ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Tongue in cheek, but just had to suggest that Shatur really needs something there. A trainer for some skill (Exotic Weapons? Moss? Mindstar?), a rare item shop, something.

It's the only town where no quests cross, no trainers park at, and all of the item shops default to generally low tier gear (Enough so that I've never encountered anything even decent there). There's no story narrative across it, and it's totally easy to do runs without ever entering it. Another simple thought would be make it specialize in good bows and arrows, so archers feel it's the go-to spot. Give it a double sized infusion shop or some oozemancer boost, so thalore thematically fit better with it. Have walking trees, so its at least visually 'woah'.

That's a shame. Someone spent time arting and drawing that town. It's got a square on the world map. And aside from the first run, it's a total waste of real-estate.

Save poor Shatur from its perpetual never visit state.

I always check Shatur for infusions and maybe torques and gloves, but I agree it's a little boring compared to other towns. Having some kind of unique vendor or quest would help.

Shatur's the only place, afaik, that sells torques and totems (does anyone use totems?) outside of Zigur.

You can sometimes find a psychoportation torque there, quite decent for its cost in the early game and really good for some classes.

Also infusion shop is definitely nothing to sneeze at. I don't think it can spawn heroism at all but finding that phys/mental wild is golden.

And considering all the other shops, it definitely has the potential for nice items.

Shatur is pretty limited for a lot of classes. For about half of the games I play, I have no reason to ever bother going there.

To address that, I propose a "mastery" quest. I'm not sure what appropriate details would be on the quest itself but the reward should be a .2 bonus to one generic category… something non-magical or anti-magic, but available to everyone. Thus, it should pick four or five generic options that every class in the game will have access to at least one of. When the quest is completed, you get to pick which category you get the mastery in.

I don't think it needs to be relevant to all characters. I'm fine with never going to the Iron Council, Irrkkk or Angolwen/Zigur in most of my games and I generally only go to Elvala for the alchemist quest.
Making the player go to all the towns for the sake of having the player going to all the towns isn't really a good thing.

I would like to see the shops have a bias in their ego power sources. That makes different towns more relevant to different characters without penalising anyone for not visiting all of them.
Something like:
Zigur: Never arcane. Increased antimagic.
Angolwen: Never antimagic.
Shatur: Increased nature.
Elvala: Increased arcane.
Iron Council: Increased technique.
Irrkkk: Increased psionic.
Dearth: Lower quality but cheaper.
Last Hope: Increased quality but more expensive.

HousePet wrote: Something like:
Zigur: Never arcane. Increased antimagic.
Angolwen: Never antimagic.
Shatur: Increased nature.
Elvala: Increased arcane.
Iron Council: Increased technique.
Irrkkk: Increased psionic.
Dearth: Lower quality but cheaper.
Last Hope: Increased quality but more expensive.

I rather like this concept but Shatur is still getting the short-end. Why not give each town egos that are ONLY available in that town? That would make going back to them later in the game worthwhile.

More so, it's not necessarily to gear that's the problem, it's that there's no OTHER purpose to going there. There's no side-quest, arena, etc.

It needn't necessarily be universal but it'd be nice if it had something.

Making the egos town-specific seems a little too granular, but I like the idea of making some spawn more often in certain towns.

I would go further and say that antimagic should never spawn in Angolwen or Elvala, and arcane should never spawn in Zigur or Shatur. The fact that Shalore racials are spells makes me seriously question the logic of them trading in antimagic items. Restricting arcane items from Shatur just works to balance the scales.

I just didn't want Angolwen/Zigur to be the same as Elvala/Shatur.

Well, I don't really care if they sell the same items. Angolwen and Zigur both have associated quests to differentiate them. They also sell T3 gear, while the other towns only sell lower tiers.

Personally, I'd throw in an alchemist quest there. Antimagic characters are capable of using the potions, so that's not necessarily a problem; and there's a slot for a mental crit rate elixir.
(The other two elixirs could be anything. Damage resist, affinity, idk. Not important.)

That's the reason I enter most other towns...