ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

At the moment Archmages and Celestials get a special start, which makes them more interesting to play. I'd like to see that expanded upon to give each of the classes an individual feel. These starter dungeons could also be catered more to each classes playstyles and difficulties. Of course yeeks, dwarves and undead would still get their special racial start instead. Some ideas:

Berserker/Bulwark/Arcane Blade: Fight through a dungeon with a random adventuring companion, eventually finding a Sher'Tul relic. Your companion fiddles with it and gets turned into a horror-esque version of itself that you must kill. Reward is a suit of mail with zero fatigue, "Steel Skin".

Brawler: Escape from the Ring of Blood through a secret passage, with an enslaved brawler as the boss. Reward is some special life-leeching gloves. When you return to the Ring of Blood later the yaech dude will be hostile.

Archer: Hunt a legendary stag through forests to prove your prowess. Stag appears on each level and must be brought below 50% HP each time to make it flee to the next level. Reward would be a sinew from the stag that you could use to craft either a bow or sling.

Alchemist: Start without a golem and fight through some ancient Conclave ruins to get the parts to construct one (with the boss being a half-made golem that you must "tame"). Reward is a special rune.

Rogue/Shadowblade/Marauder: Infiltrate the assassin lord's keep, avoiding or killing the guards to retrieve a powerful dagger. At the end you kill the assassin lord's lieutenant and get the dagger, but then the assassin lord shows up. The correct tactic is to flee (and that should be made clear to the player), but if immensely skilled you could defeat him and stop the merchant kidnap from ever happening. Defeating him would give the extra reward of a book of poisons, that gives the same bonus he gives himself when used. If you flee and come to find him later he'd have special dialogue but ultimately act the same as normal.

Cursed/Doomed: Fight through a nightmare realm to master your curse. Boss is a corrupted version of yourself. Reward is a cursed but improved version of whatever weapon you were wielding.

Necromancer: Loot an old graveyard for souls and parts, facing worms and lost spirits. Eventually you come across some undead and a rival necromancer you must slay. Reward is his staff or robes.

Temporal Warden/Paradox Mage: Some temporal thingy. I know Edge and DarkGod have plans for this already.

Reaver/Corrupter: Attack the Thaloren woods and steal the essence of their sacred tree, Shatur'Tialis ("Life Sap of Shatur"). Fight through flimsy elves and wood creatures to eventually face the boss - the tree itself. Reward is a special taint corrupted from the tree's sap.

Summoner/Wyrmic: Hunt down a corrupter that has stolen the essence of the sacred Thaloren tree. Fight through corrupted creatures and low level Rhaloren to find the Corrupter boss. Reward is a special infusion once the sap is retrieved and purified.

Mindslayer: Escape from a laboratory where a yaech has been experimenting on your mind. Your initial room is locked by mental force and only opened by killing the experimenter in the room with you, which in turns releases all of the locks throughout the laboratories and all of the test subjects inside. Fight your way out killing other subjects and technicians (who are also fighting each other), with the boss being a lab rat that has been imbued with intense psionic powers (it would have only 10 HP, but 95% resist all and a psionic shield focus). Reward would be the shield focus, or something else psionic specific.

Hmmm... in general I think the game would be more interesting with alternative versions of existing dungeons that may or may not turn up. From a replayability point of view, that is. Story-wise, I'll grant, class tailored starting are nice.

It's also a good opportunity to highlight the classes characterics: most critters should be vulnerable to the class, since it's a starting dungeon, but some should exploit the classes' weakness and be resistant to their strengths, if weak overall.

Grey wrote:Alchemist: Start without a golem and fight through some ancient Conclave ruins to get the parts to construct one (with the boss being a half-made golem that you must "tame"). Reward is a special rune.

I was going to say that this is a problem for builds that use the golem a lot early, but then remembered the new talent respec system. Carry on Have trolls that you can enjoy burning up and have something slow and fire resistant... maybe gargoyles?

Grey wrote:Cursed/Doomed: Fight through a nightmare realm to master your curse. Boss is a corrupted version of yourself. Reward is a cursed but improved version of whatever weapon you were wielding.

A nice side effect would be that we coud tailor this dungeon to give the poor cursed a leg up. Lots of weak critters. Actually, there should be lots of stationary summoning things that the doomed and Feed off and that summon hate-fodder for the cursed. Mainly shambling, low defense stuff, but the occasional weak but high-def critter so the cursed learn that accuracy is their weakness.

As for the reward, doomed won't necessarily be able to use a weapon all that well. For them I'd suggest a cloak or belt. Or a lantern.

Grey wrote:Rogue/Shadowblade/Marauder:

There should definitely be weak damage-on-hit amor about. So that later the player will think twice before flurrying.

I certainly like your ideas Grey, both the general idea of other class-specific starting zones and many of the specifics that you have outlined. One question on your warrior missions though. I imagine that the adventuring companion you'd have would be like the dwarven starter's Norgan, so what would happen if it dies before the time for the boss battle?

Oh, uh, hmm, good point...

The mindslayer rats better be cranium rats godomot.

Avianpilot wrote:I certainly like your ideas Grey, both the general idea of other class-specific starting zones and many of the specifics that you have outlined. One question on your warrior missions though. I imagine that the adventuring companion you'd have would be like the dwarven starter's Norgan, so what would happen if it dies before the time for the boss battle?

Another adventurer managed to get there first, and is now the boss that you need to kill.

I like the idea of class-dependent missions. However, I don't necessarily like the idea of giving them class dependent rewards.

This has a HUGE problem, and that is that each race already has its own starting area. This would over ride that. Allowing a couple of rare exceptions is okay, but basically doing away with all the existing starts is not.

Perhaps instead of starting areas, have class based special dungeons or quests which would kick in closer to the beginning but not at the beginning. Perhaps their own version of the second tier dungeon set instead of the first ones.

The idea is you can still do both, in the same way that archmages and celestials have a starting zone and move on to their racials afterwards.

You inspired me to cook up a class starter dungeon as well.
I hope you don't mind me using the corruptor again, your idea can still be used for the Reaver

Corruptor starter dungeon:
Terrain: Old Forest - like
Enemies: humans (style: Last Hope inhabitants), forest critters (hostile to the humans)
Final level: single open area (like Deep Bellow 3)
Boss: Melinda's father
Additional NPC: Melinda

When you enter the final level, you will have to fight and defeat Melinda's father. Melinda herself is invulnerable.
After defeating Melinda's father, a friendly Acolyte appears, who grabs Melinda, and tells you to come to their crypt later on.

Later on, when you trigger Melinda's quest, the final level is changed. As you enter, you see the last of four acolytes being slain by a Hero. Now you will have to defeat this Hero. Succesfully doing so causes Melinda to turn into te Demon, which will be friendly to you. He will give you a Demon Horn as a reward.

Demon Horn:
- worn on the head.
- increases Corruption / Shadowflame mastery by 0.30
- can be used to summon a levelled random horror

Neat idea :D