. So just like the Necropolis, you're running around for your life unless you're some kind of uber tank mage that spams heals and uses AOE spells.

The impact of this means that you can't stop and smell the roses anywhere until you've "cleared the tower". So all the ambiance and good will earned on the first floor is thrown out the window for power gaming and "Hulk Smash" gameplay. It's really a wasted opportunity.

The good news is that I think it's easily fixed. You just need to reconsider how the AI treats players, and figure out a way where success doesn't turn into a Benny Hill like run to the treasure chests.

Now for the spoilers within the spoilers...
Do not proceed if you don't want extra information on how to complete this quest.

Spoiler

Using the first Note, this is what my thinking was...

Embrace the Dawn - I took this to look towards the East.
Face your Pain - I thought I was supposed to turn towards the Lord of Agony.
Then Count to Three - I thought I was supposed to then count three bookshelves over.
The New Order
Shows The Path - I had no idea. I was looking for a book called "The New Order" that would give me a new clue.

I would later learn from other players that there was a secret compartment I was looking for on the first floor. Once I learned that it was easy to find just by exploring. But I still don't REALLY understand what the note was supposed to mean.

I know there's also a book called On Following the New Order that gives additional hints where to find the compartment.

So I think I was close without much help, but I still don't know if my interpretation was correct because I can't remember where I found that book "On Following the New Order".

The fact that I was playing Benny Hill didn't help any. And this is a great example of why NO dungeon should work like this. Running for your life trying to find clues and understand slightly complex directions and puzzles. This forces you to either fudge the scene and cheese your way through it, or tank mage to success.

This to me is what needs the most work in these dungeon areas. This is also a direct byproduct of how combat and AI work in general, so I don't know that we can design good quests without fixing those things first.

And that's it, that's my feedback on the Tower of the Shuttered Eye. I hope this helps.

 

Or you can just kill the small handful of undead. Great quest/scene.

 

SPOILERS

Spoiler

Each statue is named after an Obsidian Lord. Cruciatos, Lord of Agony, Orta, Lady of the New Dawn, Anapa, Lord of Death and Visayon, Lord of Arcane Power.

Embrace the Dawn - hug the statue of Orta - walk up to it and face it
Face your Pain - turn and face the statue of Cruciatos
Then Count to Three - correct, count three bookshelves over.
The New Order Shows The Path - "On Following The New Order" on that shelf gives the rest of the hints

Take What Beckons For Your Journey
Seek What Opens Behind Arcane Power - not sure how much clearer this can be. Look behind the statue of Visayon and lo, a loose brick...

I'm not happy with how AI behaves in the tower either. Creatures shouldn't aggro from the floor above. We'll fix once things aren't in such flux.

 

I love the Benny Hill tune. Can we select that for POT mazes?

 

Spoiler

the problem with that line is that there's a decoy. the backdoor that doesn't open in the secret passage is directly behind that statue. fits perfectly with "seek what opens behind arcane power." i spent hours looking for some sort of switch to open that door. HOURS. when i got the key there was no sense of joy or accomplishment, just relief that the thing was done. take that door out please, or move it to a less relevant location.

 

Excellent point and we'll probably just move the statue (easier than re-engineering the passage)

 

Sorry to necro a long dead thread, but were the statues moved without the clues being updated?

 

Just checked. Nothing has been moved. It is as it was in the previous release.

 

Can we fix the aggro in Owls Nest too please? It's like the entire forest knows I zoned in and they all band together to stop me.