ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Right now the way shops are handled they have amazing mod but poor quality items and never restock. This leads to shops not being useful until after 2 or 4 dungeons when you have a few hundred gold to buy useful items. Around level 20 shops are just useless. I would like to see shops become more useful over the game. Here is my idea:

• Under 2 dungeon bosses killed First tier quality items that are mostly non magic. This way players have quickly grab an item or two to help at the beginning of the game.
• 2-5 (+1 for dwarves, human/elf archmages and undead) dungeon bosses killed first to second quality items mostly magic uncommonly purple
• 6-9 (+1 for dwarves, human/elf archmages, and undead) dungeon bosses killed 1st to 3rd tier quality items almost all magic items common purple items
• 10 (+1 for dwarves, human/elf archmages, and undead) dungeon bosses killed 2nd- 3rd tier quality items rarely stralite almost all magic and common purple items
• Far East Commonly Stralite rarely voratun almost all magic common purple

Basically when you complete the first quest (beat 2 beginning dungeons) you get a restock. After you beat the 6 starter dungeons you get a restock. After you beat 4 dungeon for the 2nd dungeon quest you get a restock. When you arrive in the far east you get a restock. This would make shopping around useful while making shops not too powerful. Also if you miss an item than it should be alright because there should better stuff out there.

Yeah I kind of feel like the shops need to be changed around a bit too. Like you said they become less and less useful as you level up, to the point that gold is just blah. The system you mention could work, but then it would have to be revisited everytime new dungeons are added. Maybe instead they should restock every 10 character levels? I don't know...

I definitely wish they'd have some nice junky non-ego items at the start of the game. At the moment the 10 gold you start with is useless. Can barely even afford anything after selling the loot from the first dungeon.

Now that monsters don't respawn the restocking could even be tied to number of kills. It should be easily modifiable and fairly difficult to abuse (but hey, if you kill 500 adventurer groups for a restock, you probably deserve it).

In general I agree that the shops need some work. Seems like a difficult thing to balance correctly.

My character in b26b bought two items - one around level 10, and one at level 35. Neither item was a must have, just some things to play with.

My character in b27 has yet to purchase a single item. He almost level 30.

With the upgrade to drops, store items are less enticing. With the lack of repop, store items are more expensive. The combination seems to make them almost irrelevant. I imagine that you can use them to fill a gap, like if you just never got any kind of belt or something, but beyond that... they are mostly useless (as is money).

Is this bad? I'm not sure.

It seems to get you eq that can support a move to the far east, which is good. It removes an aspect of the game I liked as a player (collecting/selling/money/eq scumming towns), which is not good. It helps put the focus more squarely on moving through the canon of quests, which may or may not be good... but it seems to be the direction that the developers are going.

So, as the store (and repop and drop) changes are intended to focus of the player on quests and story progression, the changes are successful... but they may not be welcome by all players. Sometimes I play to win, but a lot of the time, perhaps most of the time, I just like to play to play - regardless of how I'm progressing in the main story quests. The real beauty was that previously a player could go between the styles of play on a whim.

Achieving a balance, of course, is tricky thing. DG and Crew I'm sure are consciously trying to narrow the scope of TOME, and thats ok I suppose. Perhaps I should just try the unending dungeon... though I would prefer to see an unending world with shops, and wandering groups of adventurers, etc. Maybe after I get fired for writing to game forums from work, I'll look into writing that module.

Two suggestions:

(1) Give the stores more items to begin with, including low to high quality (depending on the limits of the shops, of course).

(2) Have the rich merchant in Last Hope refresh his store much more often (and have him tell you to come back often!). This makes saving him a better a reward, and allows a player to simply look in one store for new items rather than all stores. It seemed stupid and tedious to go visit all the stores in every towns when you knew they refreshed a few betas ago.

You could have some greater egos or artifacts which only pop up in stores, so if you want something that really shines you'd need to buy it from the store.

And no, I don't mean a greater ego lightsource.

Hedrachi wrote:You could have some greater egos or artifacts which only pop up in stores, so if you want something that really shines you'd need to buy it from the store.

And no, I don't mean a greater ego lightsource.

I like that idea a lot. This would stop the "what, no mage?" questions of newbies and point towards the achievement system earlier.

yufra wrote:

Hedrachi wrote: This would stop the "what, no mage?" questions of newbies

What mage?

Some shielding and regeneration runes would be nice, priced cheaply to really high depending on the amount it shields. Not finding a shielding rune can really screw then early-mid game. Not having 70+gold to buy them is annoying too.

Cheap shielding rune should be ~10g (the 100 dmg or less).
500 dmg shielding or regen could be around 100g
600+ could be around 250 g or something? Someone should probably make a better list.