I’d like to introduce this week my stab at making foundry searching at least a little useful. I’ve added a sorting filter to my master list of reviewed quests (permanent link at http://goo.gl/XbV9hj). Click through to the spreadsheet. From the “Data” menu, choose “Filter views…”, and from there, “Sort Filter”.
The display will redraw, and you’ll be able to sort by challenge, story, combat, humor and unusual by selecting “Sort Z => A” from the tiny drop down menu at the upper right corner of the “Sort Chlng”, “Sort Story”, “Sort Cmbt”, “Sort Hah” and “Sort Weird” columns. To the right of the sort columns are the columns of raw data taken from the quest’s “Detail” tab. If a value has a dark green background, that means reviewers have given that a higher score than the average of scores of all the details.
Using this to find good quests is simple. Let’s say you wanted to find a challenging quest that also had some story. Sort Z=>A in the “Sort Chlng” column to put challenging quests first, and look down the Story column to find a quest with a dark green background for its story. Boom –@kynveel’s“Dragon Prey” comes right up. Want a story quest with almost no combat? Sort A=>Z in the “Sort Cmbt” column.@Groshie’s“Dreamfall: A Beginning Career” is at or near the top. (@Longshire’s“The Family Farm” doesn’t really have enough reviews for the Details section to have any sort of accuracy. And it does have a fair amount of combat.)
I think this could be a good basis for a revised Foundry catalog search feature.
Fallen Celestial by @whitewolf009
The balance of good and evil is shifting, and it’s up to some hardy adventurers to restore it before it shifts and destroys — everything. Pretty darn ambitious, but of course, Kasul and I don’t turn away from a challenge.
Two celestial brothers, but one of them came to the prime material plane and became corrupted. The pure brother, who has taken on the form of a spirit wolf, commended us for having the strength of spirit to follow the many clues laid for us and follow them here, to their epic conclusion.
… which would have been nice to play through, actually, but we enter this quest at its end. After avoiding a lot of static mobs, we take on the celestial’s brother, who escapes into another map. A largely empty map, as we found as we crawled through the flame and lava-lit dungeon. At the very end, the dungeon finally spawned, so we retraced our steps to the beginning, killing as we went, and then went back to the end again for the chest. So running back and forth through a dungeon a few times.
I liked the story, but the story was front loaded in a ghost wolf infodump at the beginning. We’d have rathered have played more of that story, and perhaps then the author would not have had to add the unnecessary second map to pad out the running time.
Kasul and I both gave it two stars. The community has rated it at 3.75, which is below average.
Pros: There is a decent story somewhere in there
Cons: Running back and forth through a dungeon, killing static encounters.
CotEU — Crypt of the Deathly Dread by @mmorpgnw
You’d think zombies wouldn’t be much of a problem for a priest who worships the (ex-) god of death itself, Myrkul. And yet the Necropriest Dethed has hired you to do that small task for him. Perhaps his priestly powers are on the fritz because of the aforementioned death of the god of death, who no longer can grant such powers.
In fact, Dethed looks more than a little like a zombie himself. Dethed explains that he’s actually alive, he pretty much just wants to looks half dead. Well, sure, because, who wouldn’t? Apparently, he is an ally in the fight against Valindra, under the old “enemy of my enemy is a friend” rule.
Well, it turns out that Dethed might not have been 100% completely honest with us… I wouldn’t say we were “Myrkul whipped” or anything, but….
Kasul loved the story, while I really enjoyed our little Myrkul worker, Dethed. However, map glitches, some spelling issues, and fairly dull environments tempered our enthusiasm a little, and we ended up giving it three stars. Players have rated it at 4.20, which is an average score. This quest ranks pretty closely to @vandignesca’s“Secrets of Manipulation”, so maybe give that a try if you liked this one.
Pros: Good story and characters
Cons: Maps could be better.
Chef’s Challenge by @groshie
If you’re going to offer a child as reward for winning a cooking contest, and you don’t know in advance the gender preferences of your competitor, it’s good to have a child whose gender you never quite pinned down… But, I think the larger issue might be, if you’re giving your child to the winner of a COOKING contest, just what is it you think they are going to do with your generous gift? Something to think about.
In “Chef’s Challenge”, you have traveled to the village of Gourm to show the world just what you can do with a few random ingredients and a scroll of Burning Hands. But, this being Neverwinter, even the simplest activities can turn into something deadly… as does this one. So off you go, to rescue the Mayor’s ambiguous child from wherever it is a particularly lively edible creation has dragged them.
Maps were nicely decorated, the concept was good, the characters hilarious. The author had a bunch of static encounters in some corridors, but the obstacles placed in the hall meant most of the mobs couldn’t figure out how to get to us after we ran by, so not taking points off for that. The mobs are there if you want to do some trash killing, easily left behind if not. Kasul and I both gave it four stars. The community has given it an average of 4.07 stars, which is below average, and I think the community made a mistake here. That said, it’s ranked closely with another underrated quest,@sn0wst0rmz’s“Arselu’Tel’Quess”, though they really couldn’t be more different.
Pros: Funny, unique plot, and great characters
Cons: Maps could have been a little better.
Padova Sanatorium (Part 1) by @Missfit1313
This quest is set, not in Neverwinter, but in the real-world Tranquille-on-the-Lake Padova City Sanatorium in Kamloops, BC. Once a tuberculosis sanatorium, it re-opened as a mental hospital until being permanently shut down. There’s no indication that the patients and staff had all been brutally murdered, but… this quest asks the question, what if they HAD?
Mother Margret, a nurse, has come by to try and figure out the real story behind the murders in Padova. Wary of the dangers, she asks us to collect the inevitable journal entries scattered about. We soon find the patients and staff are anything but dead…
I liked the characters and subtle puns scattered throughout. Kasul really enjoyed the spooky atmosphere. However, the spelling was all over the place, the encounters were pretty generic, and the maps were mundane. We both gave the quest three stars. There is a second part in the “For Review” tab that we have not yet played.
See you next week!
Today’s writing music: Chet Faker, “Digging the Blogosphere”
