ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I finally decided to spoil myself and find out how to unlock archmages, and have now gone through the necessary procedures. I must say I'm overall very unhappy with how this is achieved.

Firstly, I never would have found the queset without being spoiled. There is nothing that marks out that section of the map as being special. I would suggest either make some individual looking terrain feature, or make the little section inside the mountains darkened (as in unexplored map squares - that'll really pique people's curiosity). In fact, I think it would be nice if the whole world map had to be "explored". Quest locations would be revealed (and Bree at the start of the game), but there'd be a "fog of war" outside of radius 6 from the player. That way interesting areas would be invisible, and the hidden valley would be noticably hidden by those who go exploring.

Secondly, the quest itself is a bit silly. It's a standard and wholly boring fetch quest, easily solved by scumming the trollshaws for a few minutes. To make it at least a bit more interesting I suggest requiring that the player obtain items totalling a minimum value (as in shop price value). About the value of, say, 5 ego staves or 5 decent rings. Or, say, the price of the Staff of Angmar (which should maybe be beefed a bit to make it a harder choice for some). That way you have to make real sacrifices of item finds rather than grinding for junk.

Or perhaps someone has a better idea. I'm just not impressed with what's there at present.

I wonder if that doesn't relate to your play style. I definitely saw the novice mage before I heard about him on the forums. He just popped up, so I figured there would be a benefit to helping him out.

Also perhaps there IS a shorter way to solve that quest without scumming, but alas, you did not start this threat in spoilers

Hmm, I have an odd feeling that I may have been rather stupid... :P

Did I just get unlucky to never find the little guy in the wilderness before? Or do most people only find the quest through getting spoiled?

As an alternative to a fog of war, maybe moving/expanding the zone of appearance so that it includes the area to the east of Bree in order to guarantee that everyone finds him early and easily?

Well, there's two dungeons out that way, so I guess there's plenty of opportunities to bump into him..

I actually unlocked the mage before I knew it existed, then deleted the game completely, didn't play for a while, and forgot about how to unlock the mage. I did run into him again before I got spoiled how to unlock the class, but I was regularly bumping into him before I knew where he was.

How about swapping the zones of appearance for the Ancient Elven Ruins and the Mage? Currently you have a much, much bigger chance as a new player to try to go head on with the Greater Mummy Lord than the basic Archmage quest.

Or considering the lack of dungeons in the east maybe place the Ancient Elven Ruins there? Maybe in Lothlorien or the Elven Kingdom in the Mirkwood?

The elven ruins have been upped in levels and so should be less encountered at low level.

I saw the novice mage instantly when I headed out, and I wouldn't know about the unlocking if it wasn't for a mention I read somewhere in the forum. I've had a hard time gathering items, I'm not really into scumming and the good stuff I find it's always for my character.

The closest character to get the quest done, was one who, not knowing exactly where to venture to, entered the Elven Ruins thinking it might be fun. Which it was, until I was frozen and instantly killed by this Greater Mummy Lord. Jeez, how sad is to die from a corpse wrapped in toilet paper.

PS: I had to think in Jack Nance... "She's dead, wrapped in plastic."

I think this should slowly move to spoilers..

Uh, yeah, this is ending up far spoilier a thread than I anticipated :/

"Ideas" often contains spoilers.

I ran into the mage long before I read about him in spoilers. It was several months of playing though before I bothered getting enough items for the unlock though.