This is the sequel to Nargad's Trail: Argon's Evil Lair, but the gameplay and concept is quite different from NTAEL. The quest doesn't put much emphasis on story, but instead focuses on an emerging world to explore. Besides that, there are 8 classical dungeons featured in this quest and 1 big final dungeon. While you go through the dungeons in a linear order, side quests and a massive overworld to explore change up the pace constantly.
Features:
A compelling story, but no heavy cutscenes!
A vast overworld, countless hours of exploration
8 mysterious dungeons, all with a puzzling, unique theme
1 final dungeon, with two possible endings
Many interiors, filled with witty, strange and funny characters
A heavily modified version of DoR 1.0 as tileset
Reappearing NPCs from NTAEL
Discover more about Argon and the Orb of Fierce
Custom (non-scripted) bosses
Good quality graphics
Many scripts to make the game smooth
Energy resource instead of mana
Some custom music
Walking SFX
Travelling system
A few sidequests
Still the best overworld in ZC. It has some flaws, but man, the world is super fun to explore.
Twilight Knight, Colin, Shane and 2 others like this
For people playing in a recent build, it helps with z3 development (and in general, helps with ensuring compatibility) when we can add a replay for an entire quest. A simple way to assist in that is to enable the "record new save files" option (found in launcher settings for the player), and DM me the resulting .zplay file when you've finished playing the quest. big thanks!
Twilight Knight, Russ, Shane and 1 other like this
Five dungeons into this one now and I'm really enjoying it. The trek from level 1 to level 2 is a real difficulty outlier but aside from that I haven't had many major complaints. Oddly, I've really been enjoying the dungeons in this one so far. I know the quest is best known for its overworlds, but I think this is also some of CastChaos's finer work. His dungeon design style really suits the otherworldly theme of the temples and I appreciate how they all seem to exist in the same sort of location with that cool starry background. Excited to see where this one goes.
I'm both enjoying how much there is to explore and frustrated at how many times I find a superbomb trigger and have to think "okay, come back here once you grind for a 300 rupee superbomb and trek over to the 'cheap' superbomb shop". There's two superbomb triggers that I've noticed on the way to level 2 and that's gonna be 600 rupees down the drain. Surprised at how early you can access Sandgaze Village, you can reach it before even finding level 1.
Make sure to explore whenever you get a new option, there's a lot of optional goodies that can make things easier (if you have a 5 bomb capacity before level 1, try exploring a bit more)
Anyways tips for people stuck in level 1:
I can't find the dungeon item!
There's two. You need to bomb open some floors (look for darker patches with arrows pointing at them), one of the items is super early on while the other is behind a massive key gauntlet. Make sure to slash every pot you find, two of the keys are hidden in pots. If you've found both of them and still need a key at the end of the long path, there's a key nearby in a room with pillars and frogs behind a pillar.
but I think this is also some of CastChaos's finer work. His dungeon design style really suits the otherworldly theme of the temples and I appreciate how they all seem to exist in the same sort of location with that cool starry background. Excited to see where this one goes.
Certainly! But his finest work is Valami for sure, if you haven't checked that out yet.
I'm both enjoying how much there is to explore and frustrated at how many times I find a superbomb trigger and have to think "okay, come back here once you grind for a 300 rupee superbomb and trek over to the 'cheap' superbomb shop". There's two superbomb triggers that I've noticed on the way to level 2 and that's gonna be 600 rupees down the drain. Surprised at how early you can access Sandgaze Village, you can reach it before even finding level 1.
I'm in the middle of the journey from Level 1 to Level 2 and about ready to ragequit, but it sounds like this trips up almost everyone so I'm going to try to stick it out. I liked the first dungeon overall.
Yeeeeeeeeeeah it's interesting how there's this MASSIVE PILGRIMAGE so early in the game. You can get the blue tunic and white sword by this point, which helps a ton, but requires grinding out a whole bunch of money. Grinding in this game isn't the worst, there's a lot of tall grass, but still, kind of annoying just on principle.
I'm quite behind, to the point where I can't see myself finishing the quest before we even get to the next Quest Club entry (Still between Levels 1 and 2.).
minor gameplay spoilers
It's a pretty great quest that makes a ton of interesting advancements in ZC, especially in terms of 2016 ZC, but part of my lack of progress has simply been the type of design not quite being my style (beyond general schedule conflicts making things a lot harder). Giant expansive quests are cool and all, but many of the secrets feel a little too cryptic for my tastes, and there's often not enough of a visual indication that things can be interacted with, such as some bombable floors in the first dungeon having an issue where even the very hint that it needs to be bombed is as hard to see as the bombable floor itself. Same goes for climbable walls, it feels like you reaaally have to squint sometimes to be able to tell if you can climb them or not.
It's a very good quest, it's just too big brain for me at times.
Beat the quest and sorta 100% it (I got everything and max hearts, but there's spare heart pieces and I avoided picking up those spares to keep my inventory looking neat). I even grinded up for the 5000 rupee bragging rights thing (including picking up every single 50, 100, and 200 coin that was in the quest).
my thoughts, includes minor gameplay spoilers
This quest picks up in pacing after that big trek to level 2; I went from having just completed level 3 to having 100% the quest in a single 6 hour session, give or take grinding for some optional stuff. I liked levels 2 through 5 (even getting more positive on my feelings on 4, which I thought was a miss on my first playthrough), and I liked the final dungeon. Sadly, 6 is pretty mediocre, and 7 and 8 are really bad.
The last few dungeons being bad is exacerbated by the overworld's pacing lategame; the overworld before 6 is a massive pain to navigate that I found really hard to backtrack out of, and after 6 the downtime between dungeons kinda vanishes. I would have appreciated some sort of diversion before level 8, especially since there's a few areas in the overworld relevant to the plot that really feel like they ought to be explorable but just aren't.
I'm really disappointed by one of the sidequest rewards; you can start a sidequest before level 1 and it only becomes finishable after level 5, and the reward is a form of one-way fast travel that requires you to both pay money and can only be accessed from a fairly inconvenient spot, and a cheap item shop; the problem is that in the same area you finish the sidequest you can find a better, free form of fast travel that has no restrictions, and by the time you finish the sidequest one of the cheap items the shop sells has no more use cases (or you can find free ones just laying around). It's a shame because if the fast travel it rewarded were both-way and if you could finish this sidequest pre level 3 and if after finishign the sidequest you didn't have to walk all the way back to turn it in, it would fix mid game overworld exploration by a lot. Instead you just get hyped up for a reward that doesn't really matter.
Also, there sure are a lot of arrow related stuff you can obtain far before you can actually get the first arrow; I think ifyou were able to buy a weak level 1 arrow in shops early that would make a lot of these early quiver and bows you can buy or find more meaningful (although that might complicate secret triggers...)
One last problem this game has is money; you're capped at 100 until after the first dungeon, and then you're capped at 500 for most of the game until suddenly you get both the 999 wallet and the 9999 wallet back to back; this means you often have to leave money behind whenever you find it or else have to grind massive amounts for the optional (or sometimes required) stuff. If the game started you off with the 9999 wallet and found other ways to block progress, I think this quest would be improved.
Hopefully I didn't miss anything.
I'm quite behind, to the point where I can't see myself finishing the quest before we even get to the next Quest Club entry (Still between Levels 1 and 2.).
I wouldn't worry too much; the pacing pre level 2 isn't indicative of pacing post-level 2 (which is pretty fast).
EDIT: Also also! Lens of Truth can be a bit tough to find; but you can get it as soon as you have level 2's items. If anyone wants a hint for it, click below:
Lens Location
It's in the east part of the desert, look for a pushable stone; the cave might look unpassable but there's an invisible floor. You might have to navigate the sandstorm/maze path, if you haven't figured out how to navigate it:
I too am between 1 and 2. I did grind and go back and get the L2 sword, which will help. I read I can also have the blue tunic but not sure where that is. My problem is I'll have no access to ZC between Wednesday and Sunday, so I'll fall way behind. I can catch up next week but this week isn't good.
I'm going to just say despite the obvious amount of content and work put into it, I'm not terribly gripped by this so far. But from everything I'm reading it keeps getting better so I'm going to stick it out.
Don't forget that there's a cheaper superbomb in the swamp. They're 299 a pop, not 500. Still a lot, but.
I think I did honestly like The Trek once I was actually on it. Although the continue points in this game are real wonky, so, uh, try not to die in transit.
The long travel between level 1 & 2 is a very intentional thing.
Entering a house/cave/village/dungeon sets your continue point, that may help. I put some houses/caves all over the place just for that purpose.
I'm glad everyone still kinda likes this quest. For sure I would do many things differently today though and I agree with all feedback that's been mentioned so far.
I hope the Argon's Evil Lair remake (unfinished atm, but a new demo is coming soon) will cater more to everyone's varying tastes!
