How about adding an "Indiana Jones" twist to t-hunting?

[Hunters' Moon]

I was just thinking about some of the skills in UO that could stand some upgrading. One of the classes/templates is the "thunter". This class is pretty much straight forward. Get a map. Decode the map. Go to a rune library and gate your party to the location. Dig up the chest. Kill some balrons,titan,and a few poison eles and divide the loot. Rinse and repeat.Sounds fun...doesn't it?

I say lets put an "Indiana Jones" twist to the whole process. In good RP style,you could pick up a map at a local town tavern from a shady character that just happens to have this nice parchment with a big black "X" on it. You decipher it and it leads you to a swampy area just outside of Skara. You find a marker,or dig up a chest. Instead of finding any buried treasure there you find a brigand ambush party(that spawns solely for the quest chain and they would be much stronger than the typical brigand). Surviving the ambush and getting the next clue from the marker,you would proceed to the next destination after deciphering the marker.

This time you are led to a dangerous area in Ilsh. This time you must slay/snoop and steal from a certain type beast to gain a "key" to the final location of the treasure. After finding the key and getting out of there with your life. You discover that you must go to a location of the pyramid near gravewater lake to get the treasure.

When you get to the pyramid(or whereever the final location would be)it would not be such an easy task as just to walk up to the chest and pick it clean,oh no!You must solve a few puzzles(hidden traps,water/lava barriers,swinging blades,snakes and mummies) that would challenge the player as much as the character they control.

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

Sorry but that sounds mostly like you add couple of more spots. Otherwise it is pretty much the standard template and I am not sure if I think it is a good idea to remove scrolls from monster drop. The pyramid part is kindav neat - if it could be somehow made into a random thing which I dont think is possible.

But I agree thunting needs a big overhaul. I just don't find your plan so appealing.

 

[Hunters' Moon]

Sorry but that sounds mostly like you add couple of more spots. Otherwise it is pretty much the standard template and I am not sure if I think it is a good idea to remove scrolls from monster drop. The pyramid part is kindav neat - if it could be somehow made into a random thing which I dont think is possible.

But I agree thunting needs a big overhaul. I just don't find your plan so appealing.

I do think it is possible to randomize the locations that the player must go to in order to get the next clue. Look at the obsidion statue quest chain. When you have to do the paintings,the beasts are random. As to adding extra spots,well why not? Its just silly imo to know exactly where the treasure is buried and simply uses a rune library and match up the "number" of the map and "number" of the rune.

 

[Joshua Ravenloft]

Upgrading the loot to include maybe, Doom Artie's, or, even make a new set of Doom like Artie's just for T hunting would be a MASSIVE step in the right direction. And I imagine, not a particularly difficult thing to implement.

Dev's, please make it so

 

[trammelite]

sounds like fun ... .. for the first couple of runs
but for me it too sounds like ending up as MIB's. who is really doing them ? the long boat trip along with the max lev 3 loot does not make MIBs an attractive activity. do you see the similarity to MIB's ? fish them up, decode them, boattrip to the MIB location get the chest, find another MIB and so on until you make to to the Leviathan one day.
If your idea wold not come along with some supreme stuff only to be aquired through doing this "chain", people will IMHO go for doom or peerless instead.

 

[Tomas_Bryce]

Its just silly imo to know exactly where the treasure is buried and simply uses a rune library and match up the "number" of the map and "number" of the rune.

Thing is that you don't have to use the rune library. The fact that you use the rune library might be a hint that endless searching around for a map might seem fun on paper but will probably turn off most players, especially after few times.

I think that the most immediate changes that can be made:

1) More variety of monsters + more difficulty.
2) Unable to drag them away. They are supposed to be guardians of the chest. They should stick near the chest. There is already a functionality of this with the doom leash.
3) Better and more interesting rewards.

 

[Maplestone]

I'm all for adding some puzzle content and chaining together little quests, but remember that it's something that a T-hunter will likely be doing many, many times. Things are only mysterious the first time - after that running from location to location becomes just busy work.

 

[Babble]

Hmm, how about a map and a key that leads to a building/structure

At the building structure there is some spawn and a few locked/trapped doors you have to get through to the treasure.
At he end there is a locked chest only the key opens with treasure in it.
The key is used up/destroyed after opening the chest, so you cannot 'farm' it.

Make that dealer a rare spawn (once a day on a facet) with 3-40 different locations.

if planned right and with decent 'spawners' (don't know which ones ea uses) you could make nice things happening.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I like that idea of a quest chain! I know some people just want to slay critters and be done with it, but others prefer adventures and riddles. I think such kinds of quests would make treasure hunting more of an adventure, instead of a pure item-focused activity.

There are many ways such treasure hunts could start. I like the idea that someone would randomly "stumble" across the first quest item (the treasure map). For example:

- Lumberjacks find an engraving on a tree while hacking it.
- Miners working inside dungeons accidentally dig up a tattered note.
- Glassblowers find a random map while digging on a sandy beach.
- Treasure hunters search the graveyards for hidden notes inside ancient graves.
- Treasure chests in the depth of the dungeons have a chance to contain a map.
- Treasure maps could be randomly hidden all over Britannia, and can be found by digging.
- etc.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

Thing is that you don't have to use the rune library. The fact that you use the rune library might be a hint that endless searching around for a map might seem fun on paper but will probably turn off most players, especially after few times.

If there is a shortcut, people will always use it.
If the treasure would be more valuable and rewarding, people would even learn to use sextants to find it, and have fun doing it. But they wouldn't bother with such activities, when all they have to do is recall to rune number 134 and dig.

Actually, people tend to forget how much fun it can be doing things the "old way". I recently noticed that, as we were starting a dungeon expedition with nothing but clothes, bandages and an NPC weapon. You should try!

Dungeon Adventure

 

[laurlo]

uhm.. why not just rp it?

 

[Kojak]

I don't really want a giant boulder to roll down a ramp and crush me while I'm treasure hunting ... hehe

 

[Hunters' Moon]

sounds like fun ... .. for the first couple of runs
but for me it too sounds like ending up as MIB's. who is really doing them ? the long boat trip along with the max lev 3 loot does not make MIBs an attractive activity. do you see the similarity to MIB's ? fish them up, decode them, boattrip to the MIB location get the chest, find another MIB and so on until you make to to the Leviathan one day.
If your idea wold not come along with some supreme stuff only to be aquired through doing this "chain", people will IMHO go for doom or peerless instead.

The quest chain shouldn't be a grind.It should also have rewards that can only be found in the end-chest

 

[Hunters' Moon]

I don't really want a giant boulder to roll down a ramp and crush me while I'm treasure hunting ... hehe

Haha how about blades or darts coming out of the walls? Or how about trick floor tiles that fall from under your feet?

 

[Wilde1]

last thing I want is a multistep quest chain that has me bouncing all over the map looking for "clues." Fun a couple times, then a PITA after (want to do the antivirtue cloak quest 100 times?).

What I would find interesting is digging up a tmap only to be teleported into a dungeon instance (ala indiana jones) and having to fight through the instance to get the treasure at the end. If I have to do all that though, the loot better be a heck of a lot better than it is now. For instance (no pun intended heh), a level 6 map should require a group and give peerless type loot. I'd be all for that, would give me a reason to dust off my thunter.

 

[Kyrie_Elaison]

Oh and can we have pygmies attack us?

 

[Uvtha]

I always thought there should be a role for "adventuring" rogues. Things like finding hidden rooms, or hidden objects (treasure chests, switches etc) via detect hidden, then add in a slew of "puzzle" traps, that are easier to do with higher remove trap, and add in lots of locked doors and chests, and such to be dealt with via lockpicking only. Finally add in areas that can only be crossed with stealth, a few jailers or what have you that need to have keys stolen from them, or some spawn stealables, that if you fail to grab it a trap springs and monsters show up... well then youve got a fun non pvp rogue that is more involved than picking up garbage off of the ground.

I was trying to advocate this years ago.