One of the things that has always bugged me about TOEE is that Wonnilon's hideout is not a safe place to rest, yet the spiral stairway, which contextually should have evil traffic going up and down all the time, is. My hatred for this situation goes back to my first Iron Man game (before I realized Iron Man was hopelessly botched), W. tells me his hideout is safe, no one patrols back there, etc... so I'm like cool, I'll rest. Random encounter with bunch of Bugbears later, that's one game over for me. The impetus for this post is seeing Allyx's Verbo-mod with another safe resting place. How hard would it be to modify the Temple safe resting place, and would anyone else even consider it worth bothering with? EDIT: I realize that positioning issues in the cramped stairway are likely why it is a safe resting area (I'm constantly having to do fiddly manual situating of my party to enable my healers to reach everybody when resting there), but man it would be a cool surprise to have a Temple patrol run into a party that's sleeping on the stairs. Depending on their status with Romag, they could either get rousted (no new spells for you!) or have an unexpected fight at the worst possible time.
Umm, it'd be really hard to code that one, (unless i'm hugely mistaken) wonnilon's secret area is a small section in a much bigger map. to make the hideout safe, you'd have to also make the rest of the 1st level of the temple dungeon safe to rest in too (granted it could be made to happen after you rescue wonnilon).
That's it exactly Allyx. Safety while resting is done by map. The circular stairway that he mentions is not referenced in random_encounter.py, so it should be dangerous to sleep there. I don't know why it's not.
Could it be made so that after two things happen, (1) Wonnilon is rescued and (2) the Earth Temple has been cleared [maybe an easter egg in the modded game like grab the flag from the top of the Earth Temple pyramid], that a party can safely rest in Wonnilon's secret hiding spot without incurring a spawned encounter from resting. Or, is this w-a-y out there past left field, off of the face of the planet and is, generally, a bad idea?
Heh, here's an idea... Rescueing wonnilon triggers a flag, that makes a scroll in wonnilon's hideout visible, and the scroll is... "Mordenkainen's private sanctum"! Which once learned teleports the group to a safe map to rest in, and teleport the characters back to the co-ordinates they came from when they're finished.
I'd like to see it happen after Wonnilon's rescue, but not necessarily with the Earth Temple destroyed. I see it as a refuge to rest up while gathering strength for the climactic fights. An empty barrel or chest to drop off loot would be nice too. Balance-wise, it really doesn't affect anything, since old-hands have access to the spiral staircase trick anyway. The scroll idea is interesting, but seems overly complex and not exactly fitting with storyline. Couldn't the same effect be achieved with a door icon, triggered upon W's rescue that leads to a new map? Possibly a renamed small map from Hommlet, such as the festival hall? Then just a few additional lines for W. saying that the party could rest in the room to the back, while he kept watch. I'm not a modder, but I want to be and I've read any and all modding threads including Shiningted's tutorials. This doesn't seem of an order of difficulty greater than adding the fake Balor's house. If those with modding knowledge could tell me if this idea would work, I think I'll take it up as my introductory modding project. I'm soon to have a new laptap that should handle TOEE Worldbuilder. However, I do not have any Python knowledge. Regarding the spiral staircase, boy that's odd that it is not supposed to be a safe haven. I still suspect that it got made safe during one of the inital Atari patches if not earlier, due to the random monster generating in wall bug. Would a spawned encounter be possible in this area, assuming enuff playable space was available to materialize a 6-7 character patrol? I'm envisioning a Temple lieutenant, minor Earth Temple cleric, couple of guards with longspears, couple of crossbowmen, and 1 or 2 bugbears, maybe archer type. Would be a tough fight with not much room for maneuver, and missile/reach weapons and ranged magic should shine.
No, it shouldn't. This is a secret staircase which no one ever uses, good or evil. Troika changed it to be like you find it in this game. The lower terminus is well above the floor of the octagonal room, and the entrance is found only after one scales some 15' down the wall of the sacrificial pit on the main floor of the Temple. Once there, a 12" wide ledge is found, which broadens as it descends to the spiral staircase. Hardly suited to a lot of traffic. A better solution to my way of thinking would be to implement the "secret" aspect of the upper portion. Or, upper & lower access could be removed altogether, since only a climber can make it down to the ledge in the first place; never mind getting to the floor of the octagonal chamber. But, if these were removed, then the only use it would have would be for resting. The mid level door (which opens to the corridor of bones) is secret already.
