Like to see

[EricCamp]

Some things I would like to see in a variant are as follows:

Finding corpses of past @'s, with maybe a random percentage of thier gold, a random non Unique item from thier inventory, to be found on the same DL they died on (small random chance) Maybe even have the creature who killed him there to (as long as he is non unique) Maybe even have a way to 'revive' said corpse to use as a henchman... I geuss you would have to be higher lvl, and it would be a rare scroll, or very expensive service.... just a thought.

I know some varients have something like this but intellegent lvl'ing weapons seems so cool, maybe randomly produced ones with randomly produced names, when they lvl they get more powerfull and have a small chance to pick up special abilities or resistances.

More quests! :-)

Random produced Unique monsters, or just make alot more!

Just my two cents. Feel free to bash my ideas. If I could figure out how to program I would try and do it myself..... But I'll leave that for a diffrent post at a diffrent time.... There alot of varients already out there though.....

[bonzo]

I like all of these ideas, especially the last two. I'm a big fan of quests myself. They make the game much more interesting. Random uniques? Excellent idea. Even more replay value.

[Seany C]

Sentient weapons are less of a problem (although not conceptually ideal) in a variant where all classes melee a fair bit. In classes where spellcasters melee very little (ToME, FAA a bit), it unbalances the classes a little as melee-ers get the weapon bonuses as they develop while 'casters don't. Alternatively, develop some equivalent equipment for casters that develops as they kill monsters with spells...

[EricCamp]

How about a Magical Staff (wielded as A meele weapon) as it lvls up it gives you better spell usage percentages, a Random chance to pick up a spell from a circle of magic that you wouldn't normally be able to cast that you can cast 'through' it. Plus a chance to get resistances like the other weapons above. Because you have no choice on what spells you might get I don't think this would be too powerfull.

Thanks for the feedback so far.

[Seany C]

Again, you might be interested in ToME. This features ego/artifact Mage Staves that can increase spell power and spell points, and can store a spell (while it can't grant access to otherwise unknown spells*, it can reduce the amount of spellbooks required to carry around).

*Actually, it can hold an otherwise-unknown Rune-spell but I'm not sure if these work correctly in ToME at the moment...


The only thing to consider if you're building your own variant is that these changes will make the game slightly easier -if you want the overall difficulty level to stay the same, you'll need to downgrade some other character strengths OR make monsters somehow a bit tougher... and that's where balance dilemma come in...

[Seany C]

PS Quests are present in quite a few variants - ToME, older versions of Z, Entro, probably some more...

[EricCamp]

--"The only thing to consider if you're building your own variant is that these changes will make the game slightly easier -if you want the overall difficulty level to stay the same, you'll need to downgrade some other character strengths OR make monsters somehow a bit tougher... and that's where balance dilemma come in... "--


That is where the random uniques come in. You have no idea about them cause you have never faced them before... ;-)


As for the quests on Entroband and Tome, I like them alot.... just want more, more, more.....lol.
Another thing I was considering was extending lvls to 100, and depths to 200DL, thus would have to strengthen higher lvl monsters (or create new ones) as well....lol...



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[Seany C]

Random uniques would be interesting - I don't think I've seen them before...

...most long-term players complain about the game being too long, not too short, so your 'deeper dungeon' plan might increase the tedium factor. One way to eliminate this might be to have "shafts" at certain points that drop you from, say, 2500' to 3000' (you'd have to modify the monster list, though, or you'd hardly ever see the monsters native to 2500'-2950').
An alternative would be to tinker with the later DLs in V without deepening them - there are relatively few new non-unique monsters below 4000' * so there's plenty of room to stick nasty new ones in there...

* at least, there wasn't in the 2.9.* days - I've not played V in quite some time - really must give it another whirl...

[EricCamp]

Ok, deeper dungeon isn't the answer but alot of new nasty critters is.... note taken.
Another Idea I was tossing around was a mean deep nasty that could 'knock' your equipment, rings, shields, armor, off of you tossing it to the floor (just one item at a time), thus leaving you 'vulnerable' if said item was providing you that much needed resistance..... ooo sounds soo devlishly mean does it not? Poor @'s scrambling to pick up thier gear with Dragons and such on thier tail......!!

[Lipa]

You should also check out PORTRALIS (read my review - there's a link on the Variants -> Portralis page). You'll find lots and lots of randomly generated stuff and semi-unique monsters (called "elites" and "bosses"), plus an entire quest-based story with dialogues. A really excellent and fun variant!

Check it out!