ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Well, the "imbue" system is already ingame, but as far as I can tell it's Alchemist only.

In addition the game has a number of basically useless items ingame right now:

• Gems (except for Alchemist of course)
• Unenchanted rings/amulets
• Gold (you don't really need it much after a certain point)

So, lets combine this with a crafting system.

1. Expert Jeweler
In Angolwen there is already a nice jeweler. Add an option when entering the shop to enter the craftsystem instead of the shop (can be realised easily by an modified shopwindow). The jeweler offers you to craft a ring/amulet for you if you provide the raw materials and of course gold.

The necessary ingredients would be: a gem and a "clean" ring (without enchant)
The output, a "$gem ring" (e.g. a spinel ring) with the stats the gem would provide if imbued into an armor. But not every ring is powerful enough to hold every enchant...

• copper ring: max. gem level 1
  cost: 25g
• steel ring: max. gem lvl 2
  cost: 30g
• dwarven-steel ring: max. gem lvl 3
  cost: 35g
• galvorn ring: max. gem lvl 4
  cost: 40g
• mithril and gold ring: max. gem lvl 5
  cost: 50g

Now to the juicy part:

Master Jeweler
In the eastern continent (Anorithil unless you plan to add another town), the Master Jeweler is located. Well... at the beginning he's still a mere Expert Jeweler...

Part 1: An Ancient Tome
The Quest begins when you find an "Ancient Tome". The final room of Mt.Doom (leftover from our blue friends quick retreat) or Vor boss would be my recommendation. You bring it to the jeweler and he gets really excited. It's an description of how to craft marvellous jewelery of great power! But there is a problem... while forging, a source of intense magic is needed... There are rumours about a site of power in the southern mountains. Old legends of the immortals tell about a place where a part of the moon melted when it got to close to ne sun(*) and fell from the sky. A lake formed in the crater of the crash. The water of this see, soaked in intense moonlight for eons, should be sufficient to forge powerful artifacts! Go to the lake and then summon me with this scroll (handover scroll). But beware! Great evil is attracted by this magical nexus!

Part 2: Towards the Valley of the Moon!
So you go off, enter the cave leading to the valley of the moon...
The cave should be relatively short (1 or 2 lvls) in the "cave layout" of the spidercave (though propably not so greenish ), but *nasty*. All sorts of demonic critters and major demons will lurk there and give you a bad time... at the end of the final cavelvl (as said, only 1 or 2 recommended) a "staircase" leads you into the valley (trollshaws style but surrounded by mountains), a rather small special-lvl with a lake and a glowing stone in the center. There should be some LoS breakers (stones, trees) spread in the area nearby the moonstone. You clear a couple of demons, go to the lake and call the jeweler.
"Oh, by the Vala! This place is corrupted! I know a rite of cleansing, but for that I will need time and full concentration..." (yes, the jeweler happens to be a paladin too... or maybe he summons 2 paladins to do this).

pt. 3: The Rite of Cleansing
Well the pala starts the rite and the demons notice that somethings going wrong in "their spring of magic". So they do the obvious and rush to kill you and everything. Your job is to prevent them from killing you or the pala (he should stand outside direct LoS (e.g. behind the moonstone) of the incoming waves to prevent annoying "collateral damage" deaths) for e.g. 500 turns.

The waves should be easily scriped by having side valleys with "deep chasms" at their end between the cave entance and the main valley with the lake where every X turns demons are summoned. Both minor and major demons should spawn and beating all of em should be nearly impossible if there were not the awakening of the cleansed moonstone.

In an radius of $round/50 around the moonstone all demons take $round/10 light dmg per round. $round is the number of rounds passed since the rite started, so the moonstone gets more and more powerful with time. However the demons do so aswell (especially in numbers and with more "major demons" spawning. Thus the minor demons simply burn up after a while but the major demons still impose a threat.
At round 400 (the moonstone make 40dmg/turn in a radius of 8 by then, so choosing a good tactic can avoid much trouble already from the demons but pushing you quite far back to fully exploit the moonstone-light) the big boss shows up. "$Demonname the Corrupter" - a Balrog that still exists in this world! Flames of nether engulf him and scorch whatever they touch... The darkness surrounding this ancient being absorbes all light.
As you may guess: It's immune to light and was the one who once broke through the moonlight and corrupted the moonstone. And he's not very happy if you mess with his stone!

Survive till round 500 and all demons in the valley disappear (of course except the Boss), kill the Boss if it's not done yet and the quest is completed.

Reward: The Master Jeweler
Okay, what now? The Jeweler decides to stay in the valley but offers you now to craft artifact rings/amulets. The system is basically the same but you can imbue one clean ring with 2(!) gems.
The final ring will have the properties of *both* gems plus one random enchant (what could make the ring very powerful if your lucky). But of course it's not for free. In addition to the two gems and an appropriate clean ring you'll have to pay a lot of money. I'm thinking aboub something as 250-300g per artifact ring.


(*) Can't find my Silmarillion right now, but I vaguely remember some story where the Maia of the Moon tried to catch the sun but then got burned - back in the early days of the 2. age when the sund&moon were still young.


Ugh, now that got longer than I expected...

Feedback, comments?

Cheers,
Patryn

That quest sounds like fun!

The gold price seems kinda steep from a story perspective. You just bent over backwards for this guy and now he wants to charge you to make rings? I understand your logic is to give players something to spend money on but I'm not sure that's the right way to do it. I know that I feel cheated by stuff like that as a player, jumping through hoops for an npc and basically doing all of his work just so he can turn a profit.

So... what if he requires another type of gem in addition to the two gems that actually add the enchant that you can only buy at the shops that sell stones and that's what costs an arm and a leg? It'd need to either be common enough that you didn't half to shop scum terribly for it or would need it's own dialog box at the store after this quest was completed.

I like, I like it very very very much !

I'll probably implement it soonish

If you have other such ideas, please, post them!

@DG: Thanks!
I had the idea when thinking about some nasty new mobs that could be added in my test-module I'm fuddling around with right now and intend to get into in more depth when I have some more sprae time next month.
Actually right now I have an idea of a pretty twisted dungeon type - but thats still half-baked... Maybe next month when I had the time to learn a bit more about lua and the lvl-generator to do some actual coding in lua instead of just exchanging variables...

@edge: Hmm. Well, the reward of the effort was supposed to access self-designed artifact rings at all... So much from an ooc game perspective. But yes, you're right. From the character point of view you would feel kinda cheated.

Your proposal: Place the gold-dump to another npc (gem merchant) feels right from the characters perspective. You helped the jeweler gain a new skill and went with him through hell for that (comradeship) thus he'll use that skill for free for you. That solves the ingame-consitency.
However from a gamedesign point of view I personally dislike this because having an item just for that... well, maybe if it shows up before you have the quest and the gem description is choosen right it can serve as a teaser for whats possible next. I think that will work and should be better than my proposal.

Just some thoughts and comments:
- If the Master Jeweler makes the artifacts for free, will he make the "normal" craftes rings/amulets for free too? That sounds kinda cheesy to me. But on the other hand at that point in the game you may not be too interested in those items anyway... :-/

- I forgot to mention it in the first post: The jeweler stays in the valley of the moon! Thats why I proposed the demon cave to be short (1 or 2 lvls only, I prefer 1). After the moonstone was cleansed of course the valley is cleansed too and safe, but the cave still imposes a threat since the demons are still attracted by the source of power nearby.

Done!

Quite fun it is, we will see how survivable it is

I need some more demon varity though, but the bulk of the quets is done.
I need to decide where to drop the tome, maybe make it a world drop in some zones ?

Nice! That was quick, even for "soonish".
Can't wait to see it in action.

This includes necklaces, right? >.>

No only rings, sounds too powerful to me otheriwse, or maybe I can do amulets but no rings ?

Patryn wrote: There are rumours about a site of power in the southern mountains. Old legends of the immortals tell about a place where a part of the moon melted when it got to close to ne sun(*) and fell from the sky.

(*) Can't find my Silmarillion right now, but I vaguely remember some story where the Maia of the Moon tried to catch the sun but then got burned - back in the early days of the 2. age when the sund&moon were still young.

"But Tilion was wayward and uncertain in speed, and held not to his appointed path; and he sought to come near to Arien, being drawn by her splendour, though the flame of Anar scorched him, and the island of the Moon was darkened."

Perhaps the cave is where Tilion hung out, and rested, and salved his burn marks, in the days before the seas were bent?