The Legend (at least an idea for one)

[Tinkerbell]

The Legendary Snow Scorpian

I think it would be nice to have a monster that TRULY needs teamwork. Imagine a monster that live in southern Nivalis (on a new map). She only spawns once every 24 hours or so (randomly), She hits 2 times harder then Jacko but has 6 to 8 times the HP. She is the opposite of aggressive (she tries to run away)so you must have at LEAST 1 archer to get her attention (battlemagic will not work). She can cast heal on herself, so you must have 1 mage to cast stop-spell on her, often, (I spoke to Fate who said this COULD be made a level 3 magic spell). You would need at least 1 mage to heal the party, as said... she hits HARD. And of course, many warriors. She can call other scorpians, as she is the mother of all scorps in game, they will do anything to help momma out.

She drops:
-3 to 5 iron potions
-3 to 5 concentration potions
-snow goggles (5% chance)
-some new item used for a future quest(25% chance)

I spoke to 3 Devs so far, Meway, Fate and Black Don, they all liked the idea. They all said it needs work, will take a while to balance etc.. but would be an interesting new monster concept.

The basic idea here is to have a monster that can NOT be beaten unless there are at LEAST 3 to 4 (although 8 to 10 would be better) players working together. She should not be allowed to be spawned in spawn parties as that would take away from her mystery. I also like the idea of a NPC who predicts when she will show up...

NPC says 1 of the following
-I dont sence a thing
-Wont be long now (will spawn within 6 hours)
-I can feel something in the air (within 30 mins)

She will be 2 times the size of a normal scorp so in the pic below, use your imagination, also, this is only a VERY preliminary drawing based on current scorps, her look will improve. (Thank you Meway, my friendly Dev in pink )

Sooo thats about it, I want comments (be nice, this is my 1st attempt to bring new stuff to the game, not counting the mini-skirt. Hope you like.
See you in game.
Tink

[Crush]

Really strong boss monsters is something TMW really lacks at the moment. The only real boss monster is Jack-O.

But someone has to volunteer to actually do the graphics.

[Link , hero of time]

"The Legendary Snow Scorpian" I think is a good idea because there are too many monster in Nivalis



in the land of snow there already plenty of monsters "spirit traks"

[lien]

good idea
but the sprit (monster) is too ...... bad

[enchilado]

It is a great idea, but perhaps not a Snow Scorpion, as I can't stand games with just loads of monsters basically the same in appearance. Whatever happened to the Yeti?

[Tinkerbell]

poison_ivy

I agree

Yeti should come, mine is not a replacement....

We need Yeti in nivalis, and Snake Lord and all others, i and (we) should not compeat, we need a LOT more.




ps.... piad

[Freeyorp101]

I think it would be nice to have a monster that TRULY needs teamwork.

Yes please! It would be nice to have an area with a true challenge, as opposed to relying on spawn events for anything remotely difficult, as it is currently...

Imagine a monster that live in southern Nivalis (on a new map). She only spawns once every 24 hours or so (randomly)

You could even use an NPC to make this a truly random spawn, as opposed to using static spawn points; something like a global timer that decrements a variable every 30 minutes, spawns when it hits zero, then calls a function when the snow scorpion is killed, resetting the variable to a random value and starting the timer again

She hits 2 times harder then Jacko

Hitting hard is a must; there are so many mobs that just do 1 damage every time that all evenly matched combat is boring (as it is currently, at least)

I'm not sure if you'd be interested in using this, but I think I've managed to get a splash damage skill working, so if you want, you could allow the snow scorpion to periodically hit multiple targets at once. Something that might keep people on their toes, in addition to a possible higher critical hit rate?

but has 6 to 8 times the HP.

Quite a bit there; even the snake lord is currently set to only have 4 times JackO health, though there are other supporting scripts there (as there would be with the snow scorpion as well, I guess?)
Still, would need to see how it goes during testing. The ability to quickly regenerate coupled with a sizeable health buffer might prove insurmountable, or it might prove a worthwhile challenge

She is the opposite of aggressive (she tries to run away)

Mob AI was something that always bothers me; there seem to be many mob modes available (from simpler canMove and canAttack flags to more involved boss, plant, and detector flags (the latter of which doesn't seem to do that much, I still have yet to look into how a lot of those flags work)) but I don't think there is a Flee flag among them..

Mob AI (or the lack of) has always been rather problematic; mobs are quite content to walk along towards a stack of more than a dozen high level characters over the corpses of their fallen clones. Some way to customize at what times a mob is content to engage in combat, some way to customize at what times a mob will attempt to flee, at what times a mob will give up running away and attempt to do what damage it can in it's (suspected) last moments...

Even some intelligent (non-random) target selection would be nice, though I don't have the slightest idea how the per-mob dmg log works (another thing that I will hopefully find the time to look into at some point...)

so you must have at LEAST 1 archer to get her attention (battlemagic will not work).

Not sure how this would work; I'm not even sure the mob knows the difference between ranged, conventional, or magical attacks right now (though I think I recall seeing some flags being set in battle.c; I'm not sure if that's persistent)

Or were you thinking of a more implicit requirement, wherein archers do ranged damage at a high enough rate of fire (or the mob doesn't rely on dodge enough for magic to be more effective than conventional attacks, assuming some flee system was hacked into tmwAthena)?

She can cast heal on herself, so you must have 1 mage to cast stop-spell on her, often, (I spoke to Fate who said this COULD be made a level 3 magic spell).

I had been working on something similar, but it used heal status effects (through a mob skill) and another status effect that cancels it (through a player character spell) (I don't think mobs can use magic at the moment?)

You would need at least 1 mage to heal the party, as said... she hits HARD. And of course, many warriors.

It will be nice to have something that poses a good challenge ingame

She can call other scorpians, as she is the mother of all scorps in game, they will do anything to help momma out.

That was a skill that I always thought was rather underused, given the possibilities. I'll need to check the available skill conditions, but it should hopefully be possible for her to summon only when she is under attack, rather than just idly summoning assistants for no apparent reason, as the slimes do

I also like the idea of a NPC who predicts when she will show up...

If an NPC script is used to summon her, adding something like this in (possibly with a bit of random variance?) should be easy

Hope you like.

Definitely.



---Freeyorp

[enchilado]

It'll give people a reason to go to Nivalis, too.

As for drops, I wouldn't give it anything too fancy, otherwise people won't kill it as much for fun as for "MUST FARM FOR DIS ITENS!!1!"

But I would be prepared to do inventory icons for whatever it does drop.

[Maxxie]

Well I loved it up and to seeing the sprite. I was thinking more of a Scorpion Queen Lady thing . So I put this together Its A bit more than a Glowing black scorpion but still not much. Please give some input and critique. I was thinking a weapon like A trident or spear. I must say I really Love the Idea that it takes a team and more than 1 or 2 players to kill thats the best and the rare spawning is awesome but in Nivalis? I think in the under ground would rock! We need to expand that cave under the town Of Hurns She could live there

[enchilado]

We need to expand Nivalis, not the caves under Hurnscald.

[Maxxie]

You expand what you want and ill expand what I want I would like to get to every town by underground cave. So by expanding the underground It could expand Nivalis' underground

[Maxxie]

"The Legendary Snow Scorpian" I think is a good idea because there are too many monster in Nivalis"

We need Killer Snow Men

[Link , hero of time]

"The Legendary Snow Scorpian" I think is a good idea because there are too many monster in Nivalis"

We need Killer Snow Men

the players need to kill snow men


They (the players) want to kill a living character has Nivalis


the yeti of North pike lives in a mansion frozen
"twilight princess"

[Tinkerbell]

Maxxie, I like your idea about that scorp-girl, why not have both.

The SS is not a regular monster, she spawns rarely and and is difficult to find and even more difficult to kill. As I said she is a legend, to find her and actually kill her is a treat. I even think once every 24 hours is a bit too often, mayby once every 48 hours would be better. Thing is this, I dont want her just to be a boss, but rather a rare treat. Thats why she should not be a replacement for snakelord or other bosses presented in the past.

I spoke to Melkior who had some cool ideas to make her a bit more complex, rather than misquote you Mel, I invite you to post your ideas here.

Freeyorp, I think you put a lot of thought in this and like your suggestions.

Remember, SS is not some creature to level on or get items, she spawns much too rarly for that.
I would like some ideas on how NPCs would have some tales about her, hints on her origins, tips on how to kill her, how its sad that she runs from humans or something like that.

One last thing... what if she has a timer... in the sense of... if the group doesnt kill her within a certain time frame... she runs away to fight another day this would make killing her an even better treat... just an idea. But of course.... not TOO short of a time, we dont wanna make her impossible to kill.

See you in game
Tink

[Lizandra]

I liked the idea of a scorpion girl too =)

Could you make the monsters bigger?