[b37] Smaller early game

[MarvinPA]

These addons implement some of the more boring suggestions from the threads about early game tediousness, since those are far easier to implement than the interesting (and better) ideas like restricting certain areas and randomised content so on. The first addon makes some of the tier 1 dungeons a little bit smaller in size, and containing slightly fewer enemies. The second shrinks all of the tier 2 dungeons to three floors instead of five (with the Temporal Rift appearing on Daikara:2 instead of 4), incorporates Voideka's stable Sandworm Lair and enables autoexplore inside it.

These were mostly just a quick job to see how easy it was to do (pretty easy, luckily!), so there's almost definitely stuff I've overlooked in the process.

[rascyc]

Just trimming levels really does a lot though to band-aiding the problem. Seeing how trivial this was by looking at your mod is motivation enough to just go through all of the areas that are 5 or more floors and to just start trimming floors out to make a "trimmer" entire game version as well.

Is this something you were planning on doing or is it kind of "up for grabs"?

[MarvinPA]

I've not made it very far into the East yet, so I don't really know which other zones are appropriate to shorten, other than maybe Dreadfell (down to 6?) and the Halfling Ruins (down to 3?) - so if anyone else wants to do the same thing for the later zones, go for it. Or alternatively let me know which other areas could do with trimming and I can expand this addon.

[bricks]

Dreadfell's length is fine, IMO, seeing as how important it is for the game. Reknor, Briagh's Lair, and Ardhungol could all stand to be smaller in dimension.

[Zonk]

Interesting addon to streamline the game, I'll likely try it..

Dreadfell's length is fine, IMO, seeing as how important it is for the game.

I dunno, it's important yes, but...9 levels is a lot(especially with the chance of all these huge vaults). I'd prefer 7, personally.
If you want to have a super long/important zone, well, there's the peak(though I think shortening it slightly might be a good idea, too).

[nuku]

What does this do for the xp rate? Are you doomed to be always too low level now?

[bricks]

The huge vaults are precisely the reason why I like the length. 1/4 of the level might be taken up by a vault, but the dungeon is long enough that you don't feel crippled if you skip the vault.

I dunno, I just really like Dreadfell. Apart from the damn Dreads.

[Grey]

Yeah, I gotta say Dreadfell is probably my favourite dungeon and it would be a shame to see it reduced. It's also got that nice feel of escalating in danger quite significantly as you progres. Reducing the number of levels would ruin it a bit.

Xp from this shouldn't be badly affected, since bosses give so much of it and everything scales anyway. Lore placement will be messed up in areas though, I imagine.

[MarvinPA]

I've only done Dreadfell a couple of times, so I don't have a strong opinion on it either way - I'll leave it as-is for now, since it's super easy to adjust to your preference anyway. As Grey says, I doubt any of this affects total XP in any particularly noticeable way. And yeah, some lore will be missing in places like the Maze probably but I wasn't too worried about that since this is just a quick fix.

Uploaded slightly updated versions, to lop a floor off the Halfling complex and to shrink a few T1 zones but (hopefully!) properly this time and without locking up the game.

[Grey]

I think the lopping off should be more vertically narrow rather than shrinking all over. We know we have to go left to right, so it would make sense for the dungeon design to push us in that direction.

[bricks]

Yeah, XP is pretty self-balancing. Dreadfell is one of the first places to pick up tier-4 equipment, though.

[MarvinPA]

I think the lopping off should be more vertically narrow rather than shrinking all over. We know we have to go left to right, so it would make sense for the dungeon design to push us in that direction.

Hmm yeah, that definitely sounds like a good thing to try with areas like Trollmire. I'll have a play with it later and see how it looks.

[MarvinPA]

Uploaded new versions to fix the Lake of Nur leading back to Old Forest 5 (which no longer exists, oops), and taking Grey's idea of shrinking some zones vertically to emphasise the direction of travel (for Trollmire and Norgos).

[PureQuestion]

Slight issue. How are we supposed to get the key to the ruins?

[Lprsti99]

So, to confirm, this doesn't cause issues with levels where you have to find lore to unlock the last level (Bill's area, for example). It's the only thing keeping me from installing (well, that and I'm not at my home computer at the moment.)