[v.1.3.0+] Nur Kit

[Zizzo]

Aaand after one time too many having to scrap a character for lack of water-breathing equipment to do Nur, I'm putting my proverbial foot down, in the form of my new Nur Kit addon, which places guaranteed water-breathing gear in the lost merchant shop in Last Hope.

For maximum gear flexibility, I've covered all the egos that provide what we need: a leather cap of the depths, leather armor of the deep, a belt of unlife, and an amulet of the fish (which appears to have gone away between v1.1.5 and v1.2.0 [why?]; I happen to like it, though, so I've restored it).

[Now, the main objections I anticipate getting to this addon fall roughly into three general categories:

• "Aww, but where's the fun if you can't randomly miss out on vitally important gear?"
• "Oh, but you don't need to do Nur. You can always just carry around 200 pounds of potential swap-in gear in your pack for the entire game. I mean, what did you think the I Can Carry the World prodigy was there for?"
• "Water breathing? Pfft. Wimp. You're supposed to just hold your breath really hard and hope you get lucky and find the down stairs before you asphyxiate."

My response to all of which is: Not remotely interested.]

[Technical info:]

Code: Select all

Hooks:
  Entity:loadList [to tweak the lost merchant shop and re-add amulets of the fish]
Superload:
  mod.class.Zone:
    finishEntity() [to allow creation of the various water breathing gear]

[Dracos]

I super like this direction.

Even though I've wandered through Nur a number of times (fully exploring) without it, there's a solid expectation on being able to find water breathing gear (including the lore saying so). Even if it is not uncommon for one to be there, with X tens of thousands of runs, odds do funny things, so the difference between 100 percent of runs have a route to get water breathing before going west and 99 is pretty large.

Rock on.

[Selju]

I think this addon need to change the other store

if killed host, this add-on becomes useless

[Zizzo]

I think this addon need to change the other store

? Which "other store" do you mean? I'm not aware of any other "general" store whose stock category would fit all four water-breathing items.

[HunterZ]

This is a good idea. I always make an effort to find and hang on to a water breathing item before I get to Lake of Nur, and it's always a pain when I don't manage to find one. You can breathe the bubbles but it's a huge pain that slows the game down.

Might be nice to have something like this in the Yeek starting town for one of the Yeek starting dungeons too, as it has the same annoyance (although it would have to be something cheap or free). Yes, Yeek can hold their breath longer, but it's still annoying having to explore manually and find bubbles. Water exploration without breathing gear is just not a fun mechanic in my opinion.

[Zizzo]

Might be nice to have something like this in the Yeek starting town for one of the Yeek starting dungeons too, as it has the same annoyance (although it would have to be something cheap or free). Yes, Yeek can hold their breath longer, but it's still annoying having to explore manually and find bubbles. Water exploration without breathing gear is just not a fun mechanic in my opinion.

I can sympathize, having played some Yeek characters myself. "Cheap or free" would be the tricky bit, though; I'm pretty sure all the existing egos I'm using would be too expensive for a starting character. Hmm, I wonder if it's possible to create an ego that can't appear randomly; that would let me create a custom low-cost ego for this purpose.

More generally, does anyone else have thoughts or objections to this approach?

[astralInferno]

You could make a custom artifact, they can be made to appear only in one place I think.
Maybe a potion that grants water breathing for one dungeon? Can something last 'one dungeon'? idk.

[HunterZ]

Or maybe an artifact that only works in one dungeon?

[Atarlost]

I don't know why yeeks don't have waterbreathing. Yearchs apparently do.

[HousePet]

Yeachs are more amphibious than Yeeks.

How about adding a randomly generated water breathing item with the note at Lake Nur 1.
It can be left behind by the careless note dropper.

[Zizzo]

[We Apologize for the Delay;™ the T2 module has apparently accumulated a quite astoundingly large number of bugs since the last time I did any serious testing on it... ]

How about adding a randomly generated water breathing item with the note at Lake Nur 1.
It can be left behind by the careless note dropper.

*blink* That... would involve a level of zone surgery that I'm not entirely sure my addon-fu is strong enough for. Not to mention that it doesn't really address the proximate problem.

Maybe a potion that grants water breathing for one dungeon? Can something last 'one dungeon'? idk.

Or maybe an artifact that only works in one dungeon?

Hmm, the solution I'd worked up so far but hadn't had time to publish was simply a custom cloak of air sold by the appropriate "store" NPC in Irkkk; but it sounds like people think that the solution for Yeeks should not last past Rel. That would be slightly trickier. Maybe I could hijack the Tunnel to Maj'Eyal zone change to take back our special item when the player leaves the island? I'd probably want to make our water-breathing item an artifact with suitable lore and backstory in that case.

[HousePet]

Well if we wanted to address the actual cause of the problem, we would have to hack the minds of all those people who get upset about under water areas so that they don't care anymore.

[Zizzo]

Well if we wanted to address the actual cause of the problem, we would have to hack the minds of all those people who get upset about under water areas so that they don't care anymore.

...You misunderstand. "The proximate problem" in this context is Murgol's Lair, which is long past by the time you get to Nur. The Nur problem is already solved, via guaranteed water-breathing gear in Last Hope's lost merchant shop.

[HousePet]

Oh Yeeks.

[Atarlost]

Well if we wanted to address the actual cause of the problem, we would have to hack the minds of all those people who get upset about under water areas so that they don't care anymore.

The real root problem is people wanting to make water levels. If people didn't want to make water levels other people would never get upset with their annoying mechanics.