ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Racial dungeons and random dungeons are significant parts of pre-east gameplay. What if there's a prodigy that grants access to most of these 'bonus' dungeons?

Thus, here's my proposal to our lord Darkgod: the Extraordinary Explorer(TM) prodigy.

This prodigy requires dex 50 (to replace 'roll with it' prodigy, which is one of the most boring prodigy) or cun 50, to fit with the theme.

Effect: Upon taking this prodigy, all racial, random (scourge pit, noticeably) and bonus dungeons (bearscape, etc) are generated on the world map. You will have an alternative option when dark crypt event occurs - the place will be marked on the map, for later rescue attempt.

Also, here's another little addendum to help another prodigy that needs some popularity. The player will have increased chance to find one of the parts of the ancient artifact: Top part and crystal of Telos' staff.
The adventure parties will drop the hint to find the staff parts, or even the part themselves.


There will be a lot of XPs and item drops expected before moving to the east. In my opinion, this could be one way of boosting the character's strength as well as enriching the gameplay itself instead of simply giving X buffs to the character.

I've always thought something along those lines should be added to Worldly Knowledge. Like knowledge of those places as a part of your... worldly knowledge It's still a neat idea on its own, but a 100 percent downgrade to your character as opposed to prodigies that do something. Not necessarily a bad thing, I'm just sceptical about the amount of players that'd be willing to take this just for lols.

Maybe if something was done to the newly accessible dungeons for higher risk/reward it could warrant it's own spot. I really like the concept of having to do something in game to fully benefit from a prodigy, like Naloren does. I really wish there were more (good) prodigies like that. Your idea about the Telos Staff is nice in that regard, though this now warrants two prodigies and that's just bonkers, is the staff even good enough to warrant one?

For example, if you access Dark Crypt this way, Melinda should've already been sacket, the demon had time to grow stronger so you have to fight her on steroids, with say more demons thrown in among the cultists for good measure. But still, is loot, which you might get killed for, enough to trade a prodigy for?

PS. Scale up the enemies in said dungeons, make new more powerful (to signify they didn't get dealt with so they grew stronger) versions of the bosses and have them drop unique to them artifacts. Not fixed, but a pool of a few, so you can't rely you'll get precisely what you need for the build. That could be nice and possibly not a waste of a prodigy to the powerplay-obssesive.

Sludgenest was on my mind when I was writing this proposal - which is an excellent looting place for rare archetypes of randarts such as shields or mindstars.
Also, guaranteed bearscape, santa and other dev dungeons with t5 drops.

I agree that this prodigy itself won't provide anything but location. I hope it'll work just like new Adept prodigy - improvement in overall character power, in a subtle way.

The character won't become a superhuman right after you take this prodigy, but a handful of levels and t5 rare/randart items will have it prepared before trying on more difficult dungeons.

Idea of 'advanced' dungeon (both in story-wise and in-game difficulty) is wonderful, and the same idea can be applied to the worm dungeon! Malyu the corrupted ooze with arcane blade talents will be an interesting boss mob.

And lastly, the staff is totally worth it. Affinities, resonances, dmg%, spellpower, spellcrit, crit multiplier, conf res, resources and 50% vamp are worth a prodigy, especially in a low-difficulty games where looting quality is rather low. Basically it's the Naloren for mages, only the best of best randarts could beat it.