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[SmileyMan]

Since the latest release, megabeast quests have become much much harder.  Previously easily-beatable enemies, such as giants and cyclopes have become nigh on impossible.

Presumably this is because they get skilled up during world generation now.  Any animal that has survived long enough to be hated by a town has probably got 30-40 kills under its belt.

I generated a Large world (only took 20 minutes or so) and nearly every town in the northern hemisphere gives you quests to kill this one badass cyclops.  Weapons, whether handheld or thrown, just bounce off.  My current plan is to keep sending wrestlers to try and gouge that eye, but this monster pretty much one-shots everone with a punch to the body that explodes in gore.

While I relish the challenge, I hope that some sort of system to grade the quests you are given gets put in.  Perhaps a town could send you to kill the local wolf pack or cougar, before despatching you to the Cave of Death.

What's worse is, according to the legends screen, there is a dragon somewhere out there with 121 kills to its name.  The only reason there are no quests for it is that it appears to have utterly destroyed three civilisations.  There's also a zombie dragon with 60 kills knocking about.  Sounds fun!

[Frankmanic]

Have you tried making twenty or thirty crossbow adventurers, retiring them, hiring them, and going forth with your platoon?

[Aqizzar]

Didn't Toady mention making the [SLOW_LEARNER] tag to keep megabeasts from overleveling during worldgen?  I guess that the unbalanced RNG worldgen meatgrinder ensures that any megabeasts who survive come out on the other side as the distilled essence of destruction.

Then again, looking through the raws, I notice only trolls, ogres, giants, blizzardmen, and werewolves have it.  I'd try adding the tag to megabeasts, but I never get any to survive more than 20 years.

[Bricktop]

Megabeasts are cool now.

I seem to be alone in thinking that the way they are pretty much guaranteed to die out is a good thing... I like the idea of these huge, mythical beasts roaming the land but slowly getting wiped out until only a select few are left, but powerful enough to be the ultimate challenge in quests (a dragon that can wipte out civilisations? sounds like we now have a new equivalent for the old end-game demon  ).

Also, rather than a quest scaling thing, maybe the leader of a town could give you sn option of 3 quests, and you choose each one (assuming, of course, that there are 3 threats. Obviously if there are less than three threats then you can't be offered 3 quests).

[Monsterfurby]

I am pretty sure Toady is planning to revamp the quest system eventually.

Still, I would like to see simple quests for beginning characters, such as errant quests (carrying a message or item to someplace else), [crafting] quests, [political] quests ( ][ means "once implemented"), trade quests, hunting of ordinary animals such as the already mentioned wolf pack, and of course assassination or megabeast hunting quests - maybe even quests to help build a house or castle, that would be pretty interesting.

As an adventure-mode-only-player, I hope Toady will, once he gets to it, implement all these neat things. But I am pretty optimistic at that.

PS: Already found another quest type. I call it "lazy suicide" (why did the guards try to kill me afterwards? It's not like I was not asked to kill her - by nothing less than The Touchy Nations themselves! Touchy people, that bunch..):

[umiman]

So THAT's why I've been getting owned by giants... I thought I just turned a new level of suck. Sometimes you'll find some just lying about with no limbs though.

[SmileyMan]

I think the reason a lot of the quests are for giants and cyclopes is that they are the beasts that annoy towns by stealing stuff, with the occasional kill of someone who gets in the way.

When dragons etc. go after a town, the only outcome is that one side or the other is dead, so there's either no town left to give you a quest, or no dragon left to quest after.

EDIT: Have just had a glance through the gamelog.  Turns out that this cyclops is just as sadistic as players - pretty much every kill consists of a systematic breaking of every joint in the body, followed by a one-shot punch to the stomach that explodes the adventurer.  Total badass.

[Gargantou]

This is great, I mean megabeasts should be hard, not easy, kinda pointless to call it a beast if it's an easy kill.

[Zenatrul]

This is my favorite megabeasts of all the ones I have seen about 10 worlds I generated. Such a simple name and such a sad life. Poor ust.

[RogerN]

PS: Already found another quest type. I call it "lazy suicide" (why did the guards try to kill me afterwards? It's not like I was not asked to kill her - by nothing less than The Touchy Nations themselves! Touchy people, that bunch..):

That's the most unique quest I've seen to date.  So he murdered his own grandfather and then asked you to kill him for it?  It should probably be reported as a bug.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

The main problem I see with megabeasts right now is their high mortality rate. I was just able to create a large world with 5 megabeasts left 1050 by pulling just about every trick I could think of, and the price were dozens of megabeasts who didn't see the year 100.

I agree that megabeasts should pack a good punch, but the legend mode implies that is not the case: even the dragons who survived till 1050 are not glorious. One of them got into three duels during his attacks on villages and each time got wounded and fled (^_^;;

Even successful raids by dragons usually just see a few hovels destroyed, maybe one or more shops and with a bit of luck a few villagers killed. But the destruction of entire towns, at least in the later phase of the legends seems rare (towns are quite big by then).

On the other hand, giants seem to be like cockroaches. While glancing through the middle of history, I noticed that in 560 or so, a dwarven mountain hall saw its 1224th giant rampage ...

Deathworks

[JoRo]

I went after a giant and he pulled off my steel right gauntlet and hit me once with it in the lower body, killing me.  I tried to go back for vengeance, but couldn't find the cave and was then torn apart by a giant eagle.

[Lightman]

I seem to be alone in thinking that the way they are pretty much guaranteed to die out is a good thing... I like the idea of these huge, mythical beasts roaming the land but slowly getting wiped out until only a select few are left, but powerful enough to be the ultimate challenge in quests (a dragon that can wipte out civilisations? sounds like we now have a new equivalent for the old end-game demon  ).

I like the idea, but I just think they die too quickly, right now. World generation doesn't seem to get anywhere near the target date. Even if we only want the select few, we do want those few to survive. So, I would like to be able to control the mega-beast numbers, but I guess that's hardcoded at this point?

[Monsterfurby]

Indeed Giants don't seem to be too rare. In my recent game there was one cave with 13 of them (!). They did not seem too strong, though, as now there are none.

[SmileyMan]

Have you tried making twenty or thirty crossbow adventurers, retiring them, hiring them, and going forth with your platoon?

I went to tackle one of the stronger giants in the world with two swordsmen (I made three but one has wandered off), and we had an epic fight in a cave, which the two of us barely won.  Unfortunately, trying to travel away caused a crash to desktop, which is a shame.

But multi-adventurer parties are officially awesome.