Rare/random monsters in wilderness

Aepas

I have always been a big fan of the wilderness map, it makes the world seem a lot larger. However, trudging through it is really quite boring. I get that it's not supposed to be a particularly fun mechanic, but since it's there why don't we do a little something with it?

I had always thought that large monsters may appear far away from civilization, perhaps ancient things that have not yet been touched by mankind and are mostly myth and legend.

So what if you were trudging through the plains and something like the lightning eagle swooped down on you. Perhaps it would give you a bit of warning to duck into the forests, or if you had a group of people you could sense it's general direction and head out to try and claim its hide yourself.

I figure there could be a great number of things ranging in size and difficulty
-Greater Drakes
-Wurms/tremors/thresher maw/whatever you call it
-Hill giants
-Ancient mammoth
-Crazed golems
-Giant animal types
-Rogue cultists (could be a variety of types through our lore, only Crimson Fang comes to mind right now)
-Bandits
-broken cart (just random vials/food/gold?)

I don't think that flooding the wilderness with these things would be amazingly worthwhile, but making it one of those rare events that can happen, much like sea monsters, would be very interesting, and even give a bit of incentive to go out and explore things a bit more.

They could drop rare items like we see from deep sea diving, or perhaps some small trinkets that help with crafting or can just be mounted in your house like a trophy. Or who knows, maybe you could gain a small buff like the horseshoe thingy for a day or so. I'd say a lot of gold for the effort, but at the same time we need more gold sinks, not more gold generators.
Maybe you could slowly gather pieces and make an awesome weapon. Monsterhunter in achaea plz.

I say keep them moving and offplane, to keep people from porting in quickly and trying to get a quick kill. That way things would have to at least be somewhat coordinated, but tracking down the beast might take a few minutes, and in those few minutes it might return to it's lair not to be seen again for several days.

Thoughts?

Hecon

Yes! More rewarding exploration please. Would be quite a lot more interesting and rewarding to adventure then, oh and it'd be good finding temporary buffs, such as increased experience gain, faster movement or perhaps temporary skills such as the ability to use wormholes or the ability to fly.

Aktillum

Yes to wild pokemon battles in the wilderness. All my yes.

Sarathai

Would be down for this.

Tael

I'm lukewarm about random monsters just for the sake of having random monsters. The problem is that their frequency of appearance leaves you with a catch-22: if they're frequent enough to justify seeking them out, then you have a problem because they become the new bashing target (and, for many reasons, I really don't think you want bashing to primarily be a wilderness thing); but if they're not frequent enough to seek them out, then it's a lot of work to add things that people are going to just walk right past 99% of the time (unless they somehow hinder you - and I don't think that would help help the problem of wilderness travel being laborious and not much fun).

On the other hand, giant boss-style monsters in the wilderness in the vein of sea monsters?

YES.

You could do a lot with the idea too - require more from a group than just mashing their bashing combo together, like having certain people place and maybe man traps, having people set up trap rooms and other people herd the monsters into the trap rooms, etc. And, in addition to any special, fun rewards (maybe monster-specific things somewhat like the new ship trade items?), there's already a system built into the game that's perfect for something like this - make the monsters give a large number of Gathering resources.

Monster Hunter: Achaea please.

Sarathai

Tael said:

(unless they somehow hinder you - and I don't think that would help help the problem of wilderness travel being laborious and not much fun).

Could always make them pop up on Survey as something like "there is a monster in the area" or whatever. Make it a bit like Shipwarning perhaps - it'll tell you general distance and direction, but won't show the exact room.

Alaskar

Sounds pretty sweet.

Xith

......

Ahmet

Sarathai said:

Tael said:

(unless they somehow hinder you - and I don't think that would help help the problem of wilderness travel being laborious and not much fun).

Could always make them pop up on Survey as something like "there is a monster in the area" or whatever. Make it a bit like Shipwarning perhaps - it'll tell you general distance and direction, but won't show the exact room.

Or have them show up on your map like people. Like, a big red exclamation point or something, cause ya know, that's not at all alarming when you see three of those on your wilderness map while being unaware that they changed the way seeing players in the wilderness worked.

Deladan

@Tecton @Sarapis Plz to this plllllllzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. 

Jeslyn

And subject the general population to all the mudsexers in the wilderness? Where would they go then? 

All jokes aside, this would be a fun idea.

Rinzai

This lines up with what I always wanted for sailing, just the random monster, even if it didn't react just something to spice things up.  It would give a different avenue for hunting, with new monsters, especially if they were to cling to areas.  easy things for common popular areas, but if I go way off the path into the mountains maybe something larger.

Great idea.

Tecton

Random encounters on the wilderness has been on my "list of things to do one day" for quite a while!

Greys

If this happens, so putting together a script to play the right battle music when it occurs.

Aepas

Here's mine. I even imagine the screen whooshing inwards

Sarathai

Greys said:

If this happens, so putting together a script to play the right battle music when it occurs.

Something like this?

Trey

Aepas said:

Here's mine. I even imagine the screen whooshing inwards

 Pleb. Here's how you do it.

 

Skye

>_> A WILD LIGHTNING EAGLE APPEARS!

*masterball gogo*

Aepas

Battlerage has set up the perfect opportunity for this idea.