Exploration remastering

[Damon_Cooper]

I was reading this

a visual indicater of directions of sounds (for the deaf) or just a visual there is a sound near by mabye not direction

A good solution would be a small text in the system chat (from URW):
" You hear a sound coming from south"

Btw we don't have, right now, many sounds from animals, etc..
So:

- More sounds in the forest, animals, etc..( scary for Bears,...)
. More descriptions in the system chat of what is happening in the world

and considering I've spent last two months exploring new lands in search of untouched goodies, I got some thoughts.

Proper exploration of unknown areas around your spot is one of the most important things, and also a huge pain in the ass. The problem lies in map discovering - if you move in one direction for one minimap, you'll open two adjacent as well, but you won't literally explore them - you'll just know about terrain around you, 'cause you view distance is much smaller than minimap. So, making even short trips (for 10-20 mins) in one direction won't give you a guarantee, you've explored something. May sound quite dumb, so here's some illustrations of what am I talking about:

Here's some "explored" area quite far away from me:

The red circle points on natural "bridge" across the river, so my exploration trips (three red lines) were headed into that spot.

As you can see, almost all the area was revealed and now looks like explored, but only the lands under green overlay were properly explored, and all others - weren't, and still can potentially contain some localized resources/ or high-quality forage spawn spots.
And the main problem - no one can be sure where the difference because we have not any tools for marking explored areas.

And here's some solutions for it:
1. Temporarily expand the "field of view" for all the revealing maps. Using a specific tool (see below), you can gain a buff that will show you some specific map markers (animals/herbs/mushrooms/loc.reses/etc).
2. New toggle - "deep exploration" - reduces max.aviable speed by 1 and marks your map/minimap with colored overlay to show exactly the area you've explored (green zone on image).
3. That's one inspired by sMartins - some tools for discovering points of interest on revealed, but not actually seen maps. Something like exp.events (but without EXP gain) - "You stop for a moment and hear the roar of the mighty %animal% from somewhere not so far in the south".

And here's some tools for those solutions:
1. Hearth magic - another one to drain your experience points - it can be useful in both solution1 and solution3. Gives you a temporary buff (let's say 250 xp for 30 mins).
2. Equipment - googles/monocle/binoculars (R1 and L1 slots) - may serve for solution1 and may be requirement for solution2.
3. Alchemy - just like rustroot extract, but royal-toadstool extract made from mushroom and water - not usable itself, but allows you to add one ingredient to make a proper potion. Allows you to search specific items - just add bear's tooth into extract for bear-search-potion as example.
4 (technically it is 2.5). Alchemy/tool - pouring specific potion on dowsing rod will show you the arrow to that specific item in the wilds.

Ideally if all of these work together. So if you're planning your exploration trip, you'll brew some extracts, put your best exploration item, cast some magic, toggle deep exploration mode on and go into the wilds, being sure you'll find what you need and won't miss anything important.

P.S. Yes, some may say - it is too complicated and not worth it. But there are not so many fun activities in H&H - PvP (but "combat is broken and PvP sucks"), raising q400 carrots (but "farmers should go play Farmville" and Exploration, so why not make it slighly better?

[zebratul]

Your map image appears to lack the red marking you're talking about.

Otherwise nice ideas. I too hate the fact that you load 3+ minimaps around you but can only see one, missing out on interesting stuff like rare animals, foragables and others.
A rust-root analogue for local resources/mammoths would make exploration and hunting more fun and game-ey, rather then simply walking around for hours. To keep the process challenging, the item for such a search (be that a spy glass, a magic infused medallion (family heirloom use when, jorbtar) or a potion) should have limited amount of charges and use up semi-rare materials.

[Damon_Cooper]

Your map image appears to lack the red marking you're talking about.

Oh, my bad, thx for the correction. Reuploaded proper image.

A rust-root analogue for local resources/mammoths would make exploration and hunting more fun and game-ey, rather then simply walking around for hours. To keep the process challenging, the item for such a search (be that a spy glass, a magic infused medallion or a potion) should have limited amount of charges and use up semi-rare materials.

The cost balance isn't quite a question yet, though I assume there aren't any hard-to-balance-things. Like adding precious metal nugget in pure extract's recipe.

[Ysh]

3. That's one inspired by sMartins - some tools for discovering points of interest on revealed, but not actually seen maps. Something like exp.events (but without EXP gain) - "You stop for a moment and hear the roar of the mighty %animal% from somewhere not so far in the south".

I like some solutions like this most. Exploration should have some intent and not just random wanderings.

[ricky]

I wouldnt mind a telescope that takes ~2 seconds to activate and gives the player an expanded Field of view, as long as he isnt moving

[CShooter]

Telescope or binocular is a good idea.