Idea search: Wolf and Bear elites

[Frumple]

So, short version: Lone bears and wolf packs are the most godawfully annoying and pointless thing in the west. Adventurer parties, at least, have some sort of reward and some danger involved. Wolves and bears, barring some minor benefit for certain resource users (vim, psi, hate), are absolutely nothing but an annoying speed bump that causes you to waste time loading and reloading maps. The only reason, personally, I avoid them at all is to be able to skip out on the ruddy loading time running into the buggers entail! Finally, the flipping idiots happily chase down a level 40+ doomventurer that's slaughtered wyrms, orcs, and horrors from the beyond. The death wish of Maj'Eyal critters is one thing, but this is taking things a little too far.

There's got to be a way to fix this. The obvious first step, methinks, is bring the encounters closer to adventurer parties, if not in loot, then at least in risk. This, of course, requires wolves and bears that aren't pushovers for even level one characters.

So bring ideas and already coded beasts! Let's get some proper lupine and ursine threats into Maj'Eyal! We want elites, better uniques, and possibly just higher level critters more able to go toe to toe with later content. Anything to make those bloody ambushes less gratuitously pointless!

[CaptainTrips]

I'll quote myself out of another thread (http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=27282) as relates to this:

I'm not sure if their frequency has been increased in b31, or if I'm just noticing it more than in the past, but I've been running into a ridiculous number of bears and wolves on the world map. This wouldn't be a problem if these encounters were in some way interesting/dangerous/profitable, but as it stands, they are none of these things - they're just a waste of time. Waiting for the game to save twice so that I can kill 1-3 low level baddies just isn't worth it.

I suggest that these extremely low level encounters are either removed, or better, improved upon to be more interesting/dangerous/profitable. Adventurer parties are the golden standard here - they are all three of these things. They are something special, and I feel like any encounter of this sort should be in some way special, after all, I think we get our fill of killing bears and wolves in the Trollmire and Old Forest. Here are a few hastily thought out ideas about what could make these encounters more 'special':

- If we're going to stick with normal critter encounters, add a random boss-type critter to each encounter, with some sort of appropriate reward. Of course the correct balance of difficulty to reward must be maintained to discourage farming, but this shouldn't be too problematic.

- Instead of just having wandering critters, the player might 'stumble upon' an encounter/mini-quest. I'm thinking of two possibilities here: 1) random mini-levels that fit the surroundings the player is currently walking through -or- 2) pre-configured encounters; you might stumble upon the bandit fortress or some other large vault, or maybe you're ambushed, or perhaps you have stop a fight between two rival adventurers (whose letters to one another you've been finding all over), etc. Obviously the former would require less work, but the latter would be much more satisfying and interesting.

Ok, that's it for now, I hope others will chime in soon with other ideas or critique - I'm getting tired of these damn wolves chasing me around.

In other words, I heartily concur.

[marvalis]

How about adding werewolf that haunt adventurers to suck away their powers to fuel their evil rituals. With some back-story, it might make sense to have them hunt down powerful adventurers.

Those powerful bears could be more than just bears. The Guild Wars 'Norn' come to mind immediately. These are barbarians that can shape shift into animal spirits and the live in Nordic area's. They could get their own region on the map, their own faction that you can befriend (or exterminate) and possible some quests and lore attached to them.

[edge2054]

I've been thinking about a shapeshifting wilder class. Something like you just described would fit nicely.

[Sirrocco]

First thought I'd have would be to reduce the frustration at higher levels - if you're (say) 20 levels higher than the default foe of a wandering pack, they walk up to you and just die, without need for load. They're no threat, and you won't get anything - why have the fight at all?

Mind you, this is working exactly the opposite side from your idea, but that's okay. The two could certainly be combined.

[kazak 2]

First thought I'd have would be to reduce the frustration at higher levels - if you're (say) 20 levels higher than the default foe of a wandering pack, they walk up to you and just die, without need for load. They're no threat, and you won't get anything - why have the fight at all?

Or instead of them dying automatically, they could just not chase you. They'd still roam around, but just kind of avoid you. That way they'd still be available if you wanted an easy way to replenish vim or hate or something, or if you waited late to do the alchemist quest and needed a bear paw or whatever---just chase them down.

Just make it more optional once the player gets to a certain level.