ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Say you've been playing ToME for a few weeks or months. You're totally hooked at this point but by now you've done the starter dungeons umpteen times and are beginning to grow tired of them. A way to skip those dungeons while still being able to collect the loot and still being forced to fight the boss would be perfect!

Player has completed the Trollmire and Korpul quests 20 times over their account history.
On the 21st time entering one of those dungeons, he receives a pop-up

"Old distant memories come flooding back to you upon entering this dungeon. You suddenly know the layout like the back of your hand. There is no challenge for you here, would you like to skip ahead to final level of this place?"

Upon click yes, the player is warped to the lowest level where everything is still unexplored, and he continues to play like usual. All critters and normal creatures from the previous levels are insta-killed and the player gets the experience total immediately. Elite and Dangerous enemies remain alive with their drops. Anything in a vault stays alive. The previous levels become fully explored, except for vaults. Any remaining monsters are shown on the mini-map so the player can go straight to them and finish them off if they choose. Maybe even make it so artifacts and egos can only be dropped on the final level of the dungeon so they player can never miss those items by taking this shortcut. (Not sure if this last part is balanced but it might help. it does remove the value of vaults, but not many artifacts are dropped in them anyway)

The beginning part of the game is still fun as it is now. A little tedious after many months of playing, but still fun nonetheless. It's just that, the parts after those early levels are much more fun and challenging. It usually takes me 30 min to an hour, at the least, to get a new player to finish all those low level dungeons (Trollmire, Kor'pul, Nogros, Scintillating caves, Heart of Gloom, etc.). Auto explore helps ALOT but I think it could still be better!

Many new players complain about the dramatic differences among enemy type at the lower levels. Skele Archers and Mages come to mind. But it is important for new players to learn and understand that they exist and are a threat at any time. They have to learn to deal with them in one way or another, which is almost always possible with a little creativity on their part. By making them complete those dungeons 10-20 times, it is ingrained in their minds to be weary of these mid-level threats and not assume that this game is a click fest. There is a high level of strategy in all character classes, and that is the best part of this game. New players need to be able to see this aspect.

But, a common complaint of the player who has been through this part many times is the monotony of it. Create character, clear a few dungeons, level up, get gear, clear a few more dungeons, die once or twice due to clicking too fast, focus on the bosses, repeat. Get to lvl 20, and now the real fun begins. I believe this solution would be relieved by implementing a suggestion like this.

Perhaps do it according to class? Player has finished Kor-pul 5 times as a berserker. On the 6th the prompt comes up. But he still has to finish it 5 times as a Rogue in order to get the pop-up and skip feature. Maybe reduce that to 3x per dungeon? You guys have any thoughts?

Eh. Never a fan of auto-play mechanics. As someone who can run through 3-4 characters before getting one that "sticks", I hear where you're coming from, but I don't think it'd be a good idea to give players the option to skip ahead like that.

If one were going to but the early zones into "brief" mode, I'd rather it be something that takes advantage of the higher skill level that a veteran could be expected to have, like reducing the total number of levels for the early zones but bumping up their difficulty(and reward) to take advantage of it.

If you were really going to do the "skip it all" thing, it'd probably be better to just skip everything, even the bosses. Just auto clear everything(or close the zones altogether and put the player in their starter town instead) and give the player a single "nice" item(to represent the boss drop) and a bit of gold to buy something useful. That or just generate a random, weak magical attribute for each of their starting gear.

It'd probably be a weaker start than actually running the areas, but if you wanted to fast-track things...

Yeah, I have to agree with that train of thought. There should be (at bear minimum) a slight penalty involved for skipping something. Knowing that you could get more loot by exploring yourself is an incentive enough to keep playing that way. But a choice of one or the other would be nice after enough time invested in those dungeons. I recommended leaving the last level unexplored with the boss so that you still have to accomplish something without being able to totally skip it.

Although your system sounds pretty good too. Maybe at birth, you could get a different pop-up that allows you to fast track to clvl 10 with the 2 starter dungeons for his race, kor'pul, and trollmire closed. A little gold like you said, plus slightly improved starting gear, and one decent low level artifact. If you actually played through those dungeons you'd have much better gear and be around clvl8-12 depending on race. Yeeks and undead should probably stay screwed though, part of their appeal is the hard difficulty they have to go through to get to the mainland. Probably cornacs too since they don't have "racial dungeons." Eh i dunno.

I stress the choice part though, this would definitely be a yes/no kinda thing. Only existing to cater to the impatient people like me.

I think the real reason that levels 1-20 are so dull is how slowly you pick up talents. Early levels are a game of not getting killed by poison or ranged attackers while hoping that stun doesn't lock out your entire skill set. Someone who has had more experience designing classes may be able to weigh in on that point a little better (edge? benli?).

The main reason I continue to run the early dungeons is so I can pick up artifacts. Summertide Phial is a good light, with a highly-situational activate; Wintertide Phial has one of the best activates for Ghouls/Skeletons; Crooked Club and Skullcleaver have on-hit effects that continue to be situationally useful for pretty much the whole game; Eelskin Armor can be a huge damage boost for spellcasters; Kor'Pul's staff is a low-maintenance option for entering Angolwen; Rod of Annulment is obviously incredible; Blood of Life needs no explanation. Even if you don't use the artifact that is dropped, it takes it out of the artifact pool, somewhat increasing the odds finding a nice artifact elsewhere. I don't know how to dissuade this sort of behavior; nor am I sure that it is unintended, considering you need to clear these bosses to access the backup guardians.

Honestly, I still feel spoiled by auto-explore; the only dungeon that I still have gripes with is SWL.

Keep in mind there is no requirement to complete the starter dungeons. If you want to you can go directly to Dreadfell and start diving at level 1. Surviving on the other hand...