Various Gameplay Ideas (Portal Storms/Dungeons, Collapsed Towers, "Proficiencies")

[KheirFerrum]

I'm writing this up so that I don't accidentally delete the stuff I've written, and also because people have told me to again and again.

Comments are welcome, but do note that I don't intend to implement any of these until much later, so any extensive discussion should wait until I open a specific issue for one of these ideas.

Portal Storms

The goal is to add a static location like the Triffid groves, Mycus fields and Migo towers, that have permanent Portal Storm weather (minus the annoying rewind and random teleportation effects) and very dangerous nether enemies (kind of like what you'd expect from the time of the actual Cataclysm written into lore). In the center of this location would be a "mega-portal" of sorts that instead of teleporting you randomly, brings you into a portal dungeon.

The portal dungeon lore is outlined in the lore pages under the Nethereum, but basically it should be a small, contained dungeon made up of 3-5 overmap tiles with dangerous (and maybe unique) monsters and a powerful reward at the end. I'm thinking either relics once we have the system set up properly, late game equipment, or strong crafting materials used for late game techs.

Collapsed Towers

Have the collapsed towers be the labs working on nanofabrication tech, where they designed a system that allowed you to break down materials into nanomaterials, then reconstitute them. With another system that allowed them to "flash" an item into a nanomaterial template, consuming the item in the process.

At one point or another, they attempted to use this same method on animals, with varying levels of success, and all was fine and dandy until the blob got into the ecosystem. When they continued their animal testing, the blob got into the end result. The residual strands of consciousness within the biological nanomaterials caused the blob (which couldn't be converted to nanomaterial) to hijack the nanomaterial and "come alive", attempting to reconstitute itself in grotesque manners.

Things went from bad to worse when, stuck within the nano-converter, the blob integrated the core system into itself like a bionic, which got loose and started turning everyone into similar monstrosities (minus the nano conversion), as by now everyone has been "infected" by the blob. Recognizing the severity of the issue should the creature get loose into the city, failsafe's are activated that attempt to sterilize/destroy the lab, leading to the current situation.

So this becomes a "unique" location that contains several key items of interest.

• A single nano-converter creature with a "disintegrating" touch that the player is highly advised to engage at range. On death, dissection will produce a "broken" nano-converter that with the right knowhow and enough materials, can be fixed to create an item that you can use to recycle items you don't use anymore into nanomaterial canisters. The more advanced the item, the more nanomaterial it produces, and requires.
• A number of nanomaterial templates, all high tech items, randomly generated. A nanotemplate creator, so if need be you can flash an item into a template and make more of them.
• A nanofabricator furniture item. Which you can then uproot and move to your base, which you will need to provide with a suitable template, a suitable amount of nanomaterial (always need more material to make an item than you get from recycling it), and a suitable amount of grid power.

This would neatly allow us to remove nanofabricator finales from labs to cut down on finale bloat.

"Proficiency"

My opinion is that proficiencies should have been stuff like the MD trait, Parkour Expert, etc, only. Being on/off perks instead of crafting stuff. This system should also allow NPCs to train you in proficiencies they know, so you're not locked out of them if you didn't pick them up at chargen.

This would allow us to have "perks" of a sort with unique effects, dialogue, abilities, etc, while also not locking them away from characters just because they didn't start with them. I would entirely avoid crafting proficiencies that reduce penalties/speed up crafting. I have discussed and considered that recipes might instead be unlocked via a proficiency point system to mimic a research tree, but I'd want waaaaay more discussion on this, just not now.