The Dhahabu Kingdom arcs

[ZamuelNow]

Dhahabu Kingdom and the Indelible Curse of Hate - Arc ID: 60044

 

[SFMA} A hero's work with the Portal Corporation doesn't just spread through Paragon. Other dimensions need help as destiny has decreed you to be their savior. Aid Queen Auri as the Dhahabu Kingdom fights to stop an evil curse from destroying all she holds dear.

 

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Dhahabu Kingdom and the Unfathomable Nightmare of Sand - Arc ID: 61528
The thrilling sequel to Dhahabu Kingdom and the Indelible Curse of Hate (#60044). As you return to this mystic land, the people are assailed by an unholy drought. As something sinister lurks, only you can save this world from an ancient threat. [SFMA]

 

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So...it's back.  I think I worked out the problems in Test Mode but I don't have the same resources I had on Live.  Still worried about a few parts but as a top level arc I'm less worried about some of the potential problems with enemy difficulty.  On the positives, I did try to tighten up a few things.  And I held off until I27 page 7 dropped because one of the changes is Queen Auri now has her own costume, instead of just being a recolored Sybil.  Looking for feedback and constructive criticism.

 

Fun fact: The arc is so old that I didn't have a SFMA tag on the original.

 

EDIT: Added the sequel since it's also been republished.

Edited April 20, 2024 by ZamuelNow

[Clave Dark 5]

Just ran it, it's fantastic.  The world building was great and, uncommonly, was done during the story ion service of the story.  Repurposed critters were chosen and done really well.  Map choices sometimes felt a tad too big, but barely if so; so that's a small, subjective quibble at worst.   The story felt like it had stakes, and made me feel very heroic.  I got killed a few times in the next to last mission which was starting to frustrate, but I'm a squishie so that's on me (bring break-frees if you're susceptible ha ha).  Some interesting mechanics choices in one missions.  Her costume choice was good yes.  😃 

 

I can't otherwise think of anything else to add, this was probably one of the best, most solid missions I think I've ever run.

[ZamuelNow]

4 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Map choices sometimes felt a tad too big, but barely if so; so that's a small, subjective quibble at worst.

 

I personally wish there was a better choice for the first map, especially as the first map of the arc.  Every other other map in the arc does what I want.  Still, it's an outdoor map with no modern architecture that looks distinctly different from the other outdoor map the arc uses so it could be far worse.

 

Glad you enjoyed it, though.  I watched a playthrough of a different arc and the sheer difference in narrative style had me wondering if the arc might seem outdated.

[Clave Dark 5]

I thought the map worked just fine, perhaps a tad too big, but as I said, that's subjective I think.  I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this arc being outdated... I wouldn't judge your work against others' that way.  As I see it, any artistic endeavor is you setting a goal in mind to create, and if it's executed it well, therefore it's a success.  Maybe say making a cubism painting isn't the hot new thing right now, but if you still made a good one, you made a good one.

[cranebump]

Running it right now, and will provide write up in my reviews section soon. Couple things: there's a missing carriage return on the intro screen (space between paragraphs). And I don't think it's necessary to repeat the accept text each mish (in blue, top of page). If you want to keep that, though, I'd change the Accept text to just "Accept," and have the blue text appear on the next screen to indicate what the PC actually said. It's a minor thing, but it is noticeable (to me, anyway). Everything else is well done so far (only on M3).

 

(Speaking of: REALLY great placement of objectives and writing on that mish. I did NOT disturb the treasure.:-)

 

(I can vouch for the groups in M4. TONS of debuff. Entire groups of nothing but bosses. I'm not squishy, and I'm having to think about pulling.)

Edited February 24, 2024 by cranebump

[ZamuelNow]

1 hour ago, cranebump said:

(I can vouch for the groups in M4. TONS of debuff. Entire groups of nothing but bosses. I'm not squishy, and I'm having to think about pulling.)

 

Hmm.  Nothing but bosses was something I thought I fixed that kept wanting to reset itself during testing.  I might need to delete and rebuild that group from scratch but I'll probably wait to read the rest of your review first in case something else weird is going on.

[cranebump]

It might be I'm SURE it's fine in default mode. And I did finish it. 

 

FYI: I multi-faceplanted in my OWN recently completed arc. That was higher settings, as well. Since teams will run like that, though, I imagine it will be a fair challenge (I'm speaking of your arc and mine here). Plus, it's not like my tank is completely optimized like some of the master builders here. Main thing is the writing is clear, the objectives fall into place well, etc. It's well-engineered, which is what you want, as a baseline. Everything else is fiddly bits here and there.

Edited February 24, 2024 by cranebump

[ZamuelNow]

As a whole, I think I'm just oddly ultra paranoid about "getting things right" with this arc.  It's odd since back on Live this wasn't my first arc and I wasn't paranoid about my first arc.  Timing might be part of the issue since Homecoming has had servers running AE for a few years while my joining the game in I14 means I originally wasn't as far behind everyone.

 

Carriage return error has been fixed.  Contemplating other small tweaks but they'd really be nitpicks.

[ZamuelNow]

Been massaging things a bit to smooth out narration quirks and enemy weirdness over the past few weeks.  I think I found the problems that were causing all the boss spawns.  May or may not fill out some of the later enemy groups since I have the space.

[Kyksie]

On 2/23/2024 at 12:30 PM, ZamuelNow said:

 

I personally wish there was a better choice for the first map, especially as the first map of the arc.  Every other other map in the arc does what I want.  Still, it's an outdoor map with no modern architecture that looks distinctly different from the other outdoor map the arc uses so it could be far worse.

 

 

The first map is the huge outdoor Croatoa fairyland map, wherein we are tasking with finding the king and two villiagers; the former has a glowy aura making him easy to spot, the latter did not. I find the king and one hostage, spend ten minutes looking for the other, then give up and log into Champions. (haha I'm kidding, no one plays that. at all.)

Edited March 11, 2024 by Kyksie

[Ankylosaur]

One of the things I sometimes do on really big maps with hard to find items, or on maps that are just hard to see (like the Council Atlas map), are what I now call "spirit guides" (because of how I first used them).

 

Basically a friendly non combatant Escort in the area, a few multiples of it, without enemies around it, that they might bump into to mark the objective.

 

So, for example, I think I used that very map in my Neverland one and there were some friendly fairies that could mark the map for you. 

 

Not sure if it could work for you in this instance - just sharing the idea.

[ZamuelNow]

16 hours ago, Ankylosaur said:

Not sure if it could work for you in this instance - just sharing the idea.

 

Theoretically it can since you're supposed to meet with the king though as an outdoor map you have no control over where the king is.  I might look into what all maps got released after the original shutdown to see if a different one works better.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 3/10/2024 at 6:16 PM, Kyksie said:

 

The first map is the huge outdoor Croatoa fairyland map, wherein we are tasking with finding the king and two villiagers; the former has a glowy aura making him easy to spot, the latter did not. I find the king and one hostage, spend ten minutes looking for the other, then give up and log into Champions. (haha I'm kidding, no one plays that. at all.)

Yeah, I've often tried to have a good reason for them to have a big aura or maybe one of the Held positions where they float off the ground in a big green haze, to make them easier to spot from a distance.  Or the foes surrounding them.

[Ankylosaur]

On 3/11/2024 at 2:40 PM, ZamuelNow said:

I might look into what all maps got released after the original shutdown to see if a different one works better.

 

Not that many. Here are the outdoor ones - off the top of my head

• The Cimmerora island, but now with front, middle, and back.
• The Cimmerora castle, but the full thing, with a fifth column back.
• The Cimmerora pass
• The Croatoa frozen winterland
• The CoH floating ziggurat island
• Cap Au Diablo with the crazy sky

Anyone think of any others?

 

Note that this seems updated from a quick spot check as all those and more (like the smelter cauldron) are here: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission_Architect_Unique_Maps

 

 

Any I missed?

Edited March 13, 2024 by Ankylosaur

[ZamuelNow]

A fascinating thing I discovered when looking at older forum archives is that this arc never had the SFMA tag but older arcs I made did.  It's leading me to believe that not using the tag may have been deliberate.  I think I now remember that the reason why the Accept text is duplicated is so team members who aren't the leader can read it.  Rereading feedback, I'm seeing that a lot of things about Indelible Curse of Hate and it's sequel were directly based on feedback or scrambling to fix things that broke when a new issue dropped.

 

Speaking of fixes, I adjusted the first mission to a different Croatoa map but I may stop there.  Can't massage forever and I've got other arcs to work on.  Was editing the sequel and there was surprisingly little that needed fixing, compared to Indelible Curse of Hate.  Granted, there's some shared enemy groups so fixing one probably helped the other.

[Darmian]

Thoroughly enjoyed that!  Well done.

[ZamuelNow]

Figured I might as well rip off the bandage and republish the sequel instead of waiting to get other things finished.  Tested, but I'm sure someone else will find something I missed.

[ZamuelNow]

I added a renamed Animus Arcana to the fourth mission of Indelible Curse of Hate.  It feels small but the enemy group was lacking variety and it lacked it in a way that clashed with my own suggested spawn sizes in. It badly needed more minions.

[Clave Dark 5]

I sent you a message in-game, but just played the sequel, Nightmare of Sand.  This is all 100% topnotch work from writing to costumes, etc.  Great stuff! 

 

Anyone looking for some of the best AE work to run?  You can only choose worse options than to play these.

 

Oh, and here's the character that I ran the arc with, which you were asking after - obviously just a one note joke of a character, but obviously felt like there had been some synergy with running the arc with even that.

Edited March 14 by Clave Dark 5

[ZamuelNow]

The shade of blue looks similar to lapis lazuli so it's on brand.  Well, other than the weird fact that it isn't a major color I use in the arc, hmm.

 

More plays reminded me to update the water bearers since Water Blast and Marine Affinity exist.

 

EDIT: The water bearers have blue outfits now.

Edited March 14 by ZamuelNow

[Clave Dark 5]

11 hours ago, ZamuelNow said:

The shade of blue looks similar to lapis lazuli so it's on brand.

I have a little ceramic replica statue of an Egyptian cat, and thinking it might inspire a character, I went looking into it and discovered Egyptian Blue is a whole thing, and yeah, I tried to match his color close as the picker would let me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_blue 

[Forager]

I  just finished the first, and I would echo @Clave Dark 5's initial review. The world building was for the purpose of the story in a way that is rare for player content.

 

I know that you were looking for otherworldly or exotic with the map choices, and I think you did a great job trying to make it feel that way.

 

The writing was tight enough that I read every word. I especially appreciate that every mission didn't require a wall of text. It felt like the story was moving at a really pleasant pace.

 

As for difficulty, I played it with a blaster on +1/x3 and found the fights fun enough.

 

My favorite part was related to the way you incorporated emotions into the plot:

 

Spoiler

The idea that an outsider was best suited to do this, because if Auri or someone from Dhahabu went, they would be too emotional and just feed the curse (i.e. Auri can't go... she would be flipping out). That's a great way to put a real world phenomenon into a sci-fi/fantasy plot line.

 

As for criticism? I don't love when someone puts dialog in my character's mouth and I hate when I'm told when I think, feel or believe... but that's a personal pet peeve.

 

Spoiler

I may have missed it, but have you considered putting Anansi's name in the NPC dialog as well as the clues? That way if a player isn't reading clues, the suggestion doesn't seem so random?

 

Overall, very cool. It felt like you stayed "in the pocket" and craft a real mission arc that suits the game while using original characters with a unique feel. I don't know what exact vibe you were going for with them and I would prefer not to muse... but they felt like a group that doesn't exist in CoH but could. Most importantly? I had fun playing it.

[ZamuelNow]

On 3/18/2025 at 3:20 PM, Forager said:

Overall, very cool. It felt like you stayed "in the pocket" and craft a real mission arc that suits the game while using original characters with a unique feel. I don't know what exact vibe you were going for with them and I would prefer not to muse... but they felt like a group that doesn't exist in CoH but could. Most importantly? I had fun playing it.

 

"Feels like it could exist in the game" is a fairly high compliment.  As far as the vibe I was going for?  I wanted a fun pulp fantasy.  But, you know, less blatantly racist than some of those could be.  To that end, Portal Corp is the excuse plot that keeps on giving.  And to your point on a emotions, there got to be a valid reason the magical kingdom with tons of steampunk resources needs an outsider to solve its problems.  Succeeding here means any future problems are just you helping an established ally.

 

The writing being tight is partially because the original version of this was written back around I15 or so and you needed to manage your file's size.  All the code for fonts and such was hand typed instead using workarounds to get more than the character limit.  The useful part of that is it makes fixing things like small typos easy.  Also, not sneaking more text in helps retain the narrative flow.

 

Though the two arcs have benefitted from prior feedback, I have been thinking about a lot of things recently and I might edit some small bits to these.

[Clave Dark 5]

23 hours ago, ZamuelNow said:

All the code for fonts and such was hand typed instead using workarounds to get more than the character limit. 

Wait what?  I've faced the problem of "how do I get enough text in here?" problem more than I care to say, could you expand on this for a second?

[ZamuelNow]

I believe people are typing their text without any code and then right clicking to add the code after.  This adds the code in a way that ignores the character limit but makes things a headache to adjust afterwards.  I'd say it's better to be concise with your narrative.