On to the final part of our adventure
By now you've probably got the hang of our
Combat, Puzzle, Narrative, Reward Method
Or CPNR Method, if you like,
of analyzing Dungeon Encounters.
So, we should be able to blaze through the rest of the rooms
and discuss how they create the level as a whole.
First, we have the Master Bedroom.
It's Combat component? None.
It's puzzle component? Traps
and a lock that can't be picked.
Leading the player to start searching for a key.
It's Narrative component?
This is clearly the room of the former ruler of this place, or his lady.
It's opulent, and inviting,
the traps are still intact, and the clothes are even still hung up in the closet, but nobody's here.
It's as if they vanished, leading the player to wonder what could have happened to them.
Also, note that there are traps on everything.
Not only the treasure chest, but also the bureau and the drawers.
Whoever was here, was paranoid.
And yet, something got them.
As for the Reward, you'll find one of the best sets of armour in the game here.
It clearly belonged to whomever once lived in this room.
Also, some grapes. In case you want some grapes. (Always.)
Moving South, we get to the Gym.
It's Combat component?
Flesh golems, and another skeleton warrior.
This serves as a difference in kind.
The Designers know the Player just left a room without a Combat encounter.
Also, it has an exciting new enemy type that the player has not seen before.
This encounter is also a pulling exercise.
The Flesh Golems hit really hard, and they're fairly accurate, but they aren't that tough.
The Skeleton Warrior has a huge amount of health and high resistances.
If the Player pulls all of these monsters at once,
they're in for a rough fight.
But, if they can pull one at a time
down this corridor, which is clearly set up for pulling,
they'll be just fine.
The room's Puzzle component?
None.
It's Narrative Component?
The Tower's occupants were apparently using Flesh Golems as sparring partners.
It's Reward Component.
Another magic two handed sword.
After this, we have a connected hallway with a door to the North, and a passage to the East.
We're gonna head East.
This room's Combat component? None.
It's Puzzle component?
Here, we have a giant wine press that needs to be powered,
starting off your next miniquest.
Figuring out how to power this thing.
A player who is thinking carefully will probably see how this might play
into one of the riddles given at the start.
The grapes they were given earlier, should help the player make the connection.
It's narrative component?
Well, this place once had a powered wine press,
which would make it one of the most luxurious and
self sufficient place on the entire Sword Coast.
It's Reward component?
None yet, at least not until you power the wine press.
Now, let's head through that door in the hallway.
This leads to a room with a giant engine in it.
It's Combat component? None.
It's Puzzle component?
Clearly, this is what you need to power the press,
but the switch turns out to be missing.
Gotta go find that.
It's Narrative component? None.
It's Reward component will be turning on the press when you fix the switch.
There's also a secret door in this room which lead to a small, trapped,
hallway, and another secret door.
Let's follow that, into the Treasure Room.
Combat component? Two skeletons, and a Skeleton Warrior.
The only thing to note here is that if you explores the floor in the other direction,
you would encounter this room before the Sitting Room, where had our first encounter with the powerful Skeleton Warrior.
This is a much more muddled way to introduce the Skeleton Warrior.
What, with these other weaker guys flanking him.
Not really ideal.
A somewhat better design choice might
have been to simply mirror the sitting room encounter, and
And only have the Skeleton Warrior in this room.
It would mean having two nearly identical encounters, but
it still probably leads to a better play experience on average.
Okay, so for this room's Puzzle component, you find an odd key.
Remember that locked drawer in the Master Bedroom?
I wonder if these go together.
Also, there's a strange looking gem that's easy to miss,
buried with the other random sellable gems in this pile.
but if you examine it, it's Item description literally starts with
"this stone seems to be completely out of place down here.
Almost as if it wasn't a coincidence after all.
Perhaps it has some meaning, maybe even a purpose here."
As for Narrative, the people who lived here had a lot of treasure, but it never got spent.
The Reward component? Tons of minor rewards.
This is a room filled with goodies for the player to enjoy.
Even if most of them are still consumables.
But, the real reward in this room is the gem and the odd looking key.
Now you all have already probably figured out the microquest puzzle here, but
the key opens a drawer, the drawer contains a lever,
the lever starts the engine, the engine fires up the press,
the press turns the grape you have into wine, and
Voila! You have the answer to another one of the riddles.
Turns out that the wine was the answer to the Dwarf's love riddle.
The sword was the answer to the pride riddle.
The Gem, is for avarice.
And, as many of you have have probably guessed, ringing the gong answered the final riddle.
Fear.
So, with all that, let's head back to the starting area.
We'll traverse through the Kitchen, which has no Combat or Puzzle component.
The Narrative component is simply that a lot of people died in this kitchen.
Perhaps, of poison.
And the Reward is more basic conumables.
This area is really here just to serve as a secondary hub.
The areas you can't access directly from the main hall, you can access pretty directly from this room,
limiting the traversal time required of the player.
And once we're through the kitchen it's back to the Delving Room.
Here, rather than getting a traditional reward for the quest,
the game explodes into one of the most hectic and difficult battles you will find in all of Baldur's Gate.
Love talks about how he must be killed to move on.
This being the Room's new narrative component.
And then, all of the quest-givers descend on the party.
Two of them are warriors, one of them is a Rogue, and one of them is a magic user.
Each, with their own unique abilities.
On top of that, the fight begins with a cloud kill spell going off in the room.
Which can instantly kill members of the Player's party if they don't get out of the way.
The most interesting thing about this boss fight
is that there are many ways to approach it.
Many of the combat encounters on this floor
highlighted some specific aspect of play.
whereas this boss fight, simply
takes the approach of, "Here's a very very difficult combat problem.
Solve it however you can."
It takes place in a big open room, but the player can easily retreat to a tight corridor if they want.
The enemies are varied here, so there's incentive for both spellcasting and melee.
The health of the enemies in this encounter is distributed across four characters,
so there is an argument to be made for getting them to clump up and AoE attacking them, but
also for picking them off one at a time
reducing the abilities they have available and
the damage coming in.
And so, with one tough, but satisfying boss fight,
we have finished the first floor.
Now let's look at how all of this fits together.
We've basically got three corridors.
A North Corridor, a middle corridor, a South Corridor.
The adventure took place in the North and South corridors, while the middle one served as a hub,
To allow the player to rapidly traverse the level.
Both the North and South corridors are separated out into micro-hub areas.
each of which was tied together in a micro-quest
in such a way that when the player had fully explored
all the spokes of a micro-hub,
they had completed the first quest.
With the exception of the Gong quest which itself was divided up into even smaller subquests.
Upon entering this floor, the player was given an overarching goal to complete.
But, importantly, this overarching goal was segmented into four pieces.
This allowed the designers to create a series of micro-quests, without having
to resort to scattering questgivers all over the place.
Quests, which they could then divvy up amongst the micro-hub areas they created.
The flow of these micro-hubs,
basically the way player naturally moves through the area, because
the designers have dead-ended all the other options,
takes the player in a circuit around the North and South Corridors
and then, brings them back to the middle of the floor.
Which is connected to almost every micro-hub.
the larger Narrative component of this entire floor gives a rising sense of mystery and dread.
Until, at last the player thinks something positive will occur
because they've solved a quest for love.
Only to have all of their hopes dashed, and to be told that they must kill love in this place.
Taking the game to a dark place real quick
and preparing the player for what's yet to come.
And with that, we have finally completed the first floor of Durlag's Tower.
Thank you all for sitting with us.
I hope you enjoyed this deep dive into this wonderful example of dungeon design.
And I hope that the Combat-Puzzle-Narrative-Reward method
or CPNR method of encounter design will give you
another tool in your tool belt, to help you examine they games you play,
and to hone the games you create.
So, in that vein, if any of you would like to pick up
where we're leaving off and make a response video using this method
to examine floor two of Durlag's tower,
James is gonna try, assuming we don't get too flooded
to look at your videos personally and offer a bit of feedback in the comments.
Once again, thank you all for watching, and we'll see you next time.