REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

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Inkweaver
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REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Inkweaver »

I had an idea that could be used to develop mutually exclusive schools of magic. Currently it is possible to learn every school. I feel that it would be more interesting if The Mana World had mutually exclusive paths that forced players to make choices about what they want to do and whether they want to be good or evil.

So I thought of a quest.

The Story

I starts in a cave deep below Hurnscald, where a sinister, evil dark magician waits:
start_npc.png
start_npc.png (6.81 KiB) Viewed 3315 times
This magician offers to give you a better weapon, a cursed dagger which does much more damage than an ordinary weapon.
weapon-cursed_dagger.png
weapon-cursed_dagger.png (626 Bytes) Viewed 3314 times
To get this special you must perform a rite which enters you in his school of dark magic. You get a cursed dagger, but you forever fall from the graces of Wyra, Elenore, and other magic teachers.

Specifications

The cursed dagger will be a very special weapon.

It has a base attack of 200, a phenomenal damage factor that is explained by the fact that the daggers curse causes it to drink from the HP of monsters you attack with it.

The dagger also has improved attack speed and accuracy, making it easier to hit monsters.

There's only one drawback:

As long as the cursed dagger is equipped it drinks from your own HP, similar to the poison effect. It is like being poisoned the moment you pick it up, and the poison doesn't stop until sometime after you unequip it.

Another caveat is that to use a cursed dagger you must be wearing a demon mask.

If you get a second cursed dagger from the evil NPC you can equip it as well, and it takes the place of your shield, allowing you to attack with two hands, for phenomenal damaging attacks.

However, to be able to wield a second cursed dagger you must be wearing both a demon mask and a black robe. And, by the way, it drinks your HP twice as fast.

A black particle effect would also be nice. As long as you have at least one cursed dagger equipped you emit a strange black particle aura.

Drawbacks to the Cursed Dagger

Making a Cursed Dagger involves the following ingredients:

a normal dagger,
5 dark crystals,
15 sulpher piles.

The cursed dagger is created in a ritual that combines the ingredients with a mouboo sacrifice. At the same time you are accepted into a school of dark magic.

Needless to say you are forever banned from nature magic and healing magic.

This could be a serious limitation in the future, but some people might not mind taking it, just so they can be evil.

A major drawback of the cursed dagger is that its hard to use it and survive.

Especially if you are using two, with a demon mask and black robe equipped you can kill really fast, but you are very vulnerable to attack, and meanwhile the daggers are drinking your HP.

The only way to use it would be with a couple healers to back you up, but what white magic healer would want to risk their standing with Elenore to heal an evil magician?

So I doubt that these daggers will be used by any but the most evil players and even then, not as primary weapon, but rather as a quick assassination tool.

Possible effects on the world

I think that it is good to start incorporating serious decisions that players have to make about which direction they want to go.

I see a lot of players running around with names like "Evil Magician," etc. That's what they want to be, but they can't in this game at this time. I think it will be interesting to see how this leads to magic specialization and magic guilds as people have to choose between which type of magic they want to use.

What is Needed

Probably a better NPC character image to replace the one I scrapped together from the sex change surgeon and the monster skull helmet.

Personally, I think the cursed dagger image looks pretty good, but someone else might not think so.

Also needed are scripts for the NPC and patching it into the rest of the NPC's. Also code for the item and the equipped cursed dagger particle effect.
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Kage
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Kage »

How about this instead, what if the cursed dagger lowered your vit by say... 50?

This will decrease both your HP and armor a great deal.
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Inkweaver
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Inkweaver »

That is a definite possibility and much easier to code I am sure.

However, I think that the poison idea is better because we don't want this weapon to be too powerful.

Sure it's got a great attack, but if it is too good of a weapon then everyone will just switch over to it. Instead, the weapon needs to be balanced by a major drawback to match its major power.

I picture the weapon eating HP at a steady rate while equipped, but giving major accuracy and strength benefits, allowing players to give all their stat points to vitality. These players would have to give everything to vitality to survive using the cursed dagger, but they wouldn't have to worry so much about other stats, except intelligence for magic.

So use of the weapon would require brief bursts of major killing, then a resting period to recover, and repeat.

A totally different style, but interesting.
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Kage
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Kage »

Inkweaver wrote:That is a definite possibility and much easier to code I am sure.

However, I think that the poison idea is better because we don't want this weapon to be too powerful.

Sure it's got a great attack, but if it is too good of a weapon then everyone will just switch over to it. Instead, the weapon needs to be balanced by a major drawback to match its major power.

I picture the weapon eating HP at a steady rate while equipped, but giving major accuracy and strength benefits, allowing players to give all their stat points to vitality. These players would have to give everything to vitality to survive using the cursed dagger, but they wouldn't have to worry so much about other stats, except intelligence for magic.

So use of the weapon would require brief bursts of major killing, then a resting period to recover, and repeat.

A totally different style, but interesting.
they could eat to offset the effect of the poison, while a vit decease could not be prevented.

-50 vit plus the loose ability to heal with magic is a harder punishment.

I offer this:

Curse Dagger

Obtain:
Dagger
5 Dark crystals
15 Sulfur
Must have chosen the path of dark
Forfit the ability to cast life magic

Stats:
+200 attack
+10 Magic
-50 vit
Fast attack speed
Good amount of accuracy
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<thorbjorn> Yes. :P
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Enchilado!
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Enchilado! »

Cursed dagger is all very well, but is that and the forfeiting of Life magic all there is too the Dark Side? In Project Plum (you either know what this is or don't) I decided that each spell, or possibly each school, would either by Light, Dark or Neutral. A mage who takes the path of darkness can only cast Dark and Neutral spells; likewise, a Light mage can cast only Light and Neutral.
Spells such as Flare Dart, Enchanted Knuckles, Arrow Rain and all the existing War spells could be Neutral. New spells could include typically RPG-style spells such as Burst of Darkness, Curse and all the others.
Spells in PP were going to be arranged as follows:
School
Spell-chain
Spell
The schools of magic would be something similar to TMW. A spell-chain (I don't know what it would be called in the actual game) would consist of a firm theme - lightning strikes from the sky, big balls of fire, plant tendrils growing out of the ground and so on. NPCs would merely teach the first spell in the spell-chain, which might be five or more spells long. After the player has accomplished Flash of Flame, for example, and has practiced it a lot, they are then able to cast the next spell in the chain, which might be Fireball. And after practicing this one (for even longer) they can cast Firestorm or whatever comes next. Thus, and let us take the lightning chain for this example, to cast the highest spell in the chain (Thunderstorm, which strikes lightning at all monsters on the screen) you must first have mastered and practiced diligently all the four or five lightning spells before it, not merely have a magic level of 70.

I'm deviating. I shall return to the subject of Light and Dark magic.
There needs to be at least as many Dark magic spells as Light ones.
There. That was all.

~I myself would go for the Dark Side...
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Kage
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Kage »

Enchilado! wrote:Cursed dagger is all very well, but is that and the forfeiting of Life magic all there is too the Dark Side? In Project Plum (you either know what this is or don't) I decided that each spell, or possibly each school, would either by Light, Dark or Neutral. A mage who takes the path of darkness can only cast Dark and Neutral spells; likewise, a Light mage can cast only Light and Neutral.
Spells such as Flare Dart, Enchanted Knuckles, Arrow Rain and all the existing War spells could be Neutral. New spells could include typically RPG-style spells such as Burst of Darkness, Curse and all the others.
Spells in PP were going to be arranged as follows:
School
Spell-chain
Spell
The schools of magic would be something similar to TMW. A spell-chain (I don't know what it would be called in the actual game) would consist of a firm theme - lightning strikes from the sky, big balls of fire, plant tendrils growing out of the ground and so on. NPCs would merely teach the first spell in the spell-chain, which might be five or more spells long. After the player has accomplished Flash of Flame, for example, and has practiced it a lot, they are then able to cast the next spell in the chain, which might be Fireball. And after practicing this one (for even longer) they can cast Firestorm or whatever comes next. Thus, and let us take the lightning chain for this example, to cast the highest spell in the chain (Thunderstorm, which strikes lightning at all monsters on the screen) you must first have mastered and practiced diligently all the four or five lightning spells before it, not merely have a magic level of 70.

I'm deviating. I shall return to the subject of Light and Dark magic.
There needs to be at least as many Dark magic spells as Light ones.
There. That was all.

~I myself would go for the Dark Side...
Enchilado
Well War and Life are the only real opposites we have. I would say war is dark magic, and life is white magic.

Healing is normally looked at as good
Killing is looked at as evil

or you could remain neutral and have both, but not be as good at either.
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Kill3rZ
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Kill3rZ »

Kage wrote:
Well War and Life are the only real opposites we have. I would say war is dark magic, and life is white magic.

Healing is normally looked at as good
Killing is looked at as evil

or you could remain neutral and have both, but not be as good at either.

I don't quite agree. Snakes, scorpions, skulls, the jack-o etc. are evil aggressive creatures and I don't think that killing them should mark you as evil. A "white" mage should not be a dumb weak naive one.

I would like to suggest a different approach to dark/white warrior/archer/mage. I think that killing evil creatures should upset the Lord of Darkness while killing animals and some legendary phantasy good/natural creatures would upset the good NPC's of TMW. We need some really strong good/natural creatures. A dark player will not be automatically attacked by evil creatures, but by good/natural ones. They would be able to summon evil creatures and they should have their own villages (we wouldn't want some wise guys summoning a bunch of skulls in Hurnscald just for fun.) It would also be unfair for the dark noob to summon "forrest elders", "elves" or a cute white "bigfoot" in their village. So either we have separate villages or all menhirs provide "magic protection".

Poison (evil) could be mirrored by "choking vines" (nature's way to fight) or holy water effect (it burns and it burns until you can completely wipe it off.

The war spells should specialize: spells against white and spells against dark. It shouldn't be that much of a difference in power. Just a nice mirror effect. If it's a bargain for power vs. kindness it's not that much of a choice for most players. It's just a game and I admit I would probably make and grow both a good and an evil character and chose the one with the best gameplay regardless of color.

Healing is pretty important too. I'm sure we can find an evil, twisted way to close our wounds. For example, basic evil healing spell could involve sucking the life of a little creature trapped in a jar (the evil healing teacher will expensively supply them, but you get the spell to trap them yourself at magic lvl 2). Advanced healing should be "sucking the life from the earth" or something (the ground around the mage who healed gets decayed for a while - after trapping and torturing lots of creatures your evilness comes from within and the suffering you bring comes naturally).
Inkweaver
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Inkweaver »

Kill3rZ wrote:
Kage wrote:
Well War and Life are the only real opposites we have. I would say war is dark magic, and life is white magic.

Healing is normally looked at as good
Killing is looked at as evil

or you could remain neutral and have both, but not be as good at either.

I don't quite agree. Snakes, scorpions, skulls, the jack-o etc. are evil aggressive creatures and I don't think that killing them should mark you as evil. A "white" mage should not be a dumb weak naive one.

I would like to suggest a different approach to dark/white warrior/archer/mage. I think that killing evil creatures should upset the Lord of Darkness while killing animals and some legendary phantasy good/natural creatures would upset the good NPC's of TMW. We need some really strong good/natural creatures. A dark player will not be automatically attacked by evil creatures, but by good/natural ones. They would be able to summon evil creatures and they should have their own villages (we wouldn't want some wise guys summoning a bunch of skulls in Hurnscald just for fun.) It would also be unfair for the dark noob to summon "forrest elders", "elves" or a cute white "bigfoot" in their village. So either we have separate villages or all menhirs provide "magic protection".

Poison (evil) could be mirrored by "choking vines" (nature's way to fight) or holy water effect (it burns and it burns until you can completely wipe it off.

The war spells should specialize: spells against white and spells against dark. It shouldn't be that much of a difference in power. Just a nice mirror effect. If it's a bargain for power vs. kindness it's not that much of a choice for most players. It's just a game and I admit I would probably make and grow both a good and an evil character and chose the one with the best gameplay regardless of color.

Healing is pretty important too. I'm sure we can find an evil, twisted way to close our wounds. For example, basic evil healing spell could involve sucking the life of a little creature trapped in a jar (the evil healing teacher will expensively supply them, but you get the spell to trap them yourself at magic lvl 2). Advanced healing should be "sucking the life from the earth" or something (the ground around the mage who healed gets decayed for a while - after trapping and torturing lots of creatures your evilness comes from within and the suffering you bring comes naturally).
Amazing ideas!

That makes a lot of sense. I agree that white mages shouldn't be weak. I mean, nature magic has the potential to be extremely destructive for fighting the forces of evil.

But something like this cursed dagger could be the start of specialization forcing players to choose between white and dark magic.
Kage wrote:
they could eat to offset the effect of the poison, while a vit decease could not be prevented.

-50 vit plus the loose ability to heal with magic is a harder punishment.

I offer this:

Curse Dagger

Obtain:
Dagger
5 Dark crystals
15 Sulfur
Must have chosen the path of dark
Forfit the ability to cast life magic

Stats:
+200 attack
+10 Magic
-50 vit
Fast attack speed
Good amount of accuracy[/quote

That is true.

I agree. A vit decrease would be crippling especially with the requirement that one equipped cursed dagger requires an equipped demon mask, and two equipped cursed daggers requires a demon mask and a black robe. This would limit defense. Limited vit would then balance the extreme power that two of these cursed daggers would give an evil mage.
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Jumpy
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Jumpy »

i am sorry

even if i like the idea

it is too easy too obtain

make the elements needed much in numbers and types
2 itens
10 sulphur powders
15 iron powders
20 bottles of water
100 logs
10 snake skins
2 leather patches
a spell from the devil spirit you gain with
-1.000.000 monster points minimum
-or the help of a dark magician that got it

magician has to enter equiped as magician and you have to protect him to reach the place where the sword will be manufactured...

mmm starting to be interesting as a quest

and of course ! ! ! this sword can not be sold or trade ! ! ! so that
1. a player cannot equip it on a second, third or forth char to level fast (let's make it fair)
2. so that there is noone starting spamming and beggin around (annoying and quiting the value to have htis sword making it obtainable would be a pity)

regarding dark or white magic
weapon will look the same or just the hand part to handle color can change
stats may be different in combination of status lvl more def for one more attack for the other one

regards
DBMP - BMS - HFDI
Don't Bring Me Problems - Bring Me Solution
and Have Fun Doing It : P

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Inkweaver
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Inkweaver »

I agree that it might be a little too easy to obtain.

How about

1 dagger,
5 dark crystals
20 sulphur,
20 iron powder,
10 snake skins,
5 mountain snake tongues.

Requiring itens wouldn't make much sense as they aren't "real" items.
this sword can not be sold or trade ! ! !
Good idea. This is essential so that a white magician can't just start an evil character and then transfer the weapon over to himself to avoid loosing nature and healing magic.
Kill3rZ
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Kill3rZ »

Put some grass snake tongues in the mix too. This is too good to be obtained cheaply. Or, as there is a graveyard stage in progress, perhaps we will have some worthy monsters in there dropping some rare stuff...
Inkweaver
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Inkweaver »

Kill3rZ wrote:Put some grass snake tongues in the mix too. This is too good to be obtained cheaply. Or, as there is a graveyard stage in progress, perhaps we will have some worthy monsters in there dropping some rare stuff...
That's a good idea. Perhaps this weapon could be introduced about the same time as the graveyard extension.
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kasra5004
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by kasra5004 »

I really like the idea of being boycotted if u become a dark mage/warlock. This means u have your special magic school and spells. with the current form there isn`t any big difference between evil and good path. In a more complicated form, we can add a new stat as" karma". when u cast a dark spell,u lower your karma , then we can separate the quests.Every NPC first checks ur karma then gives u the quest. With this system every path has its own benefits and detriments. And if your spells made u a dark mage-and u regretted it- then u would have the ability to comeback.- of course by losing a lot of xp.-

What do u think about this "karma" idea?
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Jumpy
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Jumpy »

and some stingers either for dark or white anyway they are dark and sagatha hates them
may be this weapon could poison the mobs they attack :D

Regards
DBMP - BMS - HFDI
Don't Bring Me Problems - Bring Me Solution
and Have Fun Doing It : P

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Kage
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Re: REQ Cursed Dagger Weapon

Post by Kage »

I don't think the obtainability is the real question in debate. Since it is a alignment weapon, a lot of people won't ever get it.

Plus evil path is already hard enough, take into account the 100,000 gold to get nature magic + 60,000 more to learn the spells them self.
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