The Slime Cave

[Kashim]

I've always seen the slime cave as just about the hardest cave in the game, since the slime actor conditions can literally stack until you cannot act, and immediately take 100 hits and die. As of right now, there's very little reward at the end for knocking out the boss, and no plot line or quest that uses the cave. I'm wondering if the cave would be the perfect spot for a Legendary or Extraordinary item to be farmed? Obviously any items that survived in that dungeon would have to be exceptionally durable, or made of glass.

Then that made me wonder: how would you feel about a one-shot wonder dagger (Legendary/Extraordinary) like this:

Shadow Glass Knife
AP: 4 AC: 15, AD: 10, Critical Chance: 50, Critical Multiplier 4.
On Hit: On Source: 95% chance Minor Weapon Feebleness x15, 4 rounds
Flavor text: It breaks and reforms, breaks and reforms. Shockingly smooth and sharp as death, you'll only get one strike, so make it count.

Because its damage is largely based on crits, it won't unbalance most of the big bosses, since they're immune to crits anyway, and most players won't have the patience to wait 4 rounds for the Feebleness to wear off after every fight. However, once players get to a high enough level that the 35 damage is less important, it could be a valuable weapon. When I hear people talking about being level 100, something like this could be right up their alley.

For the boss drop, I was thinking something nice, but not unbalancing. Maybe something that would work with the dagger:

Shadow Glass Helmet
BC: 5, Critical Chance: 5, AC: 5
Flavor text: Shockingly hard and durable, this helmet does not restrict the wearer's sight like most do.
Just because the woodcutter's hat is the only hat that has critical chance on it. This would give people the option to have something else (better), but wouldn't be broken, just a little bit better, and something you have to fight hard to get. No one who isn't doing a critical build is gong to bother with it though.

[rijackson741]

I agree that the rewards for the slime cave do not match the difficulty. The boss drop is not only not very good, but you can buy it (cheaply, since it's no good) It's not the only boss drop that's not very good, but it is relatively hard to get. There's a problem with changing a boss drop though: all those that have already defeated the boss will have no way to get it. The extraordinary item is a good idea. In fact, I was looking for a place to put a new one. Thanks for the suggestion

I thought about a glass sword at one point, that broke on the first hit but did a huge amount of damage. There's no way to create a single use weapon for use in normal combat, but such a thing could be created (and destroyed) as part of a quest.

[Kashim]

That's why I made it "enchanted" the way I did, with the huge stacks of minor weapon feebleness representing the weapon as "broken", but some enchantment causing it to reform itself every time it gets broken.
I see the problem with changing the boss drop in that way. Is there no way to have the patch cause the boss to respawn if it was killed?

The other thing you could do would be to add some onto that cave. It's very shallow at the moment, and since you'd want to have a reasonable number of enemies to kill in order to farm up an extraordinary there (or else you have the branchtender problem) the cave could probably use a little bit of extension anyway. Add a section to it, have the current "boss" function as a kind of "mini-boss" then add another, harder (oh god, why am I suggesting this?) boss to a later portion of the cave.

[rijackson741]

I see the problem with changing the boss drop in that way. Is there no way to have the patch cause the boss to respawn if it was killed?

No, because a simple patch would only change the content, not the code that governs respawn. Once a unique monster has been killed, it's not coming back.

The other thing you could do would be to add some onto that cave. It's very shallow at the moment, and since you'd want to have a reasonable number of enemies to kill in order to farm up an extraordinary there (or else you have the branchtender problem) the cave could probably use a little bit of extension anyway. Add a section to it, have the current "boss" function as a kind of "mini-boss" then add another, harder (oh god, why am I suggesting this?) boss to a later portion of the cave.

The Mother of all slimes, or the father of all oozes? . I don't think that's necessary. I think there are enough Ochre jellies and Crimson jellies.

[Duvalon]

I don't have much to add, unfortunately, but I really like Kashim's idea of using the slime cave for an extraordinary. And the glass/breakable equipment too would be an interesting twist.

[auroradormita]

I see the problem with changing the boss drop in that way. Is there no way to have the patch cause the boss to respawn if it was killed?

No, because a simple patch would only change the content, not the code that governs respawn. Once a unique monster has been killed, it's not coming back.

Is there a way for the patch to replace the unique bosses with an identical unique boss? That wouldn't be respawning per se, the computer would think that one character has been removed and another added, but it would appear to the player to have respawned.

[Zukero]

That's one of the possible ways to do it. Another would be to programmatically respawn it when loading saves from v0.7.1 in which it has been killed already.

[rijackson741]

Is there a way for the patch to replace the unique bosses with an identical unique boss? That wouldn't be respawning per se, the computer would think that one character has been removed and another added, but it would appear to the player to have respawned.

Yes, as Zukero says that would be possible. Monsters (and everything else) have internal IDs that the player never sees. If you change the internal ID it's a different monster, but to the player one that's indistinguishable from the old one.

Another would be to programmatically respawn it when loading saves from v0.7.1 in which it has been killed already.

I assumed that would be more work than it's worth for the sake of a special case of respawning one monster for one game version.

[Zukero]

In this particular case, it's a bit different than changing the ID.

Once you visit a map, all the "unique" mobs are spawned in it (along with the standard ones).
The "unique" is never respawned, but its state is saved in your saved game (Map->Spawn Area->Individual monster).
So, when you return to the cave, you either see the unique because your saved game has remembered it, or you don't see it.

Here, we would be adding/changing a unique mob on an existing map. Any player that already visited this map will see neither the old unique (if it was previously killed) nor the new one.

One way using content would be to add a "onEnter" script on that map that activates a new spawnArea (for the new unique) if you had previously killed the old unique. For new players, that's a boss you have to kill twice to get the price

[rijackson741]

Learning all the time . I didn't realize that's how it worked. I assumed it tracked which uniques you had killed, and didn't respawn them, so any new unique would be spawned.

Personally, I think it's more trouble than it's worth to change a boss drop, with too many ramifications. Existing players would likely never even know, because they would assume they had killed that boss, and that there was therefore no reason to go back.