I'm sure we've all been exploring a cave with a party of drunks when suddenly a bunch of them run into your quest target and start getting splattered. You wander around randomly, searching for the monster, but by the time you find him, he's picking his teeth with your friend's bones. It'd be nice to find him while he is still busy and maybe sneak up behind him, right?
So enter the listening skill, which is passive and always on. At novice level (all adventurers start with novice level by default), this skill will give you clues as to where things are occuring. For instance, instead of a long spiel detailing every action in the fight, you'd just get "You hear fighting from the northwest". With this information you will be more likely to find the fight. You might also hear other things like "You hear water running to the east", to help you find rivers. As your listening skill increases (it increases a very slight amount whenever you hear something in adventure mode), you might get more detail. For instance, you might get a message "You hear a friend fighting to the southeast.", letting you know it's one of your party. At higher levels, a large circle might appear on the screen, indicating the general area you hear a sound coming from. As your skill increases further, the circle becomes smaller. At very high levels, you can get the full play-by-play of nearby battles just like it is now, but with a nice precise blip on the screen to tell you exactly where. Since the skill is passive and increases slowly as it is used, every adventurer would have it and the more general adventuring you do, the better you get at it.
Edit: maybe I should have put this in suggestions, but it was more for adventure mode than the standard DF mode...
[ June 02, 2008: Message edited by: Rob Allen ]
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Topic: Suggestion for new skill: Listening (Read 951 times)