The Agility Caves

First topic message reminder :

So yeah. I figured I should come up with at least one of my own ideas for the Raid. So here it is...

It occurred to me the other day that caves in RuneScape are a little unrealistic. Why? Well they all have floors...

So that probably sounds a little stupid to you, so let me explain more. Every cave system in RuneScape seems to have an almost artificially flat cave floor that anybody can walk on without any trouble. In real life, many untamed caves have slippery, uneven floors, stalactites, slopes, chasms and are, in short, pretty tough to navigate

Now I don't think it would be practical or logical to make every cave in RuneScape like this, but it has inspired me to suggest:

The Agility Caves

It seemed obvious to me that if a cave is going to be like I described, it's going to require agility to navigate. But that would make the Agility Caves no more exciting than your average agility course...

See, the Agility Caves are home to monsters. Lots of them. And thats where things start to get interesting, because while normally, your character has solid, flat ground to stand on while fighting, in here, he (or she) won't.

In the Agility Caves, your combat ability is effected by factors that don't usually effect combat, the most notable example being agility - because if you're fighting some big ugly monster and trying to hang onto a stalactite at the same time, you're going to need to be agile.

The idea here is to create a unique combat experience that requires players to incorporate skills that they wouldn't usually incorporate into combat situations. Of course, the player will be rewarded handsomely with a new way to train combat, agility and with new items (and possibly abilities)


Rewards

There are five ways to gain rewards from the agility caves

1. XP - People with high agility levels may find that the Agility Caves provide good combat XP. High combat levels would also provide fairly good agility

2. Killing Nequam - Beating a Nequam in combat alone isn't enough to guarantee a reward. Without a rope noose, the Nequam will simply fall into the river at the bottom of the caves. Your chances of successfully getting a Nequam into a noose is proportional to your agility level. The formula for this is *Agility level*/150. Nequam can then be looted for their hides, heads and claws, which will be useful to crafters

3. Saving hostages. Each hostage will be guarded by a Nequam, and you won't be able to rescue them until the Nequam has been slain. Once you've beaten their Nequam though, you can give them emergency teletabs to leave the cave with. Before they go, however, they may give you a reward, which varies depending on where they're from...
4. Putting hostages out of their misery - Either they'll be beyond saving, or you won't be capable of fighting a Nequam to rescue them - putting a hostage out of their misery will provide you with the lower end of the drop table for the person you killed. It will not contain any of the unique drops

Hostage reward list

(Rewards unique to the agility caves are in itallics
Wizards from the Wizard Tower - Any type of rune, including combination runes (between 5 and 150), all elemental staves, wizard robes, noted rune essence, noted pure essence, tome of rock
Warriors from Al Kharid - Mithril, Adamant and Rune scimitars, all gems up to dragonstone (cut or uncut), coins, noted silk, all types of unenchanted jewelery up to diamond, the silkscreen veil
White knights from Falador - Coins, swordfish, lobsters and sharks (2-3, all unnoted), pieces of initiate and prosylate armour (the appropriate quests will still be required to wear them) Templar boots
Karamja Tribesmen - Mithril and Adamant spears, weapon poison, noted teak and mahogany logs, pineapples, papayas, mosquito proboscis, thrower's beads

And more - realistically, the Nequam could probably abduct people from Lumbridge too, so I need ideas for drops from them, as well as fillers for the three I've already suggested.

What do the unique drops do, then?
The tome of rock provides unlimited earth runes in the offhand slot - basically a tome of frost but for earth runes
The silkscreen veil is an enchanted piece of silk that, when looked through, makes the user more accurate. Thus it has a +7 bonus in crush, slash and stab attack. However, being silk, it has no defensive bonuses
Templar boots are boots worn by the white knights. Their defensive bonuses are poor, with just +2 for slash and crush, but they offer a good +3 prayer bonus
Thrower's beads are a necklace that gives a 20% ranged and ranged damage boost to throwing weapons - ie javelins, thrownaxes, knives, darts and obsidian throwing rings - will NOT effect chinchompa and slings

And the 5th way of getting a reward? The Nequam Matriarch
So this is the boss fight. I need ideas on how it'll work, what level it'll be, etc

Enchant Level 6 Jewellery
Confuse
Weaken
Curse
Bind
Snare
Entangle
Vulnerability
Enfeeble
Stun
Bones to Bananas
Bones to Peaches
Enchant Level 5 Jewellery
String Jewellery
Stat Restore Pot Share
Boost Potion Share
Earth Strike
Earth Bolt
Earth Blast
Earth Wave
Earth Surge
Crumble Undead
Lumbridge Teleport
Teleport to House

We already have non-air combination staffs, and recently been given air+water (in the form of Frost Tome). Having the Frost Tome also meant we can now use Lava Staff + Frost Tome to cover ALL non-air runes. I don't see any repercussions of adding a Fire or Earth.

Copied/pasted the rewards into the first post, changed mist staff to the tome of rock

Added the following:

Karamja Tribesmen - Mithril and Adamant spears, weapon poison, noted teak and mahogany logs, pineapples, papayas, mosquito proboscis, thrower's beads
Thrower's beads are a necklace that gives a 20% attack and strength boost to throwing weapons - ie javelins, thrownaxes, knives, darts and obsidian throwing rings - will NOT effect chinchompa and slings

And the 5th way of getting a reward? The Nequam Matriarch
So this is the boss fight. I need ideas on how it'll work, what level it'll be, etc

What do you think?

I think you should say "ranged and ranged damage boost" rather than "attack and strength boost".

And the matriarch? I wanna try and somehow make a boss fight that incorporates agility...

I was thinking of putting in a few things... something similar to the shadow forger's explosion attack - longer charging though, and you'd have to pass over agility obstacles to get to shelter... I'm thinking, if you combine that with some agility based attacks - I'm thinking you can heighten your damage if you jump off a high rock and dive into an attack or something... I dunno...

Ooh, didn't see the matriarch. Umm... so a boss so kinds?

A boss is the idea. But I don't want it to be a straightforward fight... To be in the agility caves, it needs to incorporate agility, and as you can see, I'm struggling with that a bit...

Well if they fly, it already makes it difficult. You've already cut the number of weapons down.

I'm thinking make the matriarch wingless... As for the others, I currently plan for them to attack with melee, so they'll have to come within meleeing distance of you...

Boo.

How about the males crawl along the walls, and the females fly? Males are chimp-like in that they hand by their arms and attack with their feet - gripping onto the walls and mites/tites. Whilst females use quick-claw attacks. Like... swooping in and clawing, then flying back. But visually, you don't see it move... so it's still melee, only out of reach. When the queen comes in, she will throw the females at you (crippling them, making them use melee - but they are stronger in close-quarter than males) and eat the males to heal itself.

Interesting... You know, I think, buried somewhere in all the maniac mass murdering matriarch suggestions, you actually have some good ideas

I like the idea of sexual dimorphism. I'm gonna keep that - males are the ones that you can attack and noose to gain hides, skulls and claws. Females will be the ones that guard hostages, and they'll be stronger. I'll give them wings, but I need to figure out a method of combat that avoids just standing in one place, using no agility and just ranging or maging...

As for the matriarch, throwing females sounds a bit strange, but if you replace the idea of her eating males with the idea of her eating hostages, we're on to a winner - a big part of the agility element can be moving around the arena, killing unsavables in order to stop the matriarch from healing - if you don't have the agility to reach them quickly, that'll make the fight a lot tougher...

Sexual dismorphism is awesome.

Umm... how about she brings stalagmites down? And they perminantly obstruct the map... or at least, require removing. Thus, (a) its not recommended to stand still due to the hurties and (b) you can't stand still due to the obstruction.

I'll agree, sexual dimorphism is awesome. After all, without it I'd have breasts...

As for the boss fight... Hows this for an idea.

Imagine a dart board. Imagine each section requiring agility to cross, and different sections having different modifiers to attack and defense - generally being more offensive closer to the bullseye, and more defensive further away. The matriarch will go through phases, some where it is highly damaging and very difficult to hit, others the opposite, some in between. So one objective of the fight is to move around the battlefield according to what moves she is using - moving to defensive positions when shes highly damaging, and offensive positions when she is vulnerable.
Now if, throughout the fight, Nequam females being victims into the arena for the matriarch to feast on. She will, of course, not each if the victims are dead, so your secondary objective is to move around the arena and kill these victims to stop her healing.
Now I like the idea of stalactites falling... But how do I incorporate this?

Damage to the caves caused by the males? Some sort of screech area-of-effect attack that causes the rock to crack?

I think killing the victims is possible a bad moral to use.

So, why does everything have to be nice and happy?

Bad morals? Just putting them out of their misery. If they're being eaten by the matriarch, they can't be in a great state anyway...

I'm not saying it has to be cheery, just seems a little dark killing them solely to make the battle quicker. Putting them out of their misery doesn't so bad, but is there any way to save them?

'spose you could use the teletabs you're meant to give to savable hostages in the rest of the caves... Just tell them you're too busy to be rewarded or something?

Does the queen eat at time intervals, or at health intervals? Because it could just be made a sort of challenge to kill it before she eats them all, and thus you get more rewards the more of them who survive.

Hmm... I'll have to get back to you on that one actually. Need to give it some decent thought, but I'm too tired/hungover to do that right now

Hungover eh? Tsk tsk, 17 and hungover?

Ikr. Should've been revising as well... Me = badman

So, having given your question some thought, I like the idea of having them come in at time intervals, so that its a race against time and you can get additional rewards for saving victims.

That does leave me with a bit of a mechanics problem though - I'm not sure whether it would work best to have all the hostages in the arena to start with, or to have them brought in throughout the battle... To be honest, I'm not sure it would be possible to have them all in at the start, because that would require the fight to have a defined starting point - since you could take the boss on in groups and join part way through, would that work?

That said, if they are delivered throughout the battle, would that just encourage people to wait for lots of them to come for easy rewards?

Well if they were only brought in for feeding, then there's no worry about that.

Perhaps have 5 people, and thus you have to kill her prior to the 5 milestone else no extra reward.

How's this going?

Currently, this, along with all my other projects, are being deprioritiesd for revision... I've had a few ideas floating around in my head... A shield that actually gives a range bonus in the rewards being the only notable one

Wait until my exams finish, then I'll be back on this and getting it ready for the raid