ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Stolen the idea from Asmageddon in this thread.

Would be cool if late in the game (say after returning West) the lost merchant could order a specially made randart for you, but at the hefty price of 5,000 gold. One could choose the item type, and it would be guaranteed highest material level. No guarantee of it being useful, of course, but that's the fun of procedural content. It adds an extra incentive to saving the fat bugger, whilst also giving something to do with gold late game. Whilst technically there's a chance of something very overpowered, that chance already exists with farportals.

Being the original author of the idea I of course am all for this, but 5000 sounds a bit harsh...

Perhaps make original price 200 gold which yields a completely random randart(but most likely a weak one), and add additional options like:

* 100 gold - better material
* 300 gold - even better material
* 500 gold - one of the best materials, most likely
* 800 gold - guaranteed best material

* 200 gold - more powerful egos
* 400 gold - much more powerful egos
* 800 gold - guaranteed multiple egos or a very rare one

* 300 gold - more power - 1.2x damage/armor/etc.
* 600 gold - more power - 1.35x damage/armor/etc.
* 900 gold - more power - 1.5x damage/armor/etc.

* 200 gold - specify category of item(armor, weapon, jewelry)
* 400 gold - specify category more accurately (light/heavy armor, one/two handed weapon, ranged, etc.)
* 700 gold - specify exact type of item

Or something like that...

Also, imho it would be better if you could do this at every store.

Perhaps allow paying money to stores, which makes them restock and "upgrade" - they get better and more items, etc.
This idea got stolen from Elona.

Make it too easily available and it'll be overpowered. Hence my suggestion for exhorbitant price, late game, and only if you did what can be a challenging sidequest. Still, up to DG if he wants this at all.

It turns out that gold isn't all that useless as I thought. I have discovered an ancient Shertul process that allows the user to use fortress energy combined with gold to power the fortress scanners. This allows you to scan distant worlds. The gold and energy are consumed in the process.

Allows you to choose between several (3? 5?) worlds, shows the level type and monster type, and also the randart type by equipment slot.

The game would then generate the chosen world and the randart would be a guaranteed drop from the final boss.

Something like 100g for each world explored? Maybe less/more?

5,000 is a lot.

Maybe 2,000 or so.

The intention was for it to be a once in a game event.

Oh, and another suggestion to the randart ordering - the player should be able to name it :)

If you could order the specific egos on it (which I don't think is a good idea period) then I could see 5,000g. But blowing a few grand for a random art of the item type you want I think would be pretty balanced. Consider that you might have to do this three or four times to get something you'd even want to use.

One-time event is no good imo.

2000g indeed sounds more realistic.

Perhaps simplified version of my idea, where you pay 2000g and add further money to be able to specify item type, egos, etc.

Or perhaps make every next one slightly more expensive?

Thinking about this, wouldn't tying this to the lost merchant be a bit unfair to rogues?

Not really, it's only one randart and not that guaranteed to be helpful. It's also biased against dwarves, but you can't make everything equal to all races and classes.

What's wrong with just using a farportal? Too dangerous or something?

Final Master wrote:What's wrong with just using a farportal? Too dangerous or something?

I believe the entire point of this thread is that it is too random, doing more farportals would not help at all.

It's more for added fun than to compete with farportals. Of course the advantage of choosing an item type should be clear.

Final Master wrote:What's wrong with just using a farportal? Too dangerous or something?

"So, the story. I was toodling along in a farportal, doing my thing. Come up against a 32nd level random snow giant boss. The next thing I know, [LOG] Xybrera the snow giant chieftain hits Jack Friday for 249 physical, 746 physical damage (total 994.20). I was at full health. That was a few dozen more HP than the character had."

Farportals can be pretty damn dangerous

'course, fixing some talents here and there will help ameliorate that, but it's not going to change th'fact that some classes/characters are going to run into random uniques that they've got absolutely no bloody way of killing, and a very good chance of having no bloody way of escaping, either. Some talent combinations are just deadly, heh.

And if you recall out, chances are really, really, really, high, that the portal's going to break.

Anyway, having a source of a guaranteed randart of tier 5 quality would be pretty interesting, especially if you could choose the item type. 2-3k gold sounds fairly decent for that level of control over the process. Throwing lesser amounts of cash for less controlled randarts would be interesting, too. Say 500 just for a go, additional 1k to choose the item type or material tier, and the 2.5k for full control of tier and type. Let the player have 3/2/1 goes at each level level of control, for a total possible expenditure of 6k and 6 randarts of varying quality. That'd be a good place for an endgame character to sink their gold before having a go at the high peak.