Prodigy Idea: Fast Track to Endgame

[Tankra]

I've noticed that often, after beating the Master and reaching the East, experienced players characters' will start to become really quite strong and much of the challenge, spice and thrill of the game will be lost.* I've completed the game twice on two different characters, and I've really felt the grind come in at about lvl 30-35, and only getting worse once you reach the prides. I have a few characters sitting at around that level because it's just too much of a hassle bringing them all the way to the endgame, where my biggest concern will be whether I'll be able to get at least one really sweet randart and all the late-game artifacts I'll need. Not to mention that during those 20 levels, I'll have to remain at least moderately alert or else risk losing.

What I propose as an alternative to letting lvl 30+ characters fall into oblivion and neglect would be a prodigy that would allow a player to fast track all the way from Dreadfell to High Peak, giving them a chance to finish the game at a lower level. The way I see it, the prodigy would be unlockable and have only one prerequisite:

Unlock Condition: The player must have successfully completed the game on any non-Exploration, non-Easy mode.

Prerequisite: The character must survive the Orc ambush following Dreadfell (Against All Odds achievement).

If these two conditions are met, then a character can grab the prodigy and be instantly and irrevocably teleported to High Peak. Depending on the developer's preference, it could be either at level 1 of High Peak or at lvl 11, directly in the boss room. The way I see it, the bosses would be scaled down to the character's level (anywhere between lvl 30 and lvl 50), but in general, this method would give you a relatively harder boss fight than normal, just to make it more interesting.

I would definitely like to see such a feature in the game, and I think it would reduce the weight of grinding and the time investment involved in having a successful character.

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*My reasoning applies primarily to Normal difficulty, as I've never beaten the game on Nightmare let alone Insane. I know many people would tell me to switch to these difficulties if I'm finding Normal too grindy or easy, but I feel as though the difficulty level on Normal between levels 1-30 is still very appropriate for me, even if I find the levels beyond 30 slightly boring.

[SageAcrin]

Actually, there's an easier way to do this.

Someone just needs to make a dropped artifact that either allows you to use Burrow or Wraithform. Or a Prodigy that allows you similar passwall abilities.

These two skills can be used in the Unremarkable Cave(or whatever its name is). Leave the cave, walk north, and you actually can overland walk to High Peak.

I think tiger_eye cleared a Wyrmic doing this. There's just no universal way to do it...yet. It's nice because of how easter egg-y it is, and it'd be cool if there was a way to universalize it.

[b0rsuk]

More generally, I think the classes and areas hardest to reach get the least testing, and that's why their quality (and balance) suffers. I would suggest remedying it by

• Rotating classes - once in a while a rare class becomes temporarily unlocked to all
• Allowing characters to actually start in Sunwall, with experience level 30 and a pile of gold