ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Some people have commented/complained that High Peak is too easy before the boss fights. It's 15 levels of windshield kills for some classes. Now I have no experience of the area myself, but the instant thought that came to mind was minibosses. They could be randomly generated and randomly placed, and would break up some of the perceived tedium from the last dungeon. People who feel they cannot cope would obviously be able to just teleport away and avoid them.

My personal preference would be for them to be high level versions of the player classes - humanoids that are followers of the main bad guys and accepted positions of generals in their army. Their exact stats and abilities could be randomly generated based on their assigned class, but obviously would be boss level in terms of difficulty. They would be ranked individual, with random names (perhaps all given a military title too - General Balasir, Commander Rayhorn, etc). There should be about 5 on average, and never more than 1 on a single level, but their exact placement shouldn't be predictable. Obviously they should also drop some greater ego stuff too, preferable in theme with their class.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Well, once next rev brings in the monster egos for Nightmare support, we could get the miniboss effect pretty easily by just cranking up the frequency and intensity of monster egos for that dungeon.

I'm rather looking forward to this new Insane mode, I must say :)

I had a cool thought for an extension to this idea - the Five Fallen Heroes.

They would be characters loaded from the online profiles - ones that had gotten to level 50 but died. They would be loaded with all AI-usable talents and inscriptions, given all the same stats and resists, have the same name as the original adventurer, and given all the same equipment. They would not drop artifacts when killed, but they would drop all their neat ego gear - could be a real boon for the player as these would be items specifically chosen by other players at level 50; the real cream of the crop. They would be hard obviously, but they could be avoided by simply passing them by and legging it to the stairs.

Their description would be something like this: "Before you stands a fallen hero. They once adventured through these halls, in a quest to overcome whatever evil lies beyond. But they failed, and on the edge of death they made a pact with the enemy - their loyalty for their life. Now they stand before you, slaves to their masters' wills. Will you end up the same...?"

There would be five of them, spread across the levels (no more than 1 per level) and always placed near the downstairs so that one has to face them or find a way around them. They would be labelled as uniques and have the same player-tracking as bosses.

For those who play offline there would be preloaded fallen heroes included in each release, using character profiles from the previous betas (properly adjusted to work in the new version). For those with online connections the game should try and download the latest profiles. This may involve some manual preparation of profiles to make them serviceable, but I'm sure people would volunteer to help with this.

I could even do lore notes from the fallen heroes, perhaps giving hints about the bosses near the end. "Against such powers what hope have I? I was on a noble quest, I called myself a hero - but look at me now. What have I become...? But I had no choice... no choice... They are just too strong. No one can stand against them..."

It would be similar to ghosts in other games, but with a community aspect.

Oh, and no bleeding quadrillion damage crystalline weapons :/

That sounds pretty amazing. +1 from me.

Awesome idea Grey. +1 more from me.