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Venturing Into the Underdark

Driders (half drow, half spider) lurk in the gloom of the Underdark.

After visiting the lush, wooded locales we headed for the Drow underworld, the Underdark.

“True to its name,” Paiz said, “The Underdark is...quite dark. It’s a huge underground space--the largest dungeon we’ve ever put in DDO, if we can call it that.”

The Underdark is vast and has a strong vertical element. Looking over the edge of the cliffs we were winding along we could see below us the distance we had already traveled. While peering into the gloom below, I experienced vertigo and slipped right off the edge of the cliff (at least that’s my story; I may have been capturing screenshots and not really looking where I was going). Paiz laughed and said, “That’s not uncommon, and not entirely unintentional. That’s part of the way it works in here in The Underdark. Gravity is strange here.”

Although the Underdark is, you know, dark, Malchor’s Undersun Goggles (provided to players upon reaching the Underdark) provide some light and reveal hidden enemies by making them glow red.

On the course of our journey through the Underdark, we encountered an enormous red dragon, Micahrastir. We decided that we weren’t a coordinated enough adventuring party to take on the task of prodding him awake and stealing his treasure, but the dragon woke anyhow and wanted to play. (Even the devs I was traveling with were surprised by some of the tricks he had up his mythical sleeve.) Paiz mentioned that there would be other dragons to encounter in The Forgotten Realms, as well.

The goggles make the dragon glow red. In case you haven't guessed, that means he's a threat.

The Demonweb

Before departing our tour of The Forgotten Realms, we entered The Demonweb, Lolth’s domain. Although we had limited time and couldn’t play through the raid in its entirety, we did (through the magic of dev travel), get a visit from Lolth, the final encounter of The Demonweb’s 12-person raid. Take a look at the screenshots below for a look at Lolth’s spectral image as well as the Spider Queen herself.

“The powerful always want to be more powerful, and they don’t care who’s in their way.” - Fernando Paiz

Before we ended our adventure, Paiz informed us of a nifty bonus for players who want to get their friends back into Dungeons & Dragons Online: the ability to level up any friend who’s played DDO in the last four years to level 16, the necessary level for exploring Menace of the Underdark content, for free. This ability comes with the purchase of the expansion pack.

If you’ve been longing to see The Forgotten Realms, Menace of the Underdark launches today, delivering familiar and well loved settings and characters along with tons of new (yet familiar) places to explore, characters to meet, and adventures to face.