CD Dungeons

[lb7]

Okay, I am not usually one to complain about challenges and all of that, I do appreciate a good challenge, but I feel that in some instances we are beginning to blur the lines between challenging and impossible. It seems like an ongoing thing, really. A dungeon gets completed by players a good number of times, it gets harder and harder. Rinse and repeat. A prime example of this is the Wyvernspur crypt at it's final boss which was given a very generous AC boost... So alright, she's able to fire off all her array of spells, there's something engaging there at least, I guess. But then when she runs out of spells and starts attacking with her staff, and you proceed to play whack the boss for 35 minutes? I could go cook a chicken dinner in the time it takes to beat her down, risk free. You just watch the screen and hope that everyone rolls high on attack bonus rolls in many rows. Now.. don't get me wrong, I understand that we're trying to encourage groups instead of soloing, and I understand that we want to have a balanced ratio of challenge vs. reward, but it just feels to me like we are catering more and more towards power builds, and the rest are being left in the dust. Now, I've really only seen the above mentioned Crypt in some of the updates, but based on what I've read in the change log, I can't imagine any of the other dungeons being much better since. Of course, I could just be going a little crazy here, but I would really hate to see this server become a place where only power builds (especially ones with ECLs) can really do anything at all.

[Edge]

The main reason Lady Wyvernspur keeps getting her challenge cranked up is because the staff keeps seeing people going through that dungeon at far lower levels than it is designed for. Wyvernspur's Crypt is intended for a group in the mid- to late-teens levels (click for level list - the crypt is listed as 15-20), yet very regularly we've seen groups with characters around level 12-15 in there, sometimes even as low as level 9. What this tells us is that she's being run by groups far lower level than intended, meaning the challenge is less than the builder (Vincent) anticipated. Therefore she's adjusted upward in an attempt to bring the challenge back to the level it was supposed to be.

It's not to make it so only powerbuilds can take her on. It's to make it so only characters of the appropriate level can take her on. Yes, the occasional powerbuild outlier may be able to challenge her a level or two early, but that should be the exception rather than the rule.

Granted the entire dungeon probably needs a power boost so that it challenge players of the appropriate level just to get to her, rather than lower-level characters breezing through the dungeon easily (which unfortunately is currently the case - the skeletons, spiders, ghosts, and ghouls in there are not super-impressive to a group in the mid-teens, meaning you have to get all the way to the skeletal dragon or even the boss herself before really meeting a challenge fit for a group in the later teens). But one thing at a time.

[Wittle Dreamer]

It always really comes down to builds. I noticed CD dungeons don't leave much room for 'RP-Builds' and that a good powerbuild gets you through most of it instead. Balancing a dungeon is therefore impossible because there will be players with less strong builds and others with uberpowerful builds that will wreck everything. Best thing to do in my oppinion is to find a middleground. If it is impossible for people of the right level it is probably best to tone things down.

[Edge]

Aug 8, 2015 9:08:20 GMT -5 Wittle Dreamer said:

If it is impossible for people of the right level it is probably best to tone things down.

Well, as stated, the problem is the opposite - it's too easy for people below the intended level. Thus the increase in challenge.

[Wittle Dreamer]

I think I was that level 9 that was there that one time and I could not do anything. I was simply there with a group. In all honesty a few levels later we even had trouble to clear it as a higher level cleric and weapon master. I think lb7 is right the dungeon is too hard for classes that have a harder time combatting undead, etc.

[Edge]

Aug 8, 2015 9:13:51 GMT -5 Wittle Dreamer said:

In all honesty a few levels later we even had trouble to clear it as a higher level cleric and weapon master.

And by "a few levels later" what do you mean? If you mean in the 12-15 range, then this is working exactly as intended - those levels are too low to be doing that dungeon and should be having trouble.

If you mean in the 16-18 range, that's the lower half of the intended challenge range for the dungeon and it should be difficult but doable with good tactics, good builds, and good luck.

If you mean 18-20, then we actually have an issue.

[valiea987]

How many people is the place balanced around? Or aimed to be balanced around? Naaliah, Kaya, and Angelina frequently test themselves there, and weren't able to kill Wyvenspur until Kaya was 14ish (and had Bladesinger), Naaliah was ECL 19ish, and Angelina was 17. And that happened because Angelina's Turn Undead ability allowed her to spam the room with Heightened Turning to get the casters running before they could do any dispels beyond Wyvenspur's barrage. We had tried the place many times before that (as Kaya says), and were never successful.

Is that her being too easy? This is for the old Wyvenspur.

[Edge]

CD dungeons typically expect, and are balanced around, a group of 4 to 6 characters.

So with 3 characters, one of which was below the intended level for the dungeon, it should have been rather difficult but doable, especially with one on the highest end of the level range and one specialized against fighting the primary enemy type in the dungeon.

[Wittle Dreamer]

Aug 8, 2015 9:30:02 GMT -5 Edge said:

CD dungeons typically expect, and are balanced around, a group of 4 to 6 characters.

So with 3 characters, one of which was below the intended level for the dungeon, it should have been rather difficult but doable, especially with one on the highest end of the level range and one specialized against fighting the primary enemy type in the dungeon.

Maybe the standards should be lowered as getting a big, balanced group like that is very rare.

[trylobyte]

The only thing I want to warn about here is the 'goblin king' scenario, since the goblin bolthole most often exemplifies it - If you want to make a dungeon challenging, boost the whole dungeon, not just the boss.  Nothing results in more anger than hacking your way through a relatively easy dungeon only to get curbstomped by the final boss because he's several orders of magnitude harder than everything else.  

Yes, you're going to see people below the intended level running dungeons on any server.  There's a few ways they can do it, too - Powerbuilding is always popular, but simply having a bigger than average party can do it.  ECL races will also skew this, since a level 13 half-dragon is the level-equivalent of a level 16 of any other race (and gets all the purple swag to go with it) but still shows up as level 13 and their race might not be readily obvious to an observing DM.  In the case of Wyvernspur Crypt, you also get specialization playing a huge role - Since the dungeon is entirely undead (except for the skeletal dragon, which is a golem) any character designed specifically to fight undead is going to be wildly more effective at a much earlier level than the designer intended.  A level 12 cleric with Sun/Healing domains is going to be much more effective in that dungeon than most level 20 rogues because of this.

Edit:  This discussion is moving quickly.  I agree with Wittle Dreamer here - Expecting a party of 4-6 is an outdated standard from when the server boasted a higher average population.  The average party size I see these days is typically 3-4.  Maybe if we balanced around this the more roleplay-oriented builds would be more viable and people wouldn't feel like they 'have to' make strong builds just to be useful in the dungeons.

[sinisteromnibus]

I'm only weighing in here to point something out because of the discussion on powerbuilds vs. rp builds...

On CD players are encouraged to try a variety of builds to suit a variety of playstyles and desires. For this reason we have relaxed multiclassing rules for most restricted classes like paladin, monk, druid, and cleric (we used to enforce Order limitations on monks and paladins but this was done away with to allow for more build diversity - both for the sake of interesting builds for rp and powerful builds for combat).

Nowhere on these forums will you find anything that tells you your characters must be built 'x' way or have 'y' template. You - as the player - are free to build, design, and rp your character pretty much however you want (and this lack of restriction on player imagination and creativity has often enough in the past created major problems for staff -and- players). The reason for this is we want players to be creative and experiment.

Now, the downside to this approach is as follows - and is what I personally have seen from Wyvernspur and the actions of a small number of players. These actions do not reflect the actions or intentions of the playerbase at large of the server, but they do very greatly and heavily affect it: some players are going to do everything they can to gain every mechanical advantage with little or no regard to rp. Such players have and will likely continue to resort to powerbuilding as much as they can, exploiting mechanics, and doing anything they can to get an edge mechanically against the challenges of the server. RP will be a secondary concern and will follow from the boost in mechanical power that these tactics grant them. There is nothing that can be done to stop this behavior other than limiting the creativity and freedom of the entire player base, and is this really fair when it's just one or two doing it? I don't think so, but that call is and always has been up to the administration.

So, Vince - the primary builder - has no choice but to take these behaviors, builds, and players into account while designing dungeons. When balancing in a game you do not balance around the weak builds, abilities, or tactics. The focus is always on the top tier. You look at what works, what works well, and what works too well; and you create an environment where these things are forced more in-line with what does not work as well. This is a universal approach to balance in gaming that you will see in almost any and every online game that allows diversity in character creation and progression. The one thing that we do not do here that goes along with this is approach is targeted 'nerfs' to powerful or abused mechanics. Instead, the staff and builders here prefer to create -more- work for themselves by changing the environment around these mechanics rather than simply 'fixing' the mechanics themselves. Imagine if this was not the case and clerics and paladins could no longer stack obscene amounts of divine damage on their weapons. It would take a lot of fun out of these classes, but it would also allow dungeons like Wyvernspur to be more 'balanced' for classes not designed to fight undead as well as them.

There will always be a trade off. I believe if you choose to have a 'roleplay build' you're also making a choice to willingly give up mechanical power in your build...if by 'roleplay build' you mean that you're intentionally instilling flaws and weaknesses in the mechanical build of the character to enhance roleplay. However, if by 'roleplay build' what you really mean is 'I want to play a character and not put any or much thought into my leveling progression, class combination, or template and still be awarded with the same combat viability as someone who has spent time and research planning their build' well...that's kinda the same as going to your job and asking for a paycheck without actually doing anything. Your character becoming a noble in Cormyr from humble beginnings as an adventurer is a great feat of roleplay and comes as a reward for the time, effort, research, and energy you've put into your character's rp. Your character receiving attention from their god (outside of game mechanics) is another roleplay reward that does not care about build. Your character becoming a prominent, exalted figure in Cormyr and in our setting...one of the highest things you can aspire to and one of the only ways to leave a permanent mark on the server...comes purely from your roleplay and does not care about your build.

There are rewards for both mindsets - rp heavy and mechanics heavy - and there always have been on CD. It's one of the reasons CD has been around for a -decade-. Almost no other server still up can make that claim. We do not limit or try to control what players do with their characters but merely deal consistently with every player in a fair manner and allow them to do their own thing without us tying them up with a billion rules, restrictions, and elitist cock-nobbery.

Lastly, for my personal part I've never considered there to be a difference in a 'roleplay build' and what most consider a 'power build'. If it suits my character's roleplay to be mechanically strong, they will be. If it doesn't, they won't. I will either put in the effort to come up with a build that suits the image I have in my mind for the character while still being mechanically capable of tackling CD's dungeons at the appropriate level...or I will have a roleplay reason for why the character -isn't- mechanically strong and spend more time partying up because I have to - which, in my opinion is even better.

Many times I see people standing in the square in these little...pods. Then I see these pods go off hunting together. See them roleplay together almost exclusively with one another...and know what I see when the pod isn't on at the same time? Instead of a character from these little pods going out and roleplaying with someone else - or joining up with someone new - beyond level maybe 12 or so groups tend to form and characters seem more and more unwilling to join up with new people. This is baffling considering that this behavior limits rp and exposure for everyone - and from a mechanical standpoint slows and halts progression because it limits when your character is able to go dungeoning. I think this problem is very linked with the above one I mentioned between rp builds and powerbuilds, and it's just silly.

To me it seems like sometimes we want to have our cake and eat it, too. We want our character to hunt with people of similar relative power as them (so they don't feel outshone) or we're afraid to interact with new characters (especially higher level ones) because there's a fear of judgment when we have either chosen to build the character weaker or simply are not as good at the mechanical aspects of this years' old game and have created a character that doesn't do as well in combat. This seems to be less of an issue - again - when characters are lower level, and really doesn't seem to kick in until about level 12 and onward. Not sure why, but it's what I've noticed as a recurring theme on CD in my time here.

[Wittle Dreamer]

Hmm, I see it in another perspective really. I do not really see pods. More often then not I see people joining different people for a raid, like Varyxia or other things too. I remember being part of a huge group for a quest with people I have not seen before, or went with you (SO) for instance to the Gnolls. Same with Rashan, James, etc. Also I witnessed quite a few people that normally do not RP with one another going off together when someone puts off the notion of adventure in the middle of the square.

Eitherway I believe this to be drifting from the topic. Putting balance into a game such as NWN is an impossibility. Some classes ultimately outdominate others mechanically and some even stand little chance to do anything in most of CD's dungeons, such as rogues. With the server having around 50% undead dungeons their sneak attackes are duefully useless, sadly enough. Clerics will have the upper hand instead with their turning but even that seemed to have gotten a serious nerf. But I am not here to list all class pros and cons.

What I am getting at: instead of providing a challenge to classes that can steamroll content, especially the one or two cases of powerbuilds that you mentioned SO, why not make it challenging for the decent to not so decent builds? People who want to steamroll content will manage to do it one way or another but it won't ruin the experience for less powerful builds. Also if the worry is that no one will group together for dungeon content, I highly doubt that will happen. There are too many awesome people in this community that stick together and will find any excuse to do a dungeon or not, no matter if it is challenging or not.

What it really comes down to (And I can't strain this more then I am: This is all my oppinion) is that people enjoy the content and the mass of beautiful areas CD has instead of giving them frustrations that they will never be able to clear an area because of their build / character idea being too shitty mechanically.

And if there is worry that rebalancing may be a lot of work, which it deffinately is, I am willing to help out with it (should it be decided that there will be one).

[sinisteromnibus]

Aug 8, 2015 14:39:25 GMT -5 Wittle Dreamer said:

Hmm, I see it in another perspective really. I do not really see pods. More often then not I see people joining different people for a raid, like Varyxia or other things too. I remember being part of a huge group for a quest with people I have not seen before, or went with you (SO) for instance to the Gnolls. Same with Rashan, James, etc. Also I witnessed quite a few people that normally do not RP with one another going off together when someone puts off the notion of adventure in the middle of the square.

Eitherway I believe this to be drifting from the topic. Putting balance into a game such as NWN is an impossibility. Some classes ultimately outdominate others mechanically and some even stand little chance to do anything in most of CD's dungeons, such as rogues. With the server having around 50% undead dungeons their sneak attackes are duefully useless, sadly enough. Clerics will have the upper hand instead with their turning but even that seemed to have gotten a serious nerf. But I am not here to list all class pros and cons.

What I am getting at: instead of providing a challenge to classes that can steamroll content, especially the one or two cases of powerbuilds that you mentioned SO, why not make it challenging for the decent to not so decent builds? People who want to steamroll content will manage to do it one way or another but it won't ruin the experience for less powerful builds. Also if the worry is that no one will group together for dungeon content, I highly doubt that will happen. There are too many awesome people in this community that stick together and will find any excuse to do a dungeon or not, no matter if it is challenging or not.

What it really comes down to (And I can't strain this more then I am: This is all my oppinion) is that people enjoy the content and the mass of beautiful areas CD has instead of giving them frustrations that they will never be able to clear an area because of their build / character idea being too shitty mechanically.

And if there is worry that rebalancing may be a lot of work, which it deffinately is, I am willing to help out with it (should it be decided that there will be one).

You're relatively new to the server, so perhaps you've been fortunate in your interactions, but a few things I should point out:

Rogues: are essential. In many dungeons you will need them to disarm traps or open locks that no other class can get. As far as the undead dungeons...CD is actually split pretty evenly between undead and non-undead  (50/50 as you mentioned) dungeons overall. It's quite possible you simply haven't managed to explore all there is to see yet. Also, if everyone is good at everything, why bother partying up? The rogue having trouble with undead gives them a reason to join up with the tanky fighter to get to the loot the nasty undead are guarding. The tanky fighter, in turn, needs the nimble fingers of the rogue to get that annoying lock or his entire trip wasn't worth it.

Clerics: Are good at killing undead. Get rekt pretty hard in places like gnolls, frost giants, and Sakkors at high levels and destroyed pretty well at low levels in places like the King's Forest Orcs (granted their missile storm spam kills pretty much anything). The cleric, though - with the exception of those focusing exclusively on killing undead - is doubtlessly going to want to face enemies of their god who are still breathing. They'll want a tanky warrior and a nimble rogue themselves if for no other reason than these builds shore up their weaknesses and give the enemies more targets to dispell who aren't them.


Now, as to why we balance around the stronger bulids...well, to put it simply that has a lot to do with item dissemination on the server. See, if we ignore those 'powerbuilders steamrolling content' and they're able to rapidly and repeatedly farm content without any kind of rp or a group...they will quickly amass a wealth of the available items in the game. They then give those items (give, not sell, because as I've seen most often this is the case) to lower level characters and pretty much eliminate those characters' reason for even dungeoning. There are characters on the server who have - in being able to wear purple gear for just a few days - completely decked out in the best gear that tier has to offer. At that point they can then just start farming up gear for their friends, and pretty soon everyone is sitting at level 16 - having freshly entered the purple tier - and have absolutely no reason to bother going out to hunt. It honestly cuts off a great deal of rp as well if you're like me and rp through dungeons.

Simply put, the systems are interconnected, and if challenge isn't maintained at the highest tier very quickly there will be no challenge at any tier. I've personally seen that ruin a server to the point where the dungeons stopped being updated and there wasn't even any content at all past level 20 (server went to level 40). Basically, before it was shut down the only way to get new and interesting items was from DM events. I don't think that's what anyone wants to see here, but I may be mistaken.


Now, all that said, CD has -always- been open to player-generated content. If you'd like to contribute your own special touch to the server you can find tutorials on our systems and a seed module (I hope, if Vince has updated it) HERE. In the past CD has accepted player-created taverns, businesses, homes, dungeons, items, and even an entire city. Basically, if you make it and send it in, Vince will look over it and make sure it's not something that's going to break the server then it goes in. Right now, Vince is the only builder we have contributing to the server on a regular basis and that's a lot for one man. The work he does is truly incredible, but I'm certain he wouldn't mind if he didn't have to do everything himself.

[Fire Wraith]

While dungeons and dungeon balance are not my primary area of responsibility, I'll toss in a few notes on our overall design philosophies.

First, CD does not use dynamic challenge systems. A dungeon will not adapt itself to your party to make things easier or harder, nor will it adjust its rewards. Thus, a dungeon that is marked as intended for 16-18th level will provide rewards on that tier, regardless of what level (or number) of players is running it.

Second, we don't intend that the point of CD be anything to do with items or money. They're meant as a side/fun thing, not as a requirement. The level-tier shops are there to prevent anyone from feeling like they're going to fall too far behind the power curve.

Third, speaking of power curves, one of the worst offenders of power creep isn't smart builds or ECLs (even though we sometimes look at those too), but people loading up on the best gear possible as early as possible. You have no idea how much this annoys me, because you are sabotaging your own fun. There are only so many tiers of items, and once those run out, you're increasingly 'done' with the dungeon minigame. Cheesing through dungeons that are meant to be there for you at a higher level just means you're denying yourself the chance to run them, and find something potentially rewarding, once you're actually at that level.

Now, I might feel a bit more sympathetic if we were short on dungeons to run at any given level... but we're not, at any point save perhaps the epic range. The problem is that people are going to tend to go for whatever seems like the best reward for the easiest run, and thus we're often finding ourselves having to fix the "favorite dungeon to go farm." It becomes very noticeable, too, when people only ever run the one dungeon, or run that vastly disproportionate numbers of times compared to other dungeons of similar level.

[Vincent07]

As the one who does the dungeon balancing/tweaking, I'll address some of this.

Dungeon balance is a tricky beast.  As mentioned previously, there is a -lot- of build variety on CD.  This leads to a fair level of diversity when it comes to the power of each PC.  Level, class make-up and potential ECL template all impact how effective or ineffective a PC is in NWN combat.  The amount and type of supplies carried, as well as the general proficiency of the player controlling the character also have an impact.  Most of these factors are out of my control.  While, yes, I could in theory limit the number and level of PCs that enter a dungeon, I'd rather not.  For one, I don't want to create a situation where a group has to decide who to leave behind, because they have 'too many' PCs for a particular area.  Simply, that isn't fun for anyone.

So how do I go about balancing a dungeon? At this point, a lot of it is that I just have a very good idea of where average AC and AB values, as well as HP and damage output sits for the 'average' group of players of a given level range.  That just comes from having done this for years.  But I still keep a number of 'test' PCs around for tuning fights.  Though, lots of times I simply eyeball it.  These days, I tend to assume groups of around 4+.  Used to be we tuned for more, and there are certainly some old areas that may run smoother with a larger group, assuming proper level range.  However, many of these older areas were also tuned for a time when the +4 and above loot table did not exist and the +3 one was much smaller and simpler.  It's only in recent years that the time was taken to fully fill in those tables, a process I'm still working on.  But if you want an idea of what 'old' dungeon design is, look no further than the Solitary Spire out in the Semberholme. (Or many other Sember dungeons for that matter.)  That place has been mostly un-updated since it went in.  I bet few of you know that it actually has a basement level.  There's no reason to go there aside from killing encounters, as I'm fairly sure there's no treasure.  An at-level group with time appropriate gear would struggle through that tower to do the Gem of Life quest, and come out having collectively lost money.  Not a scenario you see too much these days.  As you may imagine, the Spire is on my revamp list, as are a number of other places.  There's a lot of dungeons on CD, some more well balanced than others, a trend that is easy to pick out by which ones are visited most frequently.

Now I wanted to take a moment to cover one particular accusation that keeps coming up whenever we have this discussion, and I assure you this is not the first time this topic has come up.  And that is, that I balance around ECLs.  This may sound odd, coming from someone who's player vault contains more ECL characters than most of you have characters in total, but I don't.  Any time I pull AB and AC values for testing, I do so off a normal, non min-max'd Human fighter or rogue type.  That isn't to say I don't also note down the min-max potential values. I do.  And to some extent, I could also tell you what changes any particular ECL would make, or how insane you could pump values by powerbuilding a fighter type with half-orc and 10 RDD levels. But why would I balance around those templates or that orcish strength powerhouse?  All that would accomplish is ensure that the aforementioned average human fighter or rogue got curbstomped by whatever I was making. (That isn't to say that doesn't happen now and then, some creatures are made to hit like the giants they are.)

Some of the frustration that I've seen in regards to dungeon balance, is really the symptom of a few problems.  One, a small, or under-leveled group trying to take on something tuned for either more or higher level players.  This is fairly straight forward.  For example, a group of 3-4 low teens going into Varyxia's lair are likely not coming back out except via a Respawn.  It isn't that there's a problem with that encounter, but that the aforementioned group wasn't prepared to handle it.

The second issue is actual imbalance.  This could be something as simple as the loot in a particular dungeon being either too much or not enough when compared to the challenge of the dungeon as a whole.  Many of the Semberholme dungeons fall into that latter category.  For a long time, places like Khazar, and Ogre Lord's Redoubt fell into the former and thus we saw them ran very regularly.  Trylo mentioned the Goblin Bolthole, one of the early level dungeons that has some boss encounters that are a bit beyond the difficulty of the rest of the dungeon.  This is the third issue, though in the case of the Bolthole King's room, I feel that the level of loot available after his defeat makes up for his difficulty, though it could probably stand to be tweaked a bit, as his guards do a lot of damage.  (Though perhaps some of you recall the old versions of them with halberds, who would 1-shot most at-level PCs on a crit.  Not fun.)

This brings me to Wyvernspur.  Made up of 2 floors, this is one of the longer mid/high-teen dungeons on the server.  But after a test run of it this afternoon, and having watched some recent behavior, I can say that it suffers from some very problematic balance issues.  I'll go ahead and address them here, for those interested.

To begin, I entered the dungeon on one of my mid-teen alts. Specifically, a 10 Bard / 2 Duelist, single wielding a (buffed) +4 1d6 fire mace, with flame weapon added on.  With standard buffs, not counting haste, I ended up with around 47 AC and 26ab, with 140hp, and 50% concealment from displacement, though that likes to wear off mid-fight.

There are 5 main creature types in Wyvernspur, not counting the boss type creatures.  Fallen Heroes, skeletal warriors that at level 12 conned blue.  Zombie Devourers, spiders that conned blue as well.  Then Restless Ancestors, ghost types that conned purple, and Slaughter Wights, ghouls that also conned purple.   With the aforementioned character, only the latter 2 types were able to land hits with any regularity, and generally they still missed.  Greater Skeleton Mages make up the last type, and while their dispels made a difference, dropping my AC down to 39, it was still survivable with some tactical play. (Rebuffing, healing as needed.)  The Dragonbone Golem would probably have done me in if alone, and Lady Wyvernspur herself certainly would have.  Lady Wyvernspur herself is an epic level Lich, with all the goodies that come with that.  But, she tends to run out of magic long before she dies, in part to having a bit too much AC, on top of innate concealment. (Which I'd forgotten she had, ah well, these things happen.)  This results in her moving into melee, which, as a pure wizard with little to no physical ability scores... is laughable at best, and results in a very dull whittling down of her  HP while she prods you with a stick.   That's.... not what I think of when I think "fight a Lich".  As with many other dungeons, the good loot is in the final room, a handful of tier 3's, and 2 tier 4s that happened to roll up, with the previous area's finding resulting in a solid amount of gold and tier 3 gear.  So, can you see the problem here?

Simply, the overall challenge of the dungeon is quite a bit under its listed level range, sans the final fights with the Golem and Lady Wyvernspur, which are closer to the intended target, though Lady W runs out of magic far too quickly in relation to her hp/ac values, and once survived, the overall challenge of the fight evaporates, resulting in, in my opinion, fairly easy loot gain if you are prepared enough and lucky enough to survive the magical assault. (Gotta love those 1's though.)  Loot in the rest of the dungeon is overall solid for low-teens, but the encounters themselves are far too easy, given that a lone level 12 survived them with minimal damage.

So, solutions?  I have two.  Option 1, de-power Wyvernspur and her loot, slightly increase the other spawns and re-classify the place as low-teens.  Option 2, tweak the Lich,  jack up the rest of the encounters to be appropriate to a group of mid-high teen PCs, and increase the overall loot quantity appropriately.  Personally, I don't particularly like option 1, as I feel that a Lich should be a near-epic encounter.  So I favor option 2, though it is considerably more work.  What is likely to happen, is I will tweak Lady W a bit, and adjust her loot drops accordingly until I can get the entire place revamped into something more appropriate.

As a final aside, visually the crypt is kind of meh... needs more flavor, which I have some good ideas for.

Well, I realize that I've written a small essay here, but perhaps now you have a better idea of my process with dungeon balance and design.  As always, input is welcome.  In-fact, I have an entire forum for dungeon feedback, it's a sub-form in the bug forum.  Obviously, I don't have time to run every dungeon or watch them all be run with every group make-up, so such feedback is very helpful to me.