Ok, here's my wish list

[Higher Game]

You know the drill.

#1. Artifacts should be purposeful. Mercantile feels like a wasteful skill because of how valuable artifacts are. A non-axe user will simply sell that 5,000 gold axe and have plenty of gold. If you could give it to someone in exchange for a special benefit, it would open up more options and make mercantile more appealing. In ADOM, a popular roguelike, you have to give away 6 artifact weapons to access the ultra endings.

#2. Level 10 benefits to medicine and meditation. Like, a massive boost to health or fortify mana every few hundred turns. They aren't so appealing otherwise.

#3. A poison-air dungeon so toxic you can't even drink a potion before it's ruined. (inspired by the secret area you have to walk on fire to get to. Toxic resistance should get an area too). This would make the #2 skills, and many others, more interesting in an environment where you can't use potions. Magic-free areas might offer other challenges.

#4. Though associated with lesser RPGs, being able to redistribute skill points would be interesting. It's sort of like fast travel, a convenience for many players.

#5. Hidden endings, ultra hard uber bosses, etc. Eschalon II's increase in challenge over the first game was very welcome. Crank it up more for III, for veteran players.

#6. PLEASE make a fast mechanic for bashing. My high-strength warrior hauled around half a dozen clubs as "lockpicks", but it often took several minutes to get a door down. "Bash until weapon is worn" should be an option.

#7. Make a time-limited random maze or two to really give cartography some teeth. It's still soft. Time-limited quests are usually in poor taste, but not when they make a niche mechanic better.

#8. An explosives shop.

#9. Better tolerance for hands-free casting. Improving the weight limit is pointless now because it's always far too low.

#10. Forage-only ingredients.

#11. A timer to show you when your special recharges.

[Evnissyen]

Agree with #1 , #6 , #8(!) and #11.

Asterisk for #5: While I agree with having a bunch of scattered bosses, I don't agree -- like I said in another thread just yesterday -- that they should be insanely difficult. Too many developers do this, I suppose because a boss just wouldn't be a boss if he/she/it weren't insanely difficult to beat, and I find this kind of annoying.

Still, this game, unfortunately, suffers from a different kind of poor balancing: pretty hard in the beginning and really easy about 9 or 10 levels in . . . at least with archers. I'm going back into it now and I have this urge to replay with another type of character . . . not a mage; either a fighter or a rogue. Fighters are so simple and generic; maybe I'll try a rogue.

Again on #5: I like the idea of hidden endings.

#7: No no no no no! I hate hate hate mazes! They might be fun for the developer to make, but they're annoying for people like me who... well... hate mazes. There aren't any mazes in Book II, are there? I don't recall coming across any yet, by level 12 anyhow, which is the point I left off at.

Addition to #9: I've said this before, but I want to say it again: mages should not suffer casting penalties simply because they're wearing armor. Mages should be able to wear armor. In fantasy they're romanticized as unarmored robe-rats, and it doesn't make sense. It's just romanticizing. I don't see any reason why a person's spellcasting abilities -- which, after all, are controlled by the mind, not the muscles or the skeletal structure -- should be restricted by armor.

It just ends up making a weak adventurer (who keeps running out of spells -- or in RPG land, mana or spelljuice or whatever) even weaker.

But... on Cartography: 1. Yeah, maybe there should be other uses for the skill, though I can't come up with anything off the top of my head. Probably if I thought about it a little I could come up with something, but that's BW's business, anyhow. 2. If you've mapped out an area at an equipment-boosted level then maps shouldn't lapse back when you remove that equipment and cover the same territory. This is just nonsensical, and I know BW likes realism. If this is more trouble than it's worth to program, though, then I suppose you can always just take away any Cartography-boosting equipment.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

I can think of two mazes in Book II (though I haven't visited the second, which is apparently in the new Fathamurk expansion dungeon). The one from the original content is only slightly more complicated than the second floor maze in the Goblin Citadel in Book I. I understand the Fathamurk one is a real bear if you don't have good Cartography, though.

[Mod.]

ultra hard uber bosses

+1

#6. PLEASE make a fast mechanic for bashing. My high-strength warrior hauled around half a dozen clubs as "lockpicks", but it often took several minutes to get a door down. "Bash until weapon is worn" should be an option.

Bashing is supposed to take forever, that's the main incentive for using lockpicks instead (especially for players with no equipment degrading).

Make a time-limited
give cartography some teeth. It's still soft.

Yes, to better cartography use, no way to time-limited challanges. I've quit numerous games even for optional time-related challenges, even ones with little reward. This also goes along with the "multiple solutions" on my wish list.

An explosives shop.

No one will argue with you here. +1

Forage-only ingredients.

I like this idea best when I think of forage-only ingredients not being able to be sold at shops; it's already the best unlimited cash generator (if not the only useful one), doesn't need to be more powerful. Shop only ingredients too maybe? Items from foreign areas you can't find locally, used for powerful potions, can save you cash on the most powerful (and expensive) potions with high enough alchemy.

#11. A timer to show you when your special recharges.

Good idea, +1.

[IJBall]

You know the drill.

#1. Artifacts should be purposeful. Mercantile feels like a wasteful skill because of how valuable artifacts are. A non-axe user will simply sell that 5,000 gold axe and have plenty of gold. If you could give it to someone in exchange for a special benefit, it would open up more options and make mercantile more appealing. In ADOM, a popular roguelike, you have to give away 6 artifact weapons to access the ultra endings.

This gets to a suggestion that several of us have made - weapons and/or armor sets (e.g. Killi's Dwarven armor/weapons set, which when all collected would include a unique helm, chest armor, gloves, leggings, (boots?) and an axe).

It would be nice in Book III if you could gather an armor/weapons set together to be granted something like an extra "mega-super" bonus.

#2. Level 10 benefits to medicine and meditation. Like, a massive boost to health or fortify mana every few hundred turns. They aren't so appealing otherwise.

Yep. Either do something like this, or cut them as Skills entirely...

#4. Though associated with lesser RPGs, being able to redistribute skill points would be interesting. It's sort of like fast travel, a convenience for many players.

I'm not in favor of this suggestion, FWIW.

#8. An explosives shop.

I'm still hoping for a pirates' island/town/pub (i.e. more developed than Picaroon island's, with actual pirate NPCs, not just pirate merchants! ) - that was one of my favorite discoveries in Ultima IV.

#10. Forage-only ingredients.

This is another suggestion that I very much like!

One of my other favorite things about Ultima IV is that you had to do the legwork to actually track down Mandrake and Nightshade (by talking to NPCs). Something like that would be very welcome in Book III. I'd prefer that such a thing be a little more "flexible" than Ultima IV's conception (where you were allowed to gather the above reagents during full moons only ).

But a Reagent that could only be obtained by Foraging a certain map (or within a certain part of one (or more) maps) would be really cool.

#11. A timer to show you when your special recharges.

Something like that already exists in Book II - if you click on the little Status Window icons for, say, Cat's Eyes or Reveal Map, it will tell you how many turns are remaining in those spells. IIRC, there's something similar for Feats. So little to no work would need to be done for this request.

[Evnissyen]

My issue with armor sets is that if you find a really cool pair of gloves or boots, you have to check against your armor set bonus to see if the new benefits make up for losing the set bonus. If not, then you can't use that really cool pair of boots.

[CrazyBernie]

While I originally was on board with the "armor sets" idea... I've been growing to not favor it so much. Part of that reason is from playing MMO's where all of the good armor is composed of set pieces... and you need to grind away for an indefinite period of time to complete that set. So here's a slightly modified version of that idea:

Certain magical armaments are endowed with various affinities. For example, you find a magical leather helm, and once you've properly identified it you see that it has an affinity for two "elements," fire and ethereal. Later, you find a pair of gloves that have an affinity for poison and fire. When you wear both the gloves and the helm, you get a "fire affinity" set bonus - something like a boost to your fire magic, or fire damage added to your attacks. Then you come across a pair of boots that has an affinity for poison and ethereal, and bam, you get a triple affinity bonus.

The more pieces you find with matching affinities, the more powerful the bonus becomes, and perhaps there could be an extra mix bonus for finding items that are "perfect matches" (e.g. a shirt and leggings with identical multi-affinities). As a balance measure, the affinities would each take up an "enchantment slot" on an item.

This would allow you to build your own armor sets, and add a little twist to the worn out "Epic Set" formula that's become a bit overused.

[Kreador Freeaxe]

Hey Bernie,

That's a really cool idea, though I think maybe in threes rather than twos unless the two-piece bonus is pretty small and increases more with each additional affinity match.

Even if he can't get that into Book III, maybe something related to that can make it into BW's next game.

I'm also not excited by the ideas of sets the way they exist in a lot of other games. Like so much else about the Eschalon series, I like the freewheeling mix-and-match nature of the armor and weapons systems.

[IJBall]

Certain magical armaments are endowed with various affinities. For example, you find a magical leather helm, and once you've properly identified it you see that it has an affinity for two "elements," fire and ethereal. Later, you find a pair of gloves that have an affinity for poison and fire. When you wear both the gloves and the helm, you get a "fire affinity" set bonus - something like a boost to your fire magic, or fire damage added to your attacks. Then you come across a pair of boots that has an affinity for poison and ethereal, and bam, you get a triple affinity bonus.

The more pieces you find with matching affinities, the more powerful the bonus becomes, and perhaps there could be an extra mix bonus for finding items that are "perfect matches" (e.g. a shirt and leggings with identical multi-affinities). As a balance measure, the affinities would each take up an "enchantment slot" on an item.

This would allow you to build your own armor sets, and add a little twist to the worn out "Epic Set" formula that's become a bit overused.

I'm totally cool with this idea as an alternative to traditional 'sets'.

[CrazyBernie]

Hey Bernie,

That's a really cool idea, though I think maybe in threes rather than twos unless the two-piece bonus is pretty small and increases more with each additional affinity match.

Even if he can't get that into Book III, maybe something related to that can make it into BW's next game.

I'm also not excited by the ideas of sets the way they exist in a lot of other games. Like so much else about the Eschalon series, I like the freewheeling mix-and-match nature of the armor and weapons systems.

Nah, it'd have to be and added bonus for every piece... reason being you don't know if you're going to find another piece that will match up well enough to keep. I would keep the bonus relatively weak until you collect a full "set" and perhaps add another bonus of some sort for having "collected 'em all." For instance, matching pieces with fire affinity slowly increases your fire resistance until you have 7 pieces with fire affinity; then you get an additional bonus of enemies taking a small amount of fire damage whenever they physically strike you. We'll call that status icon "Inflamed"

The real question would be whether or not to allow such affinities to be placed upon items via enchantment... I'm leaning towards no. I think the affinities should be something that has slowly seeped into an item over years of exposure to some sort of magick.