Shattered Kingdoms

What areas do you think have great potential, but for whatever reason are currently underutilized?

I really like the aesthetics and concept of the Orc Hive, but it's not good for leveling and not many of the items there justify returning when you're strong enough to take on the NPCs there. I'd like to see either it changed so it's better for leveling at journeyman-mentor, or maybe alternately see it buffed up a bit and made more relevant for higher levels.

Oooh, Orc Hive would be a good candidate for sure.

I also feel Ch'zzrym is an under-utilized area. It seems to have all the ground work laid for a perfectly good starting city. I feel it could be a little more accessible for lower levels to get to and explore, and could be updated a bit with some easy, medium, and hard level quests.

I think the Orc Hive should have something added to make adventuring there more enticing.
I think a solution for a lot of under-utilized areas would be to add a decent consumable that people would use. A pill or scroll or potion of some sort.
But it would be cool to see one additional room added with a stronger fight. A dracolich-strengthed enemy after you kill the three main enemies.
Their drops are kinda trash.

I think Ch’rzzym is enticing enough. You have an adventurer’s guild quest that takes you there. The entire Matrons questline, a very powerful necklace. A good ring and a good wand. You have that unique item that’s situationally useful in the slums. The darkness/silence scrolls are there. Idk how we would want to increase it’s value. I think that place is pretty well put together.

I think it would be cool to see the training schools re-opened. I’m not sure which ones were used.

I’d like to see something done to Sith’a’neil and Krychire/moot since they got shut down as starting cities. I think law should be removed (has it already) because killing the war parties could be a fun raid-like activity. There are good consumables in each of these areas, but last I heard Moot’s law system was bugged and nobody could get pardoned.
During the Battle for Graham the Darkies were supposed to kill the war party and then enter a portal to kill the king. Is this portal still alive? Or was it just for the event? Because that could be fun too.

I think somewhere like The dwarf city near Nerina? Loot could be updated to make going down there more valuable. Isn’t there some quest line with the houses down there? I’m not too sure of it but perhaps some reward that’s up there with the Matrons?

I’d like to see maybe something in seawatch (North of losqche, right?) changed up. There isn’t much in there. A couple things. The Epee that is found there is cool at first until you learn it has MR on it. Maybe change those innate runes? Maybe add a boss somewhere in there.

I think that’s what I would want to see. Some of these under-utilized areas have a stronger enemy added and have them drop something that’s actually practical.

Love this thread, thanks for starting it, Sax!!


I'd love to see Kytar repurposed and re-opened. That was the first area I remember walking into when I started playing way back in 1997. Don't know what would be the best direction to take it though. Ditto the Teron Coliseum.
Nerina's newbie school was redesigned and reopened as well as Taslamar's, and both were well-received and well-done.
Ayamao's newbie school was slightly tweaked and reopened along with a small elven settlement in the far west forests of Ayamao, providing some low-level multi-aura leveling opportunity. Unfortunately, the player contributing to the design was unable to finish everything, and I was unable to do much more to the existing school zone except to bump up the level of the training NPCs. There's room for improvement (and contribution) to this one.
I don't remember the Northern Waste's newbie zone, or if it has been repurposed/reopened.

Thematically it made sense to remove the law from the Wastes, but I don't know how that ended up to be currently.

In Sith'a'niel, I intentionally wanted to leave the law intact. Despite Grahme leaving the Alliance, Sith'a'niel is ruled by a xenophobic paladin, so law, order, and justice remains important in the Ayamao. Personally, I had also wanted to leave the system open enough so that other tribunals could still declare war and raid the city with guards in-tow. Unfortunately, the code implementation of closing the Guardians didn't work out exactly how I hoped. The city can be raided, but with law intact, it's a very dangerous prospect, and less viable as a potential high-level dark-aura training zone than my original plans had intended. I also wanted to leave the law intact for the potential to run another organized RPK event. There's room for changes, but I doubt we'll see much change in Sith/Ayamao law unless I return actively to the staff to tackle it.

The King's Sith war party from the Battle of Grahme has been split up, so all of those big player NPCs are still in the expanded palace, but they've been re-arranged to their respective locations/residences. This has resulted in multiple high-level light aura NPC groups assorted throughout the palace, but none of whom are as powerful as that early war party was. The portal to reach the King still exists but was tweaked along with the other additions to the palace, and reaching him would be challenging for a group of dark aura characters without access to lore. The quests I had in mind for the Sith palace were cut short by burnout, discouragement, and real-life priorities. This is unfinished business that still sticks in my craw, and I would be interested to fix & finish it if there is interest from the playerbase to be able to work through a high-level gray/dark aura elf-hunting quest akin to the Ch'zzrym matron quest. Despite the shoddy nature of the access points and questline, and the currently poor implementation of the hints & keys, etc, all of the palace areas can be accessed, and there's a lot of mid/high level equipment available, much of it light-aura themed as a counter-weight to the much dark-aura themed equipment in Ch'zzrym.

The dwarf city (Vaerlain) has seen various tweaks and updates over the years, and the houses & caves down there provide some leveling opportunities and some low/mid-level equipment and consumables that aren't available elsewhere, but the quest lines here are nowhere on the level of the Matron quest. It's a good solid historic area with room for additional improvement, but I don't know how much the payoff would really be for the time investment.

The old Adept HQ should be repurposed for housing darkie sacred gear, add daemons and a boss to make it a leveling area (preferably veteran-mentor). The lore that could be added is so juicy. The Chancel is a stupid place for sacred to be housed currently, and the Algorab set is impossible to obtain with the current pbase. This is a self-serving proposal and I want to acknowledge that, openly.

Others:
Mortoon
Khardyl
Borderlands Keep
Seaside
Selhys
Shinlaken
Vaerlain
Tribal grounds

Lots of potential to pump some areas up.