Hey! First quest written in the “DM Mode” of Sword Coast Legends!
It took some time to figure out the process. I imagine there are lots of videos showing precisely how to go about it. I’ll watch them, eventually, but I wanted to approach it as someone entirely new to the tools, as I am.
My goal was to make a quest. The quest giver would be a traditional vampire. He would send the adventurers into a tomb of other vampires in order to obtain the “sparkle” that lets him walk about in the daylight, feed on mortal humans more easily, and so on. You know, “Twilight”.
Making the NPC was easy enough. But figuring out how to make it into a quest took awhile. Turns out I had to make the dungeon first, then set him as the quest giver to that dungeon.
Dungeons are created entirely randomly. You set the parameters — which are fairly extensive — and it makes a dungeon that fits those parameters. There is no digging out the dungeon by hand or anything. No explicit placing of NPCs. You can make a boss to be in the last room. I made it the same NPC as the quest giver because I was lazy.
I chose a tomb tileset, single floor, simple layout, easy monsters. Monsters were a combination of drow and undead. You can modify mobs to fit your theme.
One thing I could not do it make a plot that carried through the dungeon. I also could not have the boss drop the “sparkle” item. I couldn’t even make a “sparkle” item.
There are different modes — you can have kill quests, collection quests, boss quests — but once you set the parameters, there’s a random dungeon waiting for you, and it is what it is.
Playing through, I took my level 1 paladin and three level 2-3 NPC companions and started through. It’s a very tactical game, and even “easy” mode is no walk in the park. Just letting the NPCs choose their own attacks tends to let everyone die fairly quickly. Pausing is incredibly important.
Midway through, my NPCs disappeared. Another actual player had joined the game, and the game shifts at that point into a real-time mode; there is no pausing. My character had died at that point, but the PC came and stabilized me and we completed the dungeon.
Gained a level, too. Or, two, rather. Level two.
So, can I make those EQ dungeons in Sword Coast Legends? No, not yet, anyway. I think there might be a little more customization for outdoor views — trap placement and stuff. Maybe something can be done there. But this isn’t the sort of free placement system available in Neverwinter Online by any means. The tilesets and environments available are the ones you get.
I know the videos I’ve watched have you able to set traps and encounters and stuff in real time; I suspect this is the Live DM mode, where one player is setting stuff up while the other players are playing through it. I’m sure there’s a million times more stuff left to discover than I’ve found, but it’s already clear that this isn’t going to be the sort of free form environment with scripted quests, actions and NPCs found in the original Neverwinter Nights.
2 thoughts on “Sword Coast Legends Headstart”
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That’s a real shame. Careful design of the maps and dungeon rooms plus being able to attach scripts to everything was a major part of the tools in the Neverwinter toolkits. You had everything you needed to make a full campaign with npc characters that idled, reacted to events and participated in the story you created.
I suppose there’s some value in taking the dungeon design off the DM’s plate so they can focus on providing the story elements in real time, but I think I preferred the old way.
Agreed. I was (and still am) hoping for something more like the old NWN toolkit. Maybe they’ll add it later. Maybe.