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Thread: Tackling the new quests & maps for ADOM

  1. #11
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    A few thoughts:

    I feel that overall the game is a bit lacking in good chaotic quests. There's basically four chaotic quests: Kill Jharod, kill Tywat Pare, kill Thrundarr, kill Guth'Alak. Of these, the middle two are basically never done simply because the rewards (amulet of chaos and amulet of raw steel) don't really justify the effort in attempting them. The other two quests are interesting for some cases, but are still rarely done overall compared to the lawful quests. For players roleplaying chaotic or for Chaos Knights, there is a relative lack of things to do, particularly in the midgame.

    What I'd like to see:
    -A chaotic quest aimed for characters around level 15. I'd suggest making this quest mutually exclusive with the Griffyard quest, and of similar difficulty. Perhaps the PC could be required to steal something from a village of mist elves, say. There could be two possible routes--a stealth route, where the PC must pickpocket a particular key off of one of the elves in order to access the item, then sneak away steathily, or a fighting route where you just kill everything. I think lore-wise, it would make sense to have the mist elves be predominately caster-types of various sorts (not summoners), but, of course, have few HP. Rewards might be things of interest to a chaotic character and similar power to Griffyard, depending on whether the stealthy or violent method were completed. In the former case, perhaps a ring of invisibility, wand of poison and a pair of seven league boots would be appropriate; in the latter case, perhaps a vampiric eternium weapon (or artifact equivalent), a ring of slaying, and wand of death.

    -A quest where wilderness is heavily featured. I've described a possible idea for it here.

    -A mid-level (pre-ToEF) quest where the PC must align with one of two mutually exclusive factions. Here's one such option.

    -An endgame-level quest suited for characters level 30-40 (perhaps even only available at those levels). Something like the "reclaim the Dwarven Halls" quest above might be nice. A possible reward that might be very nice for a PC at this level would be something that would, let's say, halve the background corruption in the CoC (but not in other areas like the scintillating cave). This might make endgame areas like greater vaults or BDC more amenable to non-ultras without huge stashes of SoCR.
    Hoping to win with every class, doomed. Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Beastfighter, Druid, Elementalist, Farmer, Fighter, Monk, and ULE Priest down.

  2. #12
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    Lots of great suggestions in this thread. I will list/reiterate what has been bugging myself the most.

    1. A better guide to finding Kranach. I use this quest for my early game money needs, so all of my fresh rolls start with mucking about the Terinyo/Holeinthewall/lake triangle.

    2. An early-game (pre-Pyramid) quest that rewards the player with a (random?) skill or one of the items needed later on in the game (anything for ToEF comes to mind). Too many of the early quests reward the player with artifacts they would rather avoid for the time being if they want to take advantange of pre-crowning, which I typically choose to in order to even have a chance of passing ToEF and some of the temples.

    3. A guaranteed (enemy-free or non-respawn) altar area somewhere in the wilderness, perhaps near the lake. A lot of early game trekking is between altars and shops for me. Having a non-alignment-specific quest that significantly raises one's piety associated with it would be quite perfect.

    4. Make the cute dog spawn in a room with no enemies. It's kinda bullshit when you arrive there safely below the time limit only to find the corpse in a tension room or something else ridiculous like that. It's bad enough that you often tend to accidentally kill the puppy in the first dark room on your way to stairs. Having it behave less like a berserker in the cavernous level would be appreciated also.

    5. Having a good leveling quest/area for melee pre-ToEF would be very appreciated, though I guess it's not only the melee who need that.

    6. More chaotic quests that don't consist entirely of assassinating important non-chaotic quest characters. Surely there are other things to attend, too?

    7. I think another town/village in the western part of the map would actually be a good thing. The eastern has three of them really close to each other, after all.

    8. Early game (say, levels 1-10) needs a better item sink than selling off everything you find to Barnabas for 1 gold a piece. Anything will do; right now I have to drop off anything I consider more valuable than 1-3 GP in some safe place where I can retrieve it from and sell to a better shopkeeper later.

    Aside from that, right now the only decent income sources in early game are the Kranach quest which is NOT guaranteed, and the Arena (only for 19 fights if you want a pre-crowning and/or completing Thrundarr's quest properly, though, and there's a high chance you'll encounter a cat, a hydra, or something else nasty that way). Considering general store prices are outrageous for most character races at that point in the game, something else is needed to maintain the expenses such as scrolls, potions, and learning skills from NPCs, at least until the access to the si. If I don't do the Kranach quest on a character that doesn't have Food Preservation, there's a high chance I'll end up using all of my money on mid/low-weight food and will barely have enough to reach the ratling dealers. Adding a location that has a guaranteed stash of 3000-5000 GP protected by melee-able enemies would be very nice. Even better if they leave useful corpses (hill/dark orcs? trolls? giants?).

    9. I still have no clue as to how to successfully learn spells from spellbooks with non-magically-inclined classes. I've been playing for 13 years, spoiled myself into oblivion by this point, and that remains a mystery yet. It seems that even a Literacy and Concentration of 100 with decent Le score aren't enough even for mid-tier spells?


    For the record, here is my typical routine right now, which I very rarely break (usually if I do it's because I find an altar in a place where I can sacrifice enough enemies for a precrowning):
    — go to Terinyo, get all the quests;
    — go to Holeinthewall, get Pickpocketing, run over all the items in Barnabas's shop;
    — visit SMC before fighting anything to fixate the level of its initial spawn;
    — run around the place until Kranach is found, cash him in, buy food;
    — try to save the cute dog, cash it in, clear the rest of PC;
    — go through SMC, emerge in HMV (typically ASAP unless I have unexpectedly good gear for the level) and open up the shortcut.

    At this point I will most likely attempt pre-crowning by the following course of action:
    1) look for altars in high(er) DL areas, avoiding all the guaranteed artifacts (in order of preference/scouting: PC:5, DD:8, SMC, NDC, DD:5-7, UD:5-8, CoC:5-7) until I hit level 15-16;
    2) grab the si at CoC:8 to let it multiply, do the Pyramid at 16, kill Keethrax beforehand for the black torc (or get the rune-covered trident if I'm Raven and have means of water breathing and teleportation/invisibility) if I'm melee and have no easier way of killing Rehetep;
    3) descend to Dwarftown and CoC:9-10 if I haven't found a suitable altar by level 20, do Thrundarr's quests up until the Arena one, fight 19 fights in the Arena for money, try getting decent high metal gear;
    4) briefly scout TotHK:3-4 (5 too if possible) and (if I have good gear and the necessary protection) ToEF:1-2 for altars using teleports or means of magic map revealing;
    5) if I've generated 6+ artifacts by the time I've exhausted the precrowning locations accessible before the interaction with Khelavaster, or I just don't want to bother anymore, I abandon the precrowning idea and start cashing in the rest of the early artifact quests.

    This basically dictates how I play to level ~23; after that there is a significant lull incurred by the fact that I begin calculated low-danger ID-diving for AoLS and misc useful items (books, potions, blankets, and scrolls mainly) in preparation for the higher difficulty areas. Then, when I eventually hit level 25 and get at least somewhat decent gear, I scour wilderness for chaos enemies that leave eternium loot. I typically do this until I have equipped blessed artifact or eternium gear in all of the meaningful slots, and have a ring of ice + ring of fire resistance + two or more fireproof blankets + at least one waterproof blanket + several pickaxes.

    So, for my typical routine, having a good leveling area for clvl 20-26 with a higher chance of random AoLS generation (a guaranteed greater vault perhaps?) and a source of high metal gear would be really good there before the deep CoC dive/ToEF. I remember there being a similar lull at early/mid-30s or so, where, depending on your class, most of the areas you can go to are either too easy to bother, or too hard to consistently handle (Bug Temple, Air Temple, Minotaur Maze, Rift, Darkforge and some other special locations).
    Last edited by moozooh; 01-03-2014 at 07:30 AM. Reason: added #8-9

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by moozooh View Post
    9. I still have no clue as to how to successfully learn spells from spellbooks with non-magically-inclined classes. I've been playing for 13 years, spoiled myself into oblivion by this point, and that remains a mystery yet. It seems that even a Literacy and Concentration of 100 with decent Le score aren't enough even for mid-tier spells?
    Mostly it's levels. A level 6 archer with 100 Literacy and Concentration and 25 Le might be able to learn some castings of easy spells like Darkness or Farsight. The same character at level 30 should be able to learn acid ball.
    Hoping to win with every class, doomed. Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Beastfighter, Druid, Elementalist, Farmer, Fighter, Monk, and ULE Priest down.

  4. #14
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    > Which PC level ranges are right now the most boring according to your impression?

    Levels 1 - 10 come super fast, so not those.
    Levels 11 - 17 are to reach Dorftown and do Thrundarr quests and pyramid, so not those.
    Levels 18 - 20 are to do Tomb and Darkforge, so not those.
    Levels 20 - 22 are to do the Tower, so not those.
    Levels 22 - 32 come from doing the rest of the temples, so not those.
    Levels 33 - 50 all come on D:50, which is odd, but not boring, so not these either.

    The game is paced quite well as things are, and adding additional quests could unbalance things.
    If new quests are added, consider making them exclusionary to ones that currently exist.
    Consider changing the way xp is gained. Currently about 90% of xp comes from slaying 1% of monsters.

    > Which kind of tasks and later quests are currently very hard to understand / solve without additional external spoilers?

    Pool sipping, as 'you feel elated' and such doesn't give an accurate impression of what just happened.
    Personally, I savescummed to figure it initially, and still to this day cannot remember them all off
    the top of my head. I wrote a bot to give strategic adom info on #adom and .pool is one of the most
    used commands. On that note, .herb is often used as well (to give herb pattern information). Other
    often used commands are .crown (to list a class's crown gifts) .heir (to list a class's heir gift)
    and .dl (to list a dungeon level's danger level).

    > Are there any in game story topics / legends that you would like to see covered in more detail?

    Rolf
    "Whip me!" pleads the adom player. The rng replies... "No."

  5. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by gut View Post
    The game is paced quite well as things are, and adding additional quests could unbalance things.
    Consider also that the game as a whole shouldn't be balanced entirely around top-tier players. Optional sidequests hardly disrupt the balance by the virtue of them being, well, optional; if you can consistently do ToEF at 20-22 and the rest of the temples by 32, you don't need these sidequests, and most likely wouldn't do them anyway in the first place. The rest of us require certain class powers, gear, spells, or other things to do things earlier, so having good places to be efficient about one's progression requirements is never a bad thing, especially for challenge classes and Learning-deprived races. I do agree that experience gain should be somewhat revised. (I never understood what exactly made me gain post-50 level ups either.)

    By the way, I think it's a good idea to adjust large side-areas to class power breakpoints, since they both become easier upon reaching a new breakpoint, and sometimes reaching it is one of the main incentives of doing a side-quest area at a given time before advancing on to the harder areas.

    Let's see what we have among the level-limited sidequests:
    — clvl 6: Puppy Cave;
    — clvl 12: nothing;
    — clvl 18: Pyramid (kind of, technically up through 16);
    — clvl 25: nothing? (Minotaur Maze is open at 22, but who goes there before 25?);
    — clvl 32: Minotaur Maze (technically up through 30, but long enough to reach 32 while in there);
    — clvl 40: nothing.

    There you go, three very good potential slots for limited entry sidequests. One of the two new major quests could go between Pyramid and Minotaur Maze, the other after the maze.

  6. #16
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    Wow, I love the contrast between the blog post discussion and the forum discussion. It looks like people are talking about two totally different games. In the blog post there are "normal" players suggesting that lots of things should be made easier, and here we have the hardcore players saying that the quests should be few in order not to make it too easy, and not give artifacts to not mess with precrowning (a technique which no new or unspoiler player will ever attempt). Curious.

    I think the way to go would be to implement suggestions by both groups of players.

    Some opinions of mine:

    - I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet because it has a 20-0 voting as an RFE ( http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=1880 ), and the opinion is unanimous: right now one of the pace-stopping moments (which wasn't there in 1.1.1) is the first Thrundarr quest. With the change to the rarity of the monster, it's way more difficult than the following Thrundarr's quests, which makes no sense. You spend loads of time looking for the rare monster, and once you kill it, you're probably too buff for the other quests to be a challenge.

    - I agree with many posters (in both "groups" of posters) that the late teen levels (17-22 or so) are the part of the game that tends to get to a stall, especially if you don't feed prepared for the ToEF, and *especially* if you really want to look for an AoLS save Khelly. I think some optional quests here would be nice for both things. In fact, although I know most hardcore players will curse my ancestry, I'm not against the idea of including a guaranteed AoLS somewhere as long as it's difficult to obtain AND requires a significant cost or giving up something relevant to get it.

    - Levels around 28 to 50 have a different problem, which is that you level up very slowly. It is typical to reach D:50 at level 32 or so, and then get to level 50 there by killing the balors (a single balor gives more exp than several levels of killing stuff in the deep CoC). This wouldn't be especially bad if it weren't for class powers. The level 50, 40 and even some times the level 32 class powers are never used because they come in the last level. I think it makes sense for the level 50 power (it's the ultimate power after all), but level 32 and 40 powers should see some use, and this means the exp curve should be tweaked so that you can get to level 40 by normal playing without killing balors. From what I've seen in the forums, I think this (contrary to e.g. the guaranteed AoLS thing) is also a practically unanimous opinion among players.

    - In the particular case of Chaos Knights, they need more early-game content. There is not much to do with them currently since no character will speak to them, this is great as a game mechanic but there should be some chaotic quests for them to do so they can level.

    - A town somewhere in the west would make sense IMHO. If there are going to be more quests, it makes sense to have more NPC's.

    - No one does the quickling tree quest (this also used to happen with the minotaur maze, but no longer after its rebalancing!)

    Things that are difficult to figure out without spoilers:

    - Ultras. In fact, I think there should be ways to do ultras without so much alignment juggling. I like to roleplay lawful or neutral chars that don't want to be chaotic. There should be a way to get an ultra with a purely non-chaotic char, even if it's much more difficult than the current way.
    - The mutual exclusivity of the elder and druid quests. Many people just talk to one character all the time (because they get a quest, what can be wrong about that?) and never learn about the existence of the other quest. There is an RFE about this.
    - Despite the in-game warnings, I still see that many newbies start adventuring in the SMC. Maybe they need... even more warnings.

    By the way, I absolutely loved the "reclaim DH" idea above, as well as the idea of a quest that requires getting stones from altars of the three aligments (now *that*'s a tradeoff and a decision! Great!)
    Last edited by Al-Khwarizmi; 01-03-2014 at 09:53 AM.

  7. #17
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    I also found the game to be relatively free flowing even for Chaos Knights, the biggest issue as I and most everyone said is that character leveling is too slow. This is the only reason the game 'halts' at some points.

    Wrt what is difficult to understand without spoilers: I would say not many, it depends on what time-frame you expect the above average Joe to finish the game. It took me somewhere in the region of 2 to 3 years playing about 80% of evenings and weekends to get an unspoiled finish. I should probably add that I was inebriated most of the time, so sober folk would probably not take that long. Things that was difficult the quest to kill Filk, which I never could figure out. The main reason is that a character typically never reached experience level 45 until he kills Balors on D:50. The second one I never figured out is that there is a quest from the Ghost Librarian. The third was traversing D:49, that took me about 3 weeks to realize how to do. I think the main reason was that I had visited the library and had all those spells, which obviously did not help me on that level. I basically gave up on the game at that stage. e: A part of me don't want you to make the hint clearer, but if you do consider; maybe change the hint slightly to something like: "They say that for every iction there is an equal and opposite reiction." The spelling error being intentional.

    Otherwise most things was not too difficult to figure out. The main issue with it taking some years is, I think the 1st year was learning all the mechanics and just trying to not die in a very hostile environment, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The second year was figuring out what to do to actually finish all the 'quests' and finish the game.

    Another thing that I never figured out or realized was that background corruption increases every 90 days, I had many characters turn into ChAoS beings as I never even considered that I should not spend months or even years in game.

    Maybe later I'll think of some other 'too difficult' things and add them, if there are any. Maybe you guys can ask me too.

    Edit 2 - I suppose a lot of folk will likely disagree, but a "purist" like myself enjoyed it taking so long to get a win. I was sort of disappointed when I did manage to do the lategame in one attempt. One can maybe say that the folk that don't won't to take so much time to finish one game can always read spoilers, but I think the general consensus would be that people nowadays don't want to take years to finish a game. I definitely don't know what to suggest. It is/was a great adventuring game, but I think some folk expect to finish a game in a week nowadays.
    Last edited by Stingray1; 01-03-2014 at 02:55 PM.

  8. #18
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    Indeed, all the important mechanics like background corruption should be as close to transparent as possible (not as verbose as "it increases by X every Y days" of course, but something matter-of-factly). They're too important to be left as vague hints, as it is now at best.

  9. #19
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    I must say please be wary of some fan requests. There are a lot of posts on the blog asking for guaranteed wishes, rings of ice, and certain powerful skills. These would make many of the interesting challenges in the game trivial.

    Overall I think the game has a good balance of quests across the game already, so having them evenly spread would be good.

    A few things I'd like to see from quests:
    * Forced options, like with the healer quest vs the druid quest. Mutually exclusive quests are good for replayability.
    * Quests with different methods of completion, like carpenter / healer
    * More chaotic options
    * Randomised or semi-randomised rewards
    * Short quests (no mazes!)
    * Randomised quests in the game - you don't know which will appear in each playthrough (a bit like vaults)
    * Little randomisation of quest goals (no kill random x quest) or quests that encourage scumming to complete

    With randomised quests and mutually exclusive quests you could keep the current game balance whilst still adding content and replayability.

    A few rough quest ideas:
    * Golden golem in a CoC side-branch. Could produce an armour that is especially valuable when sold at the casino.
    * Piety-related quest for crowned characters, with a random artifact reward. Could involve small variations for each race and alignment.
    * Secret dungeon in the HMV filled with chaos critters
    * Stone giant fortress near the HMV
    * Special quest vaults with individual rules to the vault terrain - acid-filled vaults, etc.
    * Goblin camp near Terinyo - mutually exclusive with Kranach, very suitable for low level characters with tiny rewards
    * Quest with a cool pet reward Maybe the quest is to rescue a certain animal / beast from a nefarious gang, and the creature grows fond of you.
    Platinum Edition ADOMer
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  10. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by moozooh View Post
    Indeed, all the important mechanics like background corruption should be as close to transparent as possible (not as verbose as "it increases by X every Y days" of course, but something matter-of-factly). They're too important to be left as vague hints, as it is now at best.
    Well, its a world being invaded by ChAoS. I always found the basic fact that you should hurry or you'll get turned into a purple j pretty intuitive, to be honest. And the details about how much you should hurry needn't be known to an unspoiled player IMO.

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