Shatur: Why?

[ibanix]

Shatur, the quiet town of Thaloren elves.

Shops. A statue. Shops.

This town could fall off the map and I don't think I'd notice. Why not some content for this town? A quest which starts/end here; an NPC with a special service/ability; pretty much anything to make there be a reason to go there.

Thoughts?

[darkgod]

yes

[grmblfzzz]

I concur with things that would make any town more interesting... but I contend it already serves the purpose of all tier 1 towns, namely for early game runes/gear. After all, doesn't have to be too good to replace the nothing you start with in most shops!

Also, if you're contemplating adding more quests... I'd request that as a starting point do some end-game ones! The linearity of endings/lack of super endings is one of the only lacking things about ToME at the moment.

Further, from the perspective of madmen like me, if you ended up, say, implementing the super last boss through the void portal and he was optional, that's an easy way to make Insane more Insane as a stopgap before actually adding another difficulty. Two birds with one stone

[SageAcrin]

I've been tossing around the idea of a skill shop(Or rather, an Adventurer's Training Academy or something like that), that would be a kind of alternate use for large amounts of money, as opposed to the randart shop.

Something that would grant, say, escort rewards for 1000-1500 range, boost a random category rating by 0.1 for 750(perhaps a specific one for 2000), a randomized category for 4000, a semi-directable category(say "techniques") for 6000, that sort of thing.

Shatur would make as good of a place as any to make it; The problem is, I don't think I can code it yet.

[TheRani]

It's currently already the only place outside of Zigur where you can buy torques and totems and mindstars (unless you're a yeek maybe?), unless they manage to randomly turn up in the Last Hope merchant's shop. But yes, some quests would be lovely.

[Sirrocco]

On the flipside, all the Shaloren town has aside from shops is an alchemist, and the Dwarf and Yeek towns are likewise barren. Also, while adding quests may be cool and all, we don't necessarily want to just crank up overall player power further. So...

- A shop that takes a gem and some money, and returns a mindstar of the same tier with a random enchantment (possibly a decent quantity of money, and then yields a good likelihood of high-quality enchantment).
- Move the archery training there
- for that matter, move the last hope training in general to a single shop. Running around Last Hope to check all of the inventories gets a tch annoying as it is, to no real purpose.
- Make the statue some great Thaloren from ages past who sealed himself in stone for whatever reason, and can now be brought back to life and then killed as an endgame boss.

Actually that would be a way to make the alchemy quest more interesting. The alchemy quest was made some time ago, when we basically had mage-types and fighter-types and rogue-types, but didn't have a whole lot in terms of will/cunning-based casters. The math makes it so that adding another alchemist with different options isn't really all that practicable, but we could include a bit of a rotation. Add another alchemist in Shatur, who specializes in the sorts of things that would appeal to Doomed/Mindslayers/Oozemasters/Summoners/Solipsists, and then at the start of any game, only have four of the five actually be gunning for it. The fifth would really *like* to be involved, but it turns out that they have some other terribly important thing they need to do this year. They're still collecting components, but it's for an infusion to bring back the Great One, or perhaps something to return Celia to her mortal state, or whatever. as each of them gets some outside activity to do, you can add them to the rotation. I kind of like the idea that sometimes the world quests and available potions might be a bit random.

...and while I'm digressing, as it stands, the 4 stat points option is pretty pathetic, as compared to the +3/+3, largely because the +4 is under stat cap, while the +3 is above it. In particular, normal PCs will tend to hit stat cap in two or three stats. Thus, even if the stats don't line up at all, the +3/+3 will give you +3 in your favorite stat, plus at least something elsewhere. The +4 will give you as much as +4 in your third or fourth favorite. Cranking it up to +6 wouldn't make it amazing as compared to the rest of what's on offer, but it would at least make it closer to competitive

[AlexanderR]

Why so complicated? Just use the town for lamp shop (with dwarven city hosting digger shop).