Something different: An annotated game of kingdom management

[The Avatar]

Hmm... Where could they make the Dragon Scale spawn reliably?

Here's an idea: Since the Northern tree doesn't have an unnecessary dungeon why don't they add a dungeon with Dragon boss.

[Darvin]

Maintaining this would be a pain for just one person, which means that it should probably be on the wiki. What we could use is a permanent link to the wiki from the forums.

Sounds like a plan; a nice "resource index" page on the wiki could be very helpful.

Hmm... Where could they make the Dragon Scale spawn reliably?

Hmmm... perhaps southern swamp could be made 50% Snake boss / 50% Dragonspawn boss? This would mirror the Wraith/Goo duality in the Northern Desert.

[The Avatar]

But Dragonspawn v. Rogue would be devilishly tricky for new players.

[Darvin]

That's more a case of dragonspawn just being a tough boss (with APHEELSIK still locked, probably second-most-difficult after Frank amongst the random bosses). That's going to be an issue no matter where you put him in a normal-difficulty dungeon, and there is certainly no space for him in any of the hard-difficulty dungeons.

[The Avatar]

I meant a unique dragon boss. Not the firstborn. Like how Björn gives you a Bandit Scalp despite not having bandit stats.

[Darvin]

Hmmm...

West has five dungeons, south has five dungeons, east has six dungeons, and north has four dungeons, so an extra dungeon in the north would make sense (branching off Rock Garden, to maintain the format of the other paths). So you could put a custom dragonspawn boss there. We lost the "Second Son" from the old starter quest line, so perhaps that little story bit could be repurposed for that dungeon.

[The Avatar]

Six in the east? Oh... VHoS. I personally think that unless they're adding a Vicious version of Ick, The Labyrinth, and Shifiting Passages it is far to out of place.

[Darvin]

Vicious Ick... wow that'll be nasty. In any case, north is still under-represented.

[Lujo]

Yeah, what's with the disparity in dungeon distribution?

I have a bunch of complaints/suggestions/questions about all that, but I figured I won't derail any thread with such "cosmetic" stuff, even if some of it isn't cosmetic...

[Nandrew]

I like this thread and its thoroughness, would probably sticky anyway. It's useful. I think the only question is whether or not it'll stay relevant long enough (witch unlock subdungeon has changed since you played, for example, though not a biggie).

Also, your Eastern Tundra monk run was overprepared. The most recent update made it a lot easier for him to tackle this scenario.

Yeah, what's with the disparity in dungeon distribution?

I have a bunch of complaints/suggestions/questions about all that, but I figured I won't derail any thread with such "cosmetic" stuff, even if some of it isn't cosmetic...

I don't think of VHoS as "dungeon six" in the east, to be honest. More like " dungeon five-and-a-half". It's sitting there as a tantalising gateway to a gameplay possibility that we'd been flirting with at one point. But we're still not 100% on whether it's really appropriate to be adding more Vicious stuff when we still have so many existing dungeons that could do with more attention.

The current direction numbers are just an evolution of what came before. At full roster, all directions had six dungeons, and we were beginning work on the "vicious versions" starting in the East. Then we culled what we thought were the weakest dungeons in every direction, favouring fewer stronger ones over too many lukewarms. That's when each direction moved to five (+VHoS sticking around in the east).

The Northern Desert has four because Gaan-Telet was, at one point, the north's number five.

It would be nice to bring the desert into balance with the other directions, but as said already, I'd feel really foolish adding yet another directional when so many problems exist with the current content.