ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Instead of making you go kill the pregnant necromancer everytime, I was thinking that it'd be more interesting if, as with the alchemist quests, you needed to find a set of needed reagents in order to complete the ritual.

I think a good set would be one low-diff reagent (say, something that you can get by level 8-10), a medium one (15-20), and the last one involve killing a difficult boss (eg: The pregnant necromancer, Scatha the Worm, etc...)

I think this way the quest would be more varied and interesting.

No this is a specific quest on purpose. How often do you think a reagent used for lichdom just falls on the ground?

I don't understand what you mean. I don't think it's any less sensical than having the ingredients for the alchemical potions "just fall on the ground".

Hell, there's even an in-game lore piece in which a different lichdom recipe is described.

This is, as has been said, a specific quest for a reason. For one thing, I think it's meant to show exactly what your character is doing/willing to do to achieve what is basically an abomination to nature. Making it just another gather random items quest would ruin that entirely. Besides, the regular ingredient quests are done for thing that are nice bonuses, but just that--nice bonuses--which you get several chances at various one. This is a potentially important bit of character building and development that should be predictably achievable while also being a major, memorable event.

If you are just being squeemish about the whole thing then the solution is simple. Don't do that quest.

Dude, I'm not squeamish about that quest (I... don't even understand this bit. Why would you think I'm squeamish about a game's quest? ). I simply think it would be more interesting if there was more lenght and variation to it. I find it's linearity dull. Make *all* the random components creepy themed, if you like. It doesn't feel too epic at the moment, either (the main difficulty lies in killing one single somewhat hard -but not that hard, either- boss, and then transmogrifying enough junk to reach the necessarily powerlevel). I think more reagents that had to be gathered around would result in it being more interesting overall, and more memorable.

I think that would be a more meaningful change if most players didn't tend to clear those zones anyway.

Yeah. TBH I put up those zones as an example of "toughs", more than anything, it doesn't have to be those monsters in particular.