I know that its still very far, but i know that Toady plans to add Fortress modes for the other races, each of them would have very different styles of play, and i have been thinking, how should other races create artifacts? Strange mood should be for dwarves only, other races would have other ways to create their artifacts, artifacts created by other races should also be much more rare than dwarven artifacts, since in every fantasy world lore the dwarves are always the best crafters.
My suggestion is the following:
Humans: Inspiration
Humans would be inspirated by events, conversations or by admiring foreign masterpieces/artifacts, when a human gain inspiration he chooses a type of material and a type of item, those will be based on what gave him the inspiration (by watching a Titan being slain the human could gain inspiration to create a weapon of the same type that killed the Titan using the Titan fangs or bones as material for example), exposing your humans to uncommon situations or letting them share tales would increase the likelihood of an inspiration, but still would be slightly more rare than dwarven strange moods even in a very active human village, while the artifacts in a calm human village would be very scarce.
Also humans would not be as focused as dwarves in creating the artifacts, and would be MUCH slower in doing it, they would stop the creation of the artfact to sleep, eat and drink as if they were working normally and resume it later, but they still wont accept any task other than creation the artifact, failure to create the artifact for any reason would not force insanity, but would leave the human VERY unhappy.
In the end the artifact quality would be the same as a dwarven one.
Elves: Natural Gifts
Elves would receive their artifacts from the nature, those gifts would be special magical trees that would grow on the Elven Retreats, when a magical tree appears the game would pause and the screen would focus on it like when a dwarf enters strange mood, these trees would be very rare, one per 1-2 years, about 3x rarer than dwarven artifacts, protecting the nature (sending forces to stop dwarven/human deforesters) would reduce the time interval between the birth of a new magica tree and the next one.
Those tress would take more time to mature than normal trees, once a tree reach the "adult" stage it would gain random magical powers* (glow at night, attacking hostiles with vines, repel vermin, create protective fog, etc..), some of them would bear fruit and flowers, that elves would harvest for extremelly high quality food/nectar, but these trees would never have seeds, each of them is unique (with Unique name and all). But the real treasure is their wood, some could even have wood as dense and strong as steel, the problem is that harvesting a single wood log would kill the tree, it would be a tough choise for the player.
The extracted log would have its properties in the description (it would describe the density, flexibility, overall strengh compating to other materials), the player would be able to order the creation of an artifact using the log, only a legendary crafter would be able to create the artifact, the final product would contain a magical power based on the power of the original tree.
The catch here is that the Magical Trees would attract many kinds of magical creatures, necromancers and greedy thieves that would try to devour/corrupt/steal it, and protecting multiple Magical Trees would be pretty FUN!
Losing a Magical Tree or the magical wooden log before an artifact is made of it would upset ALL the elves in the retreat, generating an unhappy tought of varying intensity depending on their personalities, would also delay the birth of the next tree a bit.
*i suppose that at this point Toady will already have implemented Magic in the Artifacts
Goblin: Urge
The goblin "strange mood" would be pretty similar to a dwarven Fell Mood, but it would happen AFTER the killing of a creature, the more powerful/important was the creature killed, higher is the chance of a Goblin urge to create a trophy, only the goblin that dealt the final blow on the creature can get the Urge, and it can only happen if there are no more enemies nearby (a Goblin would not stop combat to make an artifact, so killing the strongest enemy last would increase the chances of a Urge)
Once a goblin get the Urge to make a trophy he would drag the creature corpose to a workshop related to the goblin highest skill, different from a Dwarven Fell Mood the Goblin won't always use the creature bones or leather as the primary material for the artifact (trophy), a Goblin weaponsmith would use metal for primary material and use the creature parts to decorate the weapon. Trophies are always some kind of equipment, weapons, armor, clothing or jewelery
The trophy would be cursed by the soul of the victim, while it would have magical powers similar to dwarven and human ones, unless the creature wielding/using the artifact have enough Willpower to endure the curse the creature will Enrage or Berserk for a few seconds, a new Willpower test is made every random amount of time, upon equipping it the artifact becomes bounded to the wielder and unequipping the cursed artifact would require going to a temple and request a purification ritual to a priest, doing so would allow unequipping the artifact, but the curse would not be lifted from it, and re-equipping the artifact would re-apply the berserking curse to the wielder.
Failure to create the trophy would cause the victim soul to curse the goblin permanently instead, resulting in berserking insanity most of the time.
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Topic: Different races = Diferent ways to create artifacts (Read 2375 times)