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red_kangarooI really like the feeling of being one easily squashed adventurer against the whole world, but right now the options you have as an adventurer feel quite limited. Even many of the rewards keepers normally get for defeating their enemies do not apply to adventure mode. I would like to propose several changes that would make playing as an adventurer feel more rewarding:
Improved hiding
Hiding right now feels like it doesn’t really fulfills its potential. I like sneaky approach in areas I cannot otherwise compete in, but hiding in its current incarnation does not help with this much.
What if you could move between two tiles with hide-able terrain without loosing your hidden status? This way, you could evade enemies in forests with careful movement, hiding in the bushes without them noticing, or use the furniture in enemy dungeon to move around the room unseen. Picking enemies off one by one with sneak attacks would be really fun.
Better shops
Shopping is fun. 🙂 I suppose the current behaviour of no one caring if you loot the castle treasury is only temporary, as is looting the town houses with no repercussions. 😛 (Related to above – being able to steal from towns as long as you are hidden would be cool.)
However, once you buy whatever you want from the shop, you have no incentive to ever come back. What if shops restocked their goods every day? Thus you would have a reason to come back and see if there are more potions or scrolls to buy. You would have a reason to haul the spoils of your quests back to sell and buy better equipment. As you would be still limited by the money you can earn, it wouldn’t hopefully unbalance the game by giving you too much consumables.
Another thing with shops is that the lizardmen mushroom shop is useless, if very flavourful. You can find more mushrooms that it has in stock by simply walking around in a forest. Maybe it could sell some special, more powerful muchrooms only lizarmen know how to grow? Maybe magical mushrooms, like mushrooms of invisibility, teleportation (very good for quick escape), haste (something like +50 speed, but only for 2-4 rounds), levitation, elfsight, unbreathing, experience (buy exp with gold 😀 ) or even ghosting (can walk through walls and immune to webs for cca 10 turns). The price should of course match the power of these special mushrooms, but they would make the shopping very much worth it.
Skills and spells
One thing I would really like to eventually see is a way for adventurers to learn new skills and spells. You can already find the books that can unlock certain technologies in keeper mode, but as an adventurer, they are useless to you…
Maybe new books could be added that would teach new skills and spells to adventurers? These would make a great treasure for the various dungeons you have to clear, building your power and thus feeling really rewarding after you manage to obtain the book. Books of skill you already have could instead slightly increase your skill, thus still being rewarding to find.
As for books of spells, you probably should only gain one spell per book, to make it harder to become full mage and make you learn the best uses of each of your spells as you get them rather then begin overwhelmed by several new spells at once.
Maybe even the current books could have a use in adventure mode, to prevent them from feeling useless when found, which is not really fun IMHO.
Book of master sorcery could unlock all master sorcery spells at once, but only be readable once you have mastered all spells up to advanced sorcery. Master sorcery spells should also be unavailable in the form of a single spell books from the previous paragraph, thus giving you the feeling of studying to become a mage powerful enough to then quickly master the most powerful magic.
Book of advanced alchemy could give you an ability that would create a random potion from nothing, but with a very long cooldown.
The two mutation books could give you some random mutation / a skill normally associated with either beasts, or monstrous humanoids. Possible beast mutations would be something like scent (can sense nearby monsters through smell) or wings. Possible humanoid mutations could include traits like carry anything (like imps), fire creature (flaming and fire immune) or even undead. You would get a very powerful ability, but a random one, only one per book and some even potentially double-edged (being undead would be very cool, but the sun…).
Getting permanent upgrades could be balanced to prevent overpowered power-hoarding by rarity of the books (you don’t need to find all spells and all skills in every run – and you probably shouldn’t). You wouldn’t also always have Sorcery on your adventurers, thus making cooldowns on most spells very long.
All in all, some form of being able to get permanent, powerful abilities from completed quests would really improve the feeling of accomplishment after you manage to (eg.) slay the dragon and steal its hoard – gold is cool if you have something to buy with it, equipment is nice unless you already have better, but spellbook is incredibly rewarding, as you can now summon a fire sphere at will. 🙂
Thank you for the wonderful game and for reading this overly long rant. 😉
(And of course, I expect all the changes and additions above to be included in the nearest release, no excuses. 😛 )
