Balin's Tomb

[Thalassicus]

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Balin's Tomb

Players: 2-9
Category: Dungeon Crawl (Hack'n'Slash)
Expansion: Yes

Pick from one of nine Heroes and fight to survive and escape the mines of Khazad-dûm with a group of companions!

Features:
- Nine heroes with diverse playing styles
- Coordination and teamwork are greatly rewarded
- Lots of secret areas and hidden content to find
- Gameplay varies from survival, to hack'n'slash, to powerlevelling at the end
- 10 boss encounters interspersed with the packs of monsters, each with a different mechanic that makes them challenging

I'm not sure if it really fits into either the "rpg" or "offense" categories; it's not a castle war or footman war, but neither an open rpg with quests and the like. The three goals of the map are:

- Survive to the end
- Work together with other players in a group to defeat monsters and bosses along the way
- Friendly competition (usually) with your group members for treasure and kills to improve your hero

It's primarily designed to be a group play (goals 2 and 3), although it's somewhat soloable depending on the hero you choose. The heroes are equally balanced after rigorous playtesting, each with a different playing style.


Some of the history of the map:

Balin's Tomb maps used to be really popular back in RoC and right after the expansion, I started working on this map at that time in early spring. The layout of one of the dozens of versions floating around caught my attention, so I started working based off that. Most of the versions I made were listed as version 5.x or 6.x if you came across them, this was actually just to spark interest as big version numbers are inherently believed (even if there is no basis to do so) to be improved or more recent.

Frozen throne came around and the map broke, there was a fatal disconnect bug I couldn't figure out even after three months of work...it caused 50% of all players to disconnect right at map start. Eventually I moved on to other things, but after having interest spark in Warcraft again I wanted to see if I could finally figure out what the old problem was. I formed a game online to test it and wonders! It worked perfectly! I still have no idea what caused the problem, maybe something that was fixed on the game's end in a patch.

I've worked on it another three months, playtesting and further balancing all the heroes and encounters as best I can.

 

[Thalassicus]

Anyone have some input? I'm nearing a final version

 

[13lack.1)ragon]

Its a well made map. GJ. Though i think Gandalf is just a little strong with his spells. And Frodo with mass agiliy tomes is too good too. Maybe make the attack speed bonus per agility point .01 insted of the default .02? or 0 even. No hero should be as strong as Frodo with mass agil lol. Still gj again

 

[Thalassicus]

The attack speed gain from agil is indeed 0.01 for this map.

The disadvantage to pure agility is that it leaves your health low and vulnerable to effects that ignore armor (such as spells or immolation). Plus, since you can stay in combat longer without using consumables through increased health regen from Strength, you'll kill more and recieve more gold. The return in durability you get from increasing your Strength from 20 to 21 is much more than increasing your Agility from 100 to 101. From many playtest games with full houses, I've actually found that if you put a 1:3 ratio into Strength and Agility as Frodo you'll have more success than Agility alone.

Gandalf is like a capacitor: he can burn through his mana very quickly with a lot of damage, but once he's out he's pretty limited in options. He also can't deal much damage to the majority of the bosses in the game. Playing him well depends on knowing how to conserve your mana and where to use it appropriately (on vulnerable archers, for example).

The main disadvantage to Gandalf is that only Chain Lightning is truely instant cast, so unless he can dish out enough damage to fatally kill the targets he's attacking in a short enough time, other heroes nearby will land the final blow and recieve the kill. Plus, his primary stat boosts neither health or armor -- it merely provides him with more mana. Unless he puts some points into strength or agility he dies very easily under heavy fire, and mana rings also provide him less benifit due to his larger mana pool.

 

[13lack.1)ragon]

hum anothet thing you should maybe add before the final version is a difficulty system that (either) the host chooses or countsa the number of active players and modifies the hp values for that. Since 2 people CAN NOT do it together (even if it says 2-9 on your thing, (we couldnt even beat that first wave of monsters that show up at your gates) which should be changed to 3-9 since me and 2 pals beat it)
Othe tthan that i think you are set for the final' i can't wait to see it

 

[Thalassicus]

Thanks, I haven't had a chance to test the extreme low end of 2 players in the game, although I'm happy to hear you were able to beat it with 3. I've also done it alone with 1 while testing, although there's only certain heroes that are capable of that. Gandalf...possibly Samwise, Aragorn or Frodo...two have aoe, two healing, and Frodo obviously can't lose if he never dies (even though it might take a while to kill everything at the start!). For two players, the best team might be two people that have good AoE and at least one with healing, maybe some combination of the four above.

I'll see what I can do to tweak the initial assault waves for 2 players. After you get past the cave troll, the difficulty dynamically scales for the number of players. Since fewer players will have more individually powerful heroes, it (among other things) increases the damage post-troll creatures deal with the fewer heroes you have.

Player 1 can also choose "Normal" or "Hard" mode at the start of the map.


Edit: I scaled the starting gold with the number of players, here's the new values:

Players	Normal	Hard
     9           375        75
     8           425       100
     7           475       125
     6           575       150
     5           675       175
     4           775       200
     3          1075      250
     2          1675      375
     1          3275      775

This should make it easier in the first wave for games with fewer players to get a handle on things. The old starting amount was a flat 450g at Normal difficulty, and nothing at Hard.

 

[13lack.1)ragon]

Oh and im sorry about asking you to put a difficulty in that last post but i just thought about it (that your td had a difficulty system) once i shut off my computer

Bit more positive feedback;

When you lose your hero, your new hero that you pick should maybe get the same level as your previous one. (We played once and i had a level 1 dwarf while my ally had level 10 legolas >.<)