Optional events/dungeons to prevent earlygame repetitiveness

[martinuzz]

+1 to this whole idea.

Earlygame repetitiveness is exactly what chases me away from the game periodically. I usually lose chars before they make it to the West. After a few times of losing a level 25-ish char, I just don't feel like doing the same set of dungeons over and over again, and stop playing for a few weeks / months.

Maybe, make an optional dungeon for each and every main quest dungeon in the West, with their own rewards / storyline twist. Entering one of the pair would close the other. That way, you'd have a range of choices every game.

[darkgod]

More alternate ideas for the tier1&2 zones !

[Infinitum]

Mmkay.

Escape from Reknor: Your intel, inadequate. Your mission, failed. Your teammates, dead. The only relief is that you've somehow managed to escape to a nearby set of natural caverns. Behind you the intermittent sounds of combat slowly die away as the orcs finish off the last survivors and divy up the spoils of war. Looks like your only way out is through..

Natural cavern level (same level code as Chrystal cave). No Norgan. Snakes, Bears and the occasional Cave Troll blocks your path. Third level the same as vanilla, you link up with Norgan again before the Reaver fight.

The Deep Bellow: Not only have your fellow clansmen outdug themselves this time, they've stripmined their way down in a way suggesting they were in a hurry. The place looks like a stripmined quarry, and if you strain your ears you can just about make out a grinding sound emanating from the bottom. When will they ever learn?

5 levels instead of 3, each one progressively smaller and centerd around a giant pit (with the boss fight at the pit's bottom).

Norgos Lair: Looks like old Norgos finally met his match - a tribe of forest trolls have invaded from the nearby marshes, and a particullary vicious one is waving around his clean-eaten skull on a stick..

Trolls scattered around the level. Boss is a forest troll shaman summoning bears.

The Heart of the Gloom: They say lightning rarely strikes but once. Whatever evil lurked here has attracted an ever greater one, one that if left untouched might become a dire threat against the Thaloren race..

The Gloom is overrun by horrors (modeled after the Deep Bellow ones) fighting the indigenous Gloom creatures. Boss is a something that might've been a great cat once, spewing blight all around the place and wiggling its tentacles menacingly.

Trollmire: Looks like the autumn rains hit the spot this year - the entire mire is flooded!

Like original Mire, but more water. More insects (mosquitos) and Eels, less mice and wolves. The trolls don't seem to mind though.

Kor-Pul: Looks like the Ziguranth got here before you did. Oh, and they believe you are a fledgling necromancer for seeking this dark place voluntarily. Have fun.

Ziguranth humanoids abound, boss is a Ziguranth captain.

Chrystal Caves: Whatever energies pent up here seems to have shifted the place, somehow. You've never seen such straight angles forming in nature before. Looks like it goes quite the ways down as well.

Dark Crypt layout with large chambers intersped with narrow passageways, 5 small levels.

Rhaloren Camp: Looks like one of the resident mages finally snapped. Bound to happen with so many of the power crazed buggers congregated on one spot, really. The telltale signs of battle are all around the place, and what used to be the inhabitants have risen to greet you once more. Lovely.

Lots of skeleton Mages (the former Rhaloren mages) and decrepit skeletons (the smoking remains of their warriors). No skeleton Warriors with more than three limbs attached though, so that's a bonus. The inquisitor is replaced by some elven necromancer.

[Emaster]

Scintillating Caves: A group of adventurers from zigur went inside this area. Zigur send them to test their abilities against the magical creatures found in this cave.

The player have the chance to help them destroy the arcane users, side with the crystals and destroy the non magical beings... or destroy the adventurers while you destroy the crystals too!

Norgos Lair: Faeros are attacking the area and set the forest on fire! Instead of the usuals creatures this place is being rulled by the faeros. Of course in the end there's a huge one instead of the normal boss.

Daikara: With all the out of temporal activities found here the area was modified by time and space. Mixing mountain area with out of temporal area.

Lair of the murgol: Nagas are invading this area and started by the lair of the murgol! Stop them and protect the way!

Ritch grounds: This place was taken by spiders and they made this place their hive. Cave is now moldy and full of spiderwebs.

[Strongpoint]

Trollmire
Orcish recruiters came to recruit trolls for their cause, expect many low level orcs in first levels and some orcish bosses later.

Would be cool to meet seriously buffed versions of Prox\Bill versions of the trolls later (ambush, Roknor, West)

[bahumaut]

new to the forums, but been playing the game for a while now and enjoying it. I was thinking of attempting to build a class, and some of the ideas I was thinking about was perhaps a generic set of skills which will open up quest. My first thought was something like a title or background similar to the cursed, where your background will open something about you before adventuring. Maybe your character was a noble and the family dwelling is being attacked, and you can go to defend it for some sort of reward or ongoing benefit. The other one I was thinking of is perhaps a weapon similar to the spellbreaker gloves that get powered when you do certain things, like dungeons that allow you to unlock abilities depending on how you finish a dungeon.
Also if another race ever needs a way to be introduced, perhaps having a pirate ship or something show up, since we don't want the mainland to get too cluttered with too many spots.

[Velorien]

new to the forums, but been playing the game for a while now and enjoying it. I was thinking of attempting to build a class, and some of the ideas I was thinking about was perhaps a generic set of skills which will open up quest. My first thought was something like a title or background similar to the cursed, where your background will open something about you before adventuring. Maybe your character was a noble and the family dwelling is being attacked, and you can go to defend it for some sort of reward or ongoing benefit. The other one I was thinking of is perhaps a weapon similar to the spellbreaker gloves that get powered when you do certain things, like dungeons that allow you to unlock abilities depending on how you finish a dungeon.
Also if another race ever needs a way to be introduced, perhaps having a pirate ship or something show up, since we don't want the mainland to get too cluttered with too many spots.

Some promising ideas there (although there's a bit of a problem in that lore says there's no sailing in modern Maj'Eyal). I think they deserve their own threads, though, since mechanically they're quite distinct from the kind of thing this thread is set up to discuss.

Now, back to the kind of thing I was originally proposing.

Meakon the Cretinous has gone too far in experimenting with summoning minotaurs. Now he's trapped in the panic vault at the heart of his maze-like laboratory, and can only communicate with the outside world through magical appeals for help. Find your way through the maze, defeat wave after wave of different minotaur subtypes, and deactivate the Greater Mindstar of Minotaur Summoning before it overloads and destroys the whole place. But beware - you only have X turns before the laboratory is destroyed, so you must get through the maze without relying on auto-explore. If you can deactivate the Greater Mindstar of Minotaur Summoning, and slay the Maulotaur Guardian it summons, in time, the panic vault will be unlocked. As a reward, Meakon will offer to teach you the Summon Minotaur skill at level 5. However, if you are a wilder, Meakon will assume you are here to punish him for his crimes against nature, and you will have to fight him as a boss (archmage/summoner). Upon death, he will drop the Horn of Calling, a tool with bonuses to summoning, equilibrium regeneration and other useful things. If you are undead, you may choose to fight Meakon rather than leaving with a reward you cannot use, in which case he will instead drop a random artefact.

Durog the Mighty, a dragon-slayer just back from a successful expedition, invites you out for a night of drinking. In the morning, you find yourself in an enormous cavern with no exit, no clothes, and no equipment other than your infusions and anything you were holding in your hands. As you wander through the cavern, slaying various kinds of dragon, messages remind you that you got so drunk you publically swore to slay Karagrym the Dread Wyrm of Annihilation in nothing but your underwear. You also find lore from the diaries of incredibly powerful-sounding adventurers who apparently didn't stand a chance against the beast. Karagrym is indeed incredibly powerful - for example, he has twice the HP of a level-appropriate boss. However, once you get him down to 50% HP, Durog arrives. He intended to use you as a distraction in order to kill Karagrym himself, and can't believe you're actually still alive and holding your own. He decides to kill you both and take all the wealth and glory. You find yourself in a three-way fight with Durog and Karagrym, with Durog preferentially targeting Karagrym as the greater threat (little does he know!). However, if you are a wyrmic or close to the draconic world, and Durog dies first, Karagrym will offer to let you depart in peace, and bestow a blessing (permanent +resist to typical draconic elements) upon you for choosing the "right" side. Alternatively, you can kill Karagrym and loot his hoard. Either way, Durog will drop your old equipment when he dies, including your Rod of Recall to let you get out of here.

You find a map to the Well of Eldritch Pearls, an underwater dungeon filled with pearls, as well as loot from the bodies of adventurers who drowned while looking for the fabled Pearl of Life and Death rumoured to be hidden in the deepest depths of the Well. The monsters in the Well are not particularly challenging, and the Well is comparatively narrow, but it is so deep that water pressure starts to become a factor: every level after the first, the Water Pressure debuff reduces your maximum health by another 10%. The suicidally brave adventurer who makes it to level 9 will discover the ghost of a Naloren princess, trapped by her sorrow for her race ever since the Spellblaze, who will implore them to recover the Pearl of Life and Death from the villain who stole it from her. Those who agree to her request will receive the Tear of the Naloren, a gem which grants extra air, cold and stun/freeze resistance when carried, and can be used to cast Freeze. Alternatively, if they are more suicidal still, they can choose to fight her, and the remaining unlooted vault of the Naloren temple will open upon her death. Unfortunately, she will fly into a rage if she sees a Shalore adventurer, and attack them on sight while cursing them for the Spellblaze.

[Lynn]

Darkgod actually added quite a few of these, holyshit I love this community O.O

[SageAcrin]

Darkgod actually added quite a few of these, holyshit I love this community O.O

Indeed.

[Lynn]

Frozen Norgos was pretty funny. He could still melee you but not move. I was an archemage that run though so it didn't matter.

[darkgod]

[BoomFrog]

These sound fun but a lot of them are twists on the original but the don't make sense from the perspective of a noob. Maybe make some of the weirder events only happen when you've gotten past a certain point in the game. Like the alternate teir 1 dungeons won't happen until you've beaten the tempest guy once (sorry forgot his name). And the alternate element Storming the City won't trigger unless you've beaten dreadfall once.

[darkgod]

Why dont they make sense ? The trollmire can very well be flooded, the daikara can very well be the home of a volcano, and so on. The people this couldtake by surprise are not the "noob" who never knew the zones anyway, it's the veterants who dont expect them

And anyway the alternate layouts can only happen after having seen the zone in "default" mode once

[SageAcrin]

And anyway the alternate layouts can only happen after having seen the zone in "default" mode once

Hum. Maybe the game could check that or if you have Vampire Crusher(or one of the win achievements)?

As it stands, it sounds like anyone getting the new version wouldn't see any of the alt versions their first playthrough of the new version, even if they are a veteran. Which is a shame, though I haven't checked the code to make sure this is true.

[Infinitum]

Sandworm Lair: The sandworms have begun their annual migration, following their queen en masse from their nourishing sand habitat to more tectonically stable rock layers in order to procreate. The good news is that the massive push of worms have unearthed untold treasure chests from their rocky wombs as the main tunnel leisurely snakes eastward, beckoning you to follow. The bad news is that it's begun to collapse behind you, and the untold vermininhabiting the tunnels never got the relocation memo.

One massive tunnel going eastwards, lined with treasure chests and inhabited by oozes/jellies. Slowly collapsing from the western part and eastward, forcing the player to move quickly. 4 zones, with the last zone being the birthing chamber of the sandworm queen - one massive non-collapsing cavern filled with a seething mass of worms with the queen in their midst.