I'd like to see an end-game single player option which takes advantage of preconstructed characters

So, here's the thing about Caverns of Chaos: it's great. Love it. It's a wonderful idea which gives PvE players a way to get some really good loot and a good challenge, in a repeatable way. I also really like the randomized player characters, and I especially like that every once in a while you get a really powerful one - it keeps the fights interesting.

But: a big part of the appeal in gathering cool loot is using that loot. Randomized player characters don't give you that opportunity. Now, there is Return to Caverns of Chaos, and that's great, but the loot to be had there is nothing compared to what you get from the regular Caverns. So what I'm asking for here is an end-game way to both gather loot and use the loot that I gather.

There are a couple of ways to do this that I see: the simplest option would be to boost the loot on Return. Maybe not up to Caverns level, but higher than it is. I don't like this option very much, I think it could just lead to boring farming, but it's there. To make it a little more interesting you could up the randomization factor a bit by throwing out random handicaps or boosts or terrain effects during a battle.

My preferred solution is to do something very much like Caverns, where you bring your own preconstructed party, but instead of going either fully randomized or fully constructed you do something in between. Some combination of constructed characters and random ones would work well. Or you could use constructed characters but futz with their decks by adding some additional cards. Or a combination of both.

tl;dr: I want to both acquire loot and use that loot.

What do you all think? Better ideas? Maybe instead of doing this in a single adventure, you do two adventures: you get your loot from Caverns, and then use your loot in another adventure. That one could give you something like a slice of pizza on the first completion each day. (This would have to be a shorter one, I'm not going to do ten randomized maps each day for a single slice of pizza.)

 

Not doable without programming new mechanisms.

 

Well that's... true. Any of these options would require something new. This is pretty well the simplest bit of scripting you could imagine though. If they're that hard up for someone to type addRandoHandicap(); I guess I could do it for them.

 

If this is a suitable system, do not Caverns/Return already function this way?

 

No, Return just feels like a waste of time. Ten random maps with no failures, and all you get is a guaranteed rare at the end. When you put that next to Caverns, with a rare every map and an epic for the final few, there's just no compelling reason to play Return. At least not more than once. That was why I suggested the pizza slice as a reward for the constructed adventure - if you're going to do this (acquiring loot and using the loot) by splitting it into two adventures then the player needs a compelling reason to do both, and so the rewards need to be different. Loot for one, and... something else for the other. It doesn't have to be pizza, but it can't be loot.

Well, okay. It can't be the same loot. Another option might be to split the loot tables on the two adventures. I can see a few possibilities there.

 

Maybe the return to cavern of chaos could give a standard end of adventure chest(4 items,2 uncommons) in the 6th or 7th room (or whenever folks start losing consistently)since it would still be hard to grind for it and could make losing in the later levels a little less hearthbreaking.

 

Having uncommon items for the nightmare nodes in Return was an idea I was thinking of myself, it seems reasonable and unlikely to be exploited.