New Town NPC Ideas

[woven crescent]

Woody - New Mission Type Vendor

Woody's the kind of guy who loves seeing things go boom, so he's going to need a helping hand in liberating the Far Far West in his own way.

Mission 1 - Bomb Voyage!

Premise - Somewhere on the map a powerful crypt ritual sight has spawned and begun corrupting that area and kicking up crazy storms, reduce it to cinders.

New Map Location - Cryptic fort, surround by powerful cryptic barriers, players must work to alone or together to bring them down, and blow up the ritual site.

Map Effects - While the fort is active, cryptic activity is heightened, i.e. higher enemy counts.

Reward - 500 Gold, 500 Souls.

Mission 2 - Bombing Run

Premise - Multiple Ritual sites have appeared across the map, hit em hard, hit em fast.

Map Effects - Timed event, every ritual site destroyed gets you some time back, but everyone left standing effects rewards given.

Reward - Per Site 100 Gold, 100 souls.

Mission 3 - Bring Me The Good Powder! - Community Event

Premise - Woody's found a treasure map, and there may be some gold in them hills, or something more. The only problem is... Woody needs more dynamite. During this mission liberate dynamite warehouses for Woody to collect.

New Map Location - Dynamite Warehouses.

Event Completion - Receive notification to speak to Woody in town, when the player approaches Woody he let's the player or players know "it's ready". Woody runs off to edge of town where there is a TNT ignition switch, when speaking to him again he says "would you like to do the honours? or let me have a blast?" the player can choose between two options to set off the bomb, or let Woody do it. If the player does it he says "you might wanna cover your ears...". If Woody does it he says "hold on to your butts...". A spark ignites under the box and sets off rapidly into the distance before a huge nuke goes off. At which point souls, gold, maybe even an XP tickets or weapons fragments rain down from the sky. Players aren't expected to grab all of these as it would be quite tedious but it'd be a fun effect, at which point the typical rewards screen pops up like a challenge unlock when loading back in from a mission displaying your total rewards for helping Woody out. Maybe as an additional effect NPC's in town when next speaking to them afterwards have unique dialogue that shows there unique reactions to Woody's antics. Maybe even have the Sheriff get off his ass and rush over scolding Woody.

Trackman - Time challenge Vendor

Trackman is always looking at his watch like he's got places to be, and surely knows how to be on time.

Mission Modifier - Gives players the ability to choose timed missions, where efficiency is key.

Premise - Trackman has places to be, and heroes to save, be at the station platform within the allotted time or find your own way home. This modifier can either scale with difficulty, or just borrow the Helldivers 2 mission timer for extraction. Either way this is intended for those who want more challenge they can set themselves.

Rewards - Scalable rewards for XP, Gold, Souls, and maybe even a Weapon Fragment.

Veijo - Unique Joker Vendor

I really struggled to think of something for Veijo, and I think I've landed on something exciting for Far Far West Legends and New Bounty Hunters alike.

By his very description he's been around forever, and fought in every war, so Veijo knows a thing or two about being a legendary bounty hunter. I want to make him into a unique joker vendor.

Now for starters, this will not apply to weapons, unique jokers on weapons will be unlocked through the players time invested in that weapon. Veijo's unique jokers, will apply to the player character. By completing multi-part questlines for Veijo you will unlock unique jokers to use in your character builds to further enhance your gameplay.

The reason I want to make this a vendor specific unlock is that if this was applied to the prestige system, long term players who've already hit max prestige would just unlock it instantly and have nothing new in the game to strive for, and newer players would have to decide on whether they want to grind out 500+ hours to get those unlocks.

If it's made vendor specific I think this ends up being the most fair way to implement this idea, that respects platers time investment and is beneficial to the games longevity.

Blink - Minigame Host

Blink is either customizing our fit, or chilling in the saloon, and frankly I think the saloon model needs to be running our favourite addictive past time... gambling baby!

Blink should have several games you can engage with as a solo, duo, or full squad gambling away your hard earned gold or souls... maybe XP tickets if you're feeling lucky. these games could consist of liars dice, blackjack, poker, etc. Maybe we throw in drinking games, or shooting games, there's plenty of bottles in there lying around waiting to get shot up, and really, what's a saloon without gunfire?

Willy Billy - Community Event Vendor

Willy Billy is seen around town fixing things up, right now he's working on a pop-up cactus likely for cactus day, maybe we should give him a hand. No doubt the reason the town looks the way it does during specific holiday event's outside of the weather is because of this guy, it would be good to give players personal quests to completed through him during those events to unlock more rewards, and maybe tie a community event to him where we all pitch and get something nice at the end, whether that's XP tickets, gold, souls, some free spins on the joker machine, or a combination of all of the above.

Helldivers 2 recently abandoned the community shared medals system and it's a shame because it helped returning players get a useful resource to unlock new items, I'd like to see this games community get more systems that reward that cooperative nature in for specific yearly events.

All of this can be scaled to the devs design so it doesn't become a way to abuse the resources in the game, but get a helping hand for participating.

I will add I didn't play the game during the beta stage so if this is already in the works, forget what I said.

Bull - Challenge Vendor

Bull comes across as the roughest, toughest, gunslinger in town, and by any right it's going to take something special to impress him.

Bull presents new challenges for players to complete, and doing so unlocks more rewards like special weapon skins, character effects like lightning, fire, etc. emotes, jokers, and more.

Part of me wanted to have Bull be the melee weapon vendor, but then I thought about how evil raptor intends to include melee weapons, will it be another equipment slot, or a replacement for a primary or secondary? then I thought about how players go about putting a build together currently, which is always with Anvil the gunsmith.

At that point it would be quite messy to have to keep running between two vendors to upgrade items, with the only work around being, you unlock melee weapons through Bull, but you can customise and upgrade through Anvil, but I feel like at that point it would make Bull irrelevant as the melee weapon vendor since Anvil could just do it.

Marauder - Resource/Treasure Vendor

I don't know about everyone else but I find gold pretty easy to come by and have very little to spend it on, so it'd be nice to have somewhere to donate it.

The Marauder maybe stuck inside jail, but he loves gold, it's literally what he's all about, and if you are willing to part with some of yours, he might let you in on some of his secrets.

Mission modifiers

• Map Locations for all gold veins for the next run (50 Gold).
• Cryptic relic locations, I'll expand on this later (250 Gold).
• Marauder Pass, for the next mission Marauders are friendly, and take no damage from the player (500 gold).
• Map location for heavily guarded Marauder Vaults which contain hidden loot which might include weapon fragments, marauder weapons, maybe even a vehicle (1000 Gold).

Hooty - New Mission Type/Game Mode Vendor

This idea will probably be the most ambitious out all the ones I write about.

As per her description, she's a pro tomb raider, and even unearthed a hidden temple... that sounds like a great idea for a unique map to unlock, questline, and game mode to complete.

To access the map, you must complete 3 quests first.

Mission 1 - Whisper on the wind

Premise - Hooty has been unable to access the hidden temple, and believes the clues to the key lie in lands Far Far Away. Head to a ritual site lying beneath the sands of the Far Far West map. Players must complete the puzzle at the site to get the next clue.

New Map Location - Ritual site, a certain area once covered in sand and stone has been revealed.

Map Effects - While this quest is active the Far Far West map is considered a Hard map instead of Easy.

Reward - The rough locations of the key fragments.

Mission 2 - Shattered soul

Premise - Players must travel to 3 different maps and find the fragments of the cryptic key within an area the clues mentioned. Hooty reminds you of this clue once are within the area.

Reward - Cryptic key fragments.

Mission 3 - Forging the ahead

Premise - Players must head to the Hellfire map, to use the Cryptic forge and remake the cryptic key.

New Map Location - Cryptic forge.

Reward - Cryptic key.

Finally... you've unlocked the map. Now I've got two ideas for this location, one's more complicated, the other is straight forward.

Idea 1

Growing up in the UK, there was this neat kids show called "Jungle Run" in this show participants had to complete challenges to gain statues, certain coloured statues granted you more time in the temple at the end to get through the challenges, get the loot, and get out of the temple. Idea 1 is a variation of this where outside the temple on the island, there are 3 RNG challenges that grant totems, which get you more time in the temple.

The temple will have 3 rooms, that scale in difficulty, ending with a boss fight, before accessing the loot room at the end. Players then use the remaining time to get out of the temple, before heading to extraction, where you face a final onslaught of enemies, and bail with the key.

The win con is the loot you get out with, the lose con is if you get trapped you get nothing.

The island is considered off limits for a week as the Cryptic Overseer has a watchful eye on his sacred temple.

My main criticism of this version is that after doing 3 quests to get to the island, this might feel a little much to do once you are there.

Idea 2

Similar to idea 1, but instead you access the temple right away with no need to do 3 challenges to decide what time you have inside. Instead you are given an allotted time from the moment the key unlocks the temple and you begin your run. Once again, payers then use the remaining time to get out of the temple, before heading to extraction, where you face a final onslaught of enemies, and bail with the key.

I've seen an idea floating around for a slay the spire style game mode, which might be better, but I wanted to share my two, credit here for the slay the spire idea: https://discord.com/channels/1377223661685178460/1507700271743107162

Jeralt - Monster Bounty Vendor

Jeralts a professional monster bounty hunter, enough said.

Mission - Special bounties for new more challenging variants of existing enemies that appear on each map, perhaps map specific creatures that can challenge the player, another person posted a thread worth reading into, credit here: https://discord.com/channels/1377223661685178460/1507707505885577356

Rewards - Skins, titles, Gold, Souls, Jokers, etc.

Sheriff - Legendary Bounty Vendor

The Sheriff doesn't do much, except keep the peace, the peace and quiet he clearly enjoys while sitting in his rocking chair.

The Sheriff gives you bounties to hunt down Far Far West Legends who are running a muck, theirs one for each map, every time you take one down, they end up locked up next to the Marauder.

Mission - Hunt legendary rogue bounty hunters.

Bounty Hunters - These guys aren't run of the mill cowboys n girls, they sling spells, have fire arms that pack a wallop, and don't go down easily.

Rewards - Skins, Titles, Gold, Souls, Jokers, etc.

Fortuna Bluff

Honestly I'm a bit torn on how to address this one, most of the ideas I've had feel like it'll lead to power creep. I think it's a bit of an oversight on evil raptor to allow you to endlessly grind out levels on any given element beyond level 100, and while I know it unlocks a cooldown reduction for that element, I can't help but feel it makes all effort in attaining new spells mute since players will have hundreds of level in each school, and I'm a casual player. For now I'm leaving this one as is until more is known about the new spells and spell progression if there will be, but feel free to discuss.

Gravekeeper - Collector Vendor

As his description states he's "paid by the grave". Discovering and returning the remains of brave or fool hardy bounty hunters from levels gets you an additional something from him upon your return to town.

Map effects - The bodies of fallen bounty hunters can be found around a given map.

Rewards - Gold, or Souls.

Black Market Dealer - Cryptic/Zurker Trader

Behind the saloon in a dingey room is a lone bounty hunter surround by a couple of crates, cages, and cryptic skulls. What if during missions you could attain cryptic/zurker
relics, which could be traded in for new cryptic/zurker primaries, secondaries, and equipment?

All the gear we use currently is steampunk tech, but what if we could get new weapons and utility that offer new options in combat?

I haven't though too much about what this would consist of but it's a neat idea for new gear to pursue.