Hello,
having a successful and opulent warband made me notice 2 annoying issues:
1. Thanks to unfavorable map-designing RNG certain items are either very hard or quite impossible to obtain, appearing in minuscule quantities (antidotes, anyone?) or requiring unfeasibly long journeys from the populated areas. No amount of money helps to mitigate it.
2. After acquiring preferred mercs and equipment money start piling up with no way to use them (except maybe for buying costly uniques… should they appear at all), rendering financial rewards moot and effectively disabling the budget-management.
Here are my ideas for a fix – both of them could be accessed through tavern rumors in order to avoid the need of creating new assets:
1. Travelling Merchant – opens a trading window in which random selection of goods is available for purchase. The items would be considerably – say, twice the market value – overpriced but independent from the settlement’s location and facilities, as well as include some things that normally cannot be bought. Thus antidotes, poisons, mushrooms or rare weapons (i.e. ork, goblin, ancient dead) would be more readily available to those who can afford them while the random stock would prevent the new option from overshadowing the regular trade.
2. Shady Dealer – offers various deals that can turn out to be either beneficial or adverse, but always very pricy regardless. (think gambling from Diablo II). Some examples:
a. A “healing potion” that can either restore 30 HP, remove all injuries, apply poison AND intoxication or knock the character out for 3 turns. High-risk, high-reward “oh crap” button, if you will.
b. A “safe conduct letter” that can either protect company’s wanted criminals from the lawmen or turn out to be a fake, earning the company a massive drop in reputation and additional search parties on their tail.
c. An “ancient artifact” that can turn out to be a named weapon, an ordinary item or a stolen prized possession of a powerful bandit leader, kindly tipped by the dealer about the wherebout of the current holder
I think these 2 things would help to mitigate the RNG issues and add some interesting spice to trading.
What do others think? :)
.