Its critter killing time (dungeons, quests, ect.)

I think it will be a "dungeon crawl", which opens up an interesting option: the TB system will thus have to support terrein variance (the alternitive: "Look alive, men: you must now pass through the dreaded Flat, Empty Square Of Moria!" ). Therefore, it should be very easy to pipe in the mapgen code, and make varied-terrein tactical battles...\

A dungeon-crawl-only multiplayer would also be veeery cool....... that, and a dungeon editor! I also wonder if dungeons will be picked from a pre-made list, or somehow randomly designed.

I apologise for the "stream-of-consciousness" post, but it's a big topic.

Frogboy said that the different creatures will be individually rare, but varied. That means you aren't likely to find a civilization of unicorns or trolls, but maybe you'll stumble across a forest with a small population of various creatures or an isolated tribe of trolls.

And I would like to stress that 'critters' should not be entirely about recruiting or killing. They should be able to provide other opportunities as well. Geoff the Slug is a prime (but very specific) example.

Moria!  I freaking love that game.  Setting Moria as the standard, any kind of texture other than ASCI characters would be an improvement.  (I really hope you're not talking about Moria, the dungeon crawling game, rather than Moria from LoTR)

@pigeonpigeon:  I knew what he ment, but he made a point that anytime you had one on your side was a "big deal".   I agree entirely about other opportunities!   Any suggestions (other than our local slug)

P.S.  Why wouldn't you want dungeons in Elemental to be like this!?  (this is moria, for all those newer gamers out there, who missed the golden age of pre-win95)

Hmm... I remember him saying that having, say, a dragon on your side would be a very big deal. But I imagine (and hope) that the range of magical critters in the game will cover a very wide spectrum of archetype and combat ability. I think all fantastical beings should be stronger than (or have some other advantage over) regular troops in combat, but only the upper few levels should be really big deals. For example, yeti should be powerful in their own right but easily taken down by correct application of numbers. If my opponent as a yeti, it shouldn't be a big deal. If he has 20 yeti, then maybe I should start being worried. Likewise if he has a handful of Ents. And if he has 1 dragon I should be pissing my pants.

I wonder if there will be different breeds of dragons (with different stats), or just one type?

look at the media section paradoxnt:   there are several dragon breeds there.  I couldn't imagine that they would  have the same stats.

@pigeonx2:  I remember him talking about fantastic creatures in general being a big deal, before dragons were mentioned.  But I guess we'll  see.  (I personally think that Ents would cave to even 1 dragon.  But I'm a bigger fan of dragons being the most powerful creatures around.   The near indestructable forces I imagine from stories like "the wizard of Earthsea".  The dragon's stats in Burning Wheel also reflect this, being unable to even be injured except by "grey" stats and weapons)

I never fully understood anything said about dungeons. For practical purpose, it could had been chinese, russian or any other language that I don't understand. Hopeuflly we will get a journal or someone of those lucky ye will let us know when alpha hits. Until then, I wish I had an opinion.

Yeah, I'm with Winter (btw, I adore your latest avatar). I simply do not know enough. We know less about how dungeons are supposed to work than the magic system/research - and that says a lot. That is, it doesn't say squat.

I wonder if there'll be a viable option for those of us that don't want "fantastical" creatures in our armies, instead opting for.. racial purity.

I would like to see dungeons that:

• Are 3D (not FPS or anything, but no streight-up birds-eye views either)
  
• Have some kind of "theme" i.e. ice, lava, water, etc.
• Have enemies that also are grouped by "theme": a dungeon with all undead, a dungeon with all bugs, and so on.
• Aren't all just underground, have some mountain peaks, sky cities, and Atlantises thrown in as well.
• Contain numerous interactable objects, not just walls and enemies.
• Are designable.

don't forget that they can "link directly to quests"  (boogiebac made sure to bold that part)

Thats the part I'm most interested in.   Boogiebac confirmed that dungeons will include ruins and things like that, but what kind of quests will be linked to them I wonder?   I was kinda hoping for speculation there.

another reason I brought it up, is I am trying to figure out a few good questions for Denyu's surveys.   I am forming some questions to send him like "how do you want them to work" or something related to a possible "dungeon crawl" mode (fan or official made, doesn't really matter at this point) and I was hopping somebody would say something that would help create good questions (my brain is fried)

I hope the quests are not as simple as "kill X" or "find Y. If you survive to make it out, it's yours". I want to see much more varied objectives and sequences.

I hope we see quests like 'sneak into the Oger Bear Cavalry's cave and switch their chocolate for ex-lax.  Then plant evidence so they think Psychoak is responsible'.

everybody knows eetsmoresqrls is the on responsible, and I don't see how any quest-giver could expect proof otherwise.

But then again, the people who take that quest are pretty much F***ed anyway considering they are going into a cave of bear cav.

Surely the question should be what sort of person listens to a questgiver who is trying to unleash a horde of diarrhetic bear cavalry on the world?

One alternative could be for all such creatures being somewhat organized, and thus being able to talk to and treat diplomatically with all of them. Even if I can't get them to join me, maybe I could give them something in return for them protecting a border, or for providing LoS. I particularly like the idea of being able to use large forests as guarded borders by paying the inhabitants (whether with gold, magic, or some other resources or service) to harass any of my enemies that pass through it. Basically they'd remain independent but would render you some service in exchange for something else - you could even threaten them.

Also, maybe some critters could slowly restore life to blasted lands if left alone. That could provide a real incentive for not killing even some hostile critters, and for not recruiting as many of them as you can.

Well yeah. I guess it's just a matter of the magnitude of the "big deal." I don't see a yeti, for example, or an Ent taking on a legion of 300 decent troops all by themselves. Alone they should be capable of taking on double digits of regular units, maybe yetis on the smaller side and Ents on the higher side. But supported by an army they could be significantly more dangerous. I totally agree with you that a single dragon should be more than capable of beating a good number of Ents. The only individuals that should be able to rival dragons IMO are the most powerful late-game essence hoarding channelers and possible some other miscellaneous fantastical creatures (Frogboy hinted at there being other insanely powerful units that you might not even encounter in the game for weeks).

I remember the mention of creatures you would might play the game for weeks without seeing.  I wonder what kind of stuff falls under that catigory.  I find it hard to imagine what would work for that.   It would need to have quests and such based on it.  Some kind of ancient creature that has been chained deep beneath the  planet surface, or perhaps a being that has been adrift and frozen in space for millions of years that crashlands and is awoken by the entry of atmosphere.

Or it could be some Demon Lord, maybe it has to be summoned first (by a channeler or by event/quest-related cultists?), or maybe it's just holed up in some dungeon with enough powerful monsters inhabiting the place that you'd need a huge army just to fight your way to the super critter in question.

I don't think of Geoff the Slug as a dungeon critter at all. He's an Independent Power. Maybe his Swamp would need to be built with the dungeon blocks instead of the code chunks behind a human or Fallen community, and maybe both the Swamp and Geoff need links to existing quests and hooks for links to new quests.

My impression about the Beasts is that the sentient ones will be as rare as the very powerful ones, and I really like the idea of many (most?) of them being singular entities or parts of a small non-reproducing group, not 'breeds' of some sort. Espcecially if they're both sentient and magical, e.g. dragons.

p.s. Here's hoping that the 'little forests' stuff includes some sub-types: temperate rain forest, tropical rain forest, sub-tropical hardwood, swamp...

I actually want hordes of small, weak "cannon fodder" beasts, as well as the big guys, for one simple reason: I want "beast master" to be a valid platystyle in its own right. No powerful cities or great heroes, but a giant army of wild boars (and yes, that IS with an O, not an E . Sorry, Luckmann....)

I'd like to try that out. Although then I wouldn't want 'Beasts' as much as 'Animals'.

would/could his swamp not be a dungeon?   If a dungeon is like an X-com battle, its perfectly reasonable to imagine a  swamp as a possible dungeon location.

I didn't mean to imply that Geoff the Slug should be a dungeon critter. I like Johnny's original idea, where he'd have his little swamp area on the regular map and all. But I was just giving an example of other ways in which critters could be used to provide many different types of interactions between players and critters/beasts/whatever.

Re my previous Geoff mention, I was referring to landi's occasional oblique slug-references, not what you pigeonpigeon said. I was just typing straight from the brain while wondering just how big and flexible the 'dungeon' stuff will be as opposed to 'towns.'

On the Beasts thing, I used the capital because I'm under the impression that the devs have all units divided into humans, Fallen, and Beasts. I have no idea how much weight the prose on the Beasts lore page might still carry. Probably everything that can fight in a tactical battle descends from a common parent object, so categories should be flexible. And that old set of lore pages has zero info/hinting about undead units, traditional elementals, djinns, and other not-so-biological things common in the fantasy genre.

Most of the ideas here are very good.

I too would like to have a cool 3d engine for the dungeons.

As for the creatures strength I think it's not as simple as that. I could see a yeti going into battle and then when it starts to get into trouble it howles or whatever and then you see thousands of yetis apprearing in battle to come and help a brother in need. Now that would be awsome... if they come to fight for you of course... hehe