Mages a bit to hard to unlock?

[madmonk]

I don't mind the current mage unlock, although 15 staves is a lot. Would 9 be too few? 5 staves, 5 rings, 5 amulets? I think Angmar's Fall would be a good unlock for the mage city in future games once mages are unlocked.

You have the basis for a good idea here, rather than unlock the class with staves (which none of the starting classes need), unlock with rings and amulets (which all the starting classes use!).

This would cause a set of interesting dilemmas for players... Do I hand over this really cool item (and therefore unlock) or wait?

After unlocking the Mage class, in later games handing over the Shade's Staff should be sufficient to get in to Angolwen!

[Canderel]

Or 15 Rings/staves/amulets...

So any of the 3 any amount...

[Gwai]

and it would make those empty copper etc. rings not _quite_ so much of an insult. It's nice if most items are at least theoretically useful for something even if that something is rather small.

[Vanguard]

Why not just have it be angmar's fall every time? That would be perfect.

Could I also put out the recommendation that once a character gains access to angolwen, they also learn the Teleport: Angolwen ability? That would make things much more convenient for non-mage characters.

[Taxorgian]

Or even a compromise of sorts: Angmar's Fall for map access and 15 staves (or 15 magic stuff) for Teleport: Angolwen? A lot of characters will have to grind levels in the Old Forest before tackling Tol Falas anyway....

[Vanguard]

Should the guy who gives that quest do something different or even not show up at all for a mage character? Him being there doesn't bother me, but there's no point to him either.

[Shoob]

he gives a ring of worthlessness to you, which I usually sell anyways so yeah, the quest really isnt worth it for mages, what I find interesting is that you can get teleport to angolwen but you cant get there via the portal that the apprentice knows about, and doesnt tell you about if you are a mage.

[registeringislame]

Pfft. 15 Staves is a small amount. I go into the old forest and come back with ~4.

Never mind by doing the rogue quest you get about 20 gold which is another 4.

And you get a free staff from the shade.

You only need to do it once. Dunno what the fuss is with unlocking that store for other characters, gold is too scarce for buying from stores to be useful.

[Frumple]

Except that the mage-town store -- th'accessory one -- is the only one in the game actually worth a crap that doesn't have a fair chance of being eaten by thieves if the RNG stiffs you. Further, you can walk in there with a mage, at character level 1, just starting the game, and walk out with two energizing rings, or one and a regen ring, or 2-3 levels worth of stat-points (more, actually, if the stock's good). Lastly, gold's only scarce up until you start running into more steel than iron, at which point it really stops being all that scarce; having 50-60 gold before character level 12 isn't a surprise, for me, at least. You only need at-most 15 gold to buy a full jewelery set for yourself, in beta3, which is an honestly ridiculous boon for a starting character -- and mages already are easier to get off the ground than most classes.

Side point, I've gone through the entirety of the Old forest, all the way to the bottom and all the way back up, and only came up with two, not '~4' staves. More tellingly, I've ground 12-15 levels in the bloody place, meticulously stripping the lower levels of items, without getting all fifteen. Even with that ~4, that's at least 4 (12+3) scourings of the place, which is a bloody nuisance. Some builds have a simply hellish time with th'shade, and Amon Sul's already considerably more dangerous than everything up to Tol Falas so that 'free' staff's likely to kill you, and if you're not previously aware of the thief quest (or get jumped by it going to the Forest or the Shaws) it's entirely possibly to get hit with it too early to do anything about it, besides fail or die trying. So yeah, there's fuss man, there's fuss. Mages are the only class and magetown th'only (I've seen, to be fair) content that's basically unlocked by grinding. Just doesn't feel right, yanno'?

Anyway, I wants my option with that first unlocker to go 'The world must know!' and tell everybody, unlocking the town for subsequent characters. I could stand having ninja-mage assassins coming for that character for the rest of its short existence, or something, maybe nixing mage access to the town teleport spell for future characters too. A way to physically walk through the mountains (Maze offshoot?) might be interesting. The rest of the ideas are also improvements. Just leaving the portal unlocked would be an improvement

I've ranted now, bleh. I guess what I'd really like to see is just mage access stripped, to make things a little more equitable, then the quest to unlock the place made less annoying. That'd help, too. Guess I could go into the LUA and muck around... when I get around to being able to read the stuff. Maybe by 2015.

[atan59]

I think the 15 staves amount is fine, precisely to limit access to those stores for low-level non-mage characters. Mages can go there for story reasons, which is fine. Non-mages will get there eventually, if you take all the staves you find to the apprentice. It just takes time. Of course focusing on looking for staves can be frustrating. But if you just play the game, there are enough skeleton mages in several dungeons that actually drop them, so at some point you got 15 and hey, got a bonus access to the special stores! If it was too immediate it wouldn't feel like a special thing to be happy about.

[Vanguard]

Dunno what the fuss is with unlocking that store for other characters, gold is too scarce for buying from stores to be useful.

Dead wrong. Rings of +8 to an attribute can make all the difference in the world.

[darkgod]

In beta4 the quest can be completed with staves, rings and amulets.
Once it has been completed once it can also be completed with just Angmar's Fall.

[Baker]

That's good news. I'm not a big fan of quest like "collect 15 diseased dog livers" anyway, I think this kind of stuff belongs in an MMORPG, not a roguelike.

[Nerdanel]

I just unlocked the skeleton race. Luckily that character had the Blood of Life.

I'm not a fan of unlockables.

[Shadus]

My personal opinion is... fighter, mage, rogue, cleric (eg: four base classes) should be base classes. Archer, Slinger, Archmage, Pali, summoner, druids, etc, etc, etc. should be unlocks... that way no one is stuck playing a class they dislike. I downloaded tome4 a while back and saw there was no mage and exited and didn't touch it till today when I decided to look at wiki to see if anyone had released a mage module or addon or something and saw the achievement stuff and that it was an unlockable... so I'm working on getting an archer through things enough to unlock mage... but to be honest, so far I've lost a dozen or more archers because I can't find any ammo (and ammo creation has yet to ever create anything) and I really don't find the class fun to play.

I like the idea of unlockables, but dislike the idea of having to unlock really basic classes.