Test Discussion Episode 34: "JLD: Darkness Rising" 4-Player Operation

Greetings fellow monster slayers,

Welcome to the JLD: Darkness Rising Alert Operation. There are two versions for you to test and experience: Event and Normal. This particular piece of content focuses on the dark side of the occult. Hope you enjoy!

Please leave feedback and bugs here that pertain to the content, including the Alert matinees this time around.

In particular, test out the Lamp of Van Helsing, a new method of integrating artifacts with content. It's a new Trick or Teekle Bucket like "artifact" that you can level up and receive consumables from. These consumables will help you achieve feats and various levels of difficulty in the final encounter (decreasing and/or increasing difficulty in certain ways depending on how you do things).

Have fun storming the castle. Literally.

Known Issues:

• Hall NPCs were incorrectly set to have lower heath in Normal Mode. This change should be for Event Mode only and will be fixed in a future hotfix.

Wow that was long. I thought it was over after Etrigan. So did one of my team mates I guess, because they left. Little did I realize it was just getting started.

There's probably a few too many adds in the hallways. Grinding through them reminded me of the T3 Arkham alert.

We did the side rooms cause it's what you do on test. Also, it wasn't exactly clear to me that there was a faster, easier way, even though they were marked optional. If there were any special mechanics in those side rooms I didn't notice them.

In the last fight the pools of darkness were a little hard to see with all the darkness in the room. Once I trained my eye I could pick them out as long as there weren't too many special effects going off. Generally I liked the mechanics of the fight. Good for encouraging tanks and trolls in an alert.

Hey Charon,

just wanted to give a little feedback regarding the Alert/Operation. First off...really nice looking cosmetically. However, I will say it was surprisingly easy. Don't get me wrong, I understand this is non-Elite content so it needs to be able to be beat by the masses but it was REALLY easy, just time consuming. We ended up 3 manning it, 1 Tank & 2 DPS, as our pug left during the first few hallways (I guess he saw we didn't have a Healer and decided to bounce). We were all 258 CR and we made a point to go to every side room there was doing the Optional sections of the Alert. I only died once the entire time as did my league mates because I got alt-tabbed out of my game at the worst time, right in the middle of about 10+ adds.

All that being said, I have to say, that I enjoyed the length of the Alert. Seeing as how it would only be about 15-20 minutes tops with more gear, a full group, proper skill point total (I'm at 245 on Test and the others were around 250-255), and if you ignore the optional missions. I like the basis of the time vs reward thing with the Alert. Spend more time in it...get more reward. Seems like a logical payoff but majority of players will need to be ready to spend half an hour in there if they so choose to do this.

Only bug we ran into was the reactivation of the turret. So nothing to report on the bug front other than that but I see you are already aware of it. In closing, I do want to say that the final boss fight is nicely done.

Question
Is the Van Helsing Lamp supposed to show up on your first run of the alert? My group didn't receive a lamp until the second run.

As for the lamp itself, I don't feel like it is presented very well. In a more modern game, this would be one of those places where you'd receive a brief picture tutorial explaining about how to open the lamp, use the consumables, and level up a new lamp. I tried using two of the consumables from the initial lamp in the final fight. The best I was able to accomplish was closing one of the darkness pools. Trying to swap consumables in and out during the fight was awkward. It just seemed like it would be better to ignore the Van Helsing lamp altogether for normal runs.

If I'm understanding the purpose of the Optional areas correctly, they are there so you can kill a couple extra subbosses for extra materials for a new lamp.

I ran into a little issue, and my guess it's a bug...

I was running the alert, made it into the boss fight at the village zone past the first area and we ending up wiping. After re spawning, I had to re-log and when I was re-invited back into the instance, it sent me to the very beginning of the alert as if we just started, where John Constantine and the few groups of ads are. I tried walking back out into the Watchtower's Instance portal, but, I landed back in the same area. We were confused, tried to see if someone else could invite me back to the same instance, and nope, I was still in the beginning zone.

Was just about to report this. I think I was in your group.
Yeah, this really sucked. I enjoyed the alert but losing a teammate due to a glitch was rough.

We also lost a member and couldn't bring anyone past the first part at Argus. Because there was so much to clear up until that point it did seem like the end of the alert and someone left. In fact I was bopping around exploring and then realized there was a portal to the next part. Maybe that needs to be automatic like in Throne where you are automatically transitioned to the next area.

I tried the alert again and I'm not liking the Lamp of Van Helsing very much. You have to swap out generally more useful trinkets for consumables that are very situational. Trying to swap consumables in mid-boss fight is never a good thing to do, especially with the visibility issues in the last fight. The consumables have a long cooldown. Clearing out the optional bosses to help power up your lamp takes a non-trivial amount of time and isn't very exciting.

I don't like that there is "even more stuff" to consume limited inventory space on PCTest. Now you have to worry about holding on to your Van Helsing lamp, consumables, and the reagents you feed to the Lamp.

When playing this alert with randoms, I've found the hardest section to be the Turret room. PUGs always want to abandon the turrets and that doesn't work out very well. Those turrets hurt a lot. It'd be helpful if the NPCs spawned on the west side of the room instead of north/south. The NPCs can sometimes overwhelm a solo player that maybe babysitting a turret.

Apparently all of the ARGUS members are Gadgets players. The mines that are deployed in the Turret fight look a little too much like the ones a Gadgets player would use. I even tried using Self-Destruct Signal to blow them up, but that didn't seem to work. Those guys also like using Asphyixation Gas. So that can cause some confusion if there a Gadgets player in the group. The same thing can happen in the Etrigan fight if a player is using the Shamrock Orbital and you are in a Shamrock Orbital phase.

Have you considered maybe turning this into a raid?

Alternately, you could maybe break this into 2 Alerts.

I was confused about the Van Helsing lamp, also. I didn't realise that it was ready to go when I received it. I figured that it wasn't levelled up when I received it and that I'd be levelling it up throughout the mission. Because of this misunderstanding, I consumed the consumables by mistake, thinking they were the reagents for the lamp (reading helps, of course)

I assumed that I'd be getting more reagents throughout the second half of the alert, so I could use it again before the final boss. But I didn't get anything apart from 4 reagents from the two sub-bosses. This wasn't enough to get me back to rank 4, though, so I had to face the final boss without any consumables.

I haven't tried or tested the consumables, so I'm not sure how good they are or if they're worth using, but I do agree with the feedback Penryn wrote above, especially about it being awkward to switch in the middle of combat and the long cool down. I also agree about the inventory issue, especially if you decide not to use it or if you outclass the content and don't need to use them. It might be more interesting/desirable to use if it behaved more like a trinket or the Zeus soder from the Olympus raid in AF3, but I'm not sure.

I like the concept of the Van Helsing lamp, and the Teekl bucket, but I think the system is better suited for vanity rewards.

Bug: Healing Barrel issues in the final boss (Event Version)
1) In the final boss fight, I noticed that the healing barrel was located right on top of one of the shadow portals. As these shadow portals both damage you and heal the boss, it's a bit of a pain trying to get to it.

2) The final boss healing barrel didn't seem to respawn in my run. The healing barrel in the Etrigan fight respawned frequently, though. So I assume it's not intended.

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I experienced this bug also, except it occurred when I warped to the Hall of Doom and tried to re-enter the instance through the portal in the Tech Wing. It happened in the first half of the alert and again in the second half.

I noticed that when I returned to the portal the second time, after leaving the European Castle, it still said "Black Room" on the text above the teleporter in the Hall of Doom.

On my run, I was the only person in the map at the time, so I wasn't sure if it was intended but I didn't think it was. I was certain that in the past, I've been able to leave and re-enter operations without losing progress. After reading this report by Music Mechanicz, it's safe to say it's definitely not intended.

Yes, you were in my group. And yes, it's truly annoying when a glitch "kicks" you from the alert.

ran it at 258 cr fire tank with 250 sp, and artifacts only at 120. (new tank one, manacles and eye) I got the lamp right away but for some reason did not get enough reagents to level it to level 4. there are two flame reagents in my bag but it wont recognize them for the lamp even though it says they are for it in the description. thus I wasn't able to use the lamp at all in the alert as it wouldn't let me equip it unless it was level 4. extreme lag occurred when the laser areas appeared. I have a 4 gb graphics card so it shouldn't have lagged me out. turrets seemed like it would have been difficult without a tank, but since I was tanking I stood halfway between them and pulled everything to the middle while 1 person stood by 1 turret and 2 people stood by the other. (it took the 1 person about 2/3 of the fight to realize he needed to go stand by the other turret though). no bugs occurred on any of the boss fights. question about etrigans mirror images tho. do might powers also dispel them or only weapon attacks?

Feedback
If your group has bad Damage role players, it is possible the group may not make it past the Turret room. One group I was in yesterday had two terrible Damage role players. When we got to the Turret room, a large mob group appeared that had a medic type NPC in it. That medic was constantly healing the mob group back to 100%. The fight with that one wave went on for a long time. Somehow we were eventually able to get the mob group split up enough so the NPCs could be killed off one at a time over a long time duration.

It wasn't a fun experience.

I've been there, it's annoying.

so might powers do dispel etrigans image. also the two flames were actually the items we could use. this will be confusing to people at first. I got into a group that had been in there for 90 minutes and couldn't pass the turrets. they did have a tank. I asked the tank to position himself between the turrets and we got past it right away. having to do this with a mandatory tank is not going to work well as tanks in prod are scarce. maybe the group can get away with being positioned all at one turret without a tank. I will have to test it.

Whats the point of all the extra adds? Are they possibly tied to a feat?

Also....are tornadoes, water spouts, sand storms the new mechanic for ALL future raids now? Lmao!

I que'd for the alert two nights ago for the first time and was in the starting room by myself. The map was empty. I kept dying from the adds and my team mated trying going back for me, it almost seemed like we weren't in the same phase. I tried phasing with them but we were in the same phase. So basically they were all invisible to me and I was invisible to them. I came in a little late. Guess one of their teammates had left mid operation.