Official Feedback Thread for Cradle of Shadows (Dungeon)

ZOS_JessicaFolsom

This is the official feedback thread for the Cradle of Shadows dungeon that comes with the Shadows of the Hist DLC Dungeon Pack. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• How does the difficulty feel for Normal mode and Veteran mode?
• Are you happy with the rewards you got for doing this dungeon?
• What is your favorite mechanic?
• Were you able to complete the dungeon?
• How many times did your character die?
• What level is your character and how many Champion Points do you have?
• How long did it take to complete this dungeon?
• What was your group makeup?
• Did you do the Undaunted Pledge?

We want to see livestreams of this dungeon! If you and your group livestream or create videos of your runs through the Cradle of Shadows, please post a reply in this thread with a link to where we can find it and/or tweet us at TESOnline with the details.

MaxTM

Heyhey!

I got to say im really amazed by this dungeon. Funny mechanics so far. We did it with 2 players on Normal Mode and Dranos seems really awesome! Looking forward to the Vet-Version of him.

BUT! a bug is happening where you can't pull the lever after defeating Dranos. Please have a look into it!

AtAfternoon

I like the mechanics and overall design of the dungeon a lot. I played trough it on normal with people I found trough the group finder with cp300 characters. We had no major difficulties, I found it easier than normal WGT and ICP, died once during the last boss dropped us in the maze.

There's a big spike in difficulty between the 2nd last boss and the ones before. We were also unsure what to do with the balls that floated around the room (I just walked into them and I don't know if I activated something or just had a good timing but that made them move towards the boss and I *think* it made something). It would be great if the previous boss had just a little more HP so you're not lulled into a false sense of security (if the false sense of security isn't indented ).

I'm not sure if it's intended or not, but when you're dropped into the maze by the last boss, not all players could see the map. This meant that while someone had the light, someone else would direct us towards the exit.

Ajaxduo

erm...there appears to be a huge visual bug with the last boss;

crazmadsci

"Wrath of Mephala"!!!! I have so much to say about those 3 words haha.

Darlon

Very nice atmosphere in this dungeon. Love the spider tunnels.

pandoraderomanus

How does the difficulty feel for Normal mode and Veteran mode?
- difficulty was OK (normal mode) for 300cp templates, just need to understand mechanics and it will be easy peasy
Are you happy with the rewards you got for doing this dungeon?
- yeah, item sets, my groupmate got a monsterhelm there (cp160, is it intended?)
What is your favorite mechanic?
- the last boss is pretty interesting
Were you able to complete the dungeon?
- yes!
How many times did your character die?
- 3 or 4, just because we didn't have tank (he came later)
What level is your character and how many Champion Points do you have?
- template 300cp
How long did it take to complete this dungeon?
- maybe an hour, not very long
What was your group makeup?
- sorc tank (around 18k HP ), templar healer (me), magsorc dd, magnb dd
Did you do the Undaunted Pledge?
- didn't take pledges there

tinythinker

On a template character I can see both dungeons, but on my character(s) copied from the NA server Cradle doesn't show up on the Shadowfen map (it eventually shows up on radar) and the gates don't work. Is this intended, because the other new dungeon shows up fine on pre-existing and template characters and both types can enter it.

Praeficere

EU Player - using Templates.

Spent a few hours last night on Veteran mode, and again this night.

• The Brazier mechanic works flawlessly and is really fun
• Trash rooms, unlike ICP, are engaging - priority targets and CC is required.
• The boss abilities, including Dranos, are very clear to see, however also easy to miss if the group is unfocused. You have to play around the mechanics or people will die, most likely a wipe (although there is chance to recover if the group is fast enough) - which is as it should be. On each of the main boss fights I did, each person had a specific role for the boss mechanics and it needs communication and coordination for the group to be successful. This makes it really fun for groups, but good luck PUGing them. (Don't make it too pug friendly yet!) Calling out each of the boss phases and any mechanics that appear helped immensely, especially on the AoE in the Dranos fight. (Counting down the charge phase, then to which player it's going to... counting the runes then calling where the adds to interrupt will be)
• I have to say, the Dranos boss fight is REALLY unforgiving, a real spike up from the rest of the dungeon. The blobs, as we call it, should have a smaller impact radius I feel, if it will be a one shot. It gets really tough when it fires 2 Blobs, then 3 right after in succession. Communication is really needed for this fight, however it is doable, albeit overwhelming at times. "bloblobloblobloblobloblobloblobloblob"(Our TS during the boss fight)
• The trash rooms and boss fights before Dranos needs to be bumped slightly in difficulty, especially the mini-bosses.
• After the Dranos Boss Fight, the dungeon falls into ICP syndrome - same trash, over and over. zzzz.
• The last boss is perfect, really. Nothing is broken, you're forced to play around the mechanics, and it's all good fun. The maze phase really made the boss fight and broke up the fight into something interesting.

A set piece on every boss... perfect, however Training and Prosperous really need to be removed, please. The sets all look interesting and have a place, although I haven't a full piece to try yet.

Dominoid

tinythinker wrote: »

On a template character I can see both dungeons, but on my character(s) copied from the NA server Cradle doesn't show up on the Shadowfen map (it eventually shows up on radar) and the gates don't work. Is this intended, because the other new dungeon shows up fine on pre-existing and template characters and both types can enter it.

The "Gate" one had no interactable for me either. I gotta believe that is a bug. The second one has a tunnel underneath to get to the door.

tinythinker

Dominoid wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

On a template character I can see both dungeons, but on my character(s) copied from the NA server Cradle doesn't show up on the Shadowfen map (it eventually shows up on radar) and the gates don't work. Is this intended, because the other new dungeon shows up fine on pre-existing and template characters and both types can enter it.

The "Gate" one had no interactable for me either. I gotta believe that is a bug. The second one has a tunnel underneath to get to the door.

Yeah the tunnel one with the Puzzle City and mad Hist was fine, got inside to look around, but the Cradle of Shadows is absent from the map and the doors/gate thing do nothing if I'm not on a new character made for the PTS.

Schemering

My team did veteran Cradle of Shadows. We tried the other one yesterday; for us this one was more fun.

Beautiful design and enjoyable mechanics:)

We did the dungeon in 3 hours and 30 minutes

We used 5 resses to get to Dranos boss, we used 84 resses on Dranos fight (and we LOVED the mechanics there:)) and at endboss we used about 100 resses.

We encountered 2 bugs one was small , Dranos sliding over the floor like sometimes players do on live server, he reset after a minute or so, second bug happened twice to different party members, after being in the maze and ressing after whipe the person would still see almost nothing as if still in the maze. A UI refresh didnt fix it but relogging did in both cases

The 5 bonus set pieces did not look like something we would use but the monster helm we got is a very nice set even 1 piece giving weapon damage:)

We're EU players and went in with templates; a Breton templar healer, a ? templar magicka dd, a Dunmer nightblade magicka dd and an Argonian dk tank.

@ZOS: this is the type of dungeon that makes this group happy; good work!!

Cuyler

Hi @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_Finn @ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_RyanRuzich I had a chance to go into both the new dungeons last night on VET CP 160 and all I got to say is WOW you guys have done an amazing job on these new dungeons. I'll do my best to recap what my experience was, here we go....

Cradle of Shadows

[*] How does the difficulty feel for Normal mode and Veteran mode?

Veteran. This is def the harder of the two dungeons.
Trash - It felt like the trash here was way easier than in Ruins Mazzatun. Could use an additional bannerman in a few pulls.

Boss 1 - Typical really. Stack an whack the boss died while in the Aoe from everything. almost didn't realize it before he was already dead.

Boss 2 - This fight is hard! I think it's a really good difficultly for capped players with a ton of experience and voice comms but very unlikely an average pug group is getting through vet here. The frequency of the teleport and the distance travelled is both too often and too far IMO and as a magblade without a ranged interrupt I felt quite useless. We spent 1 hour learning the fight but should be easy for us now that mechs are known. Considering the Umbral Bolt interrupt is the only difficult mechanic there, it's simply comes down to having one or more proficient players interrupting each time.

Boss 3 - Typical again here. I think we had like 2 or 3 deaths and as soon as we learned to avoid the one-shots we got it. 2nd pull I think.

Boss 4 - This fight will be moderately difficult without DK chains. Basically you want a DK tank or gtfo so that a little disheartening for all those NB and temp tanks out there. With a DK though, and knowing/following the mechanics the fight is standard fare I think. What I would suggest however is rendering the tell of the red aoe circle where the orbs land a little sooner than it does currently. Reason, this is a 2D game and it's difficult to determine the direction these orbs are traveling exactly. It's totally manageable, but difficult to see the direction and the tell shows up last second.

Boss 5 - Holy $#!t this fight is awesome! I felt like I was in a 4-man trial with all the mechs going on. This will be a fun fight for many experienced players, however dare I say this fight may be un-puggable in it's current state. This is where we got stuck, granted we were tired after 5+ hours of continuous play, but after 1:20 min of attempting we still had not completed. I blame it on fatigue, not the mechanics. Next time we go in fresh we'd get it rather quickly as the boss was at <50% HP before the first split phase. Mostly player error and slow reflexes to blame.

We spent a significant amount of time getting through the split phase as it's pretty much rng there. Also splitting to the top gives a harder difficulty because there's 4 doors vs. bottom's 3 doors (?). I don't like rng like this here as it can wipe the group based solely on rng, not cool. I'd suggest a mechanic like the last boss of the Ruins of Mazzatun that requires your group members to relay information to the other team. For example, when split two and two the opposite side can activate something to see which door is open on the opposite side and then relay that info to the other team......after returning from split we kept dying to stupid mistakes so we called it. This part was also more difficult than necessary because of no minimap addon which would've made it significantly easier.

[*] Are you happy with the rewards you got for doing this dungeon?
I didn't see anything that really stuck out to me on this one. didn't see the helm though yet and I guess it's possible it's BiS
[*] What is your favorite mechanic?

Trash - Nothing exciting. It's fun running from fire to fire.
Boss 1 - Stay in fire circles got it. Nothing exciting here. Aoe everything dies.
Boss 2 - I like the idea of the boss immunity when not near a fire. The umbral bolts being an unforgiving one-shot is cool too however as explained previously I think may be a little overtuned, too frequent, teleports too far.
Boss 3 - On first time though it's cool when spider adds show up but on replay wont be anything exciting here. don't stack on boss for one-shot Aoe, business as usual.
Boss 4 - this is where things get interesting, the warping of the images animation is phenominal. very fun mechanic although I'm sure non-DK tanks will not like it very much. Orb is fun but hard to read. The animation of the "blood geyser" is very cool looking too although I felt like I could just stand in it without consequence.
Boss 5 - What is there not to like about this fight! Every part of it requires a team effort which I like immensely. haha, as I explained before the one thing I dont like is the rng associated to the doors in the "shadows" when splitting up. please make something that we can work with, running around aimlessly is boring but I assume will be easier once minimaps are enabled.

[*] Were you able to complete the dungeon?
No. we had done the ruins right before and we were going on close to 6 hrs straight play. Fatigue had a lot to do with us not finishing and we ran out of time at the end of the night. Had we been fresh, we would've cleared it.
[*] How many times did your character die?
I stopped counting, lol plan to die on this last boss a lot as you're learning it.
[*] What level is your character and how many Champion Points do you have?
CP 669
[*] How long did it take to complete this dungeon?
we put in 3:30 min total after a long night we were tired. Spent 1 hour learning boss 2 and and 1:20 min on last boss. I'd say when everyone knows what they're doing 30 min total is possible. we took many breaks.
[*] What was your group makeup?
Templar dps/healer, Mag Sorc DD, Magblade DD, and DK tank. All 501+ CP
[*] Did you do the Undaunted Pledge?
No


I've got a video of both for you guys but I'm cleaning it up atm, lol.

Ryuuhime

We have finally finished Cradle of Shadows, on our second attempt at the dungeon.

So, here are some spoilers and screenshots, as well as my opinion about it:

Group composition: Imperial DK Tank (rerolled Nord Stamplar Tank for the second try), Argonian Templar Healer (me), Stamina NB and Magicka DK Damage Dealers.
300 CP Templates, yellow gear (purple on the first attempt yesterday). I wore 5 Infallible Aether, 1 Kena, 1 Skoria, and Maelstrom Resto+Destro staves.

We were on Teamspeak.

Time it took us: Quite a while in total. Maybe 7-8 hours across our 2 attempts.

Rewards: Divines Velindreth Heavy Helmet. It dropped for 2 of us. It made me very happy, but at the same time very sad that it was on PTS and not Live.

Boss fights: This dungeon takes on simple mechanics (interrupt boss, dodge red circles...) and makes them hell. During the first two bosses, if you fail at either interrupting, or dodging the red, you are one shot and no amount of healing-through-red-circles or shielding can save you for the most part, aside from dodging/shielding through the first boss's ranged attack.

The last boss was absolutely epic! I loved all the mechanics (and it has a lot of them!), specially the "find the open door" one. It requires a bit of luck, but with the help of Rapid Maneuvers we were able to get through some very close encounters with those bugs. This boss requires a lot of movement, positioning and paying attention to the surroundings. Figuring all the mechanics out was a lot of fun and satisfying.

Overall, great job with this dungeon! I was surprised at the lower amount of trash mobs than usual, but that is a great thing - the dungeon takes time but that time is spent on bosses and not on boring trash, and that's how dungeons should be.

Here are some screenshots of the dungeon:

Velindreth, Widowmaker and Hand of Mephala head pieces that I got during the dungeon:

Velindreth


Widowmaker


Hand of Mephala

ZOS_Finn

tinythinker wrote: »

Dominoid wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

On a template character I can see both dungeons, but on my character(s) copied from the NA server Cradle doesn't show up on the Shadowfen map (it eventually shows up on radar) and the gates don't work. Is this intended, because the other new dungeon shows up fine on pre-existing and template characters and both types can enter it.

The "Gate" one had no interactable for me either. I gotta believe that is a bug. The second one has a tunnel underneath to get to the door.

Yeah the tunnel one with the Puzzle City and mad Hist was fine, got inside to look around, but the Cradle of Shadows is absent from the map and the doors/gate thing do nothing if I'm not on a new character made for the PTS.

We identified the issue with this bug and it should hopefully be fixed next PTS Patch. Its related to completing the Stillrise Village objective previously on a character.

Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming.

tinythinker

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

Dominoid wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

On a template character I can see both dungeons, but on my character(s) copied from the NA server Cradle doesn't show up on the Shadowfen map (it eventually shows up on radar) and the gates don't work. Is this intended, because the other new dungeon shows up fine on pre-existing and template characters and both types can enter it.

The "Gate" one had no interactable for me either. I gotta believe that is a bug. The second one has a tunnel underneath to get to the door.

Yeah the tunnel one with the Puzzle City and mad Hist was fine, got inside to look around, but the Cradle of Shadows is absent from the map and the doors/gate thing do nothing if I'm not on a new character made for the PTS.

We identified the issue with this bug and it should hopefully be fixed next PTS Patch. Its related to completing the Stillrise Village objective previously on a character.

Thanks for the feedback and keep it coming.

Oh, good to know. Thank you

Destruent

All Bosses including hardmode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Y68zMbGUg

I usually was in the other outside team and we had to use the same door on every attempt. Is this intended? We thought this would be random.

code65536

I personally made three attempts at this dungeon. I did not read any of the forum posts or watch any of the videos before these attempts because I didn't want to be spoiled.

Attempt #1: Veteran mode with mag NB DPS (me), mag NB tank, and mag Templar DPS. 3-person group with no dedicated healer.

Attempt #2: Normal mode with mag NB DPS (me), mag NB DPS (gear-swapping to tank as needed). After the Templar from our first attempt had to leave due to technical issues, we changed the mode to normal and duo'ed it.

Attempt #3: Veteran mode with HM activated with mag DK tank (me), mag Templar healer, stam Templar DPS, stam Sorc DPS. There is a recorded stream of this run.

Were you able to complete the dungeon?
My first attempt (3-person run of Vet) failed at the second boss (the ring of lights). My next two attempts (2-person run of Normal and 4-person run of Vet HM) were both successful.

What level is your character and how many Champion Points do you have?
With the exception of the mag Templar in the first attempt, we were all CP-capped (the Templar had over 400 CP). As for play experience, I've 2-manned vCoA before and have gotten speed-run/no-death in both vICP and vWGT as both tank and DPS roles.

How does the difficulty feel for Normal mode and Veteran mode?
Normal mode was fine. There was a substantial difficulty spike on the final boss (pun intended) with the spike mechanic, though. More on that later.

Veteran mode seemed fairly easy up until the final boss. Some have said that the trash mobs feel too easy, but I think they are fine--I'm not a fan of wading through tedious trash pulls (ahem, vMoL) because after you've done it a few times, the trash pulls in any instance just feel like chores to get through to get to the next point of interest. Trash pulls are not fun in any dungeon or trial, so I appreciate that we can cut through them quickly and just move on. The final boss fight was very chaotic and very messy, but the only truly difficult part was the spike mechanic.

Are you happy with the rewards you got for doing this dungeon?
I like that both normal and vet drop CR160 items. But perhaps you could scrub trash traits like Training from the vet version?

What is your favorite mechanic?
The mechanics were interesting, and I had fun figuring them out for the first time. The light/dark mechanic was cool and certainly quite novel.

• Please remove the ranged abilities from the spiders in the dark cave. They take almost no damage while in the dark, but because they are ranged, they will happily stand outside of the light's radius and spit on us. If you have a DK in the group, this isn't a huge problem--when I tanked on my DK, I just chained them in. But if you don't have a DK--e.g., my first run where we had a NB tank--this became very annoying and very frustrating. Yes, most groups will have a DK tank, but this biases tanking even further away from other classes. The light/dark mechanic--which is otherwise very fun and very cool--quickly turns tedious and annoying because of those ranged spiders. Dealing with these ranged trash in a group that doesn't have chains doesn't really make it more challenging--instead, all it does is add an unnecessary and un-fun layer of tedium. And in the future, please stop adding in mechanics like this: the random and scattered spawn locations of the adds on the vMoL twins boss that then requires DK chains to rectify is neither fun nor well thought-out, and it's very disappointing to see the same sort of poor mechanic in the new dungeon.
• There is very little time to interrupt the Umbral bolt. Even with gap closers, there were times when we couldn't reach her in time to bash. While melee interrupts are possible, the window is just too short for it to work reliably, and most people don't have the Crushing Shock or Venom Arrow morphs. It often felt that it was easier to not bother with the mechanic and just block. Increasing the duration of her cast windup would help a lot. And reduce the range of the teleport: I'm pretty sure that nobody likes how Lord Warden in ICP will often teleport away to the far side of the room--it makes the fight more tedious and annoying rather than more challenging.
• While tanking Dranos on Vet, I was being stunned and locked down before the two adds that stun me with their beam even appeared. Is this intended? This meant that there was a brief period of time where I was stunned and nobody could do anything about it, and I would sometimes get one-shot by other attacks during this window.
• Make the flesh atronachs spawn earlier on the final boss. In both normal and vet--but particularly in normal--it's quite easy to push the boss to the drop-down phase of the fight before we've killed the atronachs and picked up the lights. Even if we're not trying to push the boss, the boss will get caught in ultimates, ground AoEs, cleaves, etc. This is especially problematic in normal where it is very easy to accidentally push the boss to the drop-down phase while you're still killing the atronachs or trying to deal with picking up a light (which can be a bit clunky at times, trying to get the synergy prompt to show). Either make the atronachs spawn earlier or add some other mechanism to help prevent this (e.g., give the boss a mitigation shield when the atros spawn, and picking up a light dispels that shield).
• The spikes (er, spines) on the final boss. I feel like I'm missing something here. What I ended up doing in both normal and vet was to dodge after the purple screen ended and before the spines appeared. But the timing is just too sensitive. Dodge too early, and I'll get one-shot. Dodge too late, and I'll get one-shot. There is an exceedingly narrow window to execute the dodge so that you avoid the spike. Either there is more to this mechanic that we've missed, or this mechanic is just way too overtuned in terms of timing. And this mechanic also makes the final boss on normal massively more difficult than the rest of the dungeon. Also, for all the talk on ESO Live about telegraphing mechanics, this mechanic is frustratingly bereft of cues and hints about what to do. Is there something that I'm missing here? And if so, perhaps you could find a better way to convey that?
  • My suggestion is to give a 1-2 second delay between the appearance of the red circle and the spike. Right now, there is little or no delay between the red circle telegraph and the actual spike, so if I try to dodge when I see the red, it's already far too late. So I must dodge after the purple fades but before the red appears, and the timing window there is just far, far too narrow.
• There is quite a bit of overlap in the voice-overs of the theater scenes--NPCs talking over each other. Also, when speaking to the NPCs, their mouths do not animate.

Destruent

code65536 wrote: »

[*] The spikes (er, spines) on the final boss. I feel like I'm missing something here. What I ended up doing in both normal and vet was to dodge after the purple screen ended and before the spines appeared. But the timing is just too sensitive. Dodge too early, and I'll get one-shot. Dodge too late, and I'll get one-shot. There is an exceedingly narrow window to execute the dodge so that you avoid the spike. Either there is more to this mechanic that we've missed, or this mechanic is just way too overtuned in terms of timing. And this mechanic also makes the final boss on normal massively more difficult than the rest of the dungeon. Also, for all the talk on ESO Live about telegraphing mechanics, this mechanic is frustratingly bereft of cues and hints about what to do. Is there something that I'm missing here? And if so, perhaps you could find a better way to convey that?

• My suggestion is to give a 1-2 second delay between the appearance of the red circle and the spike. Right now, there is little or no delay between the red circle telegraph and the actual spike, so if I try to dodge when I see the red, it's already far too late. So I must dodge after the purple fades but before the red appears, and the timing window there is just far, far too narrow.

[/list]

There is a clear sign when to dodge the aoe. As soon as you see/understand it, it becomes a lot easier. I don't want to spoil it, and i think you will find it out on yourself.

edit: If you watch our HM-kill you will find this mechanic at ~11:20

efster

I was the mag NB tank/dps in the duo normal run @code65536 referenced above and I just want to echo his thoughts about the ranged spiders in the cave. Yes, a non-DK tank can taunt them and then move back into the shadows to make them move into the circle so they can be damaged; a properly geared tank can survive the shadows on vet for the time it takes to taunt the spiders, move them, and come back to safety. But it's obviously easier to stand in the safe zone and chain. This is easily enough remedied if you make the spiders that spawn here want to specifically melee whomever taunts them. It's already a thing that when a taunt is active, certain things don't happen to whomever has the taunt (e.g. the twin bosses in vMoL never change a tank's colour randomly) so just set a toggle like that on those spiders. (Or just make Silver Leash a pull-enemy-to-you ability so that any tank can run chains. Or stop pretending you want classes other than DKs to tank. )

I had all kinds of problems with the synergies all over this dungeon -- the braziers wanted me to stand in very specific places before they deigned to let me activate their synergies, whereas the atro lights would pop up 3-5m away from the actual dead atro.

The "atronach light" introductory theatre scene did not happen in our normal duo run, by the way -- we just kind of hung out near the atronach while Heem-Ja did his lil speech. I picked up the atronach light, but nothing happened. Then we walked through the door and into the next room, and that was that (no attackers came at us). I don't know if maybe it requires 4 people to trigger the enemy NPCs to spawn (?)

On the last boss, when we got dropped through the floor into the mazes, after our first wipe, the "shadow" effects that you get on your screen when not inside a brazier/atronach light persisted on our screens throughout the entire fight and did not disappear until we left the dungeon completely. Not a showstopper as we were able to finish the fight regardless but a bit annoying (and also may have to do with there having been only 2 of us).

Also, there is a book (an Eidetic Memory journal type thing, IIRC) inside the spider cave in Cradle of Shadows that is invisible except for a little bit of a glow underneath a huge black rock.

Bloodhawke-Von_Uriel

so i haven't been able to do the dungeons as yet as the group i play with don't play PTS and dungeon finder didn't find any groups.
however i watched a YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HQToV3OPMc and i am please to see that not only do all bosses seem to be taunt-able (looks at planar inhibitor with hate eyes), but also damage looks like only a tank would be able to take the hits (maybe a shield stack Sorc too, but hopefully just tanks) as too many groups these days are abandoning tanks to take up an additional DPS

I give a big thumbs up to this dungeon, based off my initial impression, my faith is restored.

Schemering

Bloodhawke-Von_Uriel wrote: »

so i haven't been able to do the dungeons as yet as the group i play with don't play PTS and dungeon finder didn't find any groups.
however i watched a YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HQToV3OPMc and i am please to see that not only do all bosses seem to be taunt-able (looks at planar inhibitor with hate eyes), but also damage looks like only a tank would be able to take the hits (maybe a shield stack Sorc too, but hopefully just tanks) as too many groups these days are abandoning tanks to take up an additional DPS

I give a big thumbs up to this dungeon, based off my initial impression, my faith is restored.

Having cleared the dungeon I can confirm the thumbs up. However as far as i understand Zos announced the new dungeons will be nerfed on live server. If that is true (others told me; i hope its not true but i didnt check official sources) as soon as it goes live groups will (try to) do it with 3 dd and a tank without a healer or without a tank with 3 dd and a healer.

Imo the best thing to do would be an extra difficulty level for this and all vet dungeons (the whole dungeon, not just a hardmode, and with the same loot table) that is harder than how dungeons are now. The normals and regular veterans will be accessable for good casual players doing dailies or achievement hunting and groups seeking a real challenge have another version of veteran and will not be mixed with people seeking to clear the veteran version for dailies or achievements A lot of the anger and misunderstanding that is part of the dailies lfg will thus be prevented.

Elloa

i'll need to re-do this Dungeon, because in normal mode with a group of Premade character, it was too easy, and I've not got the chance to understand the mechanics of all bosses as they can be bypassed easily.

As for ruins of Mazzatun, I think Craddle of Shadow could have the life of mobs and bosses in the normal mode to be buffed a bit, to allow groups with average DPS to enjoy the fights and have to play the strategy, without punishing low DPS groups.

Contraptions

Dranos Velador is the single most ridiculous boss I have seen in this game. Needless to say my group couldn't get past him, and here's why:

1. One hit kills with the red bombs, which can't be predicted. The group can split up to avoid this, and the teleport AOEs, but that leaves you vulnerable to...
2. The chain mechanic which needs most people to be in melee range to interrupt, which if you fail to do so in time results in yet another one hit kill.
3. Even better, the one who gets chained gets a bomb dropped on him, so a great big middle finger to you for following the mechanics. Have a nice day and enjoy that death.
4. Blade Weaver is yet another AOE one hit kill for anyone but tanks, I mean 30k damage even with blocking? Ok, ok.
5. The split mechanic is ok, but again leaves the group open to more bombs and RNG stupidity. It also lengthens the fight and makes the boss really tedious.

ZOS, one hit kills are NOT CHALLENGING. They are frustrating and cheap especially when the time you have to counter them is so small. Ibomez's Tenderise was ok because you had a reasonable amount of time to counter it and you could actually see him running to the target and doing his animation. Here it's less than 2 seconds to bash TWO enemies. Even with ranged interrupts we would usually end up targeting the boss instead because of how close they were to each other. Similar to vMA this place needs a serious nerf before I will even consider attempting it, let alone buying it.

It's ok that you need certain mechanics to be blocked or bashed. You have to note however that certain bosses like Khephidaen teleport so far away and cast so quickly that it is impossible to bash her without ranged skills since the darkness hurts you. Be reasonable with the balance ZOS please. No skill should be absolutely mandatory to counter one mechanic in one particular dungeon.

Destruent

Regarding those AoEs:
With a bit practice you can avoid them, and you have a lot of time to walk out of it when positioned correctly. It's nice to have a punishing mechanic in this dungeon. AoEs which does not do enough damage to kill, are boring and useless.
Everyone is cmplaining about all those "stack and burn" bosses, we get one with a mechanic which prevents stack and burn and we complain again bc we need good movement? pls stop with this!
You have also enough time to position yourself for interrupting. It takes practice, but that's a good thing.
You have only attempted this boss once and are complaining about too high difficulty, really?

code65536

Eh, both bosses are mostly fine. It might help to have a bit more time to interrupt Khephidaen, but it's also pretty easy to block that attack if your group is unable to get the interrupts in time.

rosy_ariete

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom after the patch we are currently experiencing this bug (see video), it happened several times this week.
To finish the dungeon we have to start over and hoping for the boss not to bug anymore... pls take a look.

It seems that the bug occurs when we kill the boss in his "rune" phase (he puts a rune under his feet, dunno how to call that phase, sorry)

"https://youtu.be/f2iyYp-piLI&quot;

baratron

rosy_ariete wrote: »

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom after the patch we are currently experiencing this bug (see video), it happened several times this week.
To finish the dungeon we have to start over and hoping for the boss not to bug anymore... pls take a look.

It seems that the bug occurs when we kill the boss in his "rune" phase (he puts a rune under his feet, dunno how to call that phase, sorry)

Our group had the exact same thing, and I have a message from @ZOS_Seiffer on my Twitch account which reads:
And we have fixed that issue your group ran into after defeating Dranos in Cradle of Shadows. So the statue of death will stop spewing terror once he is vanquished

rosy_ariete

baratron wrote: »

Our group had the exact same thing, and I have a message from @ZOS_Seiffer on my Twitch account which reads:
And we have fixed that issue your group ran into after defeating Dranos in Cradle of Shadows. So the statue of death will stop spewing terror once he is vanquished

Aaaah nice, thanks for the information ^^

Saturn

I really like this dungeon, I think the trash pulls are fairly easy compared to Ruins of Mazzatun, but the boss fights are harder.

I do have a few issues with some of the fights:

Dranos fight (2nd to last boss):
- The chain/stun mechanic the boss does on whoever has aggro after he finishes teleporting, has an unfortunate random chance (1/4) of killing the chained person (often the tank), as an Orb can target the said chained person, who will get oneshot while stunned and unable to block it. Just like it was done with the Nerien'eth fight, I think the stunned person should be invulnerable to the boss AoE, to avoid RNG deaths.
- There is also a chance that the adds you have to interrupt for the chain spawn inside walls or the plants around the room, making it impossible to interrupt them, resulting in an unavoidable death.
- Lastly I think having the add phases every 20% is a bit too much, every 25% would make it less of an annoying mechanic.

Velidreth fight (last boss): I freaking love this fight by the way
- I think the fact that you end up with double spawning adds after the 2nd catacomb phase takes away from the overall fight and is unneccesarily cruel, especially considering you more often than not won't have the ultimates to quickly deal with them before another add wave spawns.
- The "tell" for the shadow sense after you have to dodge the 2nd spike is too difficult to spot. I have done this last fight three times, and didn't spot the tell until my second time in there. It would be nice if the tell for this oneshot mechanic was a lot more obvious.
- I don't understand what the point of the argonian shadowscale companion is. Does she randomly target the catacomb assassins or is there an actual mechanic to it? Sometimes she will kill all the assassins for me, other times I don't see her at all.

This dungeon is by far my favourite. It looks amazing, the boss fights are interesting, especially the last boss, which has to be one of my favourite boss fights in the game.

Sedrethi

How does the difficulty feel for Normal mode and Veteran mode?

I think that this is the most difficult of the new dungeons on Veteran difficulty. Although, it's not so much difficult, but rather very unforgiving.

Are you happy with the rewards you got for doing this dungeon?

I suppose? The Gossamer set is interesting. The others either do not matter much to me, personally, or I was unable to obtain other set pieces.

What is your favorite mechanic?

While many of the mechanics are intriguing, such as the moveset of Dranos Velador and Velidreth, their results are also uninspired and boring instant kills. I suppose the only boss I found to not be as cheap was Khephidaen and was the only one of the later bosses I found to be enjoyable AND challenging while not being over-the-top.

Were you able to complete the dungeon?

On Veteran, no. Velidreth (and Dranos Veldaor to a slightly lesser extent) have, in my opinion, far too many mechanics going on all at once that you must keep track of.

Things to avoid/endure (Dranos Velador):

• Homing orbs (Orb of Spite?) spewing from the Mephala statue that you must avoid (or you die), which are eventually replaced with highly-damaging shockwaves (Wrath of Mephala?)
• Teleport Strike while laying damaging runes, which is the hint for his next move
• Gloom Wraith chains (Fangs of Mephala?), which is similar to Fungal Grotto's Gamyne Bandu's ability, only with a smaller time frame to free your ally and can potentially trap you as an Orb of Spite collides into you (either or both mean you die)
• Spinning slash that will smash through you even while blocking, forcing you to dodge (or you die)
• Dranos can become invulnerable until you either kill his shades and collect their essences, or drag him into his shades (optional, achievement)

Things to avoid/endure (Velidreth):

• Aimlessly wandering orbs that sap one of your attributes and debuffs you
• Portals which summon various enemies on the battlefield, including Flesh Atronachs with torches that you can collect (optional, achievement)
• Ultimate-draining pull, which is also an unbreakable stun
• Shadow Spine which requires you to stand still (or you die), then immediately roll within a small time frame (or you die)
• Ground-based portal (after reaching every third? of her health) which splits the group into pairs on opposite catacomb mazes where they must remain in the light and avoid darkness, or else they are both snared and damaged, while being chased by critters and assassins, while hopefully discovering a door that—Gods be merciful—is NOT blocked off

How many times did your character die?

Once we've reach Dranos Velador and Velidreth? I've honestly lost count.

What level is your character and how many Champion Points do you have?

On live, I'm Champion 596 currently. On the PTS, I'm Champion 58[X].

How long did it take to complete this dungeon?

This is our third run, and we haven't completed Veteran Cradle of Shadows yet. After about a little over an hour (with some breaks in-between) we've defeated up to Dranos Velador, but we still could not get past Velidreth.

What was your group makeup?

Dragonknight (Imperial, Stamina/Tank)
Nightblade (Dunmer, Magicka/Damage)
Nightblade (Khajiit, Stamina/Damage)
Sorcerer (Imperial, Magicka/Healer)

Did you do the Undaunted Pledge?

No.

---

I enjoy the design of this dungeon on a visual level, as if I'm going from a ruined Imperial/Dunmeri fort into the Spiral Skein of Mephala. Much like how in White Gold Tower and Imperial City Prison you appear to be crossing over into Coldharbour.

What I do not enjoy is that some of the boss mechanics feel "cheap" and uninspired. An instant death isn't challenging, it's just grueling and time-consuming. Particularly Dranos Velador's incapacitating ability that often traps a player right when an already incoming orb is about to wipe them out of existence with zero hope of survival. It "tests" a player's luck, not skill. It feels cheesy, like some of the eye-rolling mechanics seen in later stages of Veteran Maelstrom Arena, for instance.

What's the point of stacking up resistances or using a timely block? What's the point of wearing armor at all? If the mechanics were at least like a percentage-based damage, such as Veteran Crypt of Hearts' Nerien'eth's point-blank area-of-effect spell, where if you're hit by it, you have a chance to survive (albeit crippled with low health) and must react accordingly and immediately, you learn from the experience. Whereas when Dranos Velador traps someone as an already incoming Orb erases them, you learn that you were fated to die by the RNG.

Likewise, you just made it through the shadowy catacombs that Velidreth has banished you to, only to be immediately thrust into the Shadow Sense mechanic that someone wasn't ready for and immediately dies, then you have to hope the rest of the party is prepared to stay still, then quickly react or else the Shadow Spine instantly wipes the whole group with damage mitigation being thrown out the door.

Bosses like Velidreth have too many mechanics going on that it gets tiresome (for me, at least) to need to keep track of, where you may have felt you may have made progress only to be instantly shut down by another of her abilities. This fight is especially slow and grueling, and it's quickly diminished my interested in it, unlike Veteran Ruins of Mazzatun (Heem-Jas' comic relief role helps, too).