About the "dungeoniest dungeon that we have done"

[Lephys]

Not sure I am down with that.  1: Really really complex.  2: Why are all these different sleeping beasts, displaced whacko's, and ancient animancy labs all linked to the same place/have no where else to go or be? 3: This idea means it wouldn't be a mega dungeon, it would be like 5 floors where depending on story progress different stuff may or may not be there.

 

I would rather have a straight forward dungeon and if you want to do these sort of one off things let it happen based on the event and let those events trigger things that make the most logical sense.  Don't shoe horn it all into Od Nua just to give it some weird spin.  I also find it weird why people are so upset about a story mission leading you there.  Who cares?  So you have to do the first floor early in the game for a story mission?  It is just a way to introduce the player to the area so they don't somehow miss it.

I don't think you got everything I said, since I specifically stated that I'm only cool with it being done in a non-shoe-horned-into-Od-Nua-arbitrarily fashion.

 

My ideas were just top-of-my-head examples of the general approach I was referring to, not specific content that should be there (Like I know if there's a soul ether or not... much less if it can be disturbed )

 

As for "Where are all these things coming from/how-or-why are they going to Od Nua?", well, let's look at the board, shall we? (gets out an imaginary dry-erase board):

 

- If the top levels of Od Nua are above ground, then displaced bandits could easily go "Hey, some ruins no one gives a crap about... let's use these as shelter while we pilfer the crap out of people! 8D! What? No one wants to come here because of silly superstitions? That's even BETTER! Less chance we'll have to deal with people discovering us/messing with us! 8D!". Is it quite possible that they couldn't do that because of the stuff already occupying the top shelf of Od Nua? Sure. Does that mean it's not possible that they could? Nope.

 

- If it's a big set of old, old ruins, then obviously unknown-to-the-current-generation-of-people stuff is left down in there. Whether it be dormant devices/artifacts, or sleeping/dead stuff or trapped souls, etc. So, maybe something you take with you down into there, or something you do nearby in the world, in essence, activates or awakens something that was otherwise dormant. Is that preposterous? Methinks not.

 

Better yet, let me just ask you this simple question:

 

Would it not be just as preposterous for Od Nua to be completely unaffected by any and all happenings in the outside world as it would be for Od Nua to be affected by ALL the happenings in the outside world? Because... that seems like a definite "yes" to me. And if that makes sense as a point of reference, then what I'm suggesting is in the middle. Some things affect it, some things don't.

 

That could be executed regardless of whether or not it tied into just the standing threats you'll face on as-yet-to-be-cleared/faced levels of the dungeon. I was merely pointing out that it was a possible way to handle the application of content "scaling" for something that's going to have such a variety of patterns in which it can be undertaken.