Tackling the new quests & maps for ADOM

[BenMathiesen]

I'd like to see the addition of a quest that you don't have to (in fact, SHOULDN'T) fight your way through in a blaze of glory. So here's my idea, and it gives some love to two neglected classes: the thief and the mindcrafter. I'm aiming it at levels 13-16, so it competes with the Pyramid for attention.

Hook: If the PC has a pet, and talks to the ratling rebel, and has not killed any animal in the arena, the conversation changes. "I see ye is respectful of animal rights. A rare and byootiful creecher is being held captive by the Nabob of Scrumtown. Rescue it withut hurting anyone and I'll do ye a favor."

Scrumtown is a ratling village that the player can find normally in a hill tile west of the river. It has a food store and a low-DL general store ("the Bazaar") that pays double prices for gems--even worthless bits of glass. It also has another mad doctor who can heal afflictions for money and sells a helmet of anchoring (prevents all teleportation) to PCs with teleportitis. The PC can ask him about anything, similar to Thrundarr, and he may have something to say about the other dotors and the Sinister Hospital. If the PC asks him about the Nabob, he'll say "Yeah, I've done him a favor or two. But I don't tell tales about my clients."

The object of this quest is the Nabob's house, which contains a tough, non-hostile ogre butler named MajorDomo standing on a staircase. He always says "Da Nabob is restin'. Come back next year." If the PC makes it up/down stairs, they enter a mini-dungeon (house map) populated by non-hostile ratling thugs. Everyone becomes hostile if the PC sets off an alarm trap or a trapped door, or picks up anything while failing a stealth check. Each room triggers a descriptive message on entering (like the special rooms in a dungeon) and some have household-type treasure--maybe a bar with potions of booze, a locked safe, a room with a couple of musical instruments, and so forth.

The goal is to get past all the thugs to a locked room that contains Scelerat the blink dog, and a bunch of chaos rat corpses.
Scelerat is chained to the floor (see the helmet of anchoring above) and the PC can free him either by chatting ("The blink dog is wearing a metal collar chained to the floor. Do you want to pick the lock?), casting Knock, or zapping a wand of knocking at him. 'l'ooking at the dog will also describe the chain. The blink dog will teleport away as soon as it is free, and may start teleporting around and attacking the thugs in the house. If Scelerat dies he is guaranteed to drop a corpse, but eating it gives some corruption points (maybe half as much as Keethrax).

Possible outcomes on returning to ratling rebel:

PC kills and/or eats Scelerat. You have the option of lying to the Ratling Rebel, which prompts a charisma check. If you succeed, he believes that "Da beast was rabid and dying, I understand ye had no choice but to put it down." and gives you the first reward. If the check fails, he turns hostile and attacks.

PC killed Majordomo or a ratling thug. "I zed no killing! But ye freed the beast, so here you go." (scroll of peace and 500 gp)

PC didn't kill anyone, Scelerat dies in mansion. "The beast was mad, don't blame yerself." (2 scrolls of peace and 1000 gp)

PC didn't kill anyone, Scelerat makes it out of the house alive. The PC will find him again on the arena level. "Good work! I'm doing me best to purify him." (blessed potion of cure corruption, blessed potion of extra healing, 3 scrolls of peace, and 3000 gp)

[Small Bombs]

This looks like the place for random recommendations, so as a forum noob I'm gonna post my first great wall of text that nobody will likely read.

Monster: We have many kinds of corrupted fighty types but armies of chaos are sorely lacking on ranged front. So I suggest adding Chaos Archers and Chaos Mages into all levels where stronger chaos enemies roam:
Chaos Archers shoot corrupting arrows, their damage output at range is equal to Chaos Warrior, their range is long (comparable at least to an archer PC) and they can see invisible, but are somewhat weak and much less dangerous in melee.
Chaos Mages shoot off bolt spells, cause confusion, cast darkness, can see invisible and in darkness and have corrupting touch; basically mini Nuurag Vaarns without teleport, deathray or resistance to elements.

***

Place: Monastery of Madness
Somewhere in the mountains is a monastery full of monks, who've fallen prey to Chaos. It's an optional area needing a climbing set to reach, with maybe a quest from somewhere that'll reward with a very large L boost that might let even a high level PC to convert. Monastery is for level 30-35 and populated by Dominated Acolytes, Dominated Practitioners, Dominated Teachers and Dominated Masters. They're all meleeing, fast moving multiattacking monks who can stun in melee, throw rocks and might deal massive critical hits; higher ranked ones can see invisible and in darkness and will gain elemental resistances. They're worth a lot of xp but drop nothing except food, robes and some potions (they're monks, they don't need no items; no pickpocketing them either). Unlike Pyramid, all levels except last one will be random. There's no corruption at all, which might be nice for players paranoid about leveling up without getting corrupted.

The final battle will be in a big open room (possibly the roof) with dozens of regular monks plus 4 Chaos Monks, the highest rank of the monk family. These fully corrupted monks are very strong in melee and are extremely likely to chain paralyze their target (instead of stunning). And there's a one space enclosed room in the middle, where the real boss is hiding. PC starts on the stairs right next to outer wall and can escape immediately.
Coolfantasyname the Chaos Mindbreaker will become aware of PC on the very next turn and stairs are moved right under it, inside the middle hideyhole. Chaos Mindbreaker is a corrupted mindcrafter who's taken over the monastery and brainwashed the monks. It's a corruption creature like orb guardians, leaving behind a very corrupting corpse that can be eaten for stat boosts (+8Wi, +5Pe, -2St, -2To) or taken to Druid for a PoCC. It also drops two very valuable but random items (seven league boots, sword of sharpness, wand of destruction, dragonscale mail, amulet of lifesaving, etc... not a wish or artifact though).
In an ideal world without copyrights, this would be an illithid but here it'll likely be a corrupted member of one of the player races. It's a purple @. For funsies, he/she should be described with mouth tentacle corruption and whatever others that could make it resemble an illithid.

At least 2 sources of confusion resistance is required to resist the killer mental wave Mindbreaker constantly emits, hitting the entire room except for a single row right beside the outer walls. This might mechanically be an environment effect like Air Temple lightning (ends on its death), it does like 100 damage+confusion every turn; 1 source of resistance halves the damage but can very rarely stop confusion, 2 sources lets PC resist confusion very often (but still not always) and take very little damage each turn, 3 sources grants complete immunity. The walls of the tiny room must be destroyed before Mindbreaker can be attacked. Trying to mindcraft it is extremely corrupting (whatever NPCs gave the quest for Monastery must warn about this). Mindbreaker shoots extremely damaging mindblasts and mindwaves at a somewhat long range, regenerates naturally, resists all elements, is immune to confusion/blindness/invisibility/darkness/teleportation/webs/etc. It will never move from the spot and will try to teleport away a PC in melee range if it's possible to code.

The main draw of Monastery is corruption free leveling in 30s, a very large L boost and two random great items.

***

Place: Temple of Lolth (imagine ' at the correct place)
This is a hidden entrance in the overworld, a tunnel in the mountains near south swamps. For chaotic and neutral PCs, ToL is a town with chaotic questing. For lawful PCs, it's a tricky greater vault.

There's a new NPC in Casino, she's a named dark elf priestess and invites chaotic PCs to their holy temple. Temple of Lolth only appears in overworld map after PC has been informed OR randomly steps into the correct square with level 25+ a dark elf PC. Nondarkelf-nonchaotic PCs must convert to C and talk to priestess and then convert back to their original alignment to reach ToL. Any lawful PC entering ToL immediately triggers an alarm, even if they visited with nonL alignment before. N and C PCs are greeted by dark elven warriors and told to speak to Matron Mother Coolfantasyname.

Temple of Lolth is a dark elven city, divided into two halves, like levels with greater vaults. One half is open with a few buildings like Dwarftown, with dark elven peasants milling about (these are harmless). The other half is taken up by the actual Temple building; it's big, all walls are undestroyable and has many large rooms chock full of old and new types of dark elves (a greater vault for lawfuls). Teleportation is not allowed. The inner chambers has new and improved types: Dark Elven Temple Maiden (confuses, shoots paralyzing ray, resists elements, heavily drains stats), Dark Elven Temple Guardian (very high melee damage+pv+dv+hp, heavily poisons, heals self), Dark Elven Matron (corrupting touch, casts invisibility, many pv bypassing+paralyzing+stunning attacks per round, stat drains with melee hits, high pv+dv, heals self). The difficulty of clearing ToL should be very high, especially Matrons are supposed to be brutal.

Lastly, there's a three square niche in the middle, with Coolfantasyname the Matron Mother standing behind Lolth's special altar (PC must stand on the altar to talk to her even when not clearing the Temple). Upon seeing her, the message "*ATTEMPT TO HARM MY CHOSEN AT YOUR OWN PERIL, MORTAL*" is displayed for lawful PCs. Nonlawful PCs instead get told "*SHOW DUE RESPECT TO MY CHOSEN, MORTAL*". Unlike everyone else, Matron Mother won't be hostile to a lawful PC (you can kill and loot everything else and go away). Stepping onto the altar in a stupid attempt to chat with her gets lawful PCs sacrificed. She'll disappear if attacked and PC will lose lucky and fate smiles intrinsics, getting doomed and cursed as well. Also, Lolth special altar allows any dark elf in the city to offer her sacrifices, which means lawful PC will still get sacrificed so long as even a single dark elf exists anywhere on level. Clearing the whole map (including harmless peasants) and then getting doomed is the only way to get to the treasure pile behind Matron Mother, which contains an artifact whip, lots of goodies and gold.

If the PC isn't lawful, Temple of Lolth offers some attractions. Such as named dark elven peasants: Slavemaster sells a dark elven lord companion for 70k gold (and will keep selling more of them if they get killed or lost), Blacksmith will exchange your eternium/adamantium weapons with mithril/iron versions of same weapon types that have a small chance (5%) of having a random prefix/suffix (like eternium mace -> mithril mace of something, adamantium spear -> something spear) and Undertaker will animate any suitable corpse you bring him as wight pet for a lot of gold (amount depends on what you brought). And more importantly, Matron Mother herself, who has chaotic quests (all of her quests will corrupt and massively boost C alignment). After she has assigned a quest, chatting with her without finishing it will make her warn you to not waste her time. If you try talking again without finishing that quest, she'll sacrifice you to Lolth (wearing AoLS for this has the same effect as attacking her, she disappears and everyone turns hostile).
-Bring the Sheriff from Terinyo all the way to Matron Mother's altar to be sacrificed. This will probably be more annoying than hard at this point in game. Reward is gold and sherrif's corpse (which can be animated by Undertaker for lulz).
-Slaughter everyone in Terinyo and Holeinthewall, shopkeeps included. Reward is a pile of random potions of stat.
-Convert the altar at Dwarftown to chaotic. Reward is a random artifact from PC's crowning list. If all of those have been generated, tough luck.
-Kill Matron Mother's rebellious daughter, this opens up a new staircase going into Rebel Caves. Rebel Caves is a 6 level dungeon: 2 normal levels, 2 cavern levels, 1 maze level (all full of dark elves and spiders) and Darkened Forest (aka animated forest 2: revenge of the trees; whole level is dark, all trees are hostile, no respawns, teleporting disabled). Once all trees are destroyed, Coolfantasyname the Rebel Dark Elf Maiden appears in the middle. She's like a souped up Temple Maiden: corrupting touch, casts invisibility, teleports, regenerates (huge problem in a giant empty dark room), drains stats, high pv+dv, casts deathray and all ball spells. Reward is Alertness OR Find Weakness learning/training from Matron Mother. Darkened Forest might be too much bullshit though, even for this reward.
Once you complete all of her quests, Matron Mother vanishes and PC can reach the treasure pile behind her.

The lure of Temple of Lolth is a random artifact, a guaranteed artifact whip, and a very valuable skill for chaotics/neutrals; a guaranteed greater vault and artifact whip for lawfuls. Plus the game is incredibly aimless after Casino, with no interesting leads to follow other than keep going deeper. Also we need more chaotic quests. And whips are really weak weapons nobody in their right mind uses, so adding an almost guaranteed artifact whip for everyone might maybe make some people use whips for a change.

Sevenfold Scourge of the Snake *this is probably very badly balanced*
(+14, 7d3+14)
Always poisoned
Causes bleeding
Vampiric
Grants immunity to poison
Protects from paralyzation, petrification and death
Double damage vs lawful creatures
Slays animals and plants

***

Monster: We definitely need more lawful enemies. Enter the Greater Solar. For some of the ultra ending stuff or the upcoming new things, consider adding a boss that'd be equivalent to Fistanarius or Emperor Moloch, except lawful. Maybe there's some crazy hard to reach secret castle thing or some hidden portal to Plane of Law. Anyway, the point is, Coolfantasyname the Greater Solar and his/her solar posse needs to be an encounter that's protecting something vital for a special ending.

Greater Solar is immune to magic damage, regenerates, immune to confusion/stun/paralyze/blindness/darkness/invisibility/deathrays/etc, heals self, bypasses pv, attacks many times, paralyzes, not susceptible to any slaying effect and summons solars, ki-rins, white unicorns and holy slayers. It's an orange X.

***

Quest: Elemental Prince
There's some hints, rumors, fortune cookies and Mad Minstrel songs about Coolfantasyname the Elemental Prince, saying stuff like "unearthly armor would be needed to withstand his unstoppable sword". Elemental Prince is less of an enemy and more of a puzzle, like Banshee. He's a big bad warrior and automatically kills anything in melee range of him. He's immune to all magic, deflects all missiles, he can't be slowed/stunned/blinded/teleported/paralyzed/etc, he plows through water, doors, walls and altars with no care. Once he's seen you, the level exits are blocked you're dead.
Only way to not get instantly killed is to be wearing a moloch armor, which the rumors were hinting at. Elemental Prince resides in an optional area, protecting something important/powerful but ultimately not necessary for winning the game. Getting a PC to be able to wear and fight in moloch armor is a big challenge in and of itself, ignoring the difficulty of finding one, so this can't be a progress stopper in main CoC. Also since it'd trivialize the whole point of this puzzle, he will need to have the ability to dispel Strength of Atlas on sight, which is another instakill move for anyone relying on that spell. Or if that's too much of a hassle to code, the level he's on might disallow SoA by itself (possibly giving you a few turns to drop all those tons of items before removing the spell). Once you've negated his instakill move, Prince isn't all that stronger than a regular moloch/titan in melee. He'll still chase PC, but there isn't all that much he can do once he catches up. Once PC kills the Elemental Prince by clobbering, he drops his Sword of Elements. It's unusable and attempting to wield it will heavily damage any PC. So what's it good for? Well, aside from whatever it was Prince was guarding, the Sword of Elements can be rammed into one of the elemental anomalies on D48. This will allow you to keep one of the orbs to yourself for good, which should be all kinds of awesome.

Quest: Rage Market
Similar to the one above, this is another puzzleboss. Barnabras has fallen under influence of Chaos and gone mad. Someone (either Sherriff or Hotzenplots) wants PC to put a stop to shopkeep's madness. Barnabras has closed his shop and fled to SMC to practice slaughtering hapless creatures (there are no items left). This quest appears around lv20 and requires you to go into SMC, to spawn a SMCed up hostile shopkeeper, then approach him; this means it's an incredibly hard thing. Barnabras comes back to his senses on his own and goes back home if you wait too long (until lv25ish).
The solution is to live long enough to give him gauntlets of peace, which make him unhostile, then hang out with with him (inside SMC, as a PC in 20s!) until he calms down and spell dissipates. You can't be invisible or hide in darkness, he needs to be able to see you. In the end, Barnabras thanks the PC for saving him and leaves behind a pile of treasure (very likely to include an artifact or wish due to the extremely suicidal nature of this quest), a large L boost and a discount.

The idea here is to have other cool unique puzzlebosses like Banshee and Carpenter, utilizing weird items or actions for fun and profit.

***

As promised at start, this has been a huge wall of text. Maybe someone will even read it.

Noob out.

[_Ln_]

This looks fun, although missile oriented on all ideas.

I especially like the idea of using the sword to keep one of the orbs. We can add an option to purify it to make it better lore-wise for neutral/lawful characters as a lore-centred gimmick.

The scourge looks somewhat OPish, but comparable to the likes of Executor/Justifier.

[gut]

ban tp in the maze

[Small Bombs]

After thinking of more ADOM related stuff for a while, I came up with a new large wall of text. Or should this sort of stuff be made in that projects part of forum? That seems like a more individually focused idea place, instead of me throwing a load of random crap to wall to see how well they stick. Though making a whole lot of seperate posts for my random ramblings would be pretty damn spammy.
Onwards to wall of text:


--Choices: One of the coolest things in all ADOM is the choice between elder and druid, far as I'm concerned. They're both good things leading to distinct rewards and it's even skippable if you feel like it. Sadly, there's nothing else quite that cool in ADOM, maybe sheriff-crime lord vendetta comes close. I'd like more matterful choices and I think adding these choices to already existing optional things would be the best way to go. There's a whole bunch of binary choices in game where you either do one thing or completely ignore it such as Pyramid, water dragon, minotaur maze, gremlin cave, Rift, BDC, quickling tree.

Even something as braindead obvious as clearing Pyramid or joining thieves' guild (things so ridiculously good the only reason to ever not do them is doing a challenge run) could use alternatives. So here's stuff I've come up with that could serve as valid alternatives to some of the things already existing in game:

-Busting the Thieves: Quest unavailable to chaotics, from sheriff after Kranach is done/gone. Alternative to joining the guild.
Sheriff wants you to capture Yergius. "Do you wish to arrest Yergius, the Master Thief?" prompt will appear when you chat with him if you got the quest, which will make Yergius disappear and leave a staircase behind, leading to a small dungeon full of criminals (Thieves' Hideout, which shouldn't be very hard since the alternative is just getting a whole bunch of pickpocket successes with no sort of limit), ending in a bossfight with either Yergius (who'll always surrender, becoming "tamed" when badly wounded) or possibly a tension/threat room that an "Arrested Master Thief" is hiding behind if surrender is too hard to code. Either way, you'll need to escort him back to sheriff. If Yergius dies, you've failed but at least his corpse should be guaranteed for consolation bounty. When arrested Yergius reaches Tywat, he disappears leaving behind a pile of money and the actual reward unlocks from someone in village.

Since original quest's reward is basically Find Traps plus some change, I think this quest's reward should be another skill that's slightly better than Find Traps. I think Detect Item Status would be best, most other skills are either a lot more powerful or a lot more useless.

*TLDR: Alternative quest provides choice between Detect Item Status and Find Traps.

-Underwater Assault: C alternative to helping Blup. Disappears if you help Blup.
There's a "Sharkman Scout" right inside the water cave. Sharkmen are sahuagin with serial numbers filed off. He won't talk to L, otherwise explains that sharkmen are preparing to assault the cave and kill the dragon and they want your help. If you accept, you'll get "Do you wish to challenge the dragon now?" prompt when you talk with her (making her hostile any way other than direct challenge counts as you trying to get treasure by yourself, so no help from sharkmen). When you do, friendly Sharkman Raiders (very powerful at melee, throw spears, immune to water attacks) and a Sharkman Raidmaster (very powerful melee, throw spears, high defense, regenerates, immune to water) will spawn to help you in battle. If you damage any sharkmen, they'll declare you traitor and all turn hostile, summoning even more of them. After Water Dragon is killed, sharkmen will claim the treasure for themselves, raidmaster will give a speech and tell you to get your reward from Sharkman Scout. If you try to pick an item from the ground, sharkmen will turn hostile and you'll have forfeited the promised great reward.

Of course, to be a viable alternative to helping Blup, helping sharkmen should get you something comparable to rune covered trident. But I believe just throwing more guaranteed stuff into the game is lame (especially something on level of runed trident), so instead I vote both choices get you the trident. The difference is alignment and speed: helping Blup L way (which is pretty easy) gets it at lv36/16, helping sharkmen kill Water Dragon C way (which should be pretty hard) gets it immediately from Sharkman Scout (but only if you didn't piss off sharkmen during battle or afterwards). Plus, there'll be nothing stopping you from killing them all to loot the treasure once you have the trident.
(I realize this is kind of exactly like having Water Dragon drop the trident when killed, except a lot more work for coders. Maybe I should've come up with an actual alternative reward.)

*TLDR: Alternative C method gets you rune covered trident immediately if you can kill Water Dragon.

-Antediluvian Tower: Alternative to Minotaur Maze. While MM has great rewards, it's also very obnoxious, making it a prime candidate for alternating with something less infuriating and rewarding.
There's a Forgotten Ghost wandering the ruined city (it's described as indistinct humanoid shape). While it doesn't do anything other than wander silently, the Minotaur Mazelord will drop the "antediluvian book". It's unreadable and will crumble to dust if PC descends into the maze or leaves the map. If PC gives the antediluvian book to Forgotten Ghost, she'll speak in a language that can't be understood and fade away, this will create a portal that replaces maze entrance. Going into the portal will take us to ancient past ages ago, when the city wasn't ruined and this building was a tower. PC will appear in a nonruined version of the city map, and there'll be the Distressed Sorceress (described as a disheveled young human) standing in a corner of the tower, surrounded by enemies.

Now, I don't want to write backstory for an existing place here, that'd be kinda treading on Biskup's toes, so I can't actually come up with too many details for this. But the gist of it is that some sort of cataclysm has befallen to this city and now monsters are everywhere, Distressed Sorceress is the last survivor who was about to be killed before PC arrived but there's no way to understand her prehistoric language. Maybe it's demons, or undead or even battle bunnies. The central building is the starting point, where maze entrance is going to used to be (hurray for time travel!) and PC can climb up or go outside to fight some more enemies, but the city can't be exited because it's blocked by powerful magic. Unlike MM, AT is just single room upon single room, as many floors as deemed appropriate, just full of whatever has infested the city. Last floor will have a hard boss battle, on par with Minotaur Emperor and his whole posse (again can't write much details for not veering into fanfiction territory). On top of whatever treasures the boss drops, there'll be a Tome of Power. It's undecipherable and must be given to Distressed Sorceress, who'll then open a portal that'll take PC back to future.

A nice fluff thing might be that mist elves actually understand Distressed Sorceress' language, while everyone else just gets to speculate what's going on and what she's saying. Mist elves hear a plea for help from Forgotten Ghost, begging them to travel back in time and prevent her death. Then in the past, mist elves learn from her live self that she caused the disaster, defied her fellow sorcerers and dabbled in forbidden magics, unleashing whatever destroyed the city but now she's got the Tome of Power (which mist elven wizards with very high Le can barely identify as a Spellbook of Time Travel), she can fix everything! She just needs PC to go back to get started.

(I realize I've totally written a backstory here, doing the exact thing I said I didn't wanna do. It's still vague enough and might even be left out completely, maybe not even mist elves can understand Distressed Sorceress and something else has happened, so I think I can get a pass. OTOH, if I've already sunk into a mire of fanfiction, I might as well identify the creatures that destroyed the city as solars, enraged at the impunity of mortals toying with time, and the final boss to be Insertnamehere the Greater Solar. Why yes, I am indeed obsessed with having more L monsters to kill, why do you ask?)

The rewards for doing the extremely straightforward Antediluvian Tower is like Minotaur Maze but less: one random artifact, a few PoGAs (more PoGAs replace PoCCs for obvious reasons), spellbooks, but no Axe and no corpse. This is because reaching the endboss of AT is so much easier and less infuriating than reaching ME, you just clear a few roomfuls of enemies. The amount of irritation we'd save by doing this compensates for the loss of gains by my estimate.

*TLDR: Less obnoxious alternative to Minotaur Maze for lesser rewards.

-Djinn's Gauntlet: Alternative to Pyramid in same level range. Pyramid is far too good, there's no way anyone will ever not do Pyramid outside of a challenge run. Which bothers me since it's the most mandatory optional area ever.
Instead of going to Pyramid, PC can give the papyrus scroll to Mad Minstrel, who'll say something cryptic and give PC a blessed ring of djinn summoning. Which is not a ring of djinni summoning, so instead of summoning a wish granting djinni, it'll summon PC to Jackass Djinn's Palace (this closes off Pyramid). The djinn's wish is to be entertained, so he puts PC in a large arena to fight waves and waves of very weak monsters (rats, bats, goblins, etc). Fighting is pointless, djinn will keep summoning enemies forever, the way out is to find the secret door or destroy walls to uncover a staircase (teleportation is uncontrollable and magic mapping is not allowed). Next level is a maze full of traps and no monsters, whole level is under effects of "wrong perception room" (Jackass Djinn needs to deserve its name), there's an amulet of teleport control sitting on the exit. The level after that is a permanently dark cavern level full of teleport traps and a very high monster generation rate, the exit staircase is inside walls and unreachable without teleportation/digging, there's one scroll of teleportation and one scroll of magic mapping lying on the ground somewhere in this level, both are very likely picked up by random monsters. Aside from mentioned three things (and si), no other item will ever be generated in JDP; nothing drops, pickpocketing always fails, create item spells always fail. Final level is a small room where Insertnamehere the Jackass Djinn waits with his djinni buddies. From their stats in wiki, I'm assuming djinnis are appropriate enemies for a lv13-18 PC. Beating them all nets an immediate wish, followed by being teleported to a random square in the wilderness.

While I normally dislike the idea of more guaranteed stuff, least of all a wish, I can't really think of anything else that'd justify giving up on Ankh+AMW. Plus, I tried to make JDP as obnoxious as possible, short of having fake maze levels, so hopefully the frustration caused by it is enough to compensate for a wish. But I kinda suspect this whole thing is a bad idea and I should just leave Pyramid be the mandatory optional area.

*TLDR: Option to give up on Pyramid for an exceedingly annoying to get wish.

-Rift, Bug Temple and Quickling Tree are other similar places but they're very dangerous and not in any way considered mandatory for majority of PCs. Gremlin Cave just sucks. Ice Queen stuff is pretty clearly in a beta state so I can't comment on it. Old Barbarian and unicorns are already good enough. Everywhere else is needed for normal or ultra endings.


--Wilderness Encounters: We could use a lot more variety on wilderness encounters, especially at higher levels. I don't know what level these should appear at but none of them should be there from start. Even if none of these are any good, ADOM needs more varied wilderness encounters, including some that don't involve killing.

Something shining in the dirt: Roads. Only if lucky+fate smiles. Only around noon. An uncursed ring of djinni summoning on the ground. The odds of this happening is equal to getting a wish from pools.
A caravan of orc slavers: Anywhere except mountains. Large group of orcs led by a chieftain. Peaceful for chaotics who can purchase random humanoid pets for cheap prices.
Travelling dwarves: Hills and mountains. 7 dwarves. Only hostile to chaotics. Will sell pickaxe and ingots.
A travelling merchant: Roads. A shopkeeper with items lying around him, whole map counts as shop.
A lone ratling: Roads. A ratling trader who'll sell a random gem for 3000 gold (could be magical, could be worthless).
The aftermath of a fierce battle: Plains and hills. 4d8 random humanoid corpses (all same type) and random drops PC would've gotten from killing them.
A band of chaos marauders: Forests, hills, roads and swamps. 20 chaos warriors and 5 chaos wizards led by a chaos warlord.
A delegation of sinister mages: Roads. 15 chaos wizards.
A lumbering metal monstrosity: Anywhere. A moloch.
A strange feeling of stress: Forests. 5d15 animated trees.
An inexplicable feeling of dread: Anywhere except mountains. Always ambush. 3d10 invisible stalkers.
A migrating swarm of ants: Anywhere except swamps. 10d2 ant workers and 12d6 ant warriors.
A horde of terrifying insects: Plains, forests and hills. 2d10 greater claw bugs and 1d8 killer bugs.
A large group of corrupted wretches: Anywhere after day 90, disabled after gate is closed. 30 chaos mutants.
A procession of metal statues: Plains and forests. 5d10 iron golems led by a steel golem.
A solitary statue of brilliant hue: Plains and forests. A diamond golem.
A procession of shining statues: Plains and forests. 5d10 steel golems led by an eternium golem.
A procession of incandescent statues: Plains and forests. 4d10 eternium golems.
A vast mass of jagged teeth and sharp nails: Anywhere. Always ambush and only at night. 10 grues of each type.
A solitary skeleton wearing fine robes: Anywhere. A lich king.
A sudden feeling of terror: Anywhere except mountains. 3d8 ghost lords led by a ghost king.
Your long lost twin!: Anywhere except mountains. Always ambush. A doppleganger king.
An army of the damned: Plains, forests and swamps. Lots and lots of wights and skeletal warriors led by a master lich.
An army from depths of hell: Anywhere except mountains. 3d10 of each elemental demon.
A roaming agent of ChAoS: Anywhere. Inescapable. Only after day 90, disabled after gate is closed. A balor.
Nightmares given flesh: Anywhere except mountains. Only after day 90, disabled after gate is closed. 50d2 writhing masses of primal chaos.
A majestic figure and his entourage of giants: Hills and mountains. One of every type of giant, led by a titan.
An inexorable tide of destruction: Anywhere. 2d10 molochs led by a greater moloch.
A lone skeleton wearing majestic robes: Anywhere, lv50 only. An emperor lich.
The vengeance of ChAoS!: Guaranteed on any tile of the road leading to exit. Only after gate is closed. Inescapable. Only once. 4 balors.
Ragnarok!: Anywhere, lv50 only. Very low chance. 11 titans led by one greater titan. ("You encounter Ragnarok!" would be the most metal line ever.)


--While I really dislike the idea of too many fixed items, I'd have no problem if every single skill was obtainable through a nonrandom method ingame. Except better ones would have to be either mutually exclusive, like Healing-Herbalism choice, or extremely hard to get. I would classify nonguaranteed skills as
Worthless: Appraising, Survival, Woodcraft.
Has some use: Archery, Cooking, Fletchery, Gemology, Metallurgy, Mining, Necromancy, Ventriloquism
Good for everyone: Alchemy, Athletics, Detect Item Status, Concentration, Dodge, Music
Would wish for: Alertness, Find Weakness, Food Preservation

I wouldn't mind seeing the better ones obtainable ingame through various methods. Such as:
Find Weakness OR Alertness: From a dark elf NPC as a reward for some hard and long lategame quest (mentioned in my previous wall of text).
Food Preservation: From a hobbit NPC in midgame as reward for an extremely hard quest (possibly involving SMC or DH), can't be gotten after a level limit.
Athletics AND Dodge: For sale from a very hard to reach ratling duelist, 6 digit prices. Ratlings are dicks and will gouge you when you're down, just look at the bastard in Rift.
Detect Item Status: Mentioned above.
Music: Reward from Mad Minstrel, after a quest that requires a lot of scumming/farming/grinding (maybe collect a dozen of each type of instrument). I don't know why Mad Minstrel already doesn't teach music, it would be fitting.
Concentration OR Alchemy: A wizard NPC encountered after Wall of Fire teaches one for free.

Other stuff I could take or leave, they're either worthless, annoying or require too much pointless busywork. While I'd see it as completely pointless, I wouldn't object if some NPC was selling Woodcraft or Mining or whatever. The skills I listed are the ones worth implementing.
***
Another wall of text completed. So many years of playing ADOM builds up a sort of infatuation, similar to Stockholm Syndrome.

[pblack]

I give my upvote for most of your suggestions @Small Bombs

I think some things have to be balanced, specially the instrinsics of most enemies you proposed as a lot of them seem exceedingly tough. But of course if Thomas were to implement any of it, he would certainly balance it to proper ADOM-levels so I won't waste my fingers making suggestions on that.


My second criticism is on guaranteed skills. This I cannot agree on since it completely denies one of the main features of playing Bards. Which is, having lots of skills (and skills that wouldn't be possible to have at the same time with any other race/class combo). That being said, I do like the idea of Athletics/Dodge if there were some clock limit to get it. So one would have to sell some artifacts early to get it, since getting to the casino at low levels is only possible with very strong companions doing the killing for you. The price to aquire the skills should scale with the PCs level in a way that it becomes very very hard to get unless one is a very slow leveler and/or finds some early high priced artifacts and sells them. Sold artifacts should IMO, be imediately equipped by shopkeepers as well to avoid exploiting this in any way. Along with the already implemented power up they get from buying artifacts.

This is IMO a quest in itself that many would deem "too much trouble" on certain chars and with other chars they would attempt it. It would also be in line with the shady attitude from the ratling trainer. Due to the price scaling, getting both skills from him should only be possible under very lucky circumstances for any PC but trolls (but those don't need athletics). He should stop offering skills after a certain level limit to avoid usage of casino money.


I also like the Dark Elf quests to get Alertness or Find Weakness. The trick is: making those guaranteed in the game basically makes EVERY player attempt that quest. Either skill is too valuable to pass. Giving that AND extra loot/artifacts/etc, seems too powerful. Even for that difficulty level. (But again, I think some of the enemies intrinsics you proposed are too much). Also, before I move on to my last point. Gaining those skills on a char that does not train either is likely to have some impact, since you are probably going to be training it in a +1d1 basis per increase after reaching rank 50 or so. So one would want to get those ASAP to actually put them to use (specially alertness before you find most strong casters). That being the case, it probably could be acessible much sooner (and offer less rewards and be less punishing as well). Either that or it trains the skill REALLY high up from the start.

And lastly... Elemental prince and sword rocks. But a char that can fight in moloch armor, probably has very little use for one orb on D:50. Sure, any of them are useful. Specially water for casters. But you only use it on D:50 and by that time, It shouldn't be a real threat. Right now ADOM is built with that "feature" that you loose 10 stat points right before the last fight. IT is part of what makes D:50 somewhat hard. But even if you keep the orb, it wouldn't make too much of a difference. Just look at YASD posts to see that by the time one gets to D:50, he/she is not going to die anymore in all likelyhood. Even without orbs. So althou I REALLY like the fantasy, I don't think it is compatible with ADOM as it is.


All in all, I think most of your suggestions make the end-game even easier and would require true buffs to the last stages of CoC to compete with the monster PCs that would come out of those quests.

Toning down the monster difficulty a bit and some rewards thou I think you are suggesting some really cool new areas to explore. And some really cool reasons to do so.


These are my 2 cents. And I think this thread has some gold in it. Very good suggestions overall.

[Elyross]

Dear Guys!

First: Sorry for my english. )

I play ADOM since 1998 (if i remember correctly). Very good and challenging game i really enjoy it. But i miss only one thing hardly.

I think DC need *one* merchant city/village near Terinyo like this (for helping the beginners and coloring the game):

- 22 unique shop for all char professions (arrows,bows,gloves,armors for archers or staffs,books for wizards etc but *all* profession needed a shop with useful items)(Ofc respawning random items like any other shops)
- 1 fix forge (nightmare for founding one in good,peaceful place)
- skill trainers in "Trainers hall" (i want to learn the cooking skill or any other skill but where?)(Trainers teach the skills for money or new quests)
- respawning city/village guards (mages,fighters) with great XP and good items
- populace (criminals,animals etc.)

Another ideas from my mind:
- buyable empty fials to fill it with water
- "Hunting" skill and add new wild animals to the wilderness (good price for the furs,special bones etc)(+1 feature for the game)
- I reach lvl 50 very rare. I complete the game around lvl 35-45. We need big monsters for XP farming.(I'm the only one? I doing it wrong?Killed all temple,all caves etc)

Thanks for the watching !

[JellySlayer]

Dear Guys!

First: Sorry for my english. )

I play ADOM since 1998 (if i remember correctly). Very good and challenging game i really enjoy it. But i miss only one thing hardly.

I think DC need *one* merchant city/village near Terinyo like this (for helping the beginners and coloring the game):

- 22 unique shop for all char professions (arrows,bows,gloves,armors for archers or staffs,books for wizards etc but *all* profession needed a shop with useful items)(Ofc respawning random items like any other shops)
- 1 fix forge (nightmare for founding one in good,peaceful place)
- skill trainers in "Trainers hall" (i want to learn the cooking skill or any other skill but where?)(Trainers teach the skills for money or new quests)
- respawning city/village guards (mages,fighters) with great XP and good items
- populace (criminals,animals etc.)

My feeling is that such a place would make the game far too easy. Scarcity of resources is what provides a lot of the challenge in the game... While I think there may be a place for a general store that carries basic supplies beyond food (torches and firemaking goods, maybe a few basic weapons and armor or arrows, the odd healing potion), having a store available at the start of the game provides all of the class-specific resources you need seems a bit much to me.

Likewise with most of these other things. The scarcity of forges and the fact that you have to use them in dangerous areas (or the Dwarftown one, which requires some ingenuity to access) helps offset the fact that smithing allows you to buff up your character to fairly obscene levels quite easily.

Personally, I feel that allowing characters to easily learn more skills actually degrades the diversity in classes a lot. Giving every character the chance to train Alertness or Concentration or Find Weakness or even Cooking just means that every character is the same.

With all of this present, why even visit anywhere else in the early game? Go here, buy some stuff at the store, kill the respawning village guards a bunch of times for more XP and loot, sell the stuff at the store, and repeat.

Another ideas from my mind:
- buyable empty fials to fill it with water

This has been discussed at length in some other threads. Water is pretty valuable, so adding something like this could create balance issues.

- I reach lvl 50 very rare. I complete the game around lvl 35-45. We need big monsters for XP farming.(I'm the only one? I doing it wrong?Killed all temple,all caves etc)

Yes, it's quite hard to get to level 50 now. Ultras usually get there or very close, but typical closer characters definitely won't.

[_Ln_]

Yes, it's quite hard to get to level 50 now. Ultras usually get there or very close, but typical closer characters definitely won't.

Currently getting to l50 requires an atrocious amount of grinding, lucky rooms with high-xp monsters or wishing for EM. I kinda agree that xp nerf was way too much.

[Phoobnahr]

Currently getting to l50 requires an atrocious amount of grinding,

I've been seeing this said a lot in threads around here recently and I really don't get it...

I just last night closed the gate with a Human priest and he entered D:50 at level 46 I think. Granted he is a human and they level up fast, but he didn't seem significantly ahead of other average characters of mine at mid-level. I definitely wouldn't describe his playthrough as containing an atrocious amount of grinding at all. The only point where I did any grinding at all was to spend an extra hour or so in the cavernous levels above the tomb of the high kings because leveling up through the early 20s range is always the slowest going and those cavernous levels have a relatively high DL for that stage of the game. Other than that I really didn't grind at all. I crowned early and postcrowned once, but had altars in easy locations that didn't require any significant grind, and that kind of grind doesnt generate significant experience anyway.
I never entered the Infinite Dungeon, the Minotaur Maze, the Blue Dragon Caves or the Crumbling dungeon and definitely didn't wish for an Emperor Moloch or anything like that (i only got one wish, which I used on a cute dog just before leaving the Drakalor chain).

I feel like the posts on this board recently about the difficulty of reaching level 50 reflect the speed-play methods of the highly experienced players that frequent this board. I definitely don't consider myself as expert at this game as many of the other regular posters here (my wins number in the single digits and I've only had one character pass through the Chaos Gate [He got destroyed by Andy in a very discouraging reality check]), but I'm definitely an experienced player. I don't play extremely fast (this character closed the gate on day 89), but I also don't grind significantly.