Dungeon Key and winged shoes text is very confusing

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Is understanding the dungeon Key text supposed to be a puzzle that’s hard to figure out?

It doesn’t seem like it should be, but it is. I am level 55, and I never understood what to do with any dungeon keys because I found the tooltips very confusing. I’m only looking into it now because I just failed the Tentacle boss (Logos?) and so I’m backtracking and looking for things to do… and wow, the Lightless Arbor dungeon is only level 22… (that should be in the key tooltip)

After deciphering the cryptic tooltips, here are some recommendations to help users understand these better:

RECOMMENDATION - Change the winged-shoe-path tooltips to:

This very challenging route requires a DUNGEON_NAME Key and leads to DUNGEON_NAME. (Level DUNGEON_LEVEL)

For example… “This alternate route requires a Lightless Arbor Key and leads to the Lightless Arbor Dungeon (level 22).”

The current text ambigiously makes it sound like I’m not allowed to use the winged shoes until I find a different path into the dungeon, and then complete the dungeon, and then I can come back and use the winged shoe shortcut. The only this it requries is the KEY, so why not just say that?

RECOMMENDATION - Change the dungeon key locator text to talk about the clickable ERA not the “AREA NAME” (which is only visible on the zoomed out map a user may never see if they never zoom out), and to list the steps one should take in-order.

For example, change the lightless arbor key locator text to:

THE SHROUDED RIDGE LIES IN THE RUNED ERA. IT CAN BE REACHED BY TRAVELING TO THE SURFACE, THEN HEADING NORTH.

The lightless arbor key currently says:

"THE SHROUDED RIDGE LIES TO THE EAST OF LAST REFUGE, AND CAN BE REACHED BY HEADING NORTH FROM WHERE THE SHELTERED WOOD EXITS ONTO THE SURFACE.

This text is extremely confusing because of (a) the mention of “east of last refuge”, and (b) the this convoluted thing about “north from the surface from the sheltered wood”, and (c) all-caps font obscuring the proper nouns (aka “The Surface” vs “the surface”).

I opened the map many times looking for a node called “last refuge” to click on, and it just doesn’t exist. There is a zone node called “THE LOST REFUGE”, and a zone node called “Last Refuge outskirts”…but neither of them are what it’s talking about.

I finally see at level 55 it’s actually talking about “The last refuge AREA” on the zoomed out map… I NEVER zoomed out, so I never saw this label.

These key tooltips could be made much more clear by just listing the ERA NAME (which is always a big button on the top), and then listing just one *clickable zone name", and then a compass direction… That’s it. Short simple, easy to understand.

Even more epic would be if the zone name was highlighted and clickable… For example, “THE SURFACE” could be a highlighted clicakable link that just took us right to the surface zone teleport node… (though I understand this might be an issue because of console/controller compat)

2

I’ll pass this along to the lore team. While unrelated to lore text, I just wanted to also mention that if you right click on a key, it will open your map and center on the area for where it’s used.

I also want to note for this discussion that the “Alternate Path” is not describing a different physical approach to the dungeon, but rather that going through Dungeons is an alternative campaign path, as they start in one area, and exit in another, several chapters later.

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3

Yes, clicking the key highlights the dungeon… and then one reads the winged-shoe path text, which is ultra confusing, and leaves a big mystery about how you actually get to the dungeon…

When it could just say “you need a DUNGEON NAME key to use this path”

I understand what it is saying about an alternate leveling path… but i don’t see why that’s relevant to explain. Seems more useful to make it simple and clear to (a) understand the prerequsite for going there is finding a key drop, and (b) making it easy to get there.

well… here we go, level 22 lightless arbor at level 55

4

Dungeon keys can only drop after the point in the campaign at which they exit. This allows subsequent characters to utilize them as campaign skips, while preventing first playthroughs from being RNG in if you get a campaign skip or not. While T1 Lightless Arbor starts at level “22”, it’s not a particularly easy task at that level. This is as it’s intended to be for more experienced players that have already beaten the game once to utilize as a skip (though we have been discussing the exact difficulty balance of this).

Each dungeon also has multiple tiers, scaling all the way to endgame. In the case of Lightless Arbor, once you complete the campaign, it automatically unlocks a higher level T2 version of the dungeon that will be closer to your level.

5

Thanks for explaining that. I think probably if the winged tooltip was simpler focused on these important elements (you need a dungon key to use the path) and (it’s a very challenging tiered dungeon), it would be more understandable… Since when I first saw the winged path the tooltip just didn’t make any sense.

I can see now that it’s not terribly important that it be 100% understandable, as you won’t have a key anyway until later, and it’s not intended for a first time player to figure out the mechanic anyway.

Maybe one other small tweak then:

When you click on Lightless Arbor on the map, the bottom of the screen above the travel button says “level 22”… Perhaps for dungeons this should say something like: “Level 22 / 65 / 88 / 100”

If I had seen this I would have immediately understood that this is some kind of tiered dungeon system, and I wouldn’t feel like I “missed it back at level 22”

Having just completed the lightless arbor, that is a REALLY FUN dungeon mechanic! And wow, alot of treasure frogs.

I didn’t end up killing the boss, as I didn’t watch a guide… and I was putting my light-shard into the little side area only for ~3 seconds, and then seeing it do nothing, and then confused. I see from watching a guide, you have to leave it in there for quite a while longer.

I’m really loving this game, you folks all did a fantastic job!

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