Nether wildlife, nonaligned or loosely aligned critters, are more or less lacking in umph. They stand out as bizzare, but arent exactly common, exceptionally deadly, or havestable for anything.
Mi-Gos are a new players nightmare, and I think I did a neat job with the gracke, but other than that I think the blank face and the flaming eye are the best known examples of nether.
We could see about adding some or some kind of functionality to them.
Mi-gos in the mythos are supposed to be hellbent on avenging all their mi-go friends, not just fight stuff in their way. This can’t really be replicated in current mechanics.
Lovecraftian monsters don’t really fit, so we should probably look elsewhere or get creative.
Some sort of nether creep could be cool. Just mutant grass with a fancy name, replacing regular grass near nether portals. Blue or gray in color.
A critter using heat or electricity as melee attack would be nice. Insectoid theme would fit here, because grid bugs. Weak attack but OK armor and high accuracy.
Acid spitting harasser permanently in “tracking” morale with ~150 speed. Could be flying or even floating, but could be just running around. Moderately dodgy, but not too resistant.
Something poisonous, with a lot of attacks with high armor piercing but slow walking speed. Themed as a “land urchin”.
Not much can be done with jsons alone.
Personally I would like it if we didn’t go to far into the mythos type monsters. As going full mythos has some dangerous implications about the cosmology of the world of CDDA.
But going for strange creatures, I always likes creatures that seem to do random stuff that is consistent but makes little sense to us. Say for example we have a monster that only attacks one bodypart (trying to ‘rip it off’ or something) steal the bodypart, and then just zoidbergs it out of there.
And we currently have not much monsters that inflict bleeding. So any type of monster with a large ovipositor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovipositor) stabbing you to get at your blood/genetic material/kidneys. Could be interesting. Esp if the monster having the ovipositor looks like a mammal (most ovipositor animals irl being insects or crustaceans).
Having crustaceans of human or larger size might also be interesting. http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/File:Lobsterman.png
As can be anything that just folds open a lamprey like mouth: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/ed/86/2d/ed862d618db4c04f13e08ea2bdb44cb3.jpg (This example has the face, which is like the blank body, but you could have any body part have a lamprey mouth).
Or we could create a monster that spawns near the nether portals, and slowly dies. As it basically cannot survive in our world. (showing that our world can be just as hostile to nether creatures).
Edit: TIL some people have an ovipositor fetish.
Why not all the STALKER creatures? Plenty of strange crap to explain them breaking out of russia. Besides the that, there are plenty of things already in game that could create more creatures from the STALKER realm.
Anomalies alone would be a huge thing to add to the game. But it would be amazing to have rare world space areas affected by anomalies.
Add a small rare percentage to all world areas to have a handful of anomalies happen. They could damage their spawn locations, collapse buildings, kill critters, etc… Inside buildings/outside. Randomly able to spawn anywhere in small groups.
Those areas could then have the STALKER monsters =)
As much as I loved all the references to Triffids, Hunting Horrors and L4D zombies, I think it would be better to just come up with some original content instead of looking for the next IP to stuff into the cataclysm setting.
I mean hell… We even have the Thing and something from Junji Ito thrown in there, enough is enough…
The Nether seems to be a very anomalous place, clearly different from our world. So why not use that to our advantage?
You could have dead “creatures” near the portal, things which clearly could not survive in our world and died off, their decomposition giving off harmful gases similar to poison gas from a Bloated Zombie or something.
You could have changes in pressure or gravity near the Portals, making it more difficult to move or breathe near them, drastic temperature changes or even have this affect entire sections of towns or cities that became “exposed” at one point to a rift in our reality. The air around these places is heavily sulfuric or gaseous meaning that a gas mask or even a rebreather is needed to explore here.
All this could be done on top of all the other unspeakable horrors which the character has to face. And whatever they have to face SHOULD be horrifying, having to go toe to toe with whatever gribbly nasty gets puked out of a nether portal should impact the character’s morale in some way shape or form.
I think we should be working towards something unique, lest we start adding Deathclaws and Super Mutants into the game because fuck it, why not? the only reason is that its just thematically apocalyptic so it should be included.
Yeah, I agree with sundaysmile. And if we implement more creatures from other sources, please. No more popular video games. There are enough other interesting sources with monsters that most people have not heard about. I’d rather see mustakrakish than a cacodemon (This is a joke of course, mustrakrakish is just as bad horrible fit for CDDA).
We already have anomalies. Those are the artifacts. Some of them even are in locations that shoot electronics. And no, the stalker mutants are not that fun. We already have enough stalker like mutants. Most of them are basically mutated wildlife, zombies, or deranged illithids. http://stalker.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_mutants Imho that would be worse compared to just slotting in more mythos beasts. (Which I also am against).
Also, we should perhaps create more locations for the stuff we already have. Anybody ever encounter a breather? So simple but still creepy. Wonder if they are OC or based on something.
I love the ideas of anomalies acting like traps or mini-biomes, especially if artifact hunting was moved to these dangerous areas filled with nether spawn lists. And I LOVE the idea of monsters that are nuisance critters to players. For instance:
A creature that would avoid the player but voraciously drink deisel and gasoline from vehicles, like a disgusting hummingbird. Explodes into flammable goo when killed.
A critter that is only attracted to (and healed by) sources of electricity…like vehicles, UPS or player bionic power.
A sedentary and passive, highly armored critter that draws projectiles towards it. Imagine trying to throw a grenade and not noticing one was just outside your light radius.
Vermin that cause your food to rot. Their attacks don’t deal much damage but instead place and progress infections on player body parts.
A creature that injects the player with powerful sleep toxin.
This is a huge pain in the ass, esp as it kills pretty easily in few cases. Perhaps have it on a trigger? You get injected, and warned that you are feeling worse and worse, till you fall asleep. So you can find some safety, or use drugs to counteract it.
This is fairly doable. A little.
I do have a toxin in my mod that cause fainting spells. The idea is to make lower intensities worse than higher intensities, so that you fall alseep as it wears off.
[quote=“pisskop, post:9, topic:12271”]This is fairly doable. A little.
I do have a toxin in my mod that cause fainting spells. The idea is to make lower intensities worse than higher intensities, so that you fall alseep as it wears off.[/quote]
Ingenious. That is really smart usage of the systems already ingame.
[quote=“Soyweiser, post:6, topic:12271”]Yeah, I agree with sundaysmile. And if we implement more creatures from other sources, please. No more popular video games. There are enough other interesting sources with monsters that most people have not heard about. I’d rather see mustakrakish than a cacodemon (This is a joke of course, mustrakrakish is just as bad horrible fit for CDDA).
We already have anomalies. Those are the artifacts. Some of them even are in locations that shoot electronics. And no, the stalker mutants are not that fun. We already have enough stalker like mutants. Most of them are basically mutated wildlife, zombies, or deranged illithids. http://stalker.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_mutants Imho that would be worse compared to just slotting in more mythos beasts. (Which I also am against).
Also, we should perhaps create more locations for the stuff we already have. Anybody ever encounter a breather? So simple but still creepy. Wonder if they are OC or based on something.[/quote]
I have to say you are wrong here. STALKER mutants make more sense than zombies, because they were just mutated wildlife. That trumps even zombies because we have at the core of the game Mutations all over the place already. Keeping normal versions of animals would make sense too though.
CAT:DDA / STALKER
Grabbers/Izloms
Zombies/Zombies
Feral Hunter/Snork - to be honest I hate snorks wearing masks. But I also hate those spider like jumpy bastards wearing party hats =/
PK added a few things that are similar to critters in STALKER if not mistaken.
But we could use Fleshes, Boar, Pseudo Giants, Pseudo Dogs(mutated wolves; added electrical versions instead of Psy ones to simulate Psy).
Even more stuff would be nice to see as I love variety. Especially if they have some sort of interesting loot.
For nether creatures, I like them to be as non-similar to earth life as possible. And absolutely no humanoids, as ‘alien’ humanoids are immersion breakers for me in every game/series/movie they appear too much in. Examples: Ascendancy/Star Control/Out There have some creative ones, while GalCiv/Stellaris have terrible designs.
[quote=“Soyweiser, post:3, topic:12271”]And we currently have not much monsters that inflict bleeding. So any type of monster with a large ovipositor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovipositor) stabbing you to get at your blood/genetic material/kidneys. Could be interesting. Esp if the monster having the ovipositor looks like a mammal (most ovipositor animals irl being insects or crustaceans).[/quote]I’m of the opinion that if a creature on giant-insect-scale gets close enough to jab an ovipositor for their organs, the human in question should be readily capable of bear hugging and crushing said creature by their own weight.
Dermatiks too, but at least the dermatiks ingame get a pass for their sheer mundaneness, what with their very easily avoidable (Cut 2 Protection) and inconsequential (you get pregnant with larvae babies, said pregnancy is less traumatizing than actual human pregnancy) sting.
Overall though, yeah, oviposition is -really wierd- territory to be expanding our creature avenues in, especially considering we already have dermatiks, AND fungus technically does it now too, complete with mind-grating detail in the event logs for the latter.
On to new ideas, I think a nifty one would be some kind of small cat-sized geologic-insect themed species with low speed, no evasion, with a habit of heading out and slowly decimating forests, to return plant material to their surface hive (a dense, filled rock structure with no passages, though the species can crawl through freely. The only way to get in is literally blowing through or mining through the rock.)
Everywhere in a 3x3 where their hive spawns is stripped of all grass and trees, leaving behind only some logs and sticks where the trees and saplings would’ve been.
As they advance, they will slowly expand their area of baren-ness out to a limit, turning forest and plains tiles into “wasteland”, and devouring any organic items that aren’t placed indoors or in some sort of storage.
They’ll spawn individuals out to slowly rip apart forests and grasslands, emulated by having them instantly graze up any grass tiles or organic items they move over (will not eat wood, only the “green stuff” of wild plants essentially, or the organic fabrics, and foods), and rarely use a special attack which instantly knocks down trees in range. Killing the hive stops their spawning and gradually returns plant life to the nearby region.
They have low health, high bash resist, low cut resist, are completely passive, have the Shady special attribute that shady zombies have, and seek out shrubs and trees. Their meat is extremely nutritious, but is guaranteed to make you sick (Poisoned with a risk of Food Poisoning) unless you have Ruminant.
Back with more suggestions:
A type of creature that is ONLY vulnerable to fire.
A critter that tethers you to it amigara fault style and spawns ranged attackers to kite you.
A creature that generates EXTREME levels of heat or cold in its proximity
A creature that pulps bodies, is invisible if standing in blood and will target players only if they’re seriously wounded
An anomaly that generates poisonous water deep enough to drown in.
An anomaly that spawns infants that progress through adulthood and into death in a matter of turns. Sort of a morale trap. Progresses the ‘don’t care about killing zombie kids’ meter.
Meat and bone you can plant like a crop
something that has cut resist through the roof. Can’t even scratch it with a diamond katana.
Worm forests
A creature that leaves a snail trail of impassible terrain
A shoggoth scale flying critter that will try to carry the player up and drop them
A critter that’s only hostile if the player is running
A creature that will follow the player if given a booze item dog style. When it dies it leaves behind a husk that can be rehydrated to make it loyal and living again.
A sinkhole style creature it swallows players and does acid damage, killing the walls frees you.
A type of creature that follows players and only turns hostile once enough of its peers are doing the same.
A small, harmless fluffy creature that eats food on its tile and if it moves into water multiplies. If it eats food after midnight…
A drifting waterdwelling “Brain Jellyfish”, a brain with a beak and long stinging tendrils of nerve tissue. Its sharp stinging tentacles also implant its victims with a parasitic growth that bursts forth into a new one of itself, either eventually or immediately when the victim dies.
A beautiful humanoid that talks to the player and asks to talk. When they get close, it turns out that it’s actually an otherworldly lure, attached to a subterranean “fish” that swims through dirt.
Burning tendrils of animated lava that rarely emerge from lava vents, burning their victims alive.
Nocturnal hunters that only exist in the material plane in the dark. When it’s light, they convert to an invisible, intangible “shadow” form, when it’s dark, they solidify into writhing darkness and charge at high speed. When it encounters a zombie, converts it into a shady zombie.
Puppeteers surrounded by a nimbus of smoke that steals the mind of anything moving through it, always accompanied by a roving horde of enslaved creatures, from zombies to animals to standard humans (killing humans thus enslaved gives the Killed Innocent malus). These slaves are hostile to everything that is not part of the puppeteers group, though not necessarily vice versa (zombies will attack humans and animals, or the puppeteer itself, but ignore puppet zombies biting chunks from them). Since the smoke doesn’t require breathing in to affect its victim, only high environmental protection can keep a player safe. Killing the puppeteer instantly releases all of its puppets from control, potentially producing an instant free for all, and several panicked NPCs in need of assistance.
Huggers - White skinned tentacle limbed childlike humanoids whose one and only “attack” is to grab the player, hug them for a bit, and then leave. Makes periodic crying noises while not hugging something and calls out for their mother.
Wisps - Floating orbs of light. Fond of minefields, swamps, and fields of corpses. They do not attack, and generally just float around the player aimlessly when they detect him. Extremely high dodge skill and ranged weapon resistant, they mainly serve to illuminate their victims so other, more dangerous creatures spot them and come kill them.
Penitents - Half a human hanging out of a swirling portal, screaming for help. Should another lifeform get close, they will be dragged fully inside with a loud wail and the portal will close.
Mercies - Slow moving many-limbed insectiles that stalk the player at a distance without approaching. If the player is heavily injured, however, they will close in, striking the player with their razor sharp fangs to inject a paralysing venom that gives the player a morale bonus and serves as a highly potent painkiller then rendering the player asleep and unable to wake up for several hours. They then vanish, leaving the sleeping, drugged out player to their fate. Potentially even helpful if the player is actually in a safe location, otherwise a small mercy - they won’t even feel a thing.
Dead Halos - Drifting red rings of energy. Should the player get too close, they will attack by burrowing part way into the player’s body and becoming an item of gear. This will give the player certain advantages, serving as mostly positive artifacts with either active or passive positive effects, while causing 20 points of damage to the “equipped” body part every few days and the occasional dose of pain. Removal is treated the same as a CBM, requiring a chance roll to remove it, and will destroy the halo if successful.
“Ponds” - While labelled as “water” these ponds are actually the body of a liquid nether entity. Anything stepping into it will be swiftly digested, and their loot lost into the bottom of the pool. Has a nasty habit of replacing existing water sources, like motel swimming pools, where the player might find the undigestible remains of all sorts of zombies and creatures within.
Watchers - These trees have eyes. They watch the player. The player may harvest the eyes as a source of nourishment (the helpless trees suffer terribly, of course), cut down the tree for wood, or leave the poor things alone.
[quote=“iceball3, post:13, topic:12271”]I’m of the opinion that if a creature on giant-insect-scale gets close enough to jab an ovipositor for their organs, the human in question should be readily capable of bear hugging and crushing said creature by their own weight.
Dermatiks too, but at least the dermatiks ingame get a pass for their sheer mundaneness, what with their very easily avoidable (Cut 2 Protection) and inconsequential (you get pregnant with larvae babies, said pregnancy is less traumatizing than actual human pregnancy) sting.
Overall though, yeah, oviposition is -really wierd- territory to be expanding our creature avenues in, especially considering we already have dermatiks, AND fungus technically does it now too, complete with mind-grating detail in the event logs for the latter.[/quote]
Ovipositors just make me thing of genestealers. 
And totally forgot about the dermatiks. Wonder where they even spawn.
Edit:
Temples. Only temples.
Ovipositors just make me thing of genestealers. 
And totally forgot about the dermatiks. Wonder where they even spawn.
Edit:
Temples. Only temples.[/quote]
Temples?. i find them in swamps…
Well that is odd. Might have misread some of the code then. Can’t recall ever seeing them myself. But if you have. I’m going to trust that.
What does that attack even do?
Edit: ran into this: http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=2113.msg26507#msg26507 (The Netherium Compendium and Bestiary - Of creature factions and organism) might be interesting to mine for ideas.
Some of these are very doable with json, some would require special exceptions and hardcoding in exceptions. But I don’t at all mind either the nether having several factions or the nether just being a weird conglomeration of species.
No one talks about so popular things as ufos and aliens.
It could be extremely rare to find a gray little man near the crater with broken, extremely radioactive gear with little or no charges, without the possibility to fix it or reload. After you kill him, he turns on the self destruction (hi, predator) so you probably better run!
