SK idea – Summon the Deities
Brief summary: this will utilize the arcade. Deities will be able to be summoned in special spawning areas, a scenario-type room most commonly found in the clockwork tunnels, using materials made with…vials. Yes.
I’ve noticed that most pickups (vials, in this case) are used less and less by players – they prefer to keep them in the usable slots, in order to obtain better elevator prizes. (Vs. smashing them in the faces of our enemies). I do this myself as well. But here’s an idea that will make vials more USABLE than mere usable pickups.
Going into mechanics now, with a bit of story flare and an overload of opinion.
Power flows through the clockworks. It keeps this great mess of a machine turning through space and time. But it’s not just any kind of power. And it’s not just one kind of power either…
Gods. They stir in the deeps, their presence only known from legends and distant rumblings. The great Vog, an entity of flames, is the most famous of these deities. But there is a god for every status. Every vial contains their power, their ichor captured in diluted form. These deities will resonate with their own power signatures, and send minor shadows of themselves into the glory of combat, if a knight has the mind and the method for it.
Part 1 – Preparing the Offering
As a knight explores the clockworks, they tend to pick up a lot of shiny things. Some of these things are used in crafting, making the knight pretty, or in combat. Many knights prefer the use of their crafted weapons, rarely smashing vials in a useful manner, once they have their 5* loadouts established. They stay in the usable belts of knights, carried through the levels, and are discarded in favor of pills, or for the aesthetic show at elevators. It’s time that their power is recognized for what it could be.
At Clockwork Terminals, there would be new special potion-pot stations that a knight can put their vials in, that they’ve carried, if they have, through previous arcade levels. The pot/cauldron contains its own recipes, so no need to worry about clogging your knight’s memory cells.
Lower tier terminal will of course lack recipes that use higher tier vials that cannot be carried.
Recipes:
3 of vial type X will create an Y Orb of X Ichor. Y = star, X = status.
0*: Orb of X Ichor. 2*: Super Orb of X Ichor. 4*: Ultra Orb of X Ichor.
You must use the same kind of vial – so three t1 freeze vials, three T3 curse vials. No mixing of statuses or tiers will be acceptable, because the cauldron would explode. Picture the knight pouring the contents of the vials into the cauldron, and then dropping the empty containers into the center. These empty containers will melt into a spherical shape, and the vial contents will flow into the hollow orb formed by the empty, melted containers, using the magic of the cauldron and the desire of the knight, forming a potent, concentrated Orb of Ichor. This will land in the knight’s materials inventory.
Part 2- Offering the Offering.
The room will be obvious…a craggy, crumbling scenario, rumbling and humming with lines of power, that may or may not be organic. In the center of this large, danger-room type area, there is a very big orb of clear mineral-like material (roughly the size of Vanaduke’s angry balls of doom). This strange effigy appears to be roundish, with a gap in the top…
Perhaps…the Orb of Ichor should go there…it seems to want to!!
Interacting with the orb will prompt a menu to appear, if the knight has at least one kind of Orb of Ichor on them. If a knight has no Orb of Ichor, then the effigy will not interact – the knight can poke it all they want (making that boop boop gesture over and over, like you see in Pinch of Salt, for example). The menu will allow a knight to choose what orb to drop into the effigy. Any orb of any tier in the clockworks will take ONE Orb of Ichor of any type of any tier. So you can hoard Ultra Orbs of X Ichor and use them in D10 if you happen to encounter that situation.
Part 3 – Fighting the Deity
Once the Orb is offered to the Orb, it will shudder, slowly filling with the color relevant to the status used, swirling forth from the center of the ball. Eyes, angry eyes, will appear on it, and it will levitate off the ground. As it rises, it will shout “I AM A SUMMONED SHADOW OF THE GREAT AND ALMIGHTY [god’s name]. DEFEAT ME TO PROVE YOUR WORTH!” As soon as the orb is done shouting its speech, the party can fight it.
It behaves just like Vanaduke’s mask – floating around and shooting out status projectiles. And it has a very angry face, again, just like Vanaduke’s balls of doom. Hmmm…maybe those balls of doom would now be considered echoes of Vog? Fun thoughts. It will follow a knight once aggro is established, so you can lead it all over the map if you want.
An issue here is that summoning the Curse Deity will allow curse to appear in lower tiers. Perhaps the Ultra Orbs of Curse Ichor should be restricted, along with other special statuses, to T3 Effigy Scenarios.
Upon defeat, the orb could drop an item relevant to its status. (A T3 entity could always drop the 5* related material). All entities could drop a batch of forge crystals relevant to the tier, maybe 10 of them. For depths that can have two kinds of crystal drop, 5 of each. There could also be a low chance of the power condensing into an orb of alchemy, relevant to the depth the entity was summoned in. A good batch of prize for effort and the luck of finding an Effigy Scenario.
More Thoughts:
Sure, using vials has merits. In battle, you can’t inflict all that many statuses, depending on your chosen weapons and battle sprite, of course. They can help in a pinch. This is simply another optional use for the vials. And yes, you can go over to the vendors in the towns and buy pickups, but the scenario rooms containing the Effigies would be very rare. So it should be pretty balanced between effort, economy, and function. Since you can only use one orb of a kind per effigy, overstocking yourself with them would not be an unbalancing factor.
EDIT: please discuss potential god names for the other statuses, and potential Stun material prizes if you like the idea. Also be nice.
It should be harder. Of course there's a technical problem, your belt only holds 3 of each vial at a time.
So... do this: 3 vials--> one orb fragment. X orb fragments -> the final orb of summon thing.
Alternatively, make the offering require multiple orbs. This would also force parties to cooperate instead of having one guy use all his orbs alone.