ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Mostly as the subject says. I've been doing a yeek gauntlet (Going to see about getting all the yeek combos off the island, tracking how many deaths, to what, etc.), and the most consistent thing I can see that could stand changing is, well, the ritch pits. Numerous classes have literally no way of surviving one (especially one that generates in the first room, completely preventing you from being able to kite) without stairscumming... sometimes even if you pop over to the murgol lair and pick up a level or two, first.

There's a couple other consistent sanity issues with Yeek starts, but this is definitely the big one. Let's get the yeek levels more in line with the other starting zones, yes?

E: Lukep has a much better idea. Two posts down.

Yeah, the nest setups are a little much.

I can see logic with saying Yeek's a challenge race design and that the start is hard because of that, but a sufficiently nastily placed/large nest will just end your game with some class combos. Reload and try again. Sorta boring, and if you actually could beat it it grants you ridiculously out of place EXP to boot.

Would it work to lock them off (behind "crumbling sand", or something) and have them be vaults? They can be a big boost to a prepared player, but they can also kill one, easily.

That would actually be a much better idea than just squelching them. Yes please?

This is an excellent idea. Yeeks are a very nice concept and an interesting race to run. This would make them much closer to the other races in early survivability.

I personally would hate to see the nests go away, unless there was also a bump in exp gained from other kills. The nests are the only thing that'll get your character to level 4 and the second tier skills before the queen, and I probably die much more often to having to take on the queen at level 2 or 3 than to the ritch nests (though stairscumming the entrance to the tunnels and having to wait for the save each time if a nest spawned too close to the start really is painfully annoying).

If you need to grab levels before the Ritch queen, it's worth noting that there are some classes that are really better off going after their underwater brethren first.

This is not in any way meant to argue with the main thrust of the post, however.