Descend v1.3.4b

[nhs325]

Holy hell a nice Roguelike map man. I'm just wondering, can you make it so you can teleport your summons whenever you move to a new room? I feel like it's kind of a waste making your summons dissapear and you have to wait for the cooldown in next room just to summon them again (for example Star Knight's Ult). But overall really good map.

 

[Vladd]

Holy hell a nice Roguelike map man. I'm just wondering, can you make it so you can teleport your summons whenever you move to a new room? I feel like it's kind of a waste making your summons dissapear and you have to wait for the cooldown in next room just to summon them again (for example Star Knight's Ult). But overall really good map.

Thank you so much, I'm so glad you're enjoying it!

That is a very good suggestion. It makes sense for your summons to come with you, along with your heroes. Generally speaking by the time you've cleared a room with a summoning item it's cooldown should have ended before the next room, or close to it, but in the case of the Star Knight's ultimate, I agree that Nebula should follow you through since the cooldown is fairly long. I'll be sure to include this in the next update!

 

[Fawkes]

Having played hundreds of games through the development stage with Vladd, I can say this has to be my favourite and most-played WC3 custom map hands down.

• Superb re-playability.
• Challenging gameplay.
• Well optimized and polished.
• Extensive range of custom items and drops.
• Impressive hero and ability lineup.

It's an absolute blast all around.
Congratulations on the release, and I look forward to seeing the feedback from the Hive Community!

 

[Amenhotep]

Depending on the difficulty, this thing has about 2-3 hour runs, a huge amount of heroes with well-designed kits, loads of items, and some really good RNG events. Honestly, as far as WC3 maps go, it's crazy replayable and definitely shines most in multiplayer. Oh the real tho, don't fk around with ogres.

 

[Wareditor]

Played it for around 2 hours. Overall it was a fun experience that needs a bit of tuning, especially for the pacing which I feel is too slow.
In single player, I had to get heroes with sustain (though I only tried 3) or sustain items which contributed to the slowness of the map since as the floors got harder, they took longer and longer.

I Tried Sandor, Grog and Vladd. I liked Vladd the most. Though, I wish he had some synergetic class ability instead of his current summon one.

I would like to see more ways for the player to make unique "builds". In a traditional ARPG, to build your character you would often spend hours grinding - more often for simple numerical upgrades instead of cool build enabling items. Whereas in roguelikes, the player is granted powers at an accelerated rate which allows for creating unique characters rapidly and have fun with them until they reach their goal or die.
I feel like this map should try to play more into the roguelike aspect than its RPG one. It could do that by having more impactful and synergistic powers and less generic RPG stuff like +5 stats. I also think having more opportunity for decision making would help a lot too.

Here are the notes I took while playing.

• Sandor's Bloodlust buff has no UI feedback.
• Would be interesting for the door/direction choice to be meaningful.
• I like the chest icon on the minimap.
• I feel there is too many chests for the amount of keys you get.
• I like that units have their quirks to them (auras, summoners, etc) and and not just stats bag - which makes for interesting encounter. Though, later on the scaling kinda turns them into huge stats bag.
• Liked the true sight mechanic though I hope more to it will be added in later updates.
• It would be nice to have the cooldown of items displayed in their description.
• I like that there is more than just "combat" rooms.
• Shouldn't be able to kill yourself with Sandor.
• Item dropped pool seems too small - got a runt pickaxe almost everytime in the starting floors.
• Too many crates and always a rune inside of them.
• The modifiers on units are cool, especially the gold one. Need more of those!
• Can abuse aggro range on the "tentacle" event.
• Keys should stack - overall I was always lacking inventory space in single player and I felt it did more to prevent me having fun than creating interesting choices (which tbh sometimes it did). I understand it might be a lot better in multiplayer when all the items are shared.
• Weird class passive on vladd? Feels like a remnant of an old design.
• Fought king gnoll 2 times in a row (2 rooms in a row).
• You don't get blood orb charges when killing units using the dash. The shadow of the charge items can be seen on the ground and can be selected using drag select.
• Emerald room doesn't scale with difficulty so you will receive the same reward early or late (well there is that one version with the hounds).
• Goblin trader doesn't scale either.
• Vladd E doesn't work on most bosses but he will still cast it.
• The skeleton chest events doesn't scale.
• Sphynx ring still describes it as a "pouch".

 

[Vladd]

Played it for around 2 hours. Overall it was a fun experience that needs a bit of tuning, especially for the pacing which I feel is too slow.
In single player, I had to get heroes with sustain (though I only tried 3) or sustain items which contributed to the slowness of the map since as the floors got harder, they took longer and longer.

I Tried Sandor, Grog and Vladd. I liked Vladd the most. Though, I wish he had some synergetic class ability instead of his current summon one.

I would like to see more ways for the player to make unique "builds". In a traditional ARPG, to build your character you would often spend hours grinding - more often for simple numerical upgrades instead of cool build enabling items. Whereas in roguelikes, the player is granted powers at an accelerated rate which allows for creating unique characters rapidly and have fun with them until they reach their goal or die.
I feel like this map should try to play more into the roguelike aspect than its RPG one. It could do that by having more impactful and synergistic powers and less generic RPG stuff like +5 stats. I also think having more opportunity for decision making would help a lot too.

Here are the notes I took while playing.

• Sandor's Bloodlust buff has no UI feedback.
• Would be interesting for the door/direction choice to be meaningful.
• I like the chest icon on the minimap.
• I feel there is too many chests for the amount of keys you get.
• I like that units have their quirks to them (auras, summoners, etc) and and not just stats bag - which makes for interesting encounter. Though, later on the scaling kinda turns them into huge stats bag.
• Liked the true sight mechanic though I hope more to it will be added in later updates.
• It would be nice to have the cooldown of items displayed in their description.
• I like that there is more than just "combat" rooms.
• Shouldn't be able to kill yourself with Sandor.
• Item dropped pool seems too small - got a runt pickaxe almost everytime in the starting floors.
• Too many crates and always a rune inside of them.
• The modifiers on units are cool, especially the gold one. Need more of those!
• Can abuse aggro range on the "tentacle" event.
• Keys should stack - overall I was always lacking inventory space in single player and I felt it did more to prevent me having fun than creating interesting choices (which tbh sometimes it did). I understand it might be a lot better in multiplayer when all the items are shared.
• Weird class passive on vladd? Feels like a remnant of an old design.
• Fought king gnoll 2 times in a row (2 rooms in a row).
• You don't get blood orb charges when killing units using the dash. The shadow of the charge items can be seen on the ground and can be selected using drag select.
• Emerald room doesn't scale with difficulty so you will receive the same reward early or late (well there is that one version with the hounds).
• Goblin trader doesn't scale either.
• Vladd E doesn't work on most bosses but he will still cast it.
• The skeleton chest events doesn't scale.
• Sphynx ring still describes it as a "pouch".

I'm so glad you enjoyed it! In regards to the changes you recommended, I'm very grateful for the information and I will be addressing many of these points in the next update.

For the pacing of the map, I'll definitely ponder some ideas around that, especially in singleplayer. In a team, the pacing generally feels very good, however I do understand that in singleplayer particular heroes such as Vladd or Grog have great survivability but lack significant late game damage to get through levels at a faster pace.

I've tried to strike a balance between items that simply amplify the power of your character and items that change playstyles with unique abilities and effects. But I do agree that some items are more RPG-like and I plan to add more items in the future that gravitate towards enabling even more unique playstyles.

Thank you so much for the suggestion regarding Vladd's passive! He's a hero I made quite early in the map's development and went through many iterations and redesigns as I couldn't get him to feel quite right. I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed him, and I think it's definitely a good idea to rework his passive in the next patch to make it synergize better with his own abilities.

For all the other points, you'll find the next patch should hopefully solve many of these issues. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Halithor]

I've had fun playing the game, but it seems like the damage on mobs in version 1.0 doesn't scale at all. All the mobs just have 7 or 10 damage on attack, even when we're many levels deep on nightmare difficulty. Tooltips that say 'damage on summon scales with X' doesn't change the damage of the summon at all. This might be a bug?

 

[Vladd]

I've had fun playing the game, but it seems like the damage on mobs in version 1.0 doesn't scale at all. All the mobs just have 7 or 10 damage on attack, even when we're many levels deep on nightmare difficulty. Tooltips that say 'damage on summon scales with X' doesn't change the damage of the summon at all. This might be a bug?

Hi there! Thank you for the feedback, would you mind explaining what mobs/summons in particular you are referring to?

 

[Halithor]

None of the mobs and summons had scaled attacks. All of them were 7 or 10, even as we were over a hundred feet deep. It felt like it was really easy. I was playing with a group of 3 people.

 

[Vladd]

None of the mobs and summons had scaled attacks. All of them were 7 or 10, even as we were over a hundred feet deep. It felt like it was really easy. I was playing with a group of 3 people.

That is very odd. Unfortunately I'm unable to replicate this issue, are you playing on an older version of WC3 perhaps? Anything above version 1.29 should work. From the sounds of it, especially if the heroes are working fine, it sounds as though the GUI trigger "Set Base Damage of Last Created Unit ..." isn't working for you.

EDIT: Are you perhaps using Patch 1.31? There is a post here detailing how Blizzard broke this trigger for this specific patch in the past.

1.31.0 - Unit Set Base Damage doesnt work

In the trigger editor, in the units actions, the Unit set base damage is broken. My map uses items to increase the base attack of the heroes and since the new update 1.31.0, my map is broken and the base damage of my units doesnt increase… I have minions which are more powerful overtime, they...

us.forums.blizzard.com

There might be a solution which I'll see if I can implement in the next patch or the patch after that will make it work regardless. (Supposedly something to do with Blizzard changing the indexes for 1.31 only)

 

[Eat_Bacon_Daily]

Hey I tried one run with a couple of friends, really is a wonderful map and concept with tons of room to grow. I really love it. The bosses were great and it was always fun discovering new room types and new bosses with great mechanics!
I love the map, but here is some constructive feedback.
-I took the troll hunter hero and his kit very unsatisfying, I barely used any of his abilities because they are super situational, even his (Q) feels very unsatisfying to use since it disrupts the fight by tossing the enemy away.
-I don't remember how deep we got, but I wish there were some visual or gameplay impact to depth, seems like just a number in this current state.
-The regular skeleton rooms were visually a bit unappealing, it's hard to tell what is what or what is going on
-Would be cool if the defeat UI showed how deep you got.

Great game overall will def keep playing it

 

[Halithor]

I am playing in 1.31. That bug you linked might be the problem? Seems like a likely source. You could simply just set the damage for indexes 0, 1, and 2 (if you don't use the second attack slot on mobs) to cover your bases

 

[Fawkes]

I am playing in 1.31. That bug you linked might be the problem? Seems like a likely source. You could simply just set the damage for indexes 0, 1, and 2 (if you don't use the second attack slot on mobs) to cover your bases

I believe Vladd had that same idea for the fix. Should have an update out soon

 

[Vladd]

Hey I tried one run with a couple of friends, really is a wonderful map and concept with tons of room to grow. I really love it. The bosses were great and it was always fun discovering new room types and new bosses with great mechanics!
I love the map, but here is some constructive feedback.
-I took the troll hunter hero and his kit very unsatisfying, I barely used any of his abilities because they are super situational, even his (Q) feels very unsatisfying to use since it disrupts the fight by tossing the enemy away.
-I don't remember how deep we got, but I wish there were some visual or gameplay impact to depth, seems like just a number in this current state.
-The regular skeleton rooms were visually a bit unappealing, it's hard to tell what is what or what is going on
-Would be cool if the defeat UI showed how deep you got.

Great game overall will def keep playing it

Thank you so much! It's awesome you're enjoying it. For the defeat UI, that's a good idea, I've added that in the next patch Currently the only functionality depth has is a visual representation of difficulty level, which causes enemies to scale in health and damage, but I'll ponder some ways to make this more interesting! For the Troll Hunter, he is intentionally quite challenging to play and get value out of, but I do agree some of his abilities, especially "Cleanse" is far too situational. I'll be tweaking some aspects of him in the patch after the one coming out today, but his ultimate did get a change this patch. Thanks for the feedback!

I am playing in 1.31. That bug you linked might be the problem? Seems like a likely source. You could simply just set the damage for indexes 0, 1, and 2 (if you don't use the second attack slot on mobs) to cover your bases

I thought you might be! I have done just that for the patch coming out later today, please let me know if it works! I don't have patch 1.31 so I'm currently unable to test it. Thanks for the communication

 

[Halithor]

It's been fixed! Thank you! Excited to play it some more and feel out the challenge level!

 

[ExaltedHound]

I'm quite enjoying this map, its got some good replayability and varied heroes. But I've noticed that whenever I get a last hit with any ability/spell there is no exp or gold given. e.g. Slar'hees q and e do not grant gold or exp on kill, as well as Sneed's barrels. Attached image is of me having killed every enemy in the first room and having no exp or bonus gold aside from 2 gold pickups.

 

[Vladd]

I'm quite enjoying this map, its got some good replayability and varied heroes. But I've noticed that whenever I get a last hit with any ability/spell there is no exp or gold given. e.g. Slar'hees q and e do not grant gold or exp on kill, as well as Sneed's barrels. Attached image is of me having killed every enemy in the first room and having no exp or bonus gold aside from 2 gold pickups.

Hi there! Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you're enjoying the map regardless. I'm afraid I can't seem to replicate this issue, Slar'hees grants gold and XP when killing enemies with his Q and E when I test it, same with Sleed. Are you perhaps using an older or modified version of Warcraft? Your game looks significantly different to most versions of Warcraft.

 

[ExaltedHound]

Hi there! Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you're enjoying the map regardless. I'm afraid I can't seem to replicate this issue, Slar'hees grants gold and XP when killing enemies with his Q and E when I test it, same with Sleed. Are you perhaps using an older or modified version of Warcraft? Your game looks significantly different to most versions of Warcraft.

I'm using classic warcraft 3 patch 1.35, I had a feeling it might just be a version problem

 

[Vladd]

I'm using classic warcraft 3 patch 1.35, I had a feeling it might just be a version problem

Must be, I'm sorry about that! I don't think there's much I can do, especially since from the sounds of it Blizzard must have bugged out the bounty and experience systems with that update.

 

[Pickles]

If somebody leaves before picking a character you can't start the game. Also add a leaver message so you know if somebody left without checking F11 menu.

 

[Eat_Bacon_Daily]

Hey played a few runs.
I think the map gets better and better every playthrough. The items are a lot of fun and unique and the boss battles are very creative. I also like the optional bosses. Is there a reason to re-do the optional bosses? The fire elemental dropped an item the first time, but after that stopped dropping and the frost wyrm never dropped anything. The fights were fun regardless and we had a blast fighting the void monster. We kept laughing in voice chat about how we made a mistake summoning it.
I wonder about your reasoning for splitting gold at the shop floors. It kinda works in the earlier floors, but once you hit floors where items cost 5.5k it's very awkward as if you saved to buy those items, you lose it once you reach the shop and you have to beg your teammates to give it back.
I also have a question about the gates, is there any impact on which gate you pick? If you wanna add some choice maybe you can imply that some gates give different power-ups or challenges, like in rogue-like games such as ember knights.
Anyway, I really love the map, the challenges, the decision making and especially items!

 

[Vladd]

Hey played a few runs.
I think the map gets better and better every playthrough. The items are a lot of fun and unique and the boss battles are very creative. I also like the optional bosses. Is there a reason to re-do the optional bosses? The fire elemental dropped an item the first time, but after that stopped dropping and the frost wyrm never dropped anything. The fights were fun regardless and we had a blast fighting the void monster. We kept laughing in voice chat about how we made a mistake summoning it.
I wonder about your reasoning for splitting gold at the shop floors. It kinda works in the earlier floors, but once you hit floors where items cost 5.5k it's very awkward as if you saved to buy those items, you lose it once you reach the shop and you have to beg your teammates to give it back.
I also have a question about the gates, is there any impact on which gate you pick? If you wanna add some choice maybe you can imply that some gates give different power-ups or challenges, like in rogue-like games such as ember knights.
Anyway, I really love the map, the challenges, the decision making and especially items!

Hey there, so happy to hear you're enjoying it!

Currently it depends on the boss, but usually redoing an optional boss will only grant you gold and experience. So the Fire Elemental and Frost Wyrm boss both drop a random fire and ice item respectively (the Frost Wyrm should be dropping a random ice item, I'll look into that!). However, doing these bosses again only yields gold and experience. This is to prevent the player from gaining too many powerful items too quickly without spending gold. The same goes for the Demon General. Asiak (the void boss) will always drop the Voidborn Plate Helm, and the Pharaoh will always drop a gold key.

Splitting gold was to encourage team play and discourage selfish hoarding (supports and tanks generally won't be getting a majority of the kills). It is in the best interest of your team to win, so you need to work together! You can of course send your gold to other players, should they need it for an important item. There is also a command which I actually have forgotten to mention in the map, but the command is "-pool", which will pool all the gold your team possesses to you if you all agree that you need a specific item. But I could definitely see the gold splitting system being frustrating, especially if you're playing with players who don't have mics or aren't communicating. I might add a feature that allows Player 1 to decide whether or not to have gold splitting at the start of the game in a future patch.

I definitely love your idea in relation to picking gates. I do plan to add a feature along those lines in the future

Thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear you're enjoying the items, there's a lot more coming in the next update!

If somebody leaves before picking a character you can't start the game. Also add a leaver message so you know if somebody left without checking F11 menu.

Thanks for spotting that! A fix is coming in the next patch.

 

[oonzpoonz12]

ok so i've been playing your game for the last few days and i'd love for you to allow a SINGLE healer to scale to the end of the game with a healing ability, i would like to suggest AGNI the support character. my friends and i came up with .6/.8/1/1.2/1.4xint on the healing side of his ability called "Flame Wave" if the hero was able to have this scaling on the healing side of his spell. the damage wouldn't get outa control as he isn't a dmg character really, and he would actually be able to heal a tank late game unlike any other healer in the game ...... i enjoy playing your map, but healers are what im into, and not a single one can do anything past the death knight boss to keep a tank up. Anyway we have a bunch of toons in our discord who would love to help play test this map for you as we play nearly every day. Please feel free to join our discord voice chat any night of the week and talk with us, we have a lot of fair development ideas to help you. Join the Warcraft/Starcraft Custom Gamers And Friends Discord Server!

 

[oonzpoonz12]

Also I would love the keeper of the grove hero’s life saving ability he starts with to have the cooldown reduction upon successful cast and life save; that the text says it has… as the ability is not reducing the cooldown by 10 seconds if you do it correctly…

 

[Vladd]

ok so i've been playing your game for the last few days and i'd love for you to allow a SINGLE healer to scale to the end of the game with a healing ability, i would like to suggest AGNI the support character. my friends and i came up with .6/.8/1/1.2/1.4xint on the healing side of his ability called "Flame Wave" if the hero was able to have this scaling on the healing side of his spell. the damage wouldn't get outa control as he isn't a dmg character really, and he would actually be able to heal a tank late game unlike any other healer in the game ...... i enjoy playing your map, but healers are what im into, and not a single one can do anything past the death knight boss to keep a tank up. Anyway we have a bunch of toons in our discord who would love to help play test this map for you as we play nearly every day. Please feel free to join our discord voice chat any night of the week and talk with us, we have a lot of fair development ideas to help you. Join the Warcraft/Starcraft Custom Gamers And Friends Discord Server!

Hi there, thanks for the feedback!

Generally speaking, every support has different strengths and weaknesses. Agni in particular has powerful auras, can grant his allies bonus speed and damage amplification, can do a small amount of healing, and can summon skeletons to hold the line temporarily. By design, he isn't intended to be a healer, he's intended to be a support that brings a wide array of utility to the fight. He is capable of healing, but if his healing was much higher, he likely would overshadow other supports who sacrifice utility for healing. If you're looking for a support who can heal tanks late game, the Troll Hunter and the Ice Warden both have percentage healing. You could also buy a Scroll of Vitality, Hand of Helios, or a Gold Necklace for percentage healing late game. Watcher's Eye even scales its healing amount with your maximum mana, if a scaling healing ability is something you need.

Thanks so much for the invite! I'd be keen to jump in and have a chat from time to time

 

[Hey Ocean]

First of all - the map is great, music is nice, heroes and spells are superb. Plenty of replayability.
I want to write down my feedback with some of the bugs I've encountered and my personal impressions and suggestions.


In my limited playtime I've found few bugs:

Uba(Frog King) - doubling his frogs create them with 1-1 atk instead of the correct values(I don't know if this is intentional, but it is sure do not feel like it is),

Dagon(Sunken Warlord) - sometimes he takes damage in his underground form while invulnerable,

Grog(Troll King) - his heal stays 14s cd while it's description shows that it should be 14s/13s/12s/11s/10s, as well as it seems like his passive that increases the damage that he takes is active even in his tanky form(I was taking a lot of damage even from the smallest of skeletons, they were a real threat to me that I had to kite and wait for my heal cd and stun cd, I've played with a friend of mine who chose Vladd(Vampire Lord) and was able to tank any mob as good as my Grog with plenty of armor/str items(if not even better), while being in his ranged form),

Jyzargo(Dragon Priest) - enemies killed with his spell "Dragon's Gift" don't give any gold or exp,

I've played with other heroes as well, but those runs were somewhat bug-free.


As for my impressions of the selected characters that I played:

Dagon(Sunken Warlord) - his armor reduction is nice if we have phys dps in a party, but his personal damage is somewhat low, murlocs scaling is pretty bad at 15+40%INT as a form of his main damage source, at boss enemies he doesn't provide any value as armor reduction don't work, and one single murloc from his skill don't do any damage. Health regeneration in underground form is useless, at max lvl it's 15 hp per second while spending 5% max mp per second, in total that's 270 health regenerated for 90% of mana, so it's mainly used as a tool for crowd control and escaping. His tentacle wall is fine, unless mobs start zigzaging from it and jumping chaotically, but I guess that's other side of the coin. Ultimate - if I could guess that's intended to be his trump card, as the damage isn't even that big, but CC it provides helps a lot(when changing rooms and being surrounded by crowd of enemies or saving a teammate from group of mobs etc.),

Grog(Troll King) - he got this one big problem - spell casting animations, they lock him into one place and give an opportunity for enemies to strike him down, every spell casted feels like Grog is stunned for 1s or so, can't evade boss attacks, mob spells, environment effects. Trying to evade those "slowing lane attacks"(frost wyrm, lich, death knight etc.) is nerve-racking. Those constant stunlocks make this character completely unplayable for me, as I value fluidity in gameplay(not the biggest issue, considering I still haven't played all the available heroes after all).

And some thoughts not related to particular heroes:

For some reason it doesn't feel that items that give speed actually do something, with +190 speed combined I move as fast as my teammate without any speed items, that's just strange(I need to double check on this, but I'll write it down anyway),

Lack of shops and random merchants(inside rooms) later in the game, as well as they barely give any valuable items later in the game, would be cool to have analogues to frozen/lava shopkeepers but with their own set of items, also lack of items from shady dealer and lack of cursed items overall.


After I'll play more of the map there will be more to say, but it seems that's all from me, for now.

p.s. I play on the latest battle.net WC3R version 1.35.

 

[Vladd]

First of all - the map is great, music is nice, heroes and spells are superb. Plenty of replayability.
I want to write down my feedback with some of the bugs I've encountered and my personal impressions and suggestions.


In my limited playtime I've found few bugs:

Uba(Frog King) - doubling his frogs create them with 1-1 atk instead of the correct values(I don't know if this is intentional, but it is sure do not feel like it is),

Dagon(Sunken Warlord) - sometimes he takes damage in his underground form while invulnerable,

Grog(Troll King) - his heal stays 14s cd while it's description shows that it should be 14s/13s/12s/11s/10s, as well as it seems like his passive that increases the damage that he takes is active even in his tanky form(I was taking a lot of damage even from the smallest of skeletons, they were a real threat to me that I had to kite and wait for my heal cd and stun cd, I've played with a friend of mine who chose Vladd(Vampire Lord) and was able to tank any mob as good as my Grog with plenty of armor/str items(if not even better), while being in his ranged form),

Jyzargo(Dragon Priest) - enemies killed with his spell "Dragon's Gift" don't give any gold or exp,

I've played with other heroes as well, but those runs were somewhat bug-free.


As for my impressions of the selected characters that I played:

Dagon(Sunken Warlord) - his armor reduction is nice if we have phys dps in a party, but his personal damage is somewhat low, murlocs scaling is pretty bad at 15+40%INT as a form of his main damage source, at boss enemies he doesn't provide any value as armor reduction don't work, and one single murloc from his skill don't do any damage. Health regeneration in underground form is useless, at max lvl it's 15 hp per second while spending 5% max mp per second, in total that's 270 health regenerated for 90% of mana, so it's mainly used as a tool for crowd control and escaping. His tentacle wall is fine, unless mobs start zigzaging from it and jumping chaotically, but I guess that's other side of the coin. Ultimate - if I could guess that's intended to be his trump card, as the damage isn't even that big, but CC it provides helps a lot(when changing rooms and being surrounded by crowd of enemies or saving a teammate from group of mobs etc.),

Grog(Troll King) - he got this one big problem - spell casting animations, they lock him into one place and give an opportunity for enemies to strike him down, every spell casted feels like Grog is stunned for 1s or so, can't evade boss attacks, mob spells, environment effects. Trying to evade those "slowing lane attacks"(frost wyrm, lich, death knight etc.) is nerve-racking. Those constant stunlocks make this character completely unplayable for me, as I value fluidity in gameplay(not the biggest issue, considering I still haven't played all the available heroes after all).

And some thoughts not related to particular heroes:

For some reason it doesn't feel that items that give speed actually do something, with +190 speed combined I move as fast as my teammate without any speed items, that's just strange(I need to double check on this, but I'll write it down anyway),

Lack of shops and random merchants(inside rooms) later in the game, as well as they barely give any valuable items later in the game, would be cool to have analogues to frozen/lava shopkeepers but with their own set of items, also lack of items from shady dealer and lack of cursed items overall.


After I'll play more of the map there will be more to say, but it seems that's all from me, for now.

p.s. I play on the latest battle.net WC3R version 1.35.

Thank you so much for the awesome feedback!

I've fixed the Frog King issue, thanks for pointing that out It'll be in the next update.

Unfortunately, I've been unable to replicate the Dagon issue with his burrow, but I'll definitely look into it! I think Dagon might be due for a small rework in some areas, I agree that the regeneration is underwhelming. I do think that the hero is fairly powerful at all stages of the game however, based upon my own testing with friends. He is particularly powerful against large groups of enemies, which is intended to be where he excels.

J'zargo's Dragon's Gift seems to work fine on my version. You may have a similar issue to ExaltedHound, where Blizzard seems to have bugged the experience and bounty systems. Unfortunately there seems to be no fix for this on my end that I'm aware of.

As for Grog, I have fixed his cooldown issue. His animation cast time is longer than most heroes. This is because he is a very powerful hero designed around choosing your abilities wisely, as he has a lot of them and can reset their cooldowns by switching forms. The longer animations make deciding on an action more of a commitment which in turn allows for his abilities to be impactful without being overpowered.

The 3 traders are getting a bunch of new items in the next update!

Also I would love the keeper of the grove hero’s life saving ability he starts with to have the cooldown reduction upon successful cast and life save; that the text says it has… as the ability is not reducing the cooldown by 10 seconds if you do it correctly…

Sorry about the confusion, I've added a slight tooltip change in this update to make it less confusing. The cooldown does decrease, it's just the tooltip doesn't update with the new cooldown.

 

[Eat_Bacon_Daily]

Hey I just wanted to pitch a fun idea for a room. If it's not your vibe, feel free to totally ignore this message

The room suggestion would be a recurring gambling room, much like the cursed item room. You get to play one of 3 random generated games of chance. The games could like Russian roulette for gold, or re-rolling a chest-type to get a better chest-type or get nothing. The room would also contain a goblin NPC that runs the games, you have to interact with him to play. The goblin NPC would have some floating text lines saying shady gambler stuff and you could chose to play his games or ignore the room and move on.
So my idea, in much in the same vein as your Gnolliver II scroll, you could have a scroll drop that reveals that under certain conditions you can turn the goblin NPC into a boss you can fight, thus permanently removing the room from reappearing, but you get a good item. My suggestion for activating the boss battle would be to sell the goblin NPC a gold bag with a specific number of stacks, like 17 or something. That way you can't activate the boss battle too early and even if you play the map again, you can't immediately activate the boss.
I think it would make a fun recurring character that players would get familiar with before killing and it would give the players some additional decision making.

Anyway, feel free to ignore this, I just felt like posting it hahaha.

 

[Hey Ocean]

I did some additional extensive testing on getting gold and exp when defeating enemies with spells, it appears to significantly affect the gameplay of the map, as with any team combination that has spells as main source of damage - they simply can't progress, I had games where we couldn't reach lvl 3 before the first boss. No gold to buy items as well. Maybe there's a workaround for this bug? Instead of awarding gold/exp to the player who defeated an enemy - split gold and exp between all the players? Or give gold and exp rewards after clearing the room?

 

[Vladd]

I did some additional extensive testing on getting gold and exp when defeating enemies with spells, it appears to significantly affect the gameplay of the map, as with any team combination that has spells as main source of damage - they simply can't progress, I had games where we couldn't reach lvl 3 before the first boss. No gold to buy items as well. Maybe there's a workaround for this bug? Instead of awarding gold/exp to the player who defeated an enemy - split gold and exp between all the players? Or give gold and exp rewards after clearing the room?

There are a few solutions that would require extensive testing and be very time consuming to implement, but I will look into it. The unfortunate part is that spells are such a significant component of Warcraft 3. If Blizzard has made it you can no longer get experience or gold from using them, that is a big issue for them to fix. Regardless I will look into it and see what I can do

Hey I just wanted to pitch a fun idea for a room. If it's not your vibe, feel free to totally ignore this message

The room suggestion would be a recurring gambling room, much like the cursed item room. You get to play one of 3 random generated games of chance. The games could like Russian roulette for gold, or re-rolling a chest-type to get a better chest-type or get nothing. The room would also contain a goblin NPC that runs the games, you have to interact with him to play. The goblin NPC would have some floating text lines saying shady gambler stuff and you could chose to play his games or ignore the room and move on.
So my idea, in much in the same vein as your Gnolliver II scroll, you could have a scroll drop that reveals that under certain conditions you can turn the goblin NPC into a boss you can fight, thus permanently removing the room from reappearing, but you get a good item. My suggestion for activating the boss battle would be to sell the goblin NPC a gold bag with a specific number of stacks, like 17 or something. That way you can't activate the boss battle too early and even if you play the map again, you can't immediately activate the boss.
I think it would make a fun recurring character that players would get familiar with before killing and it would give the players some additional decision making.

Anyway, feel free to ignore this, I just felt like posting it hahaha.

Hi there, thanks for the feedback!

That's a really cool idea, I really like the concept of a gambling room. Perhaps you could even find rigged cards that increased your odds of winning in invisible stashes in other rooms or something. I'll definitely experiment with implementing something like that.

A scroll giving information as to how to go about summoning the boss is really cool. Perhaps to avoid players who have already discovered this scroll from no longer needing it in future runs, the charges required in the pouch could be randomly generated, and the item description therefore randomly generated also, so you realistically have to find the scroll first.

Overall, really awesome idea!

 

[Blasterixx]

Heyoo! I played this map more than a few times and i can say with absolute confidence that this map is a certified hood classic!
I played it on the latest version of War3.
I played mostly solo and eventually finished it solo! took me 2 hours and a half but i did it baby!

Spoiler: Thoughts

My thoughts while playing the map:

- The Pepperbox item doesn't count the kills when you kill units using spells, is that intended? if yes you should specify that only kills using physical dmg counts. (there are some exceptions, for example spells that do physical dmg do work in getting stacks when you kill with them, like the aoe spell from Kenshi)

- I feel like mobs should drop more keys, i see so many chests and yet no keys to open them.

- The map is really fun to play! the replayability is indeed high.

- Some heroes are much weaker than others, based on my gameplay so far, Lord Garithos and Kenshi are the strongest heroes by far, not even close, for soloing that is.

- Pets don't come with the hero when you move to another room, i think they should.

- There are some spells that don't give xp when you kill creeps with them, making the heros useless, not able to lvl up: Water Nova spell from Dagon, Fire breath spell from Dragon Priest, The Vhoosh spell from Goblin Warlock, Flame Wave from Prophet of Flame and there are probably more but i haven't tested them all.

- A big problem is with the shops! i feel like there should be a shop in almost every room, that way we are able to sell items when we have the inventory full, every god damn time i needed an item from the shops they were nowehere to be found , but when i didn't have money or when i didn't need items i saw plenty of them this is super annoying! Especially in the later levels, it feels like the chance of spawning shops in rooms is super low.

- There needs to be a backpack! i know we can buy the horse that can carry items but, my man... that 15% chance to eat the item doesn't sound that great he also has only 3 slots.

We should be able to buy an upgrade for the horse, that increases the inventory space to 6 and removes his ability to eat items, The item should only show up in the shops after you bought the horse, the item should be called "A Magical Hay Bag" Description: This magical hay bag seems to have an infinite amount of hay inside, i guess our horse will love this more than just eating some random items"

- The locked icy safe doesn't open even with 6 keys, same with the fire one, how do you open those? it doesn't say anywhere. (now that i think about it, i remember seeing a key from the fireshop guy, i guess using that "fire" key will unluck the fire safe and the icy key from the icy shop? meh can't remember, anyway, i did end up putting 6 normal keys inside one of those icy/fire safe and i lost them all cuz it didn't open , maybe the fire/ice safe should drop the normal keys out similar to how it drops out any other item you try to put inside that isn't a key? that way you don't lose normal keys).

- I have a suggestion, what if when u get 2 of the same items, they combine into 1 stronger item, this might help with the space issues.

- There was this Gnoll scroll that dropped in the early levels, was i supposed to do something with that item? cuz i have no idea.




~Possitives

- I really love the map, mainly because it's difficult but not impossible to beat, especially as a solo player, i love maps that can be played and finished solo!

- Lots of unique and interesting creeps and mini-bosses and bosses, with cool spells, loved them.

You did a great job with changing the gameplay by making the bosses attack in certain areas which they indicate on the ground, a very cool use of this mechanic, replacing the "normal" way a unit attacks, that made the boss fights that much more interesting and fun to play, having to always move and dodge all their attacks, i can say with confidence your boss fights are one of the the best i've seen!

- I really liked the rogue like / darkest dungeon aspect of the game, with different strange and random rooms you can get into! loved the survival/traps room as well!

- So many heroes to pick from and i can't believe this but all of them got unique and new spells that i haven't seen before, which is amazing!

There were some heroes that were really funny like the Frog King and the Goblin worker (i do believe you should buff the goblin hero tho, he is too weak to play him solo, i feel like he has insane potential, maybe give him more int so you can use more spells and be able to clear the first rooms so you can progress solo).

- The items! huge variety of items to choose from, once again most of them unique with interesting spells, no idea how you managed to come up with so many new items and spells idea, but well done with that sir!

- I almost forgot, the skins were also awesome, but..... my favorite skin.... and THE BEST SKIN i have ever seen in any War3 Custom map! is this beauty:

Spoiler

Trully majestic! I wish there was a hero with that skin!




After over 20 tries i finally managed to finish the map solo, i did it with Kenshi (fav hero) the main reason i choose this hero is because of the passive lifesteal and the windwalk that can get you out of trouble so you are able to survive and defeat any enemy! The ultimate is pretty strong as well, you can use the 2 clones to attack the bosses while you run around the boss and dodge his spells Teamplay!

Here is a picture with the final result:

Spoiler

My rating for this splendid map is nothing but an S Tier with 99 out of 100 points!



P.S. It seems i played this map on the version 1.0.1, i downloaded the map a few days ago, and you must have updated it by then to 1.0.2, just pointing this out just in case you maybe solved some issues, anyway, bye!

 

[Vladd]

Heyoo! I played this map more than a few times and i can say with absolute confidence that this map is a certified hood classic!
I played it on the latest version of War3.
I played mostly solo and eventually finished it solo! took me 2 hours and a half but i did it baby!

Spoiler: Thoughts

My thoughts while playing the map:

- The Pepperbox item doesn't count the kills when you kill units using spells, is that intended? if yes you should specify that only kills using physical dmg counts. (there are some exceptions, for example spells that do physical dmg do work in getting stacks when you kill with them, like the aoe spell from Kenshi)

- I feel like mobs should drop more keys, i see so many chests and yet no keys to open them.

- The map is really fun to play! the replayability is indeed high.

- Some heroes are much weaker than others, based on my gameplay so far, Lord Garithos and Kenshi are the strongest heroes by far, not even close, for soloing that is.

- Pets don't come with the hero when you move to another room, i think they should.

- There are some spells that don't give xp when you kill creeps with them, making the heros useless, not able to lvl up: Water Nova spell from Dagon, Fire breath spell from Dragon Priest, The Vhoosh spell from Goblin Warlock, Flame Wave from Prophet of Flame and there are probably more but i haven't tested them all.

- A big problem is with the shops! i feel like there should be a shop in almost every room, that way we are able to sell items when we have the inventory full, every god damn time i needed an item from the shops they were nowehere to be found , but when i didn't have money or when i didn't need items i saw plenty of them this is super annoying! Especially in the later levels, it feels like the chance of spawning shops in rooms is super low.

- There needs to be a backpack! i know we can buy the horse that can carry items but, my man... that 15% chance to eat the item doesn't sound that great he also has only 3 slots.

We should be able to buy an upgrade for the horse, that increases the inventory space to 6 and removes his ability to eat items, The item should only show up in the shops after you bought the horse, the item should be called "A Magical Hay Bag" Description: This magical hay bag seems to have an infinite amount of hay inside, i guess our horse will love this more than just eating some random items"

- The locked icy safe doesn't open even with 6 keys, same with the fire one, how do you open those? it doesn't say anywhere. (now that i think about it, i remember seeing a key from the fireshop guy, i guess using that "fire" key will unluck the fire safe and the icy key from the icy shop? meh can't remember, anyway, i did end up putting 6 normal keys inside one of those icy/fire safe and i lost them all cuz it didn't open , maybe the fire/ice safe should drop the normal keys out similar to how it drops out any other item you try to put inside that isn't a key? that way you don't lose normal keys).

- I have a suggestion, what if when u get 2 of the same items, they combine into 1 stronger item, this might help with the space issues.

- There was this Gnoll scroll that dropped in the early levels, was i supposed to do something with that item? cuz i have no idea.




~Possitives

- I really love the map, mainly because it's difficult but not impossible to beat, especially as a solo player, i love maps that can be played and finished solo!

- Lots of unique and interesting creeps and mini-bosses and bosses, with cool spells, loved them.

You did a great job with changing the gameplay by making the bosses attack in certain areas which they indicate on the ground, a very cool use of this mechanic, replacing the "normal" way a unit attacks, that made the boss fights that much more interesting and fun to play, having to always move and dodge all their attacks, i can say with confidence your boss fights are one of the the best i've seen!

- I really liked the rogue like / darkest dungeon aspect of the game, with different strange and random rooms you can get into! loved the survival/traps room as well!

- So many heroes to pick from and i can't believe this but all of them got unique and new spells that i haven't seen before, which is amazing!

There were some heroes that were really funny like the Frog King and the Goblin worker (i do believe you should buff the goblin hero tho, he is too weak to play him solo, i feel like he has insane potential, maybe give him more int so you can use more spells and be able to clear the first rooms so you can progress solo).

- The items! huge variety of items to choose from, once again most of them unique with interesting spells, no idea how you managed to come up with so many new items and spells idea, but well done with that sir!

- I almost forgot, the skins were also awesome, but..... my favorite skin.... and THE BEST SKIN i have ever seen in any War3 Custom map! is this beauty:

Spoiler

View attachment 424691

Trully majestic! I wish there was a hero with that skin!




After over 20 tries i finally managed to finish the map solo, i did it with Kenshi (fav hero) the main reason i choose this hero is because of the passive lifesteal and the windwalk that can get you out of trouble so you are able to survive and defeat any enemy! The ultimate is pretty strong as well, you can use the 2 clones to attack the bosses while you run around the boss and dodge his spells Teamplay!

Here is a picture with the final result:

Spoiler

View attachment 424692

My rating for this splendid map is nothing but an S Tier with 99 out of 100 points!



P.S. It seems i played this map on the version 1.0.1, i downloaded the map a few days ago, and you must have updated it by then to 1.0.2, just pointing this out just in case you maybe solved some issues, anyway, bye!

Well done on finishing it! I'm so glad you enjoyed it! Also thank you so much for the awesome feedback.

In regards to gold and experience not being rewarded for some spells, it seems the latest version of Warcraft has bugged the experience and bounty system. I have developed a potential fix for this which will be coming out in the next update. I'll be mentioning this in the patch notes also, but for anyone using the latest version of reforged you can enable this fix using "-xpgoldfix". (It isn't enabled by default as I'm unsure as to whether or not it will work, since I don't have the latest version to test it with, but I'm confident it will fix a lot of the issues) This will likely be the causation of the Pepperbox not working consistently also.

Shops and items are particularly difficult to manage solo, since there is only one of you. Your horse idea is definitely very funny, I may add something along these lines for Singleplayer runs as managing your inventory can get very tedious with only one player.

Icy and Infernal Safes are unlocked with Ember Keys, as Ember Keys will unlock anything in the game. I'll definitely make it so you can't put regular keys in them, thanks for catching that!

I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed the map and thank you for your comments on the bosses I really wanted to make it feel like you were having an epic battle with them rather than simply kiting them while they tried to run up to you and hit you with basic attacks.

 

[Cappichino]

Awesome fun! Heaps of replayability. Good range of items and scaling. Plenty of heros to explore. Quality game build.

Could use some Shrek movie taunts

 

[Vladd]

Hi everyone!

A new update has just been released that fixes a ton of issues, adds lots of new content, and also includes a new experimental feature to amend the bug in later versions of Warcraft that prevents spells from granting gold or experience. To enable this, Player 1 must type "-xpgoldfix" (without the quotations).

There are plenty of more features on the way! Please feel free to provide any feedback from the new update

 

[ExaltedHound]

Just tried the latest patch and the -xpgoldfix seems to work, Thank you very much for fixing this

 

[javivi]

Hi! I was playing solo, i used the xpgoldfix and it works fine, except for a little bug where enemy abilities give gold and exp, including trap rooms.

Here is a little clip i got while playing.

The map is really cool, looking forward to playing more :3

 

[Vladd]

Hi! I was playing solo, i used the xpgoldfix and it works fine, except for a little bug where enemy abilities give gold and exp, including trap rooms.

Here is a little clip i got while playing.

The map is really cool, looking forward to playing more :3

Thanks for catching that! I've just fixed this now, I'll release it in the next update

There will be a few kinks to it, if you find any more let me know. Essentially the feature just removes bounty and experience entirely, and instead all enemies are triggered to give gold and experience to overcome the issue. I would highly recommend using version 1.29 to overcome the issue entirely though! (If you have it)

Just tried the latest patch and the -xpgoldfix seems to work, Thank you very much for fixing this

So happy to hear it's working! Thanks for letting me know

 

[Vladd]

Hi! I was playing solo, i used the xpgoldfix and it works fine, except for a little bug where enemy abilities give gold and exp, including trap rooms.

Here is a little clip i got while playing.

The map is really cool, looking forward to playing more :3

Just released a small update now, please let me know if you encounter any more problems!

 

[A]mun]

Just played it with some folks, pretty lovely experience, until...

The Death Knight had enough and fired his multiple death coils, which was our party's kryptonite (all slow moving: frog king, corrupted ent etc).

Will know better for next time!

 

[Vladd]

Just played it with some folks, pretty lovely experience, until...

The Death Knight had enough and fired his multiple death coils, which was our partie's kryptonite (all slow moving: frog king, corrupted ent etc).

Will know better for next time!

That's amazing lol, so glad you had fun! When me and my friends do hardcore playthroughs, we often find that the Death Knight claims a lot of our lives too. He's very tricky!

 

[Rufus]

I don't feel like reviewing, just wanna say I really enjoyed the game
Fun items, fun heroes, fun rooms, fun bosses!

 

[Vladd]

I don't feel like reviewing, just wanna say I really enjoyed the game
Fun items, fun heroes, fun rooms, fun bosses!

Thank you so much!

 

[Pickles]

is Grahka supposed to start with 2 trinity trinkets?

 

[Vladd]

is Grahka supposed to start with 2 trinity trinkets?

Nope, that was a very silly mistake of mine. I was testing with him and I forgot to erase his inventory - this has been patched now

 

[Amenhotep]

Gilanore Hardcore run.

 

[deepstrasz]

Definitely an addictive game, offering multiplayer, randomized rooms and a variety of heroes to choose from.

Approved.

---

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If you're not satisfied with the review and wish another opinion, contact the other reviewers or use the staff contact:
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[Shido]

The moment I saw this:

I have to play it. That's MY BOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.

 

[Vladd]

The moment I saw this:
View attachment 428661
I have to play it. That's MY BOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.

Hahahaha he is a BEAUTIFUL BOI, you did a great job on making him! Just don't wake him up!

 

[goosemann]

amazing map, one of the best. really fun.
i do feel it needs a little more variety to achieve its full potential.
some issues:
pegasus heart says it gives 300 speed, but doesnt specify if it's attack or move speed. it was movespeed....
barkbeard's description calls him mirdon. there are some other typos, i remember one ability, but not which, looked like its description was cutoff.
enemies that spawn from imprisoned enemy crates often have only 7 attack damage, not sure if that's intentional.