Farportal World Choice

[lukep]

I've seen mention of choosing farportals as an idea floating around for a while. Here's my (woefully incomplete) idea.

Spend 30 or so energy at the orb to "scry" some farportal zones, gaining information about three possible targets. Going to one would take 30 energy as normal, and reset all three possibilities. Possible information given below (maybe one to two pieces per level per scry)

Boss base creature
Boss classes
-all info in boss tooltip
randart type
-exact randart info.
number of levels
type of levels (eg. maze, forest, rooms)
types of enemies

Exact randart info and boss tooltip could only be gained after getting their basic info first (eg. randart info requires randart type)

Example of how it could look after scrying twice:
World 1 (Estarium): boss is an archer/berserker/archmage. Monsters are dragons, undead, and orcs, maze layout, voratun ring randart.
World 2 (Ylergy): boss is a Dreadmaster, and Summoner/Doomed/Paradox Mage, on level 3.
World 3 (Quanjhu): The Stralite Longsword "Asdfgh" randart (with tooltip), Monsters are greater undead, orc mages, and jellies.

You could then choose the world when you step into the farportal.

EDIT: ..."Ideas" is probably a better forum for this.

[Postman]

To make it different from shop - make the choice of portal cost not money but one-shot artifact/gem. Which could be found...in normal far-portal :p

[lukep]

How is it like a shop? It costs energy, not money. Also, I don't think that requiring you to do normal farportals is a good way to balance its use/cost.

[madmonk]

Moved to Ideas.

[jotwebe]

Personally I like the randomness, ut it sounds like an interesting option. A stylish way to go about it would be to show you a vision centered on the boss - you'd get the layout, basic boss info, some idea as to the critters. But nothing about the artifact, sadly.

[fearoffours]

Farportals are random. It's a gamble you choose to take knowing the way out may be difficult, or that you may die in there.
I'm against offering a choice.

[Reverend Bizarre]

The randomness is a key feature of farportals. You may appear in a location, where you swiftly cut through the monsters, kill the boss, grab the loot and successfully return to your fortress, but there is a chance that the location will be tough and, in order to survive, you may even need to use rod of recall, thus rendering farportal useless. Removing randomness will also remove the thrill, so, I do not approve of this suggestion.