Feedback on Overlook

All in all, I'm glad to see this dungeon in the game. I think it's a big step in the right direction, and shows that even though kRO has largely abandoned us, our own GMs are still trying to work with what they have, and we're beginning to see the real results of those efforts.

I finally got a chance to run this yesterday. My party was:
Me: Slightly twinked High Merchant. Mocking and Mini-propeller, elemental axe, pupa armor, Signs. Nothing at all amazing, but not gear an L30 can be reasonably expected to have.
My friend: A High Thief with panties, undershirt, and Eden gear... pretty much exactly what'd you expect a 30 to have, minus the trans part.

I realize that this is mainly a 1st job dungeon until the end, so you're quite limited in what you can do without making it hell on newbies, but I do still think it could use a bit of tweaking - mainly in the direction of encouraging people to actually party for it.

Here's my feedback after having run the whole thing:
1. You have a major glitch. If you DC while the "select a card" menu is up, or you accidentally cancel the dialog, you lose the reward forever. My friend found this out the hard way. Please fix this ASAP, as that's a rather nasty glitch if you have the misfortune of triggering it. Even worse, because a newbie isn't going to know what half of these cards DO, there's a good chance he's going to let the NPC time out while he asks his guild for advice on what he should be taking, discarding the reward in the process.

2. Despite being melee-only, we never really desired support or nukage of any kind, with the exception of floor 1's very high dodge Plankton. There's no question that I could've soloed the place, despite being a class that gets a whole lot of nothing as a 1st job. I realize this is more a reflection of Renewal and it's melee vs. everything else balance direction, but I still think a few things could be done to encourage real parties:

- Heavier use of status effects. Floor 2's stun was a real threat (and would have been a major one if I didn't have pupa armor) that would encourage having a healer for when you can't pot, but that was about it. Everything else was basically "steamroll the place with a decent stash of pots handy". The obeaus silence of course, but a melee party just laughs at that and keeps swinging. The Marses blind, but it has such a low chance of working that it may as well not be in there.

- Artificially inflating the PDEF on a few of the monsters - not so high that nukers are required, but high enough to give them some value with Renewal's mechanics. I really didn't see anything I'd want to bring a caster along for, he would just be slowing our xp.

- Make it a bit less burst damage focused. That Swordfish Waterball is going to 1-shot any caster, but as a melee, I just drank a few pots and shrugged it off. The normal damage was low enough that I could easily pot through everything, and I don't mean spamming my pot key either. Yes, my flee is twinked to +30 with gear, but a plain old Eden geared thief would have had +40 from just Improve Dodge and the 2nd job +10 flee bonus. I suggest reversing that setup - tone down the Waterball a notch, but make the normal damage enough of a threat that we might actually want to bring a healer. Maybe even give something level 1 Critical Attack so agi meleers HAVE to take some hits.

3. The quest was purely "go kill everything". I realize that the entire point of the dungeon is to level through first job fast and get a real chance to enter the market (or get your mandatory phen as a caster), and that it makes sense for kill counts to be the main objective, but I think the whole place could have been made a bit more interesting.

- There's a non-aggro Kapha at the entrance, and the entrance text even points out that he's looking up at you to make sure you notice. Nice touch. This is never used again though. Why not make that Kapha the quest NPC instead of sign boards, and write up a quick story for it? Maybe there's an ongoing battle between a group of Kapha and a group of Strouf... or maybe the Kapha started it, and is a quest miniboss at the very end? It doesn't have to be an amazing story, just enough to make it feel like you're in there for a reason, with things progressing a bit from floor to floor. Maybe even give a quick explanation as to why there's an elite version of Bylan in the first place. Sure, we KNOW it's just Elite Bylan, but that doesn't mean the quest text can't make it seem like a bit more.

- It would be nice to break up the killing with a few miniquests in between. The rewards don't have to be anything special, and the quests don't have to be amazing either. Even if it's something like "go pull the lever at that dead end to arm our trap", it would add a bit of flavor to an otherwise pure grind dungeon.

4. A true newbie party is going to rack up a pretty large consumable bill in there (with the exception of agi melee of course), and especially in the earlier floors, there's no way the drops are going to cover said bill. I suggest adding a bit of valuable vendor trash to account for this. Maybe give the Plankton a 3% Witherless Rose drop?

5. I like the overall theme of the quest rewards. A newbie walks away with some basic slotted gear, some elu, and if he does the entire thing, a single very valuable card to help him enter the game. The Rosary definitely had me scratching my head though. A clip would have been a better choice IMO, as most classes can use one, and they're not hard to vend, vs the Rosary which is almost certainly going to be dumped on the nearest NPC for a whole 4k.

4. A true newbie party is going to rack up a pretty large consumable bill in there (with the exception of agi melee of course), and especially in the earlier floors, there's no way the drops are going to cover said bill. I suggest adding a bit of valuable vendor trash to account for this. Maybe give the Plankton a 3% Witherless Rose drop?

I agree with most of your post but this point specifically I disagree on. Steal bypasses drop penalty and nothing really prevents bots or players from just staying in that first floor to farm zeny. A better solution would be to give full heals (with a 10~15 min cooldown) or char/account bound recovery items as rewards for the mini quests. Heck they can make a quest only artifact, like Novice training ground books or WL job change quest rings that ar char bound and work only when killing the monsters to get the said recovery items and you trade it in at the end of the dungeon as the artifact has absorbed enough power from the monsters in the dungeon to transform into a card. =P

Edit:
I think the artifact dropping the char/account recovery item idea is better than repeatable quest rewords. It limits the items in a party and forces organization in the party by letting tankers pick up HP recovery while killers take the SP one. The items don't even need to be char/account bound if they cannot be used outside of the dungeon or without the artifact.

Also I still think that the lower level dungeon floors should be mobbier.

Edited by Clogon, 24 May 2011 - 05:29 PM.

#1 Mwrip

#2 Clogon

#3 Akin

#4 Mwrip

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