Adjust the Rat King room

[wraith gate]

Just my opinion, but I don't like that idea. Maybe a revamp of the Rat King room, like maybe make it more worth it to find it and such, but a nerf like this?

I just don't like that. Just my humble opinion though, this could be turned into a challenge instead wherein you have an optional boss fight with the rat king before you can get his treasures. *optional, of course.

Though if it is turned into an optional boss fight, the items have to be changed from gold to something else

[teal bolt]

No worries! I think we are approaching to the same idea that current Rat King room is not that exciting to find, I like your idea!

[pulsar bison]

You can simply choose not to discover the rat king room. Knowing others would get fewer golds won't make your game easier. This is a single player game and the game is balanced around no rat king room found anyway.

[teal bolt]

You are missing the point, I'm saying as an easter egg it's better to not have anything that could impact the later run, hence my suggestion to reduce or remove the gold. because once you are aware of the existence of the gold you will always want to get them, that's why I say it became a chore.

[pulsar bison]

I do not understand. What's the difference between simply not searching for it and dev reducing gold & you stopping searching for it? In both cases you get 0 extra golds and nothing else changed.
Just stop getting the gold if you don't like it. I rarely rob the rat king anyway.
If you need an extra excuse to not get the gold, thinking it as "Don't take the gold because you might want to give it the crown and get the rat armor ability later on" or "Don't open the chest now because you might get a wealth ring later"

[dusk prairie]

rat king should spawn another goo if u find him

[teal bolt]

because the extra gold could mean potentially extra item purchase in the next floor. This could affect a run. An easter egg should not be part of the normal game run.
If nothing else would change, why are you opposed to my idea anyway? What would this idea make less of your run?
In my case, it would be nice knowing I don't have to search for rat king for extra money for potentially extra purchase.

[trail dome]

Taking the gold doesn't make him refuse to give you the ability

He actually doesn't care about you taking it

The gold makes for a reward but the thing is for some people farming ratking become a strategy they wake goo then ignore him to search because of the boss floor effect

It works but takes time

[jade roost]

The opposition mostly comes from the fact that you appear to to proposing an across-the-board nerf without anything in return, one that affects us too, when we might not necessarily have wanted this.

Right now, if you don't like the room, you are free to not search for it.

If we do like it and your idea passes, too bad; the bonus is nerfed and taken away, and we're not free to do anything to get it back.

If you feel like you have to find it, currently, then think about all the reasons why. List all the reasons why "just skip it, then" isn't a good option for you. Now, take that list, ignore it, and skip the room anyway. "But the item purchase on the next floor-" Yeah, now you won't be able to afford it. Sucks, doesn't it? That is what you want the rest of us to feel from now on, every time, with no way back.

That is what your idea would make less of our run.

[teal bolt]

If you think removing the gold would make less of a run, then I'm not really free to not search for it, am I? The randomness of the location of the rat king room makes it a hassle to search for, if it has a more consistent spawn rules, I'll have no problem with it at all.

[teal bolt]

Come to think of it, THIS is the adjustment I really wanted: make the rat king room easier to find.

[jade roost]

If you're not free to not search for it, then what makes you think removing the gold anyway would somehow fix things? That's kind of like saying "I don't like the randomness involved in finding good enough weapons and armor to be able to defeat the bosses; we should just remove equipment from the game entirely, so no one can have it, to fix that." That... is the exact opposite of fixing the problem, actually.

Now, do we disagree with the very notion that what was supposed to be an easter egg has become too important to skip outside of self-imposed challenges, and that having to search for it every time can be a pain? Not necessarily. But there are ways around that that don't just sentence everyone to a worse experience.

Make the door not hidden, if it's expected that you need to find it anyway.

Adjust the shop prices so that much extra gold isn't needed, if you're going to nerf the payout for finding it.

Make something like "The Rat King is literally a rat and has no use for money (treasure chests in the rat king room are removed)" or "The Rat King doesn't take kindly to thieves (looting the treasure chests in the rat king room will turn him aggressive)" into optional challenge mode challenges.

Etc.

But you can't just say the problem is that it's too much of a chore to avoid the punishment, and then propose that we make the punishment literally unavoidable instead.

Maybe make the rat king room a reverse shop. He has no use for all these gold coins he found lying around and he'll give them to you if you bring him cheese or whatever special item he'd be interested in from around the rest of the dungeon.

Magic Ling Pixel Dungeon has an alternate floor 5 boss, and when you kill it, you're automatically teleported to a separate post-battle version of the floor standing right next to the king and all his chests, who are all just right there out in the open, rather than being in a secret room at all. Have whichever version you're thinking of do something like that, maybe.

[teal bolt]

Well, my initial thought is by removing the gold, the need for searching for the room is also removed, thus making the discovery of rat king room less relevant to the run, stay more true to its easter egg nature.

I didn't mean it to be a punishment for all players, instead I was trying to say these gold are not supposed to be here in the first place.

But since everyone knew about the gold, removing them does feel like a punishment to all people.

[jade roost]

Yeah. It's a bit late to go back on the gold existing at all without feeling like a nerf to people who are used to it.

... Well, I mean. Depending on the version. Rat King massively buffs the amount of gold because it's Rat King. I think the room is still basically worthless in original Shattered, if that's what you were looking for.

(And, again, Magic Ling keeps the reward fairly significant--maybe not as much as in Rat King but definitely a real enough amount to be worth opening the chests rather than them all having like one gold or something--but they're out in the open and you're teleported right to them, rather than them being hidden at all.)

[teal bolt]

The rat king is still an easter egg after all, I think it needs to be hidden, but maybe there is something that could be done to hint at the room, such as adding some subtle marks or cracks on the walls or something, idk

[jade roost]

Maybe. Like you said, I think the word is kind of already out for most players, so it's just a matter of "I know he's in here somewhere and I want that gold, soooo" which, I agree, does kind of feel different if it feels like something you're punished for missing rather than something that's just kind of neat and for-fun if you find it.

Subtle marks or wall cracks or whatever might be a bit infeasible if it means creating new assets for that, but maybe play with the rules for how that floor is generated to narrow it down? Like the Rat King's lair must always be connected to the starting room (with the up staircase) or the ending room (with the locked door and down staircase to the next stratum) or maybe even the room that Goo starts in, rather than "he could be literally anywhere."

Or maybe if you beat Goo with a certain optional prerequisite (like if you win without ever getting hit by the ultimate charge-up attack, perhaps, for example) then the game rewards you with a free Magic Mapping cast when it dies.

[spare path]

Except that searching for it consumes satiation, which means that skipping the ratking isn't necessairly a mistake, but rather the consequence if you weighting that satiation more than the ratking's gold; I personally never search for him exactly because of that (unless I got items that could help me (like, potions of mind vision, scrolls of magic mapping, etc...), and even then I still tend to question wether it's worth it to use them for so little gold or not)

The only way for the ratking to be needed might be for getting a perfect score, but that (your reasoning regarding the ratking being necessary for the run) would imply that you are "forced" to play exclusively 9 challenge runs too (as you cannot get a perfect score in any other way)

Which I believe isn't really true

[hexed saddle]

how much gold does rat king give anyway

if you cannot exist without those 200 gold

maybe it is a flaw in strategy of yours

not the game's fault

[jade roost]

... in RKA? Like 1000-2000 and at least one Nerf Gun, usually

But again, that's super version-dependent

[spare path]

I assumed they were talking about shattered specifically, my bad

(In shattered it has around 200/250 gold I think)

[jade roost]

... I actually have no idea what version we're talking about; OP hasn't specified.

So all we can say is like... it depends