The DDO Unlimited development team has written an article that takes an in-depth look at the new epic difficulty dungeon feature that's being added to select adventure packs. Basically the team wants to give players a reason to revisit classic adventure packs by fighting through epic dungeons for improved loot.

You character has to be level 20 to access the epic difficulty so you have a chance to handle the tougher monsters and extra twists that have been added to the dungeons. The first epic difficulty dungeons can be found in the Demon Sands adventure pack, but the team plans to expand this option to cover more packs in the future.

One of the rewards you can obtain for completing the epic difficulty quests are true druidic hearts, which are used in the True Reincarnation feature that lets players replace a level 20 character with a stronger level 1 character. You can read more about epic dungeons after the jump.

Greetings from the development team! Today we’d like to talk a little more about a new feature that can only be described as EPIC… no, it really is “epic.” We’ve introduced a new difficulty level into select adventure packs called “Epic Difficulty!”

Throughout our game, players can enter dungeons on Normal, Hard, and Elite settings to adjust the challenge (and rewards) they experience in quests. This is great as you level through the game, but we felt more could be done. What if you want something insanely challenging? What happens after you’ve out-leveled that adventure pack you purchased at lower levels? We wanted to inject new life into some of our classic adventure packs, and create new goals for our high level characters to work towards. Epic difficulty accomplishes both of these things, and more!

Epic difficulty can only be selected if your character is level 20. After all, it’s EPIC! We’d never expect that a mere level 1 to 19 character could face these… you guessed it… “epic” dungeons. By the time you’ve reached level 20 in DDO, you’ve gotten a real feel for the game, its nuances, and many of the tricks of the trade. With Epic dungeons, we take you out of the safety of what you know, and – if you’re brave enough – pit you against your old favorites like you’ve never seen them before.

Working on Epic Dungeons

Our epic difficulty has been through several iterations. Currently we’ve scaled epic difficulty back from “horrifically insane” to “fairly eccentric.”  You’ll find that not only are the monsters tougher than you may remember (especially in the case of a dungeon that you ran when you were, say, mid-level in the game), but we’ve often included an extra twist to keep you on your toes. Sometimes it means the tactics you used to beat the dungeon before have changed, and you’re going to need a new battle plan. Maybe there’s a new style of trap, or a monster that wasn’t even in the quest before, or a familiar object used in a strange new way. You never know what is going to be changed-up on epic difficulty. There is one constant however – we’ve unanimously decided that the color purple is EPIC! Don’t be terribly surprised if you encounter many purple-colored objects, items, and effects in relation to “epic” difficulty dungeons.

Ultimately we’d like to revisit many adventure packs to add some epic difficulty quests. After all, what are you supposed to do with an adventure pack if you really enjoyed playing the quests, but you’ve leveled past them so they’re just not a challenge any more? Adding the epic difficulty to the adventure packs really helps add value for your purchase – not only is the adventure pack good for when you’re at the appropriate level range for it, but now it’s still good once you reach the level cap of the game!

Our first available epic difficulty dungeons can be found in the Demon Sands adventure pack; we’re still hard at work on the next sets of epic dungeons. In some ways it’s been nice for us to revisit our old favorites when we’re not working on the new quests. It’s even given us a chance to make beneficial changes to the original quests. For example, we didn’t want you to have to re-flag for the epic versions of the raids, so if you got the flags previously, they’re still good! All you need is level 20, the normal flag, and one party member who’s completed the raid on elite difficulty to open the epic version. So while exploring some of our older raids, Torc is now negotiating with the infamous House Kundarak for their Vault of Night so that you won’t need to reflag to revisit a certain lovely red dragon every time – no matter what difficulty you’re on!

Epic rewards for epic tasks!

Obviously there has to be a reason why you would want to face “fairly eccentric” dungeons besides the nostalgia and challenge. When you play epic dungeons, you’ll be able to work towards three fun things:

• Upgrades of old named items from the adventure pack
• Augmentations on those upgrades to really make them your own
• True Reincarnation options

In many adventure packs there are great named items with awesome abilities…but the items are designed for characters of the same level range as the adventure pack. We felt that it’s a real let down to work hard towards getting a cool named item, only to have to leave it behind as you get higher level and “outgrow it” so to speak. With epic dungeons, you can work towards gathering crafting materials to take that cherished old named item, shove it in the eldritch device with the appropriate ingredients, and be given an EPIC version of that same item. When you upgrade the named item to its epic version, a variety of things can happen to it. Changes can include any, or even multiple, of the following:

• Enhanced versions of the original abilities
• Additional bonuses
• Brand new effects
• Increased base-damage dice
• An opportunity to add a custom effect to the item on top of the changes

The named item you loved as a lower level character lives again in its more powerful level-20-appropriate form! It’s almost like it has been reincarnated. Speaking of reincarnation…

Another reward that players can work towards by playing epic difficulty quests are true druidic hearts of wood used for the True Reincarnation feature. This allows you to take a 20th level character and replay them to become even more powerful in their second life (and beyond).

Players will have a choice of which features they’d like to work towards, but ultimately there’s no reason they can’t work towards all of them!

How it works

When you play epic difficulty dungeons, a special chest is available at the end of the quest. This extra shiny, gilded, royal purple chest contains the usual randomized level 20 rewards. But there’s also a greater treasure waiting within – the epic token! Hovering inside the epic chest, bathed in an awe-inspiring illumination of purple light, is a radiant purple disc known as an epic token. Picking up this token automatically bestows one epic dungeon token (or epic raid token if you’re playing a raid) to each person in the party. For every epic dungeon or raid, you’re guaranteed an epic chest with the epic token. Epic win! A new NPC named Misty is interested in these epic dungeon and epic raid tokens, and she’ll accept various amounts of these tokens in exchange for crafting ingredients to augment your epic weapons or true hearts of wood. Misty can be found outside the Tower of the Twelve keeping watch over the mysterious “Altar of Epic Rituals” making sure that it doesn’t explode with its sheer EPIC POWER!

In case you can’t tell, we like to use the word epic a lot. Especially in all caps. In fact, when the Twelve first acquired the Altar of Epic Rituals, their original research name for it was “TEH PWNFORGE.” There was a fear that adventurers might be too terrified of the glorious power of “TEH PWNFORGE” so they softened the name down to “Altar of EPIC Rituals.” That still looked pretty scary, so now it’s the “Altar of Epic Rituals.”

Besides epic tokens and level 20 randomized rewards, you’ll also be looking for the ingredients to upgrade your old named items into their epic versions. These ingredients can only be found in epic dungeons, and drop from slain monsters, optional chests, and even the final chest.

We’re really looking forward to seeing our skilled players flex their muscle in these tough dungeons with their player experience and high-end character abilities, and we can’t wait to see what epic loot players will create! Have some epic feedback and comments about epic dungeons? Please join the discussion thread on the official DDO forums by clicking here!