Ecological Voodoo!
Let's achieve player-driven content tweaking by misunderstanding ecology even more than most people do in the real world.
Summary: A new utility skill that takes the basic idea of choosing to bury/not bury a corpse much farther, to let players tune area content to be more playable and satisfying.
Problem statement:
Before endgame, one of the biggest problems in PG is finding content that is level appropriate, challenging but achievable, and relevant. This is even harder to do considering that there needs to be content that is tuned both for solo and group play. (And is frequently good for one, but poor or impossible for the other.)
Example areas that are often unplayable on one of these criteria:
- Sun Vale Winter Ambassador fairies: often camped by multiple high level players waiting for them to respawn. At those times effectively unavailable for lower level players. (The same applies to small groups of Rakshasa in Ilmari, and any mob with a valuable drop.)
- Boarded up basement: the wiki and most players advise level-appropriate players to simply avoid it because of the respawn rates.
- Windy View cave in Gaz: effectively a boring neverending conga line of undead. If a player gets in far enough, a room will often respawn several enemies simultaneously.
- Conversely, many areas that are playable solo content are brief, unrewarding trips for groups splitting the loot.
- I bet most players can name plenty of areas that have too many/not enough enemies for them, and you'll see players labeling the same areas as "too much"/"not enough" depending on their power level and grouping/solo preferences.
This, combined with the no-instancing approach to PG, puts a fixed, hard-to-tune, limit on which content is approachable and rewarding for solo and group situations.
The bury/don't bury choice is clearly intended to let players put in work to address this issue, but doesn't have enough effect to make a difference.
Proposed Skill:
Ecological Voodoo: Change the world around you with creepy collectible charms made from monster bits!
In a world where everything appears from thin air, vanishes without a trace, and nobody thinks that's a bit odd, the science of ecology takes a very different form. Navigate the mysterious currents of the universe to predict and even change when and where menacing monsters and tasty tidbits might appear.
Skill Summary:
Gain an uncanny sense of where you should stand to be close to, or avoid, the many things that appear from nowhere to enrich or end your life. Receive eerie premonitions of when these things might soon happen. Craft a variety of macabre charms, totems, or highly questionable fashion statements that influence the world around you.
Ideas For Abilities/Recipes: (This is brainstorming.)
Harvest Voodoo Charm: A basic ability for Ecological Voodoo: like skin, butcher, or bury, adds an option to interact with a corpse to carve off a small, but meaningful bit as a trinket that can be used in Ecological Voodoo recipes.
Notes:
- Could produce a generic item like phlogistion, or could be specific to the monster for extra inventory-space-sucking goodness. ("Great Toxic Sludge Gonopore Skin!")
- I really prefer a selection of tiny, horrifically specific monster bits.
- Could ruin the corpse for skinning/butchering/skull, or could be a harmless bonus option like mourning an exposed grave.
- Could have skill level vs. corpse level success chances like the other harvesting skills.
- Could require a special tool! (Toolcrafting)
Ability: Danger Sense: Receive a general sense of the risk of being swarmed by enemies.
Notes:
- The intent is to let a player know how much above or below the baseline spawn rates are for the area.
- Could report the respawn rate as both a baseline ("This area is swarming with spirits waiting to enter the world") and modified ("but strong rituals of warding are holding the eager spirits at bay!") rate.
- Lets players know both the intended "normal" volume of enemies to expect and how other players have been acting to increase or decrease that.
Ability: Visual Premonition: See a red ghostly image of the monstrous rage that precedes a monster as it tears its way from the spirit world to the real.
Notes:
- This skill is intended to let players avoid the specific scenario of a surprise spawn appearing while they're in combat or trying to eat a sandwich.
- Render a faint red outline that gets more solid as the monster spawn time gets closer.
- Higher levels of Ecological Voodoo or tiers of the skill give sooner warning or are less likely to miss warning for a spawn?
- My friend has spilled enough drinks on her laptop keyboard. Please give her a way to predict when it's safe to look away from the screen.
Recipe: Craft Voodoo Charm Bracelet: Create a bracelet to hold grisly charms that attract or repel spirits bent on entering the world.
Notes:
- This would be a carried item to which temporary mods could be applied.
- Each mod would increase or decrease the rate of associated mobs (or mobs in general) spawning within a certain radius of the player. (Or an effect diminishing with distance, or whatever.)
- Crafted with existing textile creation or leathercrafting products, maybe plus gems?
- Different tiered items for different level ranges/qualities of effect? Maybe higher tiered charm bracelets can hold more "charms"; mods that affect monster spawns.
Recipe: Add Voodoo Charm to Bracelet: Make a fashion statement so distinct, it echoes into the spirit world and beyond!
Notes:
- Consumes a Voodoo Charm or Monster Part or other ingredient to add a temporary effect that increases or decreases spawn rates.
- The effect could be applied to the player, the charm, or maybe the zone?
- Need to consider stacking effects, since there's lots of tuning implications here.
Recipe: Craft Warding Spirit Totem: Create a spirit scarecrow to ward a region from the sudden appearance of monsters.
Notes:
- Could be based on a carpentry item?
- Could take several optional Voodoo Charms to reduce spawn rates in a region.
- More powerful effect than a charm bracelet, but is a temporary deployable item, so it doesn't move with the player?
- Could be refreshed or reduced by other players interacting with it?
- Could also be tiered.
Recipe: Craft Seductive Spirit Totem: Make this region of the world particularly attractive to spirits, who will appear as monsters.
Notes:
- Could also be based on a carpentry item.
- Could have the same mechanics as the Warding Totem, only acts to increase spawns instead of reduce them.
- Invites all kinds of horrible interpretations about how you use shriveled monster bits in a seductive fashion!
- Hoo boy, the graphics options.
Recipe: Etheric Sieve Ritual: Sift mundane fertilizer so finely that it filters all the way into the spirit realm to nourish as-yet immaterial plants.
Notes:
- Plants (and mushrooms, and logs, and entire freaking trees) also appear suddenly from the ether into reality. Let's Voodoo Ecologize those things, too!
- Consumes regular fertilizer and %chance of consuming various textile products, depending on the tier of the Etheric Sieve.
- Could also consume the Foraging item whose spawn rate is to be increased.
- Endless fun to roleplay. Maybe works best with groups? Have a dance-style sequence where players have to say some ritual words in Nearby chat, and then activate their Ritual ability?
- Easy to envision dozens of players in Serbule engaged in ritual chants to get Wood.
Ability: Plant Seance: Contact the spirits of plants to divine their irrational otherworldly growth habits.
Notes:
- Like Visual Premonition, only displays a happy green glow where a log is about to materialize in a snowbank, or a tree is about to appear in the desert right next to three stupid Fire Drake things.
- Might combine with the "locate/point to quest item" skills? Have them point to an applicable soon-to-spawn plant if Plant Seance is active, instead of a quest target?
- Could use/be enhanced by a placeable carpentry ouiji board? Or maybe just a calligraphy table?
- Could make the Seance a crowd participation activity like the "get Wood" ritual above, only this time they're trying to contact Spirit Wood. ("Say 'Tundra Lichen Spirits' in Nearby chat." "Say 'Speak to me' in nearby chat.")
Alternate Ability/Recipe Ideas:
Craft Voodoo Spirit Mask: Like the voodoo charm, but requires dedicating your head slot to maintaing the effect and fastening extremely unpleasant monster clippings to your face.
Ritual of Summoning: Instead of crafting an item, applies an increased spawn rate to the area. Consumes voodoo charms or a craftable voodoo doll? Could also be yet another crowd participation skill.
Ritual of Warding: The same, but decreases spawn rate.
Rock Seance: Like Plant Seance, but for mineral nodes. Break out the ouiji board and talk to ... some ... rocks. Could require drums and stringed instruments to really be a "rock" seance.
Skill Synergies:
My picks would be maybe a bit unconventional:
Lore: 2 levels
Corpse Talking: 1 level
Holistic Wellness: 1 level
Percussion Instruments: 1 level (Voodoo drumming for rituals and seances.)
Druid would be a natural synergy, but since that's a permanent skill choice, it should be disqualified as a support line.
Holistic Wellness would be a great synergy because both skills are bit whimsical in nature, with the idea that if you take Lore plus an extremely open-minded approach to applying it, you discover unconventional "holistic" connections. (In this case between Voodoo and Ecology, and if any skill would relate to a Plant Ouiji board, it's Holistic Wellness.)
