ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Part of the reason for unlocks is to prevent overwhelming the player. Another is to place the more difficult options out of reach of newbie players. As it currently stands, Shalore is basically a deathtrap to new players. Part of this is the lack of a heal, another is the starter, which is basically Admiral Akbars wet dream. Many new players aren't familiar with not having a regen infusion, and many more aren't aware they can get up and leave the caves to do a different area at the start. Locking shaloren until you make it a bit further in the game might help with this some.

Suitable unlock might be to clear the Rhaloren camp. This shows you an aspect of shaloren society (so it's related), and gives you some concept on how difficult those dungeons are, so helps prevent newbie death from being unaware of this.

Thoughts?

My first charactor is a shalore alchemist, and I died in that cave...so I agree with this.
About unlock, how about buy all of the shalore stories in the shop?(harder but fit the theme better)

Sure, why not.

Rhaloren Camp would be a reasonable spot, yes.

Idea in itself is actually really good. New players have already many races to choose from and having a new rather easy unlock will be a one more yay factor when playing and learning the game.

Then there's of course the roguelike issue. Why not take regen infusions away from all the races.

Can't remember from the top of my head if Shaloren are the more magically inclined race if the elves and what they get instead of regen, but thematically a shielding rune might fit in.

They are the more magicall inclined, and it is the shielding rune.

I agree that the Shalore start is somewhat hard...but I strongly disagree with his idea.

Also, I don't think the starting dungeon is that bad for ranged classes, which are what I'd expect 'newbie' players to pick with a Shalore - after all, they are mentioned as good as magic, hence I'd expect an Alchemist. Of course, it's sometimes mentioned that Shalore aren't as great at mages as you'd expect from the text, which is a separate issue...

And the 'don't overwhelm new player with choices! they can't handle them!' always felt horribly patronizing to me.
There are a lot of other ways new players can be helped without locking content: more complete tutorials/ingame guides, an 'assisted playing'mode that provides tips on what you could do each turn('You're low on health and have enemies around, why not activate your Shielding rune since it's not on cooldown?'), mentioning the difficulty level of a race/class/starting dungeon at creation...The crystal caves could also be rebalanced.

New players have already many races to choose from

If Shalore is locked, the starting choices will be: Cornac/Higher/Thalore/Halfling/Dwarf. That's five - I wouldn't call that 'many'.

I agree that the Shalore start is somewhat hard...but I strongly disagree with his idea.

Yeah. Shalore are not the only race to have a tough start. Probably a dwarf is even worse and the final boss in Reknor is much more lethal than the crystal. Even with a regen infusion. So why not have dwarves locked too?

More seriously, I agree with Zonk that haviing more ingame help for beginners would probably be a better answer.

Locking Shalore is fine, especially as Rhaloran camp as suggested is a good spot to unlock it from that's early and easy to clear with most chars. Also will give folks a chance to see crystals and rhalore before trying to play shalore, to give them an idea of what they're up against. It's a simple enough early unlock and unlocking things is fun~

I think it might be a good idea to lock the Shaloran since the switch with runes over infusions and their difficult dungeon can quickly throw inexperienced players through a loop - they simply either haven't played the game enough to know what the proper tactics would be for either when the runes function differently to the other races infusions or in consideration to the fact that the Shaloran starter dungeons require tactics in how a character would move and approach enemies.

However, I think the unlock being proposed here is a bit boring and flat in my eyes. Having an unlock related to killing 'this/these targets' has already been done for a few other unlocks. Personally I think it might be better if the unlock focused less on the difficult starter dungeons and moreso on the Shalorans other mentioned difficulty - the runes.

Maybe make it so that you have to block a total of 1000 damage with protective shielding (reflection counts), and/or inflicted 1000 damage with runes, and/or used '5' different runes - cumulative over several game. That strikes me as different to all the other unlock prerequisites and having the unlock related to runes would help the player get some experience in their use.

I strongly disagree with locking the Shaloren race. (even if they were primarily responsible for the spellblaze)
If the dungeon is the issue, tweak the dungeon, not just bubblewrap the player/race.
Placing a 50% projectile speed reduction on the all crystals, would allow new players to learn about tactical use of the Shaloren speed and runes they start with, which can all be used to complete that dungeon as your first dungeon. (except if its the alternate version)
I'd suggest improving the speed of the elemental bolt projectile though, as it would be more of an elemental snail spell at half speed.

As I already said on the IRC, I am all for locking Shalore, for reasons that people above me outlined.

I've lost two shalore archers due to the caves being a deathtrap (and I *knew* about being able to leave the caves, I got 1-hit-killed by the crystals before I could press > both times)

I'm the end it doesn't even matter. In Roguelikes it's not playing that teaches you - it's dying that does.

Gameplay wise it'd be neat to allow one simple race/class combo and then make all the players start in special newbie area that has all kinds of lore bits laying around describing in detail all the races and classes while also unlocking them in the process (not including the ones that are currently unlockable by other means).
The monsters in the area wouldn't give xp and items would only be plain white ones.
This way new people would (hopefully) learn about classes and races while dealing with enemies and equipping stuff, kinda like the tutorial thing.

This would be only available in normal difficulty and also can be toggled off in the options.

Actually when I think about it that's kinda really bad idea. People won't read the stuff and will quit playing out of boredom.

The older generation of us learned playing by getting thrown in the dungeon whacking bloodthirsty newts (Nethack) so why wouldn't the new generation as well. Roguelikes aren't for everybody and not holding hands will make people realize that sooner.

Speaking as a fellow Nethack veteran (genocideless tourist winner, yo!), I have to say that I'm a thorough convert to the new generation of roguelikes, to the point that I just can't play the older ones anymore. You mention newts, but how did people die to newts? By being paralysed by floating eyes, of course - and floating eyes were battles with zero tactical depth that were entirely about reading out-of-game spoilers and staying awake in boring areas. That's just bad game design masquerading as difficulty.

Anyway, I support the idea of locking Shaloren.

Another option: move Healing over to Runes, maybe name them "Rune: Reconstruction" like Arcane Reconstruction or just "Rune: Healing" like Healing Light.

This would lower the priority of the Light tree for undeads, and slightly raise the cost of going Anti-Magic. Maybe make Healing Totems a bit more common to compensate, but it'd still hurt to go Anti-Magic.

Shalore can start with a healing rune (replace Phase Door), undead maybe not if it's a balance issue for them.

Doctornull wrote:Another option: move Healing over to Runes, maybe name them "Rune: Reconstruction" like Arcane Reconstruction or just "Rune: Healing" like Healing Light.

Following this route, I'd have to question what the main strategic difference between a Shielding Rune and Healing Rune would be. I'm not against the move but I think more would have to be done to make these runes distinct and useful.