Abah's landing and Hew's Bane

Lysette · May 2016

I have some more time to play now and I took a closer look at Abah's landing and I have to say, I really like the design of the city with it's many levels and labyrinth like lanes, which sometimes remind me of a kasbah in morocco. It is not that narrow like a real kasbah, but it has the flair of it. The placing of thief troves is good as well, some are easy to access others need a little thought of how to get there, but overall there are enough of them in the city area - at least now, where the hype for the TG is over and normality is taking place there.

The landscape in Hew's Bane with it's many smoothly eroded rocks and those lush creek like waterways make for a nice atmosphere and it nearly makes me feel the heat of the sun and the cool air coming from the waters of a creek there - at least I can imagine it really well, when I am exploring there, because I have been to many arid regions in the world and I like in general semi-desert environments. Those insect swarms at the coast line can be annoying, but they are an interesting alternative to scorpions, lions and other wildlife in the more arid area. There are quite a lot of chests to find, so exploring the area is fun and I enjoy the landscape design.

What is a bit annoying is how often the audio freaks out in the DLC area - I have to reload the client quite often, especially after changing characters. And after about 3-4 times changing the character the client simply hangs at "request to load character" - and I have to terminate the task to recover. Another thing what bugs me is that there is still no way to sit on furniture - there are so many locations which look nice and where I would want to rest for a moment on the arabic styled furniture, but there is just no way to do that - what is really sad, I miss that in such locations.

Some said the city would be hard to navigate, but I have taken my time to look at it more closely and I could not say that it is hard to navigate and the design especially that above street level is so, that you can easily avoid guards, if you take your time beforehand to explore which way to go in case you have to avoid the guards. There is nearly always a path with no or nearly no guards. Quite a few thief troves can be found above street level as well, so it is worth the effort to explore that in more detail. It appeared to me though, as if the troves in Abah's landing contain more edicts than outside of the TG area - at least I found more set pieces in other locations than in Abah's landing. But this could be by chance of course, I just wanted to mention it, maybe others made the same experience. Overall I like the DLC area and the city a lot and will most likely spend some time exploring the many mansions there and change ownership of possessions a bit.

So what is your verdict about the design of Hew's Bane and Abah's landing?

Mojmir · May 2016

it's designed OK,but it feels too small and unfinished for a dlc.from my time spent on PTS, dark brotherhood is the same thing.

GreenhaloX · May 2016

It's a good area. Seems an upgraded Alik'r. Wished this area was larger, though.. like Wrothgar. I come back here when I need a break from Wrothgar, to harvest more rubedites and treasure chests.

Ra'Shtar · May 2016

I have noticed that AD is the only faction that doesn't have a big city with many buildings like Dagerfall, Wayrest, Mournhold, or Windhelm...its sAD.

KICHZY · May 2016

The actual quality of Hew's Bane is superb and I'd like to personally thank the art team and whoever else made this masterpiece of an area. Its one of my favorite places to go, even now. I think many players overlook the finer details that go into making an area and I personally think having a smaller area (such as Hew's Bane) contributes to the overall quality.

I'm one of those guys who doesn't care about skill % rates, I like to sit back and relax doing quests/dungeons with friends whilst admiring this freaking amazing looking game.

Saoirse_Siobhan · May 2016

Abah's Landing is just so AWESOME! Yeah it's kinda hard to navigate at first, but you get used to it, just like discovering any new city ingame or irl. I would spend all me time there if my framerate didn't always drop down to 2fps.

Nova Sky · May 2016

Ra'Shtar wrote: »

I have noticed that AD is the only faction that doesn't have a big city with many buildings like Dagerfall, Wayrest, Mournhold, or Windhelm...its sAD.

Yeah, but you guys have a gigantic treehouse, er, Elden Root.

Volkodav · May 2016

I have absolutely no problems with Hew's Bane.Not at all.
Now that they fixed all the crashing that went on for the last week or so,All's well for me.
I have no audio problems either.

Lysette · May 2016

KICHZY wrote: »

The actual quality of Hew's Bane is superb and I'd like to personally thank the art team and whoever else made this masterpiece of an area. Its one of my favorite places to go, even now. I think many players overlook the finer details that go into making an area and I personally think having a smaller area (such as Hew's Bane) contributes to the overall quality.

I'm one of those guys who doesn't care about skill % rates, I like to sit back and relax doing quests/dungeons with friends whilst admiring this freaking amazing looking game.

Indeed, I liked as well the intro quest into the thief guild, which was basically like a tutorial for the trespassing mechanics. Not too long and not too boring, but as well not challenging, just right for a tutorial mission and with more than enough hiding spots to get into it. Having to fight some iron wheel guys and those spiders gave as well the opportunity, to get used to the level-scaling in this DLC - it takes some time for lower level characters like I have them, to see all enemies being VR16, but I found that overall level-scaling is quite good, I feel much more viable in Hew's Bane than in base game territories.

And with this intro quest there is as well to mention the quality of the texturing in regards to "blending in". All the NPC are made so, that they blend into the scenery and are not that easy to spot, there might be some NPC leaning at a wall and blends so nicely into the scenery, that you might just overlook that guy and get caught in the act. And this is in Abah's landing just the same, I sometimes wondered where that NPC is, which lets the "hidden-eye" be half-opened and I have sometimes to look quite hard to actually find that guy. I quite like how well those NPC blend in and if you just think about guards, you might just overlook that guy in the corner, the beggar on the floor or a guy on another level right below or above you.

Lysette · May 2016

Volkodav wrote: »

I have absolutely no problems with Hew's Bane.Not at all.
Now that they fixed all the crashing that went on for the last week or so,All's well for me.
I have no audio problems either.

It got better, I give them that, it is playable but it would be enjoyable as well, if I would not have to deal with working around the flaws so often. The audio issues are less in less crowded areas, but at prime time in Wayrest or Daggerfall it is bad, especially because high level characters come to starting areas and create particle shows with their fancy spells in PC EU. Surprisingly enough this is not even causing extra lag - it is just causing audio issues and wrong sounds are played, NPC do just not do their voice acting or it is interrupted or there is some white noise. This is more often in crowded places though.

Tommy1979AtWar · May 2016

I think it sucks tbh, constant hangups with ramps, boards, walkways and randomly placed crap everywhere that do nothing but irritate because of the ancient physics and movement engine we're stuck with, it's half a**ed, half finished poorly designed garbage compared to other zones and nowhere near the quality or standard an ES title should be.
The warehouse district is utterly pointless and too big of an area to be wasted on the very few quests that require your going there and a huge portion of an already small map outside of the city is completely unusable because they couldn't be bothered to put any more effort into it so simply stuck a cliff face in front of you, the monsters are irritating, poorly placed and so many it just feels they've thrown them out there to distract from how poorly designed the whole thing is.

I've not been back there much since I completed the TG questline and even when I do zone in and out I used the sewer cut to and from the wayshrine in order to completely avoid the ridiculous design of the city, I'm glad I didn't waste 4000 crowns on the collectors edition for that stupid looking badly textured camel too.

I've a feeling DB is going to be more of the same, hopefully the story will be on par with the TG because that was about the only saving grace for that whole area in my eyes.

SlayerTheDragon · May 2016

My problem is this: zero re-playability.

There is no reason to do it again with another character.

GreenhaloX · May 2016

SlayerTheDragon wrote: »

My problem is this: zero re-playability.

There is no reason to do it again with another character.

Agreed. The quests were so, so. Still good to revisit once in a while to treasure hunt and help out others in fights or to do the repeatable quests. At least, it's a way to get XP towards CP.

Lysette · May 2016

GreenhaloX wrote: »

SlayerTheDragon wrote: »

My problem is this: zero re-playability.

There is no reason to do it again with another character.

Agreed. The quests were so, so. Still good to revisit once in a while to treasure hunt and help out others in fights or to do the repeatable quests. At least, it's a way to get XP towards CP.

I think that is exactly the way it is meant to be played - you play the storyline once and then you do TG dailies after your leisure. And DB will not be different from that, I guess. Those are activities, which you do, when and if you have fun doing them. In regards to the landscape design, Hew' Bane reminds me a bit of formations which I have seen in Arizona or Marocco near the atlas mountains and I guess, they said it is a bit like formations in the australian outback as well. Desert areas can have quite strange formations, which look "badly textured", but it is just nature - it sometimes just looks that simple.

neale-clark-sandstone-rock-formations-lower-antelope-canyon-page-arizona-united-states-of-america.jpg

Edit: I know that it does not look like Hew's Bane, I posted those just to show how strangely textured natural formations can be and that it nearly looks like a graphical bug sometimes.