Tackling the new quests & maps for ADOM

[Dervi]

I just read all the feedback on new quests and experience curve, and it's really my main concern about ADOM at the moment. Basically, when you reach character levels 20-25 (and sometimes earlier), you're around the point where you tackle the ToEF and you have completed about 95% of the game in terms of quests. What's remaining? Darkforge (if you didn't clear it before), the ultra-ending quests, the blue dragon caves, the last three elemental temples... and then it's D50 and game over. Considering this, it would be nice to get more endgame quests, in the vein of the AKW's one. More experience, more corruption, more fun.

Second of all, I tend to find the Drakalor Chain really... empty. Terinyo is the only "visible" village there. Where are all the other living people? Should there be only monsters roaming the chain? Adding new villages could be the starting point of new quests.

Finally, there's a problem that has bothered me for as long as I played ADOM: the brutality of the first steps in the Chain. Basically: unless you apply the same strategy over and over, your character will die roughly 90% of the time before reaching level 2. You get randomly ambushed near Terinyo? You die. You get poisoned? You die. You get sick? You die. To make the beginning less of a game to luck, I'd add this simple quest: one of the citizens of Terinyo (could be any -- farmer, child, goodwife...) has lost a precious item (a sickle, a toy, a doll, a ring...) in the basement of his/her house; if you chat to this citizen, he/she'll give you the quest to retrieve it and reward you with a blessed potion of healing. Not much, but could be as valuable as an amulet of life saving early in the game.

[SirTheta]

Well, where else do you go then? In the wilderness you can get ambushed and the first step in a dungeon can kill you.

Who ever said this is for new player? This is an alternate quest for weak starting characters.

What are you even talking about? If your character is really weak (0 PV, etc.), the natural starting place is PC:1, VD:1-3, ID:1-3 (esp.), etc. You'd be crazy to try to fight bandits - which is like a DL3 mob as I recall - or take a chance of encountering a mugger or assassin in a situation where you could be fighting DL1 creatures. I have no idea what you've been doing, but it is not even close to the safest way to get equipment and experience on very weak characters.

(The first step into a dungeon can kill a great many characters but the chances of getting killed by traps is actually not that high -- certainly much less than trying to fight bandits/muggers/assassins)

[StViers]

What are you even talking about? If your character is really weak (0 PV, etc.), the natural starting place is PC:1, VD:1-3, ID:1-3 (esp.), etc. You'd be crazy to try to fight bandits - which is like a DL3 mob as I recall - or take a chance of encountering a mugger or assassin in a situation where you could be fighting DL1 creatures. I have no idea what you've been doing, but it is not even close to the safest way to get equipment and experience on very weak characters.

(The first step into a dungeon can kill a great many characters but the chances of getting killed by traps is actually not that high -- certainly much less than trying to fight bandits/muggers/assassins)

Maybe stingray plays spellcasters? They can easily hit lvl 7 or so in Holeinthewall from just killing Hotz and the now hostile inhabitants.

[Silfir]

Finally, there's a problem that has bothered me for as long as I played ADOM: the brutality of the first steps in the Chain. Basically: unless you apply the same strategy over and over, your character will die roughly 90% of the time before reaching level 2.

If you roll a gray elven thief over and over and minimize Toughness through the question system, maybe.

[gut]

> I cannot imagine who would lift a little finger for a suit of leather armor

I would, if my pc had 0 pv.

> If it was a mithril girdle, or even a metal girdle [+0, +1], at least most characters would get a use out of it

I could go for a girdle, but the point I was hoping to address with the +2 pv was the horrible time that a
0pv character has, not provide something useful to all characters. The fact that most characters start with
better, and so wouldn't bother with this quest seems a good thing to me.

> The reward for the Kranach quest is not worth it either. [snip...] I doubt anyone does it for the money

I do it for the money with every character that has > 1 pv. It is a very good risk/reward quest, but
only if you know the right tactics.

[Stingray1]

I play fated characters, all I'm saying is I have a character with low HP and easy means to kill bandits and outlaws, I'll rather gain a few levels in Holeinthewall than risk dying to the first trap or thrown rock or shot arrow in a dungeon or the wilderness or an ambush. My early game survival rate is pretty excellent doing it this way, higher than it used to be when I just dove into a dungeon.

This goblin camp is for those low HP characters that don't have an easy means to kill bandit folk, is the impression I got from the posters supporting it originally, which is why I supported it.

[Silfir]

A quest with the reward of an item that approximately 30% of starting characters even have a use for strikes you as a good thing? The difference between 0 PV and 2 PV is huge, it's true, but if our concern is players new to the game, we're better off steering them away from gray elven thieves for the time being, not accomodating them. If our concern is advanced players, we should stop making them our concern. Once this game has got you in its fangs, one delights in the challenge of handling the harder starting positions. If you're like me, you throw them into the UD and have them come out the other side either dead or a true berserking monster (usually the former); if you're like Stingray, you start analyzing and optimizing for maximum survival and stuff like that; neither of us is in any need of assistance.



Here's the thing. Unless we're going to turn ADOM into completely another game, it's going to be fiendishly hard and players are going to die over and over as they learn. That's actually completely fine, all roguelikes are that way, and the success of games like FTL proves that there's a market for that. Not to mention the many players who've actually played ADOM before.

So, if ADOM is going to be a roguelike, then we should remember that the main strength of roguelikes is the procedural content. In ADOM, that's dungeon crawling, essentially. That's what makes replaying the game over and over enjoyable.

Currently, the early game quests in ADOM do a relatively servicable job of tying in with the procedural content. Saving the puppy stays a fresh diversion because it offers the puppy dungeon and a motherflippin' vault. Saving Yrrigs or killing Keethrax don't get old because either quest comes with an extremely doable early game dungeon. Kranach already got old fast. My early game fun was much improved once I realized I didn't have to worry about him at all. At the very least, though, he adds something to the fluff; meaningful interaction with Tywat pare, the ability to have his head stuck on a pike in Terinyo (Obvious Steam Achievement if there ever was one). Something of a story.

If we do add a new quest to the early game of all places, we have to keep in mind that players are going to be seeing it a whole lot of times. If you ask me, unless you're willing to let it come with a whole new early game dungeon attached (and I think the current breadth of early game dungeon crawling space is more than decent), you at least have to add to the world and the story of the game to some level to justify the addition of an early game quest. I probably don't have to point out that "Eliminate the goblin camp" or "Clear out the basement of pests" do not fit the bill by any stretch.

If you ask me (do that on your own peril, I'll just keep talking anyway because I'm an opinionated duffer like that), the place to add new quests that don't come with procedural elements that make them more replayable, but that enrich the world by offering the player roleplaying opportunities - making them part of a story - is later in the game, when player characters have advanced to the point that they'll be able to face a multitude of challenges; when we can get creative on a much larger and more interesting scale. A quest to exterminate Dwarftown - eh, I'm a goody-two-shoes and would never consider doing it, but it sounds like it could be epic! Bickering about what kind of reward is just big enough for an introductory quest for a naked level 1 character armed with a pointed stick seems like a waste of typing space.



As far as actually new players go, I think a specific tutorial-based experience much like what Thomas has demonstrated recently is definitely not a bad way to go, as long as players can quickly move on to playing real games of ADOM. As far as sickness or poison go, to me it seems more prudent to guide players more clearly to already existing solutions rather than jam in early game quests to provide new ones - point them towards Jharod through NPC chatter, allow Guth'Alak to heal sickness even, point them towards their ability to pray to the gods for help and so on and so forth.

[Stingray1]

Ok, how about an assassination quest from the assassin prince to slay a new NPC which is at the deepest level of a new dungeon. This would be a pre-ToEF danger level dungeon and Boss(he sold him some worthless pieces of glass ). Maybe the final level should be themed. Maybe high experienced ratlings? Or a contract by Thrundarr and Guth'Alak on Kherab(how strong is he, never fought him?) with a whole dungeon under Darkforge, filled with similar inhabitants as Darkforge and some random ChAoS creatures spawning randomly, which he retreats into when the quest is active. The downstairs can be under the spot he is generated on? The quest is obviously unattainable if either Thrundarr or Guth'Alak is dead.

Succeeding makes you a member of the assassin guild and the prince teaches Detect traps, Alertness, Find Weakness, Climbing, Dodge, Alchemy, and Stealth? The prince is however very fond of valuable gems and only accepts payment with valuable gems? Say 5 gems per new skill and 3 gems for [t]heoretical or [p]ractical training?

[TDau]

A couple of ideas for the community quests:

1) Bart's revenge.
This is something that has been sitting in the back of my mind for a long time. When you give the golden gladius to Bart, he tells you how an elder chaos wyrm pillaged his village and exterminated his family. I'd love to see a "Bart's revenge" quest, where you fight alongside Bart (which should adjust in power and speed, enough to not die easily but not so much that he does all the work). Something like this:
* Prerequisite: the PC won the golden gladius and gave it to Bart; the PC is at least level 20.
* Quest: accompany Bart and assist him in his revenge on the elder chaos wyrm.
When you chat to Bart with the above prerequisites, he explains he has just found out that the wyrm has a stronghold in the northern mountains of the Drakalor Chain. He asks for your help and, if you accept, he says he will meet you again in the mountains and disappears. Then you can go in the northern part of the chain, and meet him in the mountain wilderness. When you find him, you also discover the stronghold.
* The map for the quest:
-- the first level is a wilderness location with a mix of rocky and swampy terrain; there are stone giants wandering around, and a bunch of black dragons and a great black wyrm which guard a staircase.
-- the staircase lead to the dungeons of the castle: two levels with very long corridors and lots of small rooms at their side. Some rooms contain food, other missiles, gold, weapons, traps; some are special in that they have no wall next to the corridor and are filled with hirelings of the wyrm: master swordsmen, ratling warlords, doppleganger lords, dwarven chaos knights. The upper level of the two contains four staircases.
-- each staircase lead to a tower, which has four levels, with a slightly decreasing size of the map as you go up. The wyrm is at the top of one of the towers, random in each game.
* How to complete the quest: by killing the wyrm, of course. But it can end in three ways. If you kill the wyrm but Bart died in the meantime, you get the loot dropped by the wyrm. If Bart survived, and you kill the wyrm, you get also some reward from Bart; if you let Bart strike the final blow that kills the wyrm, he Bless you and gives you a lot more stuff. Then he leaves and says he is going further north to rebuild his village.
* Bonus: add in ADOM II a town, north of the Drakalor Chain, with a statue of Bart which sports the golden gladius, a gladiator training hall, and a very old tavern named "Axe & Hammer".

2) A quest with some reference to the Arabian Nights. We already have some monsters which recall that kind of mythology: djinnis, ghuls, cyclops; and the gnoll is like the persian kaftar. For a truly distinct flavor, the location of this quest could use other monsters found only there, for example rocs, nasnas, karkadanns, and more powerful variants of djinnis.
Here's an idea for the quest, loosely based on the story of the fisherman:
After you have reached a certain level, while you travel in the wilderness you meet a mysterious knight. He tells you how an evil witch has changed his king into a statue and, with her lover, has taken possession of his country; he asks you if you want to travel there and kill the traitors. After you agree, the knight begins some magical rites which makes you fly for thousand of miles to a desertic wilderness map; this map would have new tiles like the ones introduced in ADOM II, desert tiles where you get some damage from the heat. In the map, you can find an entrance to the royal palace (and you can be ambushed by armies of ghuls or gnolls and hyenas).
As you explore the levels of the palace, you will battle mostly the types of monsters mentioned above. You find the witch in one of the first levels, she is non-hostile at the beginning; her lover, a powerful sorcerer, is on the last level, in a big room with the black marble statue of the king at its center. You can complete the quest in two ways, one lawful and one chaotic:
-- you can slay both the witch and the sorcerer; this will break the spell and make the king change back from statue to human. The king will give you some rewards, then he will make you travel back to the Drakalor Chain
-- if you chat to the witch, she says she is tired of sharing the power with the sorcerer and asks you to slay him, smash the statue, and give her the amulet that you will find in its remains. After you have done this, the witch will reward you (with different stuff than the king would have) and will fly you back. If you have chosen this option, there's a chance that you meet again the knight at a later time and he tries to kill you.

Which PC level ranges are right now the most boring according to your impression?

The levels 18-30: you do the ToEF somewhere in between, but before and after the tower there's not so much to do. When you attempt an ultra, the levels 40-45 too.

What kind of maps or quests for beginners might be particularly helpful / useful?

The interactive tutorial you started seems the way to go. Other useful info to add: how to switch tactics; how to apply skills (First Aid!); how to use shops and altars; cursed/blessed status of items. This old thread has some discussion about newbie-friendliness and tutorials.

There has also been quite some suggestions within RFEs as "off-topic" posts within those RFEs, but to find them will be job in its own.

Speaking of which, someone once proposed a path to become a lich; such a quest sounds promising, it would be unlike any other in the game. The quest could tell us something more about Niltrias; IIRC the in-game references point to him being a necromancer who discovered how to cheat death (the level 50 power of necromancers).

Despite the in-game warnings, I still see that many newbies start adventuring in the SMC. Maybe they need... even more warnings.

Since some PCs start illiterate, having additional warnings is sensible, for example delivered by a mouth on the wall or by the spirit of an unlucky adventurer.

Random levels are the most replayable of them all, and the most potentially exciting. Vaults, shops, surges of power, all that stuff. [...]
Everything that's randomized is replayable, and replayability is the main thing roguelikes have to offer that many other RPGs don't.

+1 to having random stuff (and also, to loving the UD) :)

I think dungeons in the style of the TotHK or Rift dungeons (i.e., a bunch of random levels with possibility of vaults, shops, etc.; plus a bottom level with a more or less fixed pre-made layout, and with boss fight) work very nicely.

Agreed 200%.

Other ideas that have my vote:
- the "Reclaim the Dwarven Halls" quest
- the goblin camp near Terinyo, with a mithril girdle as reward
- quests with different choices (such as the chaotic quest suggested by JellySlayer) where you can complete a quest in different ways and each way has different rewards, and possibly different consequences on the long term
- mutually exclusive quests
- more things to do for Chaos Knights in the early game

[gut]

> 1) Bart's revenge.

I love the idea of killing the elder chaos wyrm.