ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

make it so that new non-yeek/sun paladin/anorithil characters cannot leave the starting zone until they have defeated the first non-random boss
also make it so that archmages do not have an option to opt out of the spacial disturbance quest and cannot mageport out of there until the spacial disturbance is dead, and temporal wardens and PMs may not opt out of doing the hallowed morass and cannot timeport out of there until the weaver queen is dead, as well as whatever else would be needed to force people to do the starter zones that they start in

additionally, make it so that yeeks who enter halfling ruins for the first time are prevented by The Way from using the rod of recall in level 4 of ruined halfling complex, and from using the stairs because one of them are in danger and need your help until Subject Z has been slain or the Yeek Wayist dies(maybe on all difficulties?)

if I could take out subject Z and save the wayist at level 8 on normal without an adventurer so can you... on normal that is

this will make insane+ difficulty about 100 times harder and reduce the number of new madness winners to 0, and the number of insane yeek winners to 0

No thanks. I absolutely hate the mage starting area. You aren't forced to do Trollmire for non-specific starts, so I don't see why others should be without good reason. Heck, I'd even be ok with some way of skipping the undead start, but I understand why that may not be what DG has in mind. And if you forced facing the boss in the Fens, an east-only run for the achievement would become impossible, as you get transported west after defeating the boss.

Marson wrote:And if you forced facing the boss in the Fens, an east-only run for the achievement would become impossible, as you get transported west after defeating the boss.

well i did particularly exclude sun paladins and anorithils from what i said

Dwarven starting area is much harder than yeek or undead staring area (on madness you can start next to adult dragon, orc wyrmic, orc assasin, orc grand master assasin etc) and you can't simply recall after first random boss yet people are still able to do it. It just takes more time.

This idea seems more in line for something akin to the suggestion that Crim, The Red Thunderer made with Challenge Modes to change the game. I think that would be a better idea rather then adjusting the difficulty itself.