ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I don't know if this counts as a spoiler, but I'm playing safe...

I understand that you shouldn't open shops early, as they get filled with goods appropriate for your level, and you don't want L1 goods when you're L20. But how should I decide when is a good time to open up a shop? I'm not even that sure what counts as a reasonably significant amount of money (my best guess is that 80-100 gold is probably enough for one good item if there is one).

Also, if I do open a shop, is there any way to repopulate it? What if I buy everything in there?

I'm currently L9, and I opened the herbalist in Derth because I've seen absolutely no infusions or runes so far, and I think I could do with some. But the shop had basically nothing useful in. Basically no better than my starting items. I could go to one of the other towns, but I'm really scared that I could end up with no decent herbalist anywhere, and no way to get useful infusions/runes

Paul

I wish there was an easy answer here. A big part of the problem is that there is nothing preventing large amounts of the same inscription from spawning, so your odds of getting something like a shielding rune are slim (and the odds of getting a useful one are near zero).

After beating Dreadefell off the main quest) all shops will restock their inventories, so you will want to check then (and probably just before that dungeon).

There's a few more triggers for shop restock I believe. Rescueing Melinda being one.

Wonder why the shops won't restock regularly - there is a time system after all, why not put it to good use?

The trick is, if shops restocked on a timer, one could just wander around the world map waiting for items they want to appear. Perhaps the way to go would be restocking every X levels. Let's say, 5, starting from 10. And don't scale it linearly. Maybe something like this:
And so on. This way a player would know when to check for new items and wouldn't be pressured to wait for exactly the right moment.

Because it's scummy. Want a good shielding rune, or a water-breathing item? Just wait for a thousand turns!

Just the thought of basing it on time is giving me flashbacks to gambling in Diablo 2. It's just a matter of time until I get that rare with life steal.

That doesn't seem preferable to me over the way things are right now. I do think the current set up is a little too metagamey though, once you understand the way stores restock. It's a little ridiculous walking right by shops for the first 15+ levels of my character's existence, but almost everything that spawns in the shops will be worse than what I'm wearing, unless I'm getting completely screwed on drops. It's worth my while to tough it out as long as I can though, as I only get so many chances to find decent items in shops before it's time to head east.

I'm not sure what's been tried or considered in the past, but tying it to levels might work, or maybe just make it so more events force a restock?

Trogdor wrote: I'm not sure what's been tried or considered in the past, but tying it to levels might work, or maybe just make it so more events force a restock?

I think this is a good idea.

Either nail down shop levels (10 for the starting towns, 15 or 20 for Lost Hope and Zig) or restock when main quests are completed. In other words restock after each tier of dungeons is finished (clear Trollmire and Korpul, restock, SWL, OF, Maze, Daikara, restock).

The current system is really gamey.

Liking the level-based idea, too.

Tying it to quest completion has the drawback that it discourages skipping dungeons - and doing every little thing has large enough rewards already. If it's just the character level, you don't have to worry.

Perhaps better yet: generate a list of items spanning all level ranges, and increase prices overall. Then you'd never need to restock the shops. The downside is that the player would have access to useful equipment.

How about just removing shops? If a player needs certain items, how about adding some zones or some quests that can provide these items? For example, add a quest that rewards the player one inscription or rune of his choice (perhaps a different quest for inscription and rune).

Shops could still spawn in certain random locations. That way when you find a town would be an actual surprise and possibly a nice boon. For example, there is a chance that a small elvish town with a shop will spawn in the old forest or a few other locations. Depending on where the shops spawns, you will get certain items that you can buy.

About the inscription problem: how about making these always the same:
* Regeneration: Heal 50% max hp +20hp over 5 turns (70 at 100hp, 530 at 1000 hp)
* Heal: Heal 40% + 20 (60 at 100 hp, 420 at 1000 max hp)
* Movement infusion: always ~800% for 1 turn
* Shielding: 30% + 20 (~380 at 1200 max hp)

This way they scale with hitpoints. This allows players to maintain the usefullness of their inscription choice, wile also adding usefullness to HP increasing thins like CON.

The player can still find insripctions and runes, keep a healing / movement / whatever infusion in his inventory, and choose what to use. Allowing these inscriptions and runes to scale automically as you level removes unneeded complexity from the game. The real choice should be which infusion or rune to use, not how powerfull the one is that you find. Giving all players acces to the same healing skills that scale on hitpoints will possibly also make the game easier to balance.

Note: Inscriptions are arguably something in-between talents and items. They are not really talents, since you can 'equip' them, and they are not really items, since they work like talents. For equipment, scaling makes sense (you find better weapons as the game progresses). For talents, scaling works differently (talent often scale off equipment and other stats). Since runes and infusions are somewhere between items and talents, there could be a bit of item scaling (akin to weapons) while still preserving stat scaling (akin to talents). For example, a healing rune could variate between healing 30-50% of your max hp. I think players might even start with the highest possible bonus, possibly giving them a small penalty for changing their runes since max runes would be rare to find. Just some ideas.

By the same logic, movement infusions could scale on dex. For example, dex is generally somewhere between 10-80. This difference is to big, so we make it smaller so it is only about 20% difference:

marvalis wrote:How about just removing shops? If a player needs certain items, how about adding some zones or some quests that can provide these items? For example, add a quest that rewards the player one inscription or rune of his choice (perhaps a different quest for inscription and rune).

Shops could still spawn in certain random locations. That way when you find a town would be an actual surprise and possibly a nice boon. For example, there is a chance that a small elvish town with a shop will spawn in the old forest or a few other locations. Depending on where the shops spawns, you will get certain items that you can buy.

Adding zones/quests for specific items would lead to players simply grinding through them, regardless of how much they needed it to get the extra XP, loot, and the guaranteed item. Random dungeon stores would be terribly inconvenient to remember and revisit, but it is a cool idea nonetheless.

marvalis wrote:About the inscription problem: how about making these always the same:
* Regeneration: Heal 50% max hp +20hp over 5 turns (70 at 100hp, 530 at 1000 hp)
* Heal: Heal 40% + 20 (60 at 100 hp, 420 at 1000 max hp)
* Movement infusion: always ~800% for 1 turn
* Shielding: 30% + 20 (~380 at 1200 max hp)

IMO, changing regen, heal, and shielding inscriptions to a percentage of the player's HP would emphasize max HP far too much. Currently, max HP is a defence against burst damage, but it does not really help in long, drawn out fights (eg. bosses). If max HP affects healing and shielding amounts it would help with tanking through damage as well, essentially, gaining 20% more HP would basically give +20% healing mod.

Another downside of percentage based healing is that enemies would be affected as well. A farportal guardian with 5000 HP and some healing can be whittled down by a determined and powerful player in the current system, but it would be very difficult to get through 2000 healing (40%) every 12-17 turns.

marvalis wrote:I think players might even start with the highest possible bonus, possibly giving them a small penalty for changing their runes since max runes would be rare to find.

I would prefer if players started out with the weakest inscriptions of the type, rather than the strongest. This would allow progression throughout the game as they use progressively better inscriptions.

With potions replaced by infusions and runes, and shops offer so little chance to have something worth buying, gold is sorta meaningless. Especially when you obtained the Transmogrification Chest, which allows you to literally loot everything. What am I gonna do with thousands of gold pieces? At least you can gamble in diablo2.

(yeah I know dwarf have a gold-to-save skill, but that's not the point)

Shops chould be changed to "useful, but not directly combat-related" things? Pre-Fortress, a place to store gear would be handy. If the player could rent 3-4 storage spaces, it'd give them somewhere to put heavier pieces of gear they anticipate needing eventually(Steel Plate of the Depths? That'd be awesome, but carrying 17 pounds for 10 levels is out of the question)

Maybe a "Diviner" could charge gold to find specific things for the player? "I sense a Wretchling in some ruins beneath a lake" sort of stuff. Maybe a very specific place could be used as a "remogrifier", which will convert gold into something you had previously transmogrified...but of course, it'd be very expensive. I don't mean "keep a record of everything ever transmogrified", this would more be for artifacts. If you belatedly realize "Oops, should have kept that Crooked Club", it'd be a decent backup plan.

What about a shop to recharge burned out wands? They're pretty useful, but their limited charges means players tend to end up carrying things like staves of conveyance instead. You could sharply limit the max charges on wands to compensate. 2-3 shots of teleport, with a shop that'll restore them for 50 gp a charge, would be a good money sink without letting a player use the wand to completely replace other sources of rapid transportation, unless they found like 5 of them or something.

On that note, how about a shop or series of shops that'll enchant/change otherwise mundane gear? Found a sweet new stralite axe, but no enchantments? Take it to dude to have it randomly enchanted. Since even mundane gear is limited in number, this prevents players from spamming the shop for new gear, while still giving a potential use to what is otherwise(usually) transmogrification fodder. Another shop could enchant those mundane wands you find from time-to-time.

Helios wrote:With potions replaced by infusions and runes, and shops offer so little chance to have something worth buying, gold is sorta meaningless. Especially when you obtained the Transmogrification Chest, which allows you to literally loot everything. What am I gonna do with thousands of gold pieces? At least you can gamble in diablo2.

(yeah I know dwarf have a gold-to-save skill, but that's not the point)

Those thousands of gold pieces become quite valuable later in the game, and I'm not talking about just dwarves. Just sayin'.