SilverSliver's series of Silver, Sliver, Swords, and Stuff.

I wanted to put shower thoughts for the title, but Izzy stole it from over a year ago... so here we are.

This is just a compilation of some of my ideas that I think would be cool for Ivan, some are small things (normal numbers on list), and some are big things (bolded numbers on list):

1. The Supreme Silverised Sword. This is by far my favorite idea so I definitely put it first. It's basically a long quest to receive a really strong weapon. The details of the quest exactly are fuzzy, but it would include another town and a dungeon of some sort to pass through. While other questlines are focused on Valpurus (high priest) and Infuscor (Xinroch), this quest will be for Mellis.

When you choose to accept this questline, you journey to the town and receive the hilt of the Supreme Silverised Sword. From there, you will journey into the dungeon to pick up the Sliver of the Supreme Silverised Sword, or Silverised Supreme Sword Slivers . Each time you receive a Sliver, you can put the Sliver in one hand and the Hilt in the other, then pray to Loricatus. He shall perform his magic repairs and join the Sliver and the Hilt together to create a longer weapon. The general idea is to have 4-5 Slivers, so the first sliver merged creates the Silverised Dagger, then the Silverised Short Sword, then the Silverised Sword, then the Silverised LongSword, then the Supreme Silverised Sword, or something like that (I'm not confusing at all). The non-completed swords will just have decent stats.

So eventually, you get this supposedly really long sword, and supposedly it's stats are pretty good. But this isn't just a copy of Belederiver, because the sword has one cool ability, turning the limbs it hits into silver. The newly silverised limbs usually have decent strength, but lack dexterity and agility, making it easily to take down their owner. After that, you can sell the limbs for a great price too . Wowie so cool right? Oh also any creature with Lycanthropy Panics when they see this weapon, no matter how decked they are.

Now that we have this concept in mind, where could you get the slivers (beside the obvious idea of Mellis's championship gift)? Here are some unique possibilities I was thinking of:


2. Boy Prodigy
You run around the dungeons, stabbing kobolds and snacking on goblin spleens, when you see a small boy. "Little boy, this dungeon isn't for you," you admonish, "children should stay at home and read about heroes like me!" The boy frowns and pulls out a shortsword. You chuckle. It's only a mithril shortsword, unbreakable yes, but not even enchanted. Then you sense danger. Wait... whaARHGHRGHGHRGHRHG HELP! HELP! HE'S BEATING ME UP! HELP! AOHALEPFNBOOIaHlRialbalsh....................bleh

Actually I'm not even sure why I included that short story I could have just described the enemy but oh well basically it's a boy with lackluster gear and only weak weapon but insanely high weapon proficiency with his unique shortsword, designed to smite the arrogant .

3. The old god
No more story time unfortunately, I got lazy. But speaking of lazy, I drew inspiration from one of Kaetho's lines about winged Ostriches being godly until they discovered levitation. So why not have a ostrich as an enemy, one who didn't keep up with the times? Oh yeah, it's all coming together. The idea is an non-levitating but terrifyingly agile and dexterous bird with decently high health chasing you down.

4. The god abider
You continue traveling through the dungeon. That boy was a real pos, and the bird... eugh. But you keep on keeping on, and see a man before you. Maybe he's frie-"MORE SACRAFICES TO THE GODS!" Good Freaking grief... he's got artificial limbs too!? You approach him, and the battle begins.

Despite the inconsistency of the stories, the next unique enemy is one with 4 unique artificial limbs of various gods, (for example: dream cloth left arm, iron right arm, mithril left leg, bamboo right leg) all of which are decently good quality but not too stupidly strong like GEF. Even better, he cannot be beheaded, and his head and torso are basically indestructible. Even Even better, when you cut off one of his limbs, he'll pray to a god and get another one! So much fun! His downfall is in that eventually the gods will become angry at him, he'll change into something like a rat, and then you can finally cut him down.

5. The final boss:
What would make a final boss strong and annoying? Ranged attacks. Multiple Enemies. LifeSaving I'm think giving the final boss a wand of mirroring and an amulet of life saving so that he when he zaps himself with the former, he creates clones that are also lifesaved

So what do you all think? This was a lot of work to write down, and I think the concepts would be cool and not too hard to implement (besides the boss that prays for limbs). I just think it would be cool to have the first idea, and the others would be cool extras.

So you're looking at this as a main quest in place of the others? Or a smaller series of mini-quests where you fight bosses one after another?

Yeah a generalist quest to retrieve and reassemble the Silverised Sword with the enemies shown as possible unique bosses, like how in gloomy caves the enner is a unique monster, or the gravekeeper in Xinroch's tomb. At the very least, it sounded like a unique idea in my head and could reasonably fit in the game right? (also my name eternally indirectly memorialized would be cool)

It needs some work, but I don't see why not.

Firstly though, why pray to Loricatus when it's a Mellis quest? Isn't Mellis more likely to want the sword for himself? Assuming what you want is a full length quest, what are you supposed to do with the completed weapon? Do you not get a chance to use it?

On a mechanical point, the longer the weapon gets, the less appealing it is to use it. Silver is heavy. Rather than existing weapon types, you want something unique. Stiletto, rapier, etc.

As far as changing the hit body part to silver goes, why just limbs? Why not risk making a silver golem out of the enemy?

I like the idea of a weapon you have to assemble a lot, even if the quest isn't implemented it would be cool if there was a weapon parts of which were scattered around the world in dangerous places. Like one would be in a secret room in the big bad spider chamber, one would be somewhere in Attnam and would have to be stolen, another one in Oree's lair. Maybe assembling the weapon would be a quest itself, and give you a different ending. Maybe it was dissassembled for a good reason and once you put it together the world ends in a week or two, like in HoMM where the Armageddon's Blade destroyed the world.

Could make it a quest for the atheist deity, who is tired of this world and just wants it to end (don't remember his name) which would also block access to all other gods since not even the chaotic deities want to destroy the world, make all NPCs hostile and open access to all dungeons so you can gather the weapon pieces. Kind of like an even harder gamemode for IVAN

I like #4, both the concept of an enemy with artificial limbs and the ability for him to keep growing them back

#5 sounds similar to

SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.

I agree more ranged attack enemies would make things interesting

For Chaostrom:

Counter response time
Yep Mellis would probably absolutely want a gem based sword more, but the person who repairs the sword should be of the finest quality, and since Loricatus is both close in alignment and repairs literally everything, who better? Consider it a favor between gods.

Yep, about as much as the shirt of the golden eagle or the shadow veil . Both are very cool items that you can use, but eventually you return them to the requester. However, since the sword is split into multiple parts, you could use it beforehand, but a weakened version of it.

Aha, I thought this might come up. It is not a Silver Blade, but rather a Silverised Blade. To save you a search, to silverise something is to coat or treat it with silver to make it a silvery color. Therefore mechanically, the blade could be compromised of another material underneath the silver coating to make it only slightly heavier, as it is not a purely silver blade (we could hide black diamond or something underneath it )

But your other point absolutely makes sense, the weapons types I proposed seem too cliché. I just wanted something in a lengthening order. On another note, too make unique weapon types for a single weapon isn't a great idea either. I'm open to suggestions here.

This idea of mine really stems from a certain abusive mistress queen with agility and dexterity able to put all others to shame (which makes her good with her fingers ). My thought is that silver does give decent arm and leg strength, but it drops agi and dex to 4, an number low enough for a well advanced player to usually easily dodge, and a worthy reward of a long quest. Being able to completely turn something into a silver golem would be a little too broken imho, they lose their intelligence, drop all their armor, and can easily be fled from. An elder dark mage with silver limbs can still target you from afar, but being slow can only teleport to get away, whereas an elder dark mage turned into a silver golem poses 0 threat in comparison. I guess I just don't see the risk in a silver golem.

For BadBeaver:
His name is Solicitus

For Capristo:
True, it's just like the SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text. for #5, but I'm stuck on what a good final boss would be. A good basis would either be fast and furious like Sherry, or just ranged like izzy, but what would be good balance? At this point I was running out of steam from my earlier ideas and just needed to put something down.

Remember, this is just a [idea], a game [idea]!

Yes, but who is the requester here? Is Petrus wanting you to nab the weapon for Valpurus, does Decos send you to a temple of Mellis instead, what is the story here? At least with the shirt of the golden eagle you can put it on to take on Attnam, what can you do with the completed silverised blade? Do you pick a god to try and return it to and the other sends their forces to take it from you?

Point still stands, silver is heavy, and as it grows longer so does the weapon, leaving you with one unwieldy weapon you'll probably have to two-hand. Not to mention if it starts short and ends up long, you'll end up having to switch your weapon training halfway, which is another minus. Which is why I suggested stilettos and rapiers, there may be a difference in length but the way they're used is the same, which is not the same as short/long swords. Anyway, there's no reason we can't just make the silverised blade an artifact of the new weapon type. Besides that, do we even have a mechanic for material coating on weapons?

I see the inspiration taken from Sherry, but a long, heavy weapon just isn't going to have the accuracy to hit limbs. That ability to turn limbs to silver will become an irrelevant gimmick you'll hardly see. Whereas extending it to any body part will be far more noticeable in-play. Sure, an elder dark mage turned into a silver golem works in your favour, but that's only if you hit every body part. An elder dark mage with a silver torso for a massive health boost? Big threat.

It would be cool if turning a mob's head into silver would set their INT to that of a silver golem, so you could disable mages.

so many problems with my ideas

No matter. More ideas time. I actually really appreciate the questioning, it makes me feel that I could go somewhere with this.

As for the questline, I was thinking about a relatively unused person we have in the game now, Dictionary Thesaurius! . Concurrently we have him hanging around doing nothing unless SPOILER ALERT. Click here to see text.. He could offer the quest, as he loves treasure. Not sure about the actual dungeon layout yet, but this is still early stage planning. Perhaps this could be an alternate version of the gloomy caves ending, as once you hold the completed sword in your hands he looks upon you with greed in his eyes and orders you to hand it over. If not, he turns red and some fight ensues.

As for the sword, let's see...
"Your slightly rusted iron dagger covered in blood rusts more"
"You see a broken phoenix feather armor covered with many types of liquids on a stone floor"
Arguably silver is a solid which we don't have, but it wouldn't be too hard to include supposedly.

When I did some more thinking about the weapon weight, I decided to look into the current weapons. The heavier a weapon is, the more damage it does, but the more inaccurate it is- with the exception of whips, which the lighter and more flexible they are the more damage they do. So I said, instead of a strong rock or metal to hide underneath the silvery coating, why not hide a insanely light and strong cloth to balance out the weight of the silver, like GEF or even better, spirit cloth (Because Sophos and Mellis are more closely aligned). This way, the sword still has the hardness of silver on the outside, but weighs no more than another sword of iron or steel.

Unique Weapon types, on the other hand, are much harder to think of. The longer swords could be a zweinander or a claymore, but I have few possibilities on the shorter swords other than a gladius.(cutlasses, khopeshs, and sabers all curve, whereas I imagine the sword to be perfectly straight)
Side note: Two-bladed swords would be a cool addition to the game

I didn't really think about the weapon efficiency, I suppose making a switch from short swords to long swords would be quite the downside. Eh, seems like an IVAN thing to do though. Perhaps Haathbar could warn the adventurer ahead of time that the weapon changes type, or to just train long sword for the time being as the shorter versions of the silverised sword have no special effects, but instead are just decent weapons.

As for the ability, I think the possibility of changing all body parts to silver rather than arms and legs seems a bit strong, and too much high risk high reward. Really, the sword is just meant to be good against endgame bosses, whose stats get cut down (pardon the pun). It wouldn't be too hard to focus on limbs either if it becomes light, as it could be made pre-enchanted like blue screen. ​

Does this all make sense?

Don't worry about the problems, if you're willing to address them then yes, I don't see a reason why you can't go somewhere with this. I'm not trying to cut you down, but someone has to ask the hard questions.

I'm not sure liquids on items can be repurposed for the kind of solid material coating you're thinking of, but if you think you can pull it off, all the more power to you! Something similar has been proposed in the past incidentally, regarding armor. I don't know if it actually got added though. If it did, you might be able to extend that to weapons.

I'm not proposing just different weapons here, I'm proposing introducing a new type that allows for weapons of different lengths without the need to change to another type. Things like a claymore or gladius would fall under long swords and short swords respectively. If the silverised blade forces you to switch training halfway through, people just aren't going to use it, or focus on long swords then use it when it gets longer. Which means the early stages will get neglected, which I don't think you'd want.

If you want to write a new dungeon, it can be added. Just fire up a text editor and load up the script files, make changes, submit pull request.
IVAN has lots of features already, therefore try use what is existing at the moment to come up with new ways of challenging players.
When your new dungeon is fleshed out (or has bones, in the case of undead), then narrative progression and dungeon/creature/item specific code can be added as needed.

People will play your dungeon and give you feedback. It can be hard to satisfy everyone. Be prepared for criticism.
That said, this is a relatively safe place to try out new things, compared to the internet at large. It is amazing when anyone plays something you wrote, so earnest player feedback is hugely valuable. Use that feedback to improve your work.

On weapons, I think people's experience with the LIVAN/CLIVAN variants reveals the weapon system to be easy to unbalance. There are numerous threads all over this forum where we have discussed weapon system at length.
I think the weapon/combat system could be expanded, but we need a good model of what we have already in order to study how we can make changes while maintaining balance. I have no plan to do research or make changes in this area.