Unleveled world

[gulags]

I think it would be nice to restrict enemy levels and spawn chances to each place in a unique manner based on what the dungeon is like. I can't code so I don't know how you'd do it.

[jayhova]

I'd like to be able to select things to unlevel. I for one would like to unlevel stores and nothing else.

[Ralzar]

Yeah, I have a general problem with stores in several ways. The weirdest is of course that they change their inventory based on your level.
I would really like if shops had a lot more items, but that the item materials were restricted by shop quality. So a low quality shop would have all Chain, Iron and Steel items, some Silver but nothing higher. (Leather could just be moved to tailors) General and Pawn Shops would have a few random items.
There are 5 quality levels of stores, so just add one material for each store level and remove the lowest. Which means the best stores would have all Elven, Dwarven, Mithril and some Adamantium.
You want Ebony, Orcish or Deadric? Earn it in quests and dungeon crawling.

And while we're at it, it would be pretty nice if the armorers sold only armors and weapon smiths sold only weapons.

[jacv]

i would make like an mmo zones type, so depending on where the main quest takes place you would have high level zones, there are high level stores, enemies and loot in there, but also low level and medium level zones. I THINK it would be just simply too complicated modify the game in a way that makes every dungeon unleveled or every store unleveled so thats an easy solution to the problem.

[Ralzar]

Eh, I'd want to avoid zones. I think a lot of us that want some version of an unleveld world is after something more "realistic". And having difficulty zones is the opposite of this.


The more I think about this mod, the more I realize that Daggerfall has too many moving parts to really implement this without it having some big unforseen consequences. So I'm trying to think of ways to simply tweak the exisitng system to produce a slightly different experience.

To put it simply: the world doesn't need to be unleveled, it just need to FEEL unleveled.

Generally, the changes I could see to move the game closer to this feeling:

*Unleveled shops. The shops quality level is the only thing affecting its stock. Either lock quality level to loot tables or distribute material types between shop qualities.(See my post above)

*More diversity in dungeon enemies. Sometimes your low level character runs into a lich. Sometimes your high level character runs into rats. This could be done by, for example, having the monster spawning mechanics sometimes do something random and pick some eneimes at a completely different level. Not for the whole dungeon necessarily. It could just be a random enemy here or there.
Or even just have one high level enemy spawn in each dungeon and have one big spawn of low level enemies spawn somewhere. Running into 20 rats in a room could be interesting.

*Loot drops are locked to monster type. Only deadra and some high level humanoids have deadric gear.
(And while we're at it: all dropped loot has a random level of damage. It's not all "new". The default should be "Used" or "Worn".)



I don't need the game to completely change from the ground up, but the current level scaling feels like the game is allways looking out for you, making sure you are able to do evertying. It's not as pronounced as later games, but it's there.

[Ommamar]

I have had low level characters run into a lich or vampire ancient in random dungeons so this seems to be in the game to some degree already. I have also come across rats and bats as a higher level character.

[Jay_H]

Yeah, that's definitely a part of classic. I've run into my share of Ancient Liches at level 3

[Ralzar]

Hm, that’s something I seemed to vagely remember from vanilla, but the only times I’ve seen it in my time playing DFU has been the knights quest from your quest pack and if I wound up in a Main Quest dungeon. And those are honestly some of my best memories. Desperately trying to find a solution to an enemy way stronger than me.

[Lorex]

Just a thought, in vanilla game spawn level is chosen based on character level, so why not having random level chosen when you enter a dungeon? This would add unpredictability. However a dungeon should not change level when you exit and re-enter so it should stay that way for a number of days, or months (or you could use Persistent Dungeon mod...).
Obviously this would lead to a good amount of failed quests at the beginning but, that's life! The other side of the coin is that you could find high level equipment at level 1, if you survive.

And it should not be too difficult to do, I mean it's just random level instead of char LV.

p.s.: of course main quest dungeons should not be random...

[pango]

Or simply pseudo-random seed dungeons levels...