Official Feedback Thread for Cradle of Shadows (Dungeon)

baratron

How does the difficulty feel for Normal mode and Veteran mode?
Normal mode at CP 160 - a little easy, but okay.
Veteran mode at CP 160 - IMPOSSIBLY DIFFICULT. I'd like to say that it's about the same level that Veteran Imperial City Prison was when it first launched, but we can get to the final boss of Vet Cradle of Shadows, and we certainly couldn't get to the final boss of Vet ICP for ages. Then again, we are better players now than we were then.

Are you happy with the rewards you got for doing this dungeon?
The only dungeon set which seems remotely useful to my builds is Gossamer and I'm not in a hurry to collect it, so I'm doing the dungeons more for the Achievements rather than the loot. We got the Divided He Fell Achievement! Mostly because our Tank is a genius and figured out what it means. I'm actually a little sad that there will soon be guides to the dungeon online explaining how to do it, because most people will then just look up the mechanics rather than working them out, and that will take away people's sense of achievement (sorry) for Achievements such as this.

What is your favorite mechanic?
INSTANT DEATH. I "love" that mechanic.

No, seriously - I should give a positive answer but it's difficult to when you're utterly, utterly, utterly frustrated with the dungeon and your friends are threatening to never run it again when it hits Live.

I don't expect to be able to complete every dungeon first time. I expect for there to be mechanics that I have to learn. But the problem with this dungeon is that a couple of the boss fights have so many mechanics all at once that it becomes overstimulating and impossible to take in.

Alright. Some positive things. I do like the fact that we now have NPCs who use Veil of Blades, but the Veils are overdone - several in basically every trash mob. The Flesh Atronach light mechanic is clever. The "corpse devouring" of Votary of Velidroth is interesting and feels new, although you do not see this mechanic if you stay at range and never get into her AoE. A lot of the mechanics in the Velidroth fight feel new - the Diseased Spores, the Feast and Famine, being banished to the catacombs.

Were you able to complete the dungeon?
Normal - Yes. Completed on first attempt.
Veteran - No. We had three attempts at Veteran. On the first attempt we got to Velidreth but could not complete her, on the second attempt Dranos Velador bugged out and we could not progress further, on the third attempt we spent 40 minutes on Velidreth and eventually gave up.

How many times did your character die?
OVER 9000.

What level is your character and how many Champion Points do you have?
CP 160, and I have 600 CP (531 spent).

How long did it take to complete this dungeon?
Normal - under 2 hours
Veteran - most recent attempt - 2 hours 10 minutes, did not complete.

What was your group makeup?
Tank - Imperial Stamina Dragonknight
DPS - Khajiit Stamina Nightblade, Dunmer Magicka Nightblade
Healer - Imperial Magicka Sorcerer

Did you do the Undaunted Pledge?
I had the Pledge quest but could not complete it due to not being able to complete the Veteran dungeon. (I love what Glirion said when he gave you the quest though!)

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.
Here's our most recent attempt.

So yes. The boss designs are great, and I think the boss mechanics are probably quite interesting too. I do like the way that you learn a mechanic in an earlier part of the dungeon which applies to a boss later on. That cumulative effect is useful. But there are FAR TOO MANY mechanics on Velidreth, the final boss, and it gets absolutely overwhelming.

OK. So here are all of the mechanics we saw:

1. Adds - Shadow Warrior, Flesh Atronach. The Shadow Warrior uses DK Talons on you.
2. Feast and Famine: Pulls you to the boss who eats your Ultimate.
3. Corpulence: One-hit? devour kill.
4. Diseased Spores - spiky orbs which drain Health/Magicka/Stamina.
   • Red orbs put Sickening Poison and Vitality Poison on you, which afflict you with Major Fracture and Major Breach.
   • Blue orbs put Delirium Poison on you, drain your Magicka.
   • Green orbs drain your Stamina, I don't know the name of the poison.
5. Shadow Sense and Shadow Spine - stay still, then dodge - but where to? There used to be a red area and a green area, now there's nothing at all?
6. Shadeaway - banishes you to the catacombs.
   • Then: Shadow world -
   • Timed dash with constant snares from adds.
   • Spike traps.
   • Need light from braziers or from Flesh Atronach to see traps.
   • Hoarvors which give you Infectious Bites.
   • Also have to simultaneously read a map while dodging the adds and traps in order to find your way back to the boss. I kinda feel as though the idea of this is that one person fights while the other navigates, but in practice that's difficult even on Teamspeak, and impossible without voice chat.
   • Oh yes, and did I mention there are doors which may or may not be closed? And you can't tell from your map which doors are open, so you have to try them all in turn until either you die or actually make it through?
   • We had all four people survive the shadows world ONCE in an hour and 20 minutes of fighting this boss.

And that's excluding any mechanics which you see after 67%! I'm sure there are some more mechanics which turn up around Execute phase.

It's just too much for mere mortals. And this is just the Veteran Dungeon, not even Hard Mode!

Sweetpea704

First boss: training. Second boss: training. Third boss: training. Why do you hate me? It is like getting socks and underwear for Christmas.

MrJKurayami

The Dranos Velador Fight is broken, Even if when we dodge his radius and the radius of the death spores, we got people isntantly dying who are no where near them.

Destruent

MrJKurayami wrote: »

The Dranos Velador Fight is broken, Even if when we dodge his radius and the radius of the death spores, we got people isntantly dying who are no where near them.

you cannot dodge aoes....walk out of them or just block his whirlwind.