Those who have unraveled the mysteries of the plague in West Ardougne, met with the elves and infiltrated the Death Guard will find themselves able to help Arianwyn once again, as they go Within the Light.

This week's update saw the long-awaited continuation of the Plague City storyline, the oldest, most complicated, and arguably most frustrating quest line in all of Runescape. So how does Within the Light compare? Does it do the story justice? Does it learn from the mistakes of previous installments?

I won't let slip major plot details from the new quest without hide tags, so no need to worry about spoilers if you're a storyline buff like me. I'll put the rewards in hide tags as well. But you're at my mercy with minor details and stuff, so if you want to go 100% spoiler-free, do the quest and come back later. I'll wait.

[hide=First spoiler]There's more traps and more puzzles![/hide]

Previous quests

Okay. Now, before I talk about Within the Light, I want to talk about the rest of the Plague City series. This quest line has a history of frustrating, luck-based obstacles--poor quest design--and lists of random objects to fetch and take to some faraway corner of the map--more poor quest design.

In fact, Underground Pass, Regicide, and Mourning's End Part 1 & 2 are the worst offenders out of all quests. Forgot your rope? Whoops, guess you have to spend five minutes running to the bank and back. Run out of food? Ha, tough luck, pal, guess you gotta do the whole Underground Pass over again. MEP1 and Regicide have that awful coal tar bit, and there's the sheep-painting: "Hey kid, go out to the opposite corner of the planet and get some inflated toads to fill with paint. Oh, and stop by the other corner of the planet while you're at it so that you can pick up some paint. See ya later." And all these quests involve stupid, stupid traps all over the place.

However, MEP2 is infamous for its massive light puzzle, a complex array of mirrors and colors and crystals that must be arranged in a certain way to unlock a door at the end. I consider the light puzzle idea to be the high point of the series. In addition, although the traps themselves were unnecessarily frustrating, they did a good job of creating an atmosphere of danger and mystery that suited the trailblazing explorer feel.

What I'm looking for in a new elf quest is to replicate the feeling of traversing a trap-infested area with less blind luck and more clever detection, to provide more puzzles like the one in the Temple of Light, and to advance the storyline, preferably by getting us into Prifddinas to investigate more closely.

All right. Within the Light.

Requirements

The requirements seem like a good place to start. They're very high, higher than any other quest has asked in those skills. This is indicative of a trend. As Jagex releases new quests towards the end of the long storylines, the requirements get pretty damn high. And we're not at the end yet.

The message for quest capers like myself should be clear: if you want to keep your cape, don't rest on your laurels--train your low skills in advance! If any of your skills are at the minimum required level to complete every quest, expect to have to train them up when new quests are released.

The trend here is a result of the quest team's focus on finishing off existing storylines rather than starting new ones. I imagine they feel obligated to increase the skill requirements as the story moves on. Personally, I don't agree with that sentiment, and I think it's misplaced in this quest especially, where right from the beginning Arianwyn tells you that the problem is not as serious as it was in the previous quest. Why do you need to be higher-level, then? It seems as though you just need to have already infiltrated the mourners and explored the temple to be qualified.

I can't complain about the requirements, however, because I already had them. So I'll move on.

Gameplay

One of the first things I look for in evaluating a quest is how far out of your way you need to go to get all the items you need when you need them. Within the Light scores far better in this area than previous quests. Almost every required item is available as you need it. You need a knife and a hatchet for part of the quest--loot them from a nearby corpse. You need a death talisman--Arianwyn has a spare for you. You need combat gear to deal with shadows attacking you--well, no you don't, because Arianwyn brought his crystal bow, and he'll kill them all in one hit. Everyone hates leaving the action because they forgot their tinderbox, and this quest wisely avoids that dilemma. The only exception is the mourner gear, which you can pick up while you're arranging the distraction and charging the teleport crystal. Thumbs-up here.

Then we have a section with a time limit, where you need to charge yourself with energy in one place and run to another place to discharge the energy and activate a spell. This is something I don't think has been done in a quest before, and I like it. It's interesting. You try it the first time and realize that the energy wears off, so you need to try again. The key thing here is that unlike with Regicide or Underground Pass, you're failing or succeeding not because of blind luck but because of your own ability to navigate the Temple of Light. That's good.

Then there's a new light puzzle. There's an array of crystal trees that reflect light in certain directions and several light emitters and receivers of different colors, and the goal is to use the crystals to reflect the proper color of light onto the correct receiver, combining colors as necessary. I think it's a brilliant puzzle, even better than the first light puzzle. The focus in Mourning's End Part 2's puzzle was more on dealing with the mazelike temple full of aggressive monsters; Within the Light has distilled the puzzle down to its essence, which is manipulating light beams to shine certain colors at specific targets. It helps a lot that the mirrors are much closer together, which is a big improvement. The puzzle is challenging without being frustrating. I found it to be just the right difficulty to make me think without forcing me to consult a guide. My only complaint is that it was too difficult to tell by looking which direction the crystals were facing unless the camera was placed at a very low, uncomfortable angle.

One more thing about the light puzzle: it's randomised, which means you can't just peek at the solution in a quest guide. You have to actually figure it out! :twisted:

...Well, or use the official Questhelp, I suppose. Still. :twisted:

Finally, we had a section with a maze of traps. However, unlike the trap-filled Underground Pass or Isafdar Forest, this is condensed into a small chamber of spiked platforms. The spikes move up and down and pop up in different places in such a way that, although you take 10 damage if they hit you, success or failure is based solely on timing. You traverse the platforms to reach the other side of the room, dashing across the spikes when they retract, and fire a ballista at a moving target to open another passageway in the previous room. Then you need to run back around the same platforms again to get back.

I was very happy with this quest's design. The NPCs give you enough information for you to be able to reasonably complete it without resorting to a guide. The puzzle is great and I never found myself dissatisfied with the quest. :thumbup:

Rewards and story

The rewards for this quest were boring. 95k experience spread over four skills. Relative to the levels needed for the quest, that's not much, and not nearly as impressive as the Death Altar or even the Dragon Halberd. Could have been worse, but still a miss for me.

However, usually if the story is good enough, I'm willing to forgive mediocre rewards. In this case, well, we learned a little more, but we still don't have any closure. We didn't get into Prifddinas, although we got closer. We did learn why we can't get into Prifddinas.

[hide=Why we can't get into Prifddinas]The whole city was reverted back into the crystal seeds from which it originally grew.[/hide]

But aside from that, not much happened.

So what we have is a quest that's well-designed and fun, but with very few incentives to actually do it. Oops.

On the other hand, with its restrictive prerequisites including one of the hardest quests in the game and some of the highest level requirements of any quest, perhaps it would be a bit unfair to make the reward incredibly awesome but have so few players able to attain it. I guess that's what the designers were thinking, but honestly, I'd rather get a crystal halberd.

Bottom line

I think it's "crystal"-clear that what we have here is a de-"light"-ful adventure that manages to avoid the "pitfalls" of its predecessors. The rewards are kinda lame, but the fun makes up for it. I'm a sucker for quests, and I especially love quests that are fun, so I approve of this update! :thumbsup: