After an IRC chat session filled with ideas, I'm going to throw out something that might be fun and help get people out of town. Feel free to tack your ideas/modifications onto this thread, this is just a foundation of an idea that needs a lot of tweaking. Yes, it sounds a little like the existing treasure chest system, but I'm trying to expand on the idea, not copy it. TLDR version: Randomly generated chest placed into the world with a clue given out. The chest lasts only so long. Loot/tokens in the chest, tokens can be redeemed for valuable items. They differ from the regular treasure maps because they're not static and challenging to find. Hidden Stashes [The Lore, I'm really bad at this, but I think it is necessary] Similar to buried treasure chests, these stashes were tucked away by wealthy inhabitants of the lands hundreds of years ago. The great wizard Wolfgang, father of Mondain, discovered the existence of these treasures and feared such wealth would corrupt man. He used great magic to hide these treasures from all who inhabited the lands of Britannia. However, the death of Wolfgang at the hands of Mondain has slowly weakened the magic protecting the treasure and there are recent reports of adventurers discovering remnants of this great wealth scattered across the lands. What was left behind? What dangers await? It is up to you to decide if you have the courage to seek out these unknown treasures. The Details Three types of hidden stashes will spawn, a daily, weekly and monthly stash. The stash will spawn and remain for [duration open for debate] minutes until found. Players will receive clues to the location of the stash via an announcement from the Town Crier. However, players who are killing monsters at the time of the stash announcement will also see the announcement via an un-lootable note on monster corpses that they can read. [This monster mechanic keeps people from feeling they must just sit in town awaiting an announcement]. The Hidden Stash The quality of the items of the stash (Daily - easy/Weekly - Hard/Monthly - Extremely Difficult) will vary based upon the difficulty. The idea would be to make these a little different from treasure chests, with the inclusion of hard-to-find items [rares? oak boards?] and "Ancient Coins". Ancient Coins These coins would be found in every stash, the daily would contain a single coin. The weekly would contain 7 coins. The monthly would contain many more (but each player would only be able to loot a single coin from the monthly since it would require a team effort to find the monthly chest). These coins would be redeemable for various items to be determined by the UOR staff. [Rares? Silver coins? Trophies? A special title for bragging rights?] The Find / Encounter Daily Chests would feel a little like a level 3 map, except there would be no digging required, and would be soloable by many. However a series of tasks may be required before being able to obtain the treasure. Either freeing a prisoner, or returning to town to speak to a certain NPC, or a simple quest [killing a bear?] may be all that is needed and then a battle would take place. Only when all the guardians of the stash are defeated would it be redeemable. Weekly Chests scale in difficulty and would perhaps spawn within a three hour window on Sunday evenings. These may not be sitting out in the open, but may be under a "suspicious rock" or some other inconspicuous object. Only when this discovery is made would the weekly encounter begin, which could either: a) Trigger a battle, tougher than a daily and requiring 5 to 15 players. b) Open a portal to a final destination where a battle still takes place but in a special area designed exclusively for these encounters. Monthly Chests could require an even larger team. And again the battle could either be on-site or a portal trigger that would move the event to a controlled location (ensuring that late-arriving griefers would have difficulty getting to the scene). Other Thoughts - The "find" could be something as simple as bookcases in a town that trigger a portal that lead elsewhere. - Multi-stage finds could also exist for special events (holidays). In these, you will have to find a series of chests in order, each chest would contain an unlootable note with a clue to the next location. Only when a player finds a clue for the next location would the next chest actually spawn (preventing any accidental lucky leapfrogging). - For every hidden stash event that goes undiscovered, the token carries over to the next event and perhaps the overall reward slightly increases as well. - Make the monthly chest stress cooperation/unity amongst all players on the server by adding a "feature" that if the monthly is not found, then a certain penalty is incurred the next month [No daily chests? Or tougher daily chests? Or perhaps a benefit to all on the server over the next month? (10% monster gold bonus)]. Something that would at least temporarily stress unity among all players so that the monthly is discovered. Anyways, this is just the start of an idea that can probably be really expanded on. I love treasure chests but something a bit more dynamic might be exciting. I know I'd definitely be doing these every chance I get. Aside from the coding, I think the real time consuming task would be the person having to write all the clues. Thanks, Aris Greyst aka Wallace on IRC.
Sounds like a great start to something potentially very fun and interactive! I think every precaution should be taken to prevent people from exploiting this...and some serious thought would have to go into the looting requirements of the chest. Regardless of the "level" (daily, weekly, monthly) I can already see stealthers simply waiting for it to pop after everyone else has killed the spawn and snatching up the new currency. Maybe have the coins drop on the monsters instead, based off of damage done much like they implemented with the reindeer towards the end of the XMAS event?
Good point. I think for this to be successful it will require a fair amount of work to keep it from being ruined by others. Perhaps the first person to open the chest is bound to it (and any in his/her party also share the binding) and in addition all monsters are only lootable by those bound to the chest.
