Tackling the new quests & maps for ADOM

[Marek14]

OK, here are some of my ideas:

Wilder encounters in wilderness:
There was some talk about people not knowing how the background corruption rate in wilderness increases. What I propose is to SHOW them -- by adding new wilderness encounters or altering the old not limited by level, but by elapsed game time.
The chaos encounters would grow in both frequency and difficulty, the number of chaos brothers and sisters in pilgrimage, say, would have a new term dependent on time. Writhing masses of primal chaos would start to appear from day 90.

Chaotic quests: some minor chaotic quests, so minor that the PC might not even know what they are for. Perhaps a quest to exterminate a herd of blink dogs? The damage dealt to Law would be minor, but sufficient to, say, pull the date of background corruption increase back a few days.

Moral UE: not requiring character to change their alignment. Was mentioned here before.
What's the main problem with alignment change? That you have to be chaotic to satisfy Gaab'Baay's quests. What if I don't want to be chaotic, though?
Possible solution: have Khelavaster (once saved) function as a quest-giver to provide an alternate way to get the Crown and Medal. This would be, of course, harder then the regular route, but the character could be rewarded by, say, getting a "never once stooped to Chaos" on his win file.

The alternate way:
Demented ratling -- he knows the location of Stone Circle, but won't talk to L/N characters.
Solution: Cure him. Instead of six artifacts, throw six (or even more?) potions of cure corruption on him. After one, he becomes hostile, of course. But if you persevere, he will collapse, becoming a "dying ratling", and when you talk to him, he will thank you for saving his soul, whisper his terrible secret to you and die.
As a bonus, if the savvy character tries to give HIM an AoLS, the ratling will just chuckle, saying "Keep that. Your life is worth more than mine."
Alternately, this could be combined with the "six artifacts" requirement in some way. Or perhaps ordinary PoCCs are not enough and you would have to get a special artifact version from somewhere.

Gaab'Baay: She has Medal of Chaos, but will only give quests to C.
Alternate solution: Kill her. Khelavaster would give you the quest to do it.
However, if you kill her, you won't get the Medal right away. Instead, you'll find a note on her body noting a location of her house.
The house would be in the forest somewhere, not appearing until you get the note. It's (what else?) standing on a chicken leg. The surroundings of the house has some dangerous animals like bears and giant boars. The inside has the Medal guarded by the witch's familiar: a black cat.
Yup, to get the Medal this way, you'd have to kill a cat

The previous GB's quests could be mimicked by doing something equivalent to Khelavaster before he tells you to kill the witch.

Postgame quests: something to do after winning the game. Here, one of my old ideas: Reclaiming the ID.
1. ID will be (since gate is closed) non-corrupting. However, whenever the PC goes down, a "mouth on the wall" special room might be generated, telling some tidbit about the ID.
2. A guardian can be found on an unique level below, say, 50. Let's say that he has 1% chance to appear on 51, 2% on 52, 3% on 53, and so on. If he won't appear on certain level, he never will -- you'll have to get lower.
3. The guardian (infinity guardian?) tells you that the heart of dungeon is corrupted. He cannot fix it. He'll test you, claiming that if you can't defeat him, you'll have no chance against the rest.
4. After defeating him, a gate appears. You'll also get the Infinity Compass, an artifact amulet.
5. Going through the gate will throw you into next part of ID.
6. This place still DOES have background corruption and high monster generation. Cavernous levels are common. It's characterized by highly random monster mix and can include monsters that are normally limited to certain areas. Grues of all types in one place. Jackal demons. Some never-before-seen monsters, as benefits the idea of "bonus dungeon". Weretigers. Ancient quicklings. Karmic rats.
7. Level is only marked as ????. Multiple staircases, both up and down, are generated on every level. Only one will move you closer to the "heart", others won't change the distance or even increase it. Once you ascend or descend a staircase, you'll appear on another level, but the staircase will be gone.
8. The only way to find the right staircase, apart from blind luck, is to equip the Infinity Compass. When standing on the right staircase, you'll see a message "The Infinity Compass on your neck tugs up (or down, depending on the staircase).
9. After passing a number of levels, you'll get to the Heart. The Heart is in the middle of the level in a large circular room. When you get close enough, a monster appears on EVERY square in the room (so you can't easily retreat to a corridor and teleportation is, of course, disallowed). Anything possible or impossible can randomly appear here, including unique NPC's that died by your hand. (Kranach laughs. "I seem to remember that our last bout didn't go so well... you won't be so lucky THIS time!"). If you approach the Heart (after defeating all of the monsters or just after fighting your way in), you find that the Heart looks like a large gem. Suddenly, it inverts, becoming concave, a gem-shaped abyss. Throw the Infinity Compass in.
10. You'll find yourself on ID:1. Get out. Quest complete.
11. If you revisit ID, you will find a circle which will teleport you to any floor of your liking (up to a limit, lower floors can be unlocked). No purpose to it except for fighting stronger and stronger levels. Special features like vaults or herbs could now appear.
12. Completing the quest with any character would unlock a new option at the beginning of the game, allowing you to start a new character and going just through the "restored" ID without access to the rest of the game. Similar concept to "Ancient Cave" mode in Lufia II.

[GordonOverkill]

Maybe make it a studded leather armor at least? I think that 90% of the people who would do this quest usually play rass-class-combos with high starting PV anyway, so an ordinary leather armor will be of no use for most of their chars.

e: Talking about later game, in my eyes one problem is that there is little in-game-motivation to do any of the high DL dungeons apart from preparation to finish the game. You don't save anybody or help anybody or do whatever senseful thing else... just clear those places for exp and loot. Maybe that's a point where some improvement could be done, too. For example there could be a new village in or close to the western mountain region. In this location you could get a quest to save an innocent young person who was sent into the mino maze as a sacrifice (simmilar to the puppy quest). Since the maze is already quite rewarding by itself, the specific quest reward could be a significant L-boost, which might even be helpful around that time of the game. If the char has got high enough AP/CH and gives a wedding ring to the rescued sacrifice, he could get a special line after finishing the game, saying that he/she managed to find the love of his/her life during these dark times.
If located outside the western mountain region, this village might also contain another quest of vaguely Pyramid danger, which as a reward gives you a climbing set.
e: Maybe this quest could also be given in the HMV, which does not contain too many quests at the moment. Somehow it feels authentic that the HMV inhabitants are good mountaineers and thus can reach the western mountain region.

pros:
- a use for a rather useless item
- a use for one or two rather useless attributes
- an in-game-motivation to do a location that quite some players still skip during most of their runs

[Soirana]

So my basic questions are:
Which PC level ranges are right now the most boring according to your impression?
What kind of maps or quests for beginners might be particularly helpful / useful?
Which kind of tasks and later quests are currently very hard to understand / solve without additional external spoilers?
Are there any in game story topics / legends that you would like to see covered in more detail?

1. Most of post tower, especially if not going for ultra. Just clean temples and deal with d50. Aproximately best [as per survival rate] strategy is just go down as fast as possible since neither monsters nor stuff on levels are particulary interesting/rewarding while corruption goes up and there is always risk of stupid instakills [from series - why that frog is tad darker? - ups petrifying gas].
Not sure if that could me remedied by quests although since short of wishes/artifacts it is tough to imagine desirable reward [mundane stuff gets covered by casino] and current xp system means that if quest is not infested with greater molochs[balors/wyrms and maybe few other kind] it probably won't matter xp wise. Well, maybe stat potions combined with good xp from boss would make cut.

2. Tough to say. What kind of problem beginners actually have?
At any rate I don't think more guaranteed/items/skills are needed - current quests give quite a pile already. Something explaining base machanis - tactics/speed[most of them run arround strained and bloated]/use of ranged attacks - would be nice although it might not work well with immersion into game and feel forced.

3. Still tower probably.
One thing is it's place which uses different mechanics [damage from surrounding heat, drake speed/damage, different monster spawning patern] so you need to get used to it, but in same time due to damage/item destruction you want to minimize your time in where.
Second whatever you think about place it is toughest place in mid game [if not all game] and if you do not understand its mechanics it goes being even tougher. I mean if you open temple poorly and are not loaded on frost bolt - char might end being toast before reaching Wyrm itself. The fact that most of poster here now how to tackle place safely does not make it neitehr easy nor clear.
I like idea of extra easier fire place, but would vote for boss being fire giant king with some drop.

Maybe piranha lake. I mean if you do druid quest and choose herbalism [rather sensible choices] you easily end up needing to scum for freezing options, I guess it is trade off of having herbalism except it is very unclear tradeoff and from my early memorreis I do doubt new players would like ever choose stuff over skill. It would be nice if it was option like drop some fresh meat in other side of lake to have on other side HP damage to be lowered to crosable amount.

4. Well, stuff I would like to see at this moment at least:
HMV prison being turned into real thing - that means instead of room of monster have room with locked and guarded staircase leeding to full [5/6 levels] dungeon.
Ogre quest line [exclusive with dwarven hopefully] ending with extermination of dwarftown. Can we please get this?

At least when it comes to fireproof blankets, Thundarr's quest that sometimes gives the player some should just give them always. As long as there's a fireproof blanket, rings of ice are usually optional.

Well, it is not "sometimes" rewards are class specific, IIRC. This means that you always get your class specific set of rewards. The fact that set with blankets [and some pots] is like always preferable other equipment [most of which end in dwarven shop anyway] is problem with balance.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Regarding the goblin reward: come on, [+0, +2] leather armors are scattered all over the place in VD:1 or ID:1. I don't even bother to pick them up with most chars.

If mithril girdle is too good, make it a [+0, +2] metal girdle. Even a [+0,+2] robe is better than the leather armor, at least it doesn't take up 120s.

Another idea would be making the reward an early-game artifact, otherwise bad, but useful at the beginning.

For example, the goblin robe "Stinky".
[+0,+2], -1 Ap, -1 Ch, +1 To.

The +1 To will help beginners a lot but surely will not make most players want to wear a +2 PV piece of main armor in the midgame. Plus, being an artifact it screws precrowners! All advantages!

[Soirana]

For example, the goblin robe "Stinky".
[+0,+2], -1 Ap, -1 Ch, +1 To.

Since when goblins are thematically tough?
Personally I'd rather see something like vile leather armor of speed. Or something else prefixed/suffixed and not too good. [of resilience is probably too good].

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Since when goblins are thematically tough?
Personally I'd rather see something like vile leather armor of speed. Or something else prefixed/suffixed and not too good. [of resilience is probably too good].

You're right. Keep the "Stinky" artifact but change the +1 To to +5 speed. Speed also helps newbies a lot and would make more thematical sense, as goblins are not alien to the concept of getting the hell away from trouble.

[Grey]

Personally I'd rather see something like vile leather armor of speed. Or something else prefixed/suffixed and not too good. [of resilience is probably too good].

Rewards with guaranteed prefixes are a nice idea. The ego system is very underutilised for quest rewards at the moment.

[Blasphemous]

1. Which PC level ranges are right now the most boring according to your impression?
2. What kind of maps or quests for beginners might be particularly helpful / useful?
3. Which kind of tasks and later quests are currently very hard to understand / solve without additional external spoilers?
4. Are there any in game story topics / legends that you would like to see covered in more detail?
5. Naturally the advanced question is: Do you want to see any specific themes or quest types begin covered by the new quests?

1) It largely depends on race/class. As a wizard, I usually reach lvl 18-19 with relative ease just exploring stuff. At this stage I need ~2 more levels to max out climbing and access library.
At this stage I also typically go to the tower but that depends on items I have.
After library which usually allows me to hit level ~21 and with magic mapping, I'm headed for the maze, which leaves me with lvl 23-24.
This is typically the time when things slow down. I need a lot of high end monsters, preferably red/white dragons in a D:25ish lesser vault that are easily dispatched with frost/fire bolts.
Regardless, before I can get the unicorn quest and lvl 32 class power, I have a lot of monster killing to do. Earth temple typically boosts char level since monsters there are pretty tough and grant lots of exp but that's it.
Without deeper dives at least around D:45 and the guaranteed vault, I have no chance to get to level 40 in reasonable time.
As for other classes, it's even more difficult to get levels past 20, perhaps excluding duelists which are simply fun to level and I enjoy waddling through hordes of monsters for hours just to train weapon marks, get items etc.
I see a room for improvement by introducing a new location that can be accessed starting from lvl 25 and can provide similar amount of exp/rewards to a greater vault/maze. Access is disabled after lvl 32 for example to prevent power-clearing the area in later game. The greatest challenge of the maze is that you can't return later with a superhero that your char turns into, you are forced to gather the necessary supplies and stats at a lower level and this keeps the challenge up.

2) I think this topic has already been sufficiently exhausted by previous posters - early dungeon with a nice early game reward that is useless later on and perhaps an artifact that will screw precrowners so more advanced players will simply skip it entirely.
This is also the case of mutually exclusive stuff - either you get early artifact that at best serves as ratling fodder for advanced players or you retain a precrown option at early levels. I typically always try to get a precrown (on all chars I play) between lvls 11-14 just to safely enter the pyramid right after.

3) I feel that players should get a hint about mad minstrel. Once you reach him and discover that he says a lot of interesting things, it's up to you to properly interpret them.
He states clearly that in tower "resistance to fire not once but twice would be very nice" which already gives you a lot of information to work with.
He says similar things about the red lake, chaos temples/orbs and several other interesting places/things. His hut however is in a remote location and not everybody finds it right away.
Of course you're not expected to memorize every poem/song that he offers so newer players would be forced to return to him for more when they are stuck at some stage of the main quest.
I suggest that either the druid or village elder, after you complete their quests, should say something like "Oh and remember to pay a visit to the mad singer just south of the northern mountains. He knows more about this chaos stuff than me."
As for ultra endings, I feel those are supposed to remain mysterious and difficult to figure out.
Like somebody has already mentioned, this is not the endorsed, preferred ending to the game, it's a special ending that rewards advanced players and hardcore explorers.
It requires some extreme measures to complete and thus requires you to master the 'normal' game first to be able to tackle an ultra. This is one of the main 'replayability' features that ADOM has and it should stay the way it is.

4) and 5) I'd like to hear more about the High Kings and eternal guardian. Both were supposed to guard against chaos (roughly speaking) but it seems that the High King at least was somehow reanimated as the evil skeletal king and entrapped in the center of a deadly lake. Why? How? Who did that? Why is he evil now?
I would also like to hear a bit more about the overgrown ruins of an ancient temple that serve as surface level of the maze. Who build it? Was the maze already there? Was it perhaps built after the minotaur race emerged from an underground maze? Did they build it?
I think almost every location/special NPC in the game could use some extra backstory. Why is the Niltrias library somewhere in the deep mountains, inaccessible by any means other than the rift?
Was it built there from scratch or is it so ancient that geological movements in the past thousands if not millions of years moved it from its previous location to a remote mountain valley?
What about Kherab? I'd like to get some connection between him and either the dwarftown or just Thrundarr. How did he become what he is now? How did he come to be in the darkforge? Did he build it?
I understand that due to their preferred lifestyle deep underground, dwarves might have very well been the first sentient race that came into contact with emerging chaos, hence the fairly common dwarven chaos knights, but some back story for that would be nice too.

[grobblewobble]

What about Kherab? I'd like to get some connection between him and either the dwarftown or just Thrundarr. How did he become what he is now? How did he come to be in the darkforge? Did he build it?
I understand that due to their preferred lifestyle deep underground, dwarves might have very well been the first sentient race that came into contact with emerging chaos, hence the fairly common dwarven chaos knights, but some back story for that would be nice too.

This is what I was about to say too, it would be nice if Thrundarr could tell something about Kherab.

Ogre quest line [exclusive with dwarven hopefully] ending with extermination of dwarftown. Can we please get this?

That would be awesome.

[aerol]

and I'd really like to see some cool stuff in the post-Casino, pre-Unreal Caves slog.

Seconded. As for the goblin camp quest, I'm all for it and like the artifact robe idea, but I would make the PV +3.