World Rework Wynnexcavation

Wynnexcavation is an incredibly old questline that, in my opinion, is in dire need of a rework. I know the CT probably has plans to rework this since a couple of NPCs from the quest got changed in 1.20, but here's some ideas for what can change.

Spoiler: Wynnexcavation site A

Excavator Vade is instead met in an event when you are near the excavation site, and he talks to you about history and stuff, before telling you to come down to the site and help with something. He says something about a strange species that lived in Wynn in days of old (implied to be the Olm)

The temple could have more puzzles and the boss is renamed from Pharaoh Nabak to ''Magical Guardian''. It is implied to have been created by whoever hid the yellow crystal, and is made from sand. It has a circle of runes as a core (Az, Nii, Uth, Tol and Ek rune sphere). This is to fix the inconsistency of there supposedly being a Pharaoh Nabak in the history of Almuj

Some new dialogue i guess

Spoiler: Wynnexcavation site B

Lykron stops being a pigman in costume and becomes a human instead

The cave could have more puzzles

The crystal would now have a boss defending it too, in the form of another Magical guardian. This one is stronger and is made of prismarine. It has some ghosts as minions

A couple of implications about the Olm are overheard from some workers. Something like:

As you walk towards the pit, you overhear an excavator conversing with a colleague about.. Olm??
You wonder who or what Olm is when suddenly you lose focus and fall straight down the pit. You hear laughter above. How rude...

Obviously some new dialogue as well

Spoiler: Wynnexcavation site C

Placardus, too, becomes a human instead of a costumed pigman

The meeting you overhear is no longer staged and mentions a little bit of lore. The lore surrounds Gavelexcavation and how their discovery beyond the Abandoned mines changed them. They then say that they will win under the influence of The Eye

Amadel actually has some hints that he's a villain in his dialogue

The giant god damn path down to the crystal no longer has any mobs but it has a bunch of puzzles instead

The crystal has a guardian again, this one made from diamond (Since diamonds form in extremely high temperatures and pressures, usually from volcanic activity. Alternatively, it could be made of magma). This is the strongest guardian with very strong attacks, lots of health, and some annoying minions. Since it's only level 55, it still isn't too hard.

Dialogue changes of course

Spoiler: Wynnexcavation site D

Escape segment removed/replaced

Map fragment search less tedious because it's removed and replaced with a different puzzle which is similar to the map repair puzzle required for the Edge of Decay secret discovery

The traitor NPCs also give some hints that they are actually evil

The green crystal has no guardian because WynnExcavation killed it already. You can see dirt and grass on the floor with some runes scattered about as well

Excavator Admin Uci talks about how Wynnexcavation used to be a gavel company dedicated to studying cosmic magic, maybe a link between the crystals and cosmic magic if that's a thing

There are actually puzzles for purple and red instead of a button that may as well have had a sign on it saying ''i'm too lazy to code in a puzzle so just press this button instead''

The dialogue in the puzzle rooms actually elaborates on stuff and is more accurate to the current War of the Realms plan

Amadel explains everything and teleports away with the crystals

Amadel is much, much stronger because it feels wrong that a literal god is easier to defeat than a corrupted miner

You get way better stuff from the King than just a title and an accessory

..or you could just pull a Realm of Light on the questline and completely change it. Considering that a lot of dialogue was changed in site D though, that's not the case.

 

I always assumed the Pharaoh title was meant to imply a sort of proto-empire before the actual Emperor took over. Nabak would've been the last proper Pharaoh, hence he was buried to protect the source of the next Pharaoh, the Emperor's power, the yellow crystal. Not that it can't be changed, but I don't think it's really an inconsistency as is.

Human? Shouldn't the excavators all be villagers? I know they have human-looking models right now, but I think they should stay canonically villagers, at least with big-nosed human style excavator skins.

Not the Eye distinctly, it was specifically changed in 1.20 to be "the dark" in general instead. Same idea, though.


Otherwise, I think it looks pretty good. If you can, it'd probably be better if you elaborated on how exactly to do some of the stuff you're suggesting (specific dialogue ideas, etc.), but the general ideas don't seem bad imo.

 

Agree with everything except the removal of the Escape segment, I actually kinda liked it.

 

I dont really see the point in making Amadel and "traitors" more suspicious

 

Pharaoh Nabak is not an inconsistency. It is merely a part of unexplained lore, which can be explained without it messing up anything.

Why? How does this make the quest better? Making Amadel's plan an actual surprise is one of the quest series' best and most memorable moments in my opinion, and it is a good plot twist. This would just make it sort of "meh, that was predictable". It also wouldn't make sense for Amadel to make mistakes like these in his big plan.

The Troms escape section is probably my personal single favorite moment in the quest series. I like the concept of old, friendly areas suddenly becoming hostile battlefields for a while in video games. Why remove it? I can't see any reason why removing it is an improvement. Just rework it.

What about the reward is not enough? You get a good amount of money, access to basically the best necklaces at level and a very important title lore-wise. The reward should not be buffed too much, if at all.

most of the other stuff on this is fine ig, some other things were already stated above ^^, but this is just what i wanted to point out

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oh right this one too.

Depending on what order the player does the game's content in, it would not make sense for the player to wonder who the Olm are after doing SE content for example, so there should be alternate dialogue options for this

 

Why? He's in the desert. The Olm weren't in the desert. It'd fit if he was talking about the Desert Empire or the ancient pharaohs.

Why remove the pharaohs? What about them is inconsistent? Before the Desert Empire of 1600-1400BP there were the pharaohs, which are strongly implied to have known or even harnessed the Yellow Crystal. I believe the Desert Empire came to be in the first place because the Emperor either discovered the sceptre or discovered the Crystal and made his sceptre out of it. Also, runes? The only known civilizations that harnessed runes are the Olm and the Gavellian rune civilization. I don't see why the Pharaohs or the Emperor or whatever would want to use runes because 1. how would they know about them? They never interacted with the Olm as far as we know and 2. they already had the Crystal

WynnExcavation is a Gavellian company and villagers aren't very fond of humans. So naturally they'd want an all-villager team because I doubt they could trust humans with such an operation

Why talk about the Olm if it's in the Twain Manor? Shouldn't they rather talk about how the Twains probably hid it or something? It's unclear just how related the Olm are to the Purple Crystal especially since it's so close to the manor, and we have no knowledge of the Olm even reaching that far. Plus, hinting at the Olm at level 45 or something is a bit iffy.

Read above what I said about Lykron

Why? The excavators know that you're at Site C and they know of your record of trying to snoop around, so they wouldn't host an actual meeting because that'd be giving the player info and that would be stupid.

Why? I think his reveal is already pretty well executed. If you hint at it, it will just be like "ah, I knew it" which isn't as impactful. Even the smallest hint makes people suspicious.

Wouldn't WynnEx just have gotten rid of the guardian?

Why? This is like, one of the most fun segments of the quest, especially if you're doing it for the first time.

Less tedious? The traitors literally tell you to follow the giant eyes on the ground and on the walls to get to the map pieces. Replacing it with something similar to Edge of Decay is stupid because that's a secret discovery, and it would just make the segment too short.

Why would they hint at it? Read above what I said about Amadel, also they wouldn't want to hint that they're evil because they still need you to retrieve the crystal shards.

Yes, there's a link between crystals and cosmic magic, but why would Uci tell you this? He's not on your side. He wouldn't want to give you info.

I think it's fine as it is, especially when RoL IV gives you exposure already and it's around the same level as site D. It's only supposed to elaborate on the Corruption.

So essentially nothing changes except he disappears at the end of his reveal.

The reward is already pretty fulfilling. At level, the necklaces are pretty good, the XP and the emeralds are good, and the title is cool too. What else would you want?

 

There's supposed to be a buildup to the Olm instead of them just appearing out of nowhere

I'm fairly certain the Pharaohs didn't have the yellow crystal, since all 4 crystals were found buried in a wall in the Silent Expanse by Fruman miners. I'm pretty sure they were hidden around the Wynn province, and one of them just so happened to be placed in that ancient temple. I had no idea the pharaohs existed before the desert empire though..

As for the runes, the Twains also used them, evident from the Corrupter of Worlds' seal. But it doesn't make sense for the Fruman humans to have them, so yeah that's a mistake

I just didn't like this part of the quest. It felt somewhat.. bland. Maybe instead it could be the same area but you actually get chased and there's a timer?

I guess you could just mix the 2

 

Deja Vu as well as the entire Time Valley hints to it. If you do the secret discoveries there's that too. I don't think there's supposed to be a buildup because they're just a lost civilization and if you're an explorer you can find a lot of stuff that they built.

They did. First off, Pharaoh Nabak is literally buried with one of the Yellow Crystal shards as well as the crystal itself. Why else would it be there? Also, those were the crystal SHARDS, not the Crystals themselves. It's currently unclear how the Yellow Crystal got there, it was either brought there by the Olm or it just fell from the sky and landed in the Desert. Otherwise, if they really were in the SE mountains, who would've moved them to where they are now? The Frumans hid it away as soon as they found it, the Twains are no longer hinted at having hid them because that dialogue was changed (and they wouldnt've known about the other crystals most likely), so that's just further proof that those are crystal shards, not the crystals themselves. Therefore leaving it likely that the Pharaohs had it.
Also, for that second point, it's obvious because there was no recorded civilization after the fall of the Desert Empire in 1400 BP, and if there was we would've known about it and we would've known why it fell (if it didn't there would be a Pharaoh in Almuj but there isn't), meaning that the Pharaohs have to be placed to before 1400 BP.

 

Actually they literally talk about the Eye in the current version of the quest, so I don't see the problem.

 

They do? I remember a while ago someone updated the wiki page to 1.20, and it removed the explicit mention of the eye. Also, I checked the wiki page again, and:

They might mention it in a different quest, maybe site D, but they don't in site C, which is the part I was responding to.

 

iirc amadel was tricking them into doing things for wynnex. they thought they were traitors

wdym? the accessories are some of the best necklaces in the game, used pretty much until you can use diamond LI accessories