A Semi-Analytical Look at the Lost Halls

#1

To preface this, I’m a closed tester and have run this dungeon countless times, and have tried to fight the Marble Colossus even more. I’ve seen people argue hate on the dungeon, so I’d like to give some counterarguments for it, given my experience with it. So, let’s begin.

Base Dungeon

The base dungeon is absolutely well-made. In fact, I’d venture to call it the best-designed dungeon in the game. The enemies work well together, the room design gives it a labyrinth-like feel, and the occasional Spectral Sentry means that players must be on their toes, else they’ll be slain promptly. I’d go in detail about each individual family, but that means I’d be saying the same thing over and over again: the enemies compliment their groupmates very well.

Marble Colossus Boss Fight

The MBC is by far the best bullet hell fight in the entire game. Its final phase, in particular, is absolutely amazing, and without a Priest, Paladin, or great skill, players are destined to die. I truly think that no boss fight is better in terms of pure skill required.

Troom/Agonized Titan Puzzle

During the development of the dungeon, only 7 people, including Toastrz and Kiddforce, knew the method of activating the Agonized Titan, and the friendly souls were disabled. Needless to say, I really wish that I didn’t stumble upon the XML for this. It’s a clever and really cool puzzle. The Titan itself really caught me off guard with its damage, as it did no damage in the original document. In speaking with Kidd, he wanted this to be something the community came together and discovered, and he truly achieved that.

Cult Hideout

The Cult Hideout is a relatively easy part of the dungeon, which fits it well. This sub-dungeon is somewhat predictable, but I still really like it. The enemy variety is really nice, but it’s not the absolutely incredible dungeon that the Lost Halls is. Regardless, the secrecy of it is great.

Cult Leaders Boss Fight

I really love the idea of the “boss” being made up of 5 sub-bosses (something something Power Rangers reference) and summoning easier, yet still deadly, bosses. In particular, I really enjoy Balaam, as its splitting idea is really unique.

Void Entity Boss Fight

So, you’ve slain 5 incredibly powerful necromantic cult leaders, a giant, ancient, and powerful golem-god, and fought through haunted and infested halls. What can be worse?

How about the most powerful and ancient demonic power ever found in the history of the Realm?

The Void Entity boss fight is by far the most difficult, not because it’s a crazy-difficult boss fight, but because so much coordination is required to actually succeed. In fact, the Void Entity itself has one million HP. Seeing as the VE has barely been defeated, I won’t discuss it too much, but the boss fight is really well-done, and the final part of it is absolutely awesome.

Overall

I’ve said this before, but Kiddforce and Toastrz really outdid themselves with the Lost Halls. The design is great, and really, just about any complaint is unjustified. I think that the boss fight is absolutely stunning, and although I was originally not a fan, I think it’s incredible as of now. I wouldn’t touch a thing in this dungeon, save for maybe the length of the main part.

TL;DR: The Lost Halls is probably the best-designed dungeon in the game right now, and it kind of blows away the Nest (sorry Uni). I really hate that people are talking down about it.

Lost Halls is a disappointment
(My) Opinion on Lost Halls
The Lost Halls Thread
Community thoughts on The Lost Halls
#2

Wait, who is talking down about it? Haven’t seen any complaints thus far, at least not on the forums.

#3

[quote=“Werbenja, post:2, topic:13113”]
at least not on the forums.
[/quote]Many on reddit.

#4

Dungeon is very, very well made. As a fan of puzzles and not even knowing their was anything after the boss it’s gonna be really exciting to uncover these secrets. My only problem with the boss is it’s final phase. It leans more to unfair than balanced in my opinion. The stacked pet stasis shots, if shot at the right time will clear your health bar to half and from what I’ve done it’s extremely difficult to survive even with good dodging skills but then again I only fought it once. Other than that it’s fun

#5

I really dislike the idea of it being possible only with a large group of people. Maybe you can do it with a coordinated guild with like 20 pro players, but it’s not a case for most people. Of course it would probably be possible with less players, but it would most likely take ages to finish. This being said, the most possible way for you to finish The Lost Halls is in group of like 40-80 people. That would be fine, if the game itself would be playable in such a large groups. You see, it’s very hard to dodge stuff, when you see like 80 characters, 80 pets and pet’s healing effects at the same time. It happend to me like 3 times, that i found myself 2 tiles away from an enemy, just because i thought it was another player, mostly because there are so much new skins now, and the minions’ sprites’ size are the same as players’, that I couldn’t tell the difference untill it started to hit me. I think that something needs to be done with the game in general, before they put more dungeons with simmilar concept. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find Lost Halls combats completly unreadable.

Also, the clearing part of this dungeon is really boring. Enemies have so much hp, that trying to divide your group to clear more rooms at the time makes little sense. So there is literally nothing you can do to speed up this process, because rushing is not a case aswell. The map is also gigantic and enemies respawn in cleared rooms, so this just mean more and more of the minions to kill before actual fun part of the dungeon starts.

Anyway, I don’t have much experience in this dungeon yet, maybe I’ll find it more pleasant if I’ll get to understand it better, but overall the first impresion wasn’t too good.

PT: Vital Combat & Exaltations
#6

may as well copy my reddit post.

People don’t like tedious mazes the halls needs work. I said it from the beginning it went unheard, probably because I don’t make long thought out post.

however I can see the dungeon being saved it doesn’t need that much work to become enjoyable but us testers need to take the best of the community’s feedback and work with that we can’t go on arguing with the general community that we’re right they’re wrong.

Again I feel that everything in the dungeon is fantastic except the biggest part and that is a glaring flaw.

#7

I’ll copy my Reddit reply, I guess.

That’s the thing with it; it’s supposed to be a giant maze. Artistically, this is what Toast wanted even from the document. The Lost Halls are a labyrinth under the Realm that even the greatest of crusaders could not successfully traverse.
I do have to agree that it can take a bit too long, though.

#8

BUT IT’S NOT FUN, at all, Don’t you think that that should probably be the priority over lore.

#9

I do agree that the main focus for a game should be game-play

#10

I doesnt look like a maze tho it just looks like some squares

#11

@Shatter I’m not saying that I would prioritize lore over fun. I’m just saying that I understand why it was done that way.

@Septagram But it does form a giant maze?

#12

Same shit over and over for 20-50 mins.

I slept through too many testing sessions :frowning:

#13

one thing you couldn’t have learned in testing (unless you have way more testers than I know of) is that, well made or not, all the enemies appear to do basically the same thing if everyone is in a gigantic mob. I saw literally one enemy not do exactly that, and he just stood still. heck, even the Shatters has more variety than that. between that, and that it’s nigh impossible to tell what’s going on when there’s 50 people around, it’s just boring and highly dangerous for little to no discernible reason.

there’s a sweet spot where you can make things hard, but still very enjoyable. the Nest hit that perfectly. But from what I’ve seen so far, LH missed, but by being super hard instead of super easy. given time, I’ll probably find that this is not that bad, but a major difference already between the halls and the nest is that the nest basically demanded that I retry, that I had to keep doing it because it was interesting. Lost Halls? I think “do I really want to sit in a mob for another 10 minutes just to find myself in another nexus-or-die situation from an enemy I either can’t kill on my own or can’t see in the group?” this direct comparison of two end-game dungeons has given me new insight to this sort of design, and that being that I no longer care for making “The Hardest Dungeon of All Time”, but rather a difficult yet highly enjoyable experience.

first impressions tend to be lasting impressions, lets see in the halls can reverse that.

#14

I recently ran a lost halls, the new dungeon of course. Now before anyone gets angry, I am just going to say this is my opinion and you do not have to agree with me. Now I found the dungeon boring and lack of detail. The dungeon, in my opinion, was just not appealing design wise, I feel like there could have been more detail to it. I also found it to be very time consuming even in large groups. For such a hyped dungeon and people preparing for it, it was almost a let down for me. I feel like the more I run them, the more I will begin to like it more and more. But besides that, please reply down below and let me know your thoughts on it. I don’t mind if you disagree btw. :slight_smile: <3

#15

u ok there bro?

#16

Bro my heads been bouncing around all day lol

#17

I can see how the negativity comes from. It’s not as visually pleasing as The Nest and the other things we’ve been getting, but the new content, equipment, and enemies really do make this dungeon really great.

#19

The most fun I had was seeing all the deaths but I haven’t seen much of the dungeon yet because ik there is a lot it has to offer maybe when it’s better understood. Because rn it’s just huddling together well someone goes into another room and drags on the group from what I’ve seen. It does require some teamwork which I like.

#20

First i’d like to address that I want this be a respectful thread without any hate spewing like I’ve seen on reddit. I will give my thoughts and opinions and i’d like to hear what the rest of the community has to say.

Let me start with the good. They truly did a good job on making a difficult dungeon, it’s very unique and definitely has a ‘labyrinth’ feel. The design to drag souls to activate the room is amazing and I love that along with the puzzle aspect of it and a mob that just wonders around picking off lechers is amazing, it brings back good memories like the OG horror games that had one of those enemies like the original xbox game ‘grabbed by the ghoulies’ for anyone that somehow remembers that besides me. The boss is very nice and difficult and puts bullet hell to a whole new level, the bullet hell we deserve to rule out the pros from the pay to wins.

Now my complaints. The dungeon is excruciatingly long. A group of me and 17 other people it took 35 minutes searching for the boss just to get swarmed with over 40 rats. Bigger isn’t better and having a dungeon that big is poor design for the wrong reason. It wouldn’t be as bad if enemies didn’t re-spawn but I know that’s a core mechanic. The last phase of the golem is terrible in my eyes for there having 3 or 4 stacked pet stasis stacked hitting you getting rid of half your heath bar. The obvious answer is ‘Just dodge’, while yes you can but you can’t dodge a wall of shots coming at you, and when that happens you have to find the most optimal way to take as less shots as possible and sometimes that’s not enough for the fight. It’s mandatory to have a priest with you which is nice, makes priest useful besides lava walking in shatters but there should be a way to survive without one and from what I’ve seen it’s physically not possible to get past the golem fight without one from what I’ve experienced. Backtracking is extremely tedious but fun when there’s a sense of is the reaper right around the corner. The random invulnerability is extremely annoying. I’ve read what toast said on reddit and his reasons for it but having a mob randomly flash in and out of invulnerability is annoying. It should be used when they are switching to a new phase or about to rage

My conclusion to the Halls is it’s too boring, way to big and tedious and a let down for me as of right now. As toast said most of the negative feedback is probably because most people don’t even know how to do it ‘properly’, including me but I think everyone can at least agree that this dungeon is way to massive. For what it is though I do have to give props to them as most of it is very well done and creative.

#21

I’d say the nest and lost halls are pretty bad because of the extremely fast moving enemies that shotgun you.

Nest: Raging bees

Lost halls: That ghost thing
Bosses are well designed though

Nest is only really redeemable to me because the dungeon part is relatively short.
I agree with the mob thing too we really need to be able to hide ally players there’s simply too much going on on the screen.

Oh yeah and that toast dude can’t take criticism pretty funny reading his Reddit posts. You’re just a bad player if you can’t dodge bullets you can’t see, you’re just a bad player if you get bored after 40 mins.