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#257 Some of the loot from Yarid's house should be moved to other maps
Yarid's house has like 5 stat potions whereas most quests that are much more challenging don't have any.
It also has a Mithril Chainmail and a Bonecrusher, both in the same map with abundant stat potions, even though quality items are generally very hard to come by.
I would suggest moving some of the stat potions and one of the quality items to some other suitable maps.
After a playthrough (with a high level character) and examining the map via the editor, here are my thoughts:
There are certainly a large number of random_potion items. I count 8 in the map proper, 1 hidden, and 2 in the final treasure room, making for 11 random potions total. There is also a manually placed potion of mana. During my playthrough, 7 of the 11 random potions resulted in actual potions, and 5 of those were stat potions.
There is a random_artifact in the treasure room. Considering this dungeon contains only moderately difficult enemies, and the most difficult aspect is leanring the procedure and navigating the puzzles, it would be a relatively easy map to farm repeatedly for artifacts. Contrast this with the Summoner's House in Red Town (pup_land/jk/gs_house), which has had its artifact removed, and the Scorn old city, which gives just one artifact after the entire quest.
There is a statically placed mithril mail. Whether this is balanced is not immediately clear. From my memory, in the past, the only way to reliably get mithril mail at low to medium levels was to go outside of scorn.
The map has several areas where gates must be opened by standing on or placing objects onto small buttons, but the buttons are invisible. Low level players cannot be expected to know where these buttons are, nor can they be expected to have the spell "show invisible" at their disposal, and know where to use it. It is possible to make it nearly all the way through the map before being blocked by one of these hidden buttons, and so the player may not know what to do.
So, my proposal is this:
Remove the random_artifact and all random_potions, except one in the treasure room. Replace the missing potions with "minor" potions, like balms, healing/mana potions, minor potions of life, or similar. The best way to accomplish this would be with a separate treasurelist that includes only minor potion-items, but that may require more work.
Remove the random_artifact.
Either move the mithril mail into the treasure-room, or even better: replace it with a buffed "regular" armor.
Rework the invisible buttons to either have levers, or puzzles that require moving boulders according to instructions in a note.
Rework the basilisk to prevent it from becoming a difficulty spike. Either nerf its stats, or replace it with a much weaker monster.
Other notes about the map:
This map is a classic example of a good dungeon that takes plenty of time to figure out, has some lore sprinkled throughout, and requires the player to take it slow and explore, rather than just battling through hordes of enemies. Any reworks should keep this in mind, and try to preserve the overall feel of the map.
The map may benefit from changing the tileset a bit, or introducing some dim lighting, as it doesn't quite feel like a dungeon with the very light color scheme.
The spiderwebs and mushrooms are a great atmospheric touch.
Feedback is very welcome, and other input or ideas before I actually do the work of overhauling the map.
Seems reasonable to me.
This sounds reasonable, especially after nerfing/replacing the basilisk. If nerfing instead of replacing, I would suggest at least removing its blinding attack and increasing ac to make it easier to kill.
I also think that adding more armor and weapons that are better than what can be found in the stores but worse than the current artifacts is a very welcome idea in general.
I would also like to propose adding a hint on the top floor that there's some good equipment waiting downstairs – especially since there is that ball lightning trap which at least used to kill lower level characters almost instantly, and thus deter them from exploring further.
Ticket moved from /p/crossfire/bugs/862/
Can't be converted:
With the current Trunk changes, direct combat against the basilisk is even harder than before, as are the magical guards that are at the south east portion of the main map. However, the basilisk is not a difficulty spike and does not require adjusting.
The basilisk is designed to be difficult to engage in direct combat and may not be possible to actually kill at the level the map is intended to be played unless you have lots of spellcasting to toss at it or thousands of arrows fired threewide at it. Instead, the intended way to deal with the basilisk is using all of those pushable blocks you find in the room before as well as in the basilisk's own room in order to trap it, thus allowing you to avoid it. The basilisk's blinding attack is designed to make it difficult to engage, but it doesn't actually hit all that hard, hence the ability to push things around.
On the newer version of Crossfire, the Magic Guards regenerate so quickly and have such high AC that you probably won't be able to kill them. They also reflect magic and missiles. However, again, the first two can be dealt with by trapping them (the room that has the centipedes works just fine) and the final two can be dealt with by simply closing the gate to their area once you're done. This appears to be a deliberate balancing decision.
The treasure may be a bit overpowered for the map. It's possible to farm it for stuff like Levitation/Speed Boots, Darkblades, etc on each reset. The Mithril Chainmail is a reasonable reward though for finding the map considering the early trap you have to deal with and the general difficulty involved (and Mithril Chainmail isn't terribly valuable for farming either, and there's an even easier set you can get in another beginner map without facing anything harder than goblins).
The Basilisk does not need to be killed, it can be imprisoned by moving boulders. I would prefer to seee the basilisk stay that strong and allow the player to figure that out too. i remember fondly the first time i imprisoned him and i do not whish to take the experience away from new players.