Currently, after completing the Act 1 on both sides, one thing felt particulary lacking. The lack of creative interactions with cerain npcs who are important for quests, just beyond slaughtering them; also the possiblity of solving the quests in other ways. Especially since we have the knockout mechanic, we have the npc resurrecting mechanic, we have the prisoner cage at our camp, so why not use those for improving the gameplay and roleplay options?
1) Minthara leads her attack on the grove and we side with tieflings. As for now, game forces the "murderhobo solution" during the ensuring fight...
a) During the battle, we target the drow and she is brought to low health. Judging by her character she should start to flee, which should cause a debuff to all remaining attackers. After the battle we are given the choice of pursing her, resulting in us capturing the drow lady as a prisoner/letting her run/chasing her and finishing her off.
b) We wipe the attackers out and Minthara is the only one alive -> she starts to flee, if no enemies are close, with same options as above
c) During the fight, we knock her out -> when fight ends, we hold Minthara as a prisoner in our camp (as for now, in game journal only updates the quest properly if she is dead and knocking her out makes tieflings finish her off)
d) FIght is ending, with Minthara having enemies close to her and she is brought to low health. She is asking for mercy and surrenders to us.
e) She dies, but we use resurrection scroll on her -> ends up being captured (can't be done currently on enemy characters)
f) Very important IMO, killing enough of the invaders should cause the rest to flee, with their leader calling them cowards and either b) or d) happening.
g) Minthara dies and fight becomes easier, since the bad guys have no leader now
Her current behaviour not only completely defies her character (she considers her life to be valuable and she is pretty cowardly, with her willing to fight only if she can easily win) but also it doesn't make sense for attackers to fight as efficiently if their leader is dead/fleeing/unconscious. It was even said by Minthara that they need a strong hand to lead them, or else they will disperse.
Now, as for what interactions should be when we capture her:
- Interrogating for information, about Moonrise towers, Absolute, her role, who is she, her past, etc.
During the dialogues we should be able to treath her nicely, neutrally or badly, with each type of treatment affecting how she respond to us (like if we treat her well, she willingly reveals to us the information about Moonrise towers + Absolute and offers to join us)
- Trying to convince her to join us (after all, she doesn't want to get punished for failing by her superiors, she needs protection from her previous "allies", only possible with good treatment, logical beginning for redemption arc, which given her character is something that is pretty possible, with later option for romance if player wishes so)
- Finish her off
- Letting her go, possibly meeting her somewhere again
2) If we choose to side with "bad guys", if fight happens between us and Minthara after the celebration party, again, it doesn't make any sense for her to fight until the last breath, neither it makes sense for knockout to not work (currently it puts her to 1 hp, renders her unconscious, but as soon as we end the day again she is willing to fight again with 1 hp, what the hell?). As an example, after we knock her out, simliar interactions could be possible as above, with addition of (if player wishes to do so) spending the rest of night bandaging her, etc to improve the relation.
3) Now, interactions with tieflings
a) If we ask Zevlor to move the tieflings out of the grove, he attacks us. After this happens (and he dies/surrenders/is knocked out), we should have the possibility of our party convincing tieflings to leave, with only druids remaining in the grove.
b) With hard persuasion check, it should be possible that we can convince Minthara to only focus on druids, with her forces still looting the camp, but letting the tielfings go to spread the word about the Absolute or just by telling her that they might be useful later in future
c) We let tieflings hide or escape during/before the siege through the tunnels
d) Make it possible for us to somehow undermine Zevlor's authority among tieflings, so that they do not listen to him anymore, supporting the option a)
e) Attack the druids together with tieflings, with some of the druids siding with us (since they aren't happy about how Kagha rules the Grove)
f) After we return from Minthara, we can tell tiefling defenders what did she order us to do, with our allies putting the traps inside, close to the gate, making barricades there, etc. Basically during siege, we open the gate, attackers rush inside, gate gets closed, which creates a trap for them
g) We agree to trick Minthara into attacking from tunnels, where she gets trapped and captured/killed during the fight
4) And time for Halsin, our favourite druid.
- When he does attack us in the camp, when we do side with "evil" drow lady, he gets bugged like her, if we knock him out (1 hp -_- and still wants to fight). There should be an option to hold him as a prisoner and in general act towards him in simliar ways to described above, although due to his character being different than Minthara, he should behave differenly, that is harder to persuade, etc.
An example of persuasion could be, that we sided with "bad guys" because:
a) We failed to find the Halsin
b) Druids didn't act too nicely towards us (looking at you, Kagha and Nettie)
c) We regret helping the goblins
d) This should be only possible if the tieflings don't die
e) We return the idol of Silvanus to him, which we found after defeating the druids
f) We show him the proof that Kagha worked with
Shadow druids, so we thought that most of druids are evil then
- During our infiltration of the goblin camp, his death causes journal to update. Homever we can resurrect him, sadly game still thinks that he is dead, when it comes to quests and other characters. Same bug applies to Zevlor as well.
5) Goblin camp inflitration, attack and overall interaction, including siding with evil side:
a) Capturing Minthara, the Dror Ragzlin or Priestess Gut
b) Possibility of causing an interal war between the leaders, supporting one of them
c) Ability to become the leader of goblins yourself (after killing/capturing/"convincing" the rest)
e) Destroying the bridge leading outside, delaying the attack enough for tieflings to move out, for example by asking our ogre mercs to do it, or by using black powder barrel
f) Tricking the drow warlord into attacking false spot, again giving tieflings time to prepare
g) Causing an internal war in Druid Grove, like described above (Tieflings vs Druids), to weaken the grove
h) Tell defenders fake information about how the goblins will attack, to make defense harder and make it impossible for them to prepare.
i) Arrange the transport of "oil barrels" , with actually goblins hiding inside the barrels and helping us during the siege, when given the signal.
j) Make it possible for us to send some of attackers through tunnel to grove, if we discover it first.
k) Destroy/poison the food supplies of either Grove or Goblin Camp, forcing an early attack with weakened enemies or making defenders weaker, possibly even forcing them to move.
l) Be able to gather additional allies for attack or defense (like flaming fist/mercenaries) or for example improve the weapons on your troops, by engaging in attack on merchant wagons travelling nearby.
6) Fight when we first arrive at druid grove
- possibility of joining the goblins, who while get repelled during the attack, lead us back to goblin camp and we get treated there well, instead of the usual mocking.
- not taking either side
Currently many players do not do evil path, because there aren't enough interactions, compared to the good side, but also because of how badly goblins treat us unless we are drows. Solution above would fix the problem completely. Also, we should be given better explaination why we join the goblins, like for possiblity of controlling tadpole or learning how it works so that we can remove it later. (Since if their top leaders probably know how to create those tadpoles, they also know how to remove them)
