November 2019: Phendrana Drifts

Area of the Month for November 2019 is Phendrana Drifts!

A template format for your review is below; click 'edit' at the top of the page, copy-pasta from the ---- to the next ----, and fill in the gaps!

(Yes, a wiki account is required to edit the page and therefore post your review, but take heart: The wiki is hosted by the Cleft itself, not a third party!

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Player: You!(Class/Level)

Review Date(s):

Descriptions: X/10

How does the area's room descriptions(descs) work for you? Do they give you a good idea of the area? Do things that stand out in the desc and NEED explanation GET that, either from flavor text(extra-descs) or NPCs in the room or anything?

What about mobiles(mobs) and their descriptions? Can you get a decent mental image of who or what this NPC/monster is? Do they respond when you talk or interact with them?

Some areas have interact-able objects like fountains. Do they stack up well also?

Balance: X/10 (OR N/A)

(NOTE: combat will be most accurately gauged when your character is in the area's suggested level range.)

If this area has combat, how does it feel? Does anything jump as horribly overpowered and impossible to deal with? What about the flipside, anything far too easy to beat?

Are purchased or rewarded items at the appropriate strength levels? Is the effort required to obtain rewarded items reflected in their usefulness (or uniqueness and fancifulness)

Attractions: X/10

Why would you suggest someone come to this area? Is it just a good place to grind experience(lots of mobs)? Does the area provide a chunk of good gold and loot?

What about the quests? Does this area's quests feel properly done, or is there some part of it that you feel needs work?

For towns, are the shops good? Any other non-combative attraction for the area?

Connections: X/10

How easily and well does this area connect to its nearby areas? Does it make sense thematically to be connected to the areas it is?

Personal

Any comments you'd like to make that you don't feel apply to the other sections can go here!

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Player: Abaril

Review Date(s): 11/30/19

Descriptions: 8/10

Describing a barren, frozen white wasteland is difficult and has the potential to go two routes: either to really try to oversell the emptiness and overwhelm with walls of white text to match the walls of white ice or to keep it simple and convey the sparseness and solitude by making the rooms match. I feel that the builder has chosen the latter and that it's fairly effective. The rooms on the surface make the area feel cold and lonely--all the while being well-written and typo-free. The more important rooms, such as those focusing on the various quests in the area, tend to elaborate more and provide nice atmosphere.

The various mobs are very well-described. My favorite has to be: "Its organs can be seen pulsing gently under its transparent skin." That's a very vivid and slightly creepy way to give you a mental picture of the thing that's attacking the hell out of you, if you have time to read it before one or the other of you dies.

Balance: 8/10

I have a feeling this will be a minority opinion, but I absolutely love the Sheegoths--how difficult they can be and how batshit crazy they are. I think the Cleft needs more of this type of mob, and that when you have BIG RED DANGER signs, they should absolutely mean it. There should be difficult areas that challenge you and make you want to get better. I know that my own first encounter with a Sheegoth led me to a quick trip to the necromancer and made me understand that sometimes the signs are in place for a reason. Aside from those and McNeils' goblins though, there hasn't been much of that type of experience. It's one of the reasons I do have a fondness for Phendrana that probably doesn't quite match the size and scope of the zone itself. The other mobs inside are obviously not as interesting or as challenging, but they aren't pushovers either. Being spammed with gigadrains when you are slightly underlevel for the area can be quite deadly in its own right. Since Phendrana is rather small overall though, the mob density is rather low, meaning it's probably not one of the most effective places to choose for leveling.

TL;DR Needs more Sheegoth

Attractions: 4/10

This is definitely where the Drifts are lacking. I'm not sure if Phendrana is one of the older zones of the Cleft, but it definitely has the feel of being so. The four different quests are interesting and, at times, cute, but they're not really worth repeating once you've seen them. I had fun doing "satiated the hungry hungry Saiyan" quest, and the "looted and then escaped the statue chamber" leading up to "defeated the rampaging earth elemental" was also fairly intuitive and had some enjoyable moments. None of them, however, had rewards that I would say makes them fall into the "must-do" category for every life. The drops in the zone are also fairly underwhelming. I do give Phendrana some credit for all of the quests and hidden spaces being fairly intuitive to find.

Connections: 9/10

You can't really penalize Phendrana for having rather limited connections, because it's designed to be on the far reaches of the Cleft. Even with that being said though, it is a fairly high traffic area. It connects two of the most popular leveling zones, plus has a secret or two that make it worth revisiting even after players hit max level. It's a little bit of a hike from the nearest owlite statue or default housing portal, but that's to be expected with the type of zone it was designed to be.

Personal

Even with some of the criticisms in this review, I find myself quite liking Phendrana overall. I love the danger and resistance mechanic on the Sheegoths, and I think the world needs more crazy-ass aggro mobs like them. There really should be the feel for danger behind warning signs like the one leading to the zone, and I would support the addition of more of that type of aggression in higher level places! The area has a lot of potential to be a superstar, but for now, I think it's mostly used as a way to get from point A on one side of it to point B on the other. I would love to see its levels increased, along with mob density and possibly even mob aggression. There's so much competition in the level 61-70 areas, that it sadly cannot shine like it ought to. If it was bumped up to the 75-85 range though, and given a couple more mobs and maybe a nice rare drop or two, it could be a very relevant place and naturally progress into the zone that leads most people through the Drifts in the first place!

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