Midgame smoothing: Fuelweaver 'quest'

[maradyne]

Given the recent roadmap, and the discussion on today's stream, I'd like to resuggest an old idea of mine, to make the sequence of figuring out what exactly to do next...uh, possible, without having to refer to outside resources like the wiki:

Use the Shadow Atrium as a DST equivalent to the Divining Rod.

 

Have it do certain things when in the inventory. A slow, quiet heartbeat sound that begins in the caves, getting faster the closer the player gets to the tentapillar leading to the Atrium zone. Continue to get faster as they get closer to the Gateway.

Also give the item a dim purple glow effect in it's center when in the caves, and a red one when in the labyrinth leading to the Gateway.

 

This should at least help new players get to where they need to go, and figure out that they should do something with that item near the Gateway.

 

(I know about the scrapbook; this is meant to supplement that idea.)

[maxwell_winters]

I would prefer it if they just put a tentapillar in the ruins that always leads to the Atrium. 

But I agree the "final" bosses quest lines need a bit of a simplification. They aren't even that hard, they're tedious. CC has it much worse imo.  

[00petar00]

I don't believe anyone is getting to CC and killing him without wiki so why should Fuelweaver's quest be simplified? It would be better if this was possible without wiki but there's a lot of work required on the game if Klei is going to be anywhere close to achieving this.

I think Klei should make it more difficult to get to Fuelweaver fight, either by introducing some questline like CC or something else required to activate the rifts besides killing him.

It is already so much harder to get to fight CC compared to Fuelweaver, I don't want something equivalent of hard mode activated in caves so fast.

That is without even talking about the arduous questline journey without good rewards for CC but Fuelweaver only requires of you to kill shadow pieces and this in itself gives you an option to farm infinite nightmare fuel, dark swords and night armor, what do Pear's quests do for you? What about Crab king? Having to go to archives with iridescent gem and you get terra firma tamper that is only useful for megabasing.

Then there's wagstaff minigame that gets quite stale after you do it a few times and is just another thing you have to do, it is worth mentioning that players prefer to do it after BQ so they can maybe bundle the moongleams for moon quay or infused moon shards and there's also the ones you get from killing CC that are going to be wasted without bundlewrap.

CC only gives englightened crown and some moon glass/moon rock that the playerbase is quite split on whether it is worth it or not but resetting caves results in you getting more gems, gears, wires and thulecite.

Now what about Fuelweaver drops? They are arguably more useful compared to enlightened crown or at least one or two of the items is something you want for any character so you are already very incentivized to do it.

There is also celestial orb that you have to pray for good RNG for it to spawn so you are time locked too, so all in all this requires a lot of effort when you can get to Fuelweaver so much faster.

[Fill-Lips]

Doesn't FW already have a pseudo quest? in order to fight him you have to:

1. Fix the Suspicous Marble set by finding Rook's Nose, Knight's Head and Bishop's Head
   • Mine them on a New Moon and defeat the Shadow Pieces that come out, in a prefable order
2. Go to caves and collect 8 Fossil Fragments
3. Find the ruins with Ancient Guardian labyrinth, and kill AG
4. Find the Giant Tentacle that leads to the atrium
5. Go to the end of the atrium, slot the Ancient Key, assemble the fossils into the correct skeleton and slap the Shadow Heart into him
   • If you forget any of those key items, you'll have to leave the atrium, Key is marked on the map, fossils can be mined for but if you lost the heart, you need to redo the Shadow Pieces. And don't forget where that pillar is!
6. Beat up Fuel Weaver
   • God forbid you forget to prepare a way to go sane/insane at will

Oh yeah, and how is an average player meant to connect all these steps together to even attempt FW without someone in the know or the wiki? Or even find out there are these steps in the first place?

These chains of steps don't need simplifying, much (Looking at you, RNG Tentacles), but they sure as hell need some information in game to connect them.

One last thing, I like how the atrium teaches you that you need some way to go sane/insane at will with the sanity gates, which is also integrated in the FW fight. That's the kind of information I like, more of that.

 

Also yeah, Shadow Atrium should act like a divining rod, CC's questline has the Astral Detector to reduce the pain of location rng by pointing in the direction you need to go.