Dungeon Idea: The Twinning(Hard)

[Insidhe]

The result of thinking a little, but this could well be possible. Synopsis below. Mechanics merely suggested instead of elaborated on, because I don't wanna step on any coders' toes:

Can't help but feel this dungeon could be unlocked by a quest called "The Dark Side of Tycoon", and given by a dwarven engineer over in Tomra called Shanitt.

"You've heard the story of Shanitt, a serious-minded but metaphor-heavy Dwarven engineer who was there when the Crystal Tower was researched, who'd taken an interest in the remnants of the Tycoon, the artificial enigma who brought the Tower to the First, but was unable to salvage any parts from it courtesy of increased activity from the local machina and monsters from beyond time, tougher then what has been seen before. He's asked you to round up some of your strongest friends and accompany him back into the depths of the Crystal Tower to retrieve the Tycoon's parts, and he's promised to make it worth your collective while..."

(cont'd)

[Insidhe]

"Hey, you look pretty tough! Put up yer dukes, show me whatcha got!"
FIRST BOSS: YAN
Yan is a creature from beyond time that got stuck in the Crystal Tower, and can actually be seen running on other walkways before reaching his boss room, barrelling through sentries and even Snorting a Zaghnal off of a ledge. He's essentially a larger version of the Yans from FF9: an adorable sheep creature with a big head and big horns. Yan has two modes, and he starts off in Hostile Mode, looking like the enemy Yans with pale colours, angry eyes and upturned horns. He moves quickly and has a few different attacks.

He always starts off with Aera, which turns the border around his arena into a damaging hazard; Virus Powder which creates clouds that inflict Poison and Damage Vulnerability Up on whoever stands inside them(so don't do that); Float, which generates an aura around himself that gives Float, which he always follows up with Comet, placing two to four Comets around the arena, each dealing damage to anything that doesn't have Float; Snort, a tight cone AoE that pushes enemies all the way to the wall and inflicts them with Stun; and Head Charge, which targets someone besides the tank and has Yan charge over to that character, dealing damage and pushing them into the wall. However, being behind a Comet causes Yan to smash into it, stopping his charge, stunning him and saddling him with Damage Vulnerability Up as long as he's stunned.

Upon being defeated, Yan changes to Harmless Mode, which is a dark-skinned, golden-furred mode with friendly eyes and down-turned horns, like the friendly Yan, and will follow you throughout the dungeon to offer commentary(party members in Duty Support will, in turn, banter back at him).

NOTABLE DROPS: Yan drops a bevy of equipment, but he has two Minions he can drop: Hostile Lamb and Harmless Lamb, minion versions of both forms of Yan.

[Insidhe]

"...seekest thou the secrets hidden in the depths of the Tower? Then prove unto me that thy confidence be not merely mislabeled hubris."
SECOND BOSS: KRYSTA
Krysta is based on the FF8 boss of the same name, and manifests out of a large crystal in his boss room to challenge the heroes' strength to see if they're ready to face what lurks beyond. Krysta LOOKS the way he did in that game too: a large, crystalline creature with a vaguely humanoid stature with three arms...two on the right, three on the left.

Krysta's got a good few moves up his sleeve, but is a fair bit simpler then Yan. His first move is always Krystal Fyst, a targeted heavy-hitter with a small AoE around it, to encourage people to not cluster up close to the tank. He'll repeat this every so often to catch people unawares. He also uses the following: Krystal Myssile, which fires crystal missiles from its shoulders to explode in circular AoEs around the arena; Kryst-ocytus, which is a field-wide AoE that pushes enemies back and blankets the area in ice, incurring ice physics and delivering Frostbite with each slide around; Krystal Yce, a second, quicker area-wide AoE that follows up Kryst-Ocytus and deals damage equal to the number of Frostbite stacks players have; and Krystal Prysm, a slow-charging AoE that plops down a large prism that Krysta fires a huge beam through to wipe the group if they can't defeat Krysta fast enough.

NOTABLE DROPS: Krysta drops all the usual equipment, but he, too, can drop a minion, the Krysta Frygment, which is just a small version of Krysta.

[Insidhe]

"INTRUDER THREAT LEVEL CALCULATED AS: "APOCALYPTIC". CALAMITAS SYSTEM: ACTIVE. TRAUMA THE DOLMEN VIII-XIV: ONLINE. INITIATE COMBAT MODE."
FINAL BOSS: RESOLVER OF CONFLICTS: TRAUMA THE DOLMEN

Trauma the Dolmen is our final boss of the hour. He's based on the FF8 boss he's named after, and simply emerges from one of the walls of his boss room, which has many copies of him stored safely within. He also looks like his FF8 counterpart: a massive, floating yellow robot with a columnal flotation system instead of legs, a small head that makes him look hunchbacked, massive, flared pauldrons and enormous forearms and hands. Several of his attacks rely on adds he summons, Alignmen, who resemble the Droma units Trauma could call upon.

He does some things, for sure, with his attacks all named after the paintings in the area Trauma was the boss of in FF8. He always starts off with Vigil, which summons four Alignmen that can't be targeted. He has some attacks that involve them, but I'll go into those in a bit. On his own, Trauma has a few attacks too: Viator, which is a circular AoE that Trauma teleports himself to, creating an explosion as he does; Ignus, a targeted attack on the tank that sees Trauma throw a blazing punch(the fire comes out of his knuckles) that inflicts Burns; Xerampelinae, a quick attack thrown at non-tank foes close to Trauma that inflicts Bleeding; and Xiphias, an energy sword swing that acts as a line AoE thrown at Trauma's front, and then a conal AoE toward whichever side his sword-arm is on(IE: if he's holding the sword with his right hand, the AoE goes to the right). At certain levels of health, he coordinates attacks with the Alignmen: at 70% and 40% health, he starts off with Vividarium, a field-wide AoE that can be avoided by jumping, but leaves targets on who failed to dodge it, which the Alignmen follow up with Xystus, a poweful single attack aimed at whoever has that target on them that leaves them with a stack of Inaudax. Finally, at 10% health, Trauma begins to charge up Iudicium, a masisve pulsar cannon blast that wipes the group if he's allowed to charge it, while the Alignmen charge up Intervigilium, which is a field-wide AoE sleep designed to kick in at 25% of Iudicum's charge and end around 50% of Iudicium's charge, with sleep time being 25% longer for each stack of Inaudax the player has.

NOTABLE DROPS: Trauma the Dolmen can drop the minions the old bosses can drop, and he also drops both a minion(Dromen, a small version of the Alignmen) and a mount(Trauma the Haulmen) that plays The Twinning(Hard)'s dungeon theme when you ride it.

[Insidhe]

POST DUNGEON: Running the dungeon and competing the quest "The Dark Side of Tycoon" by talking to Shanitt again, then talking to Yan(who's standing next to Shanitt in Harmless Mode...he followed the party out and kind of stuck around for some reason) and then Shanitt again yields the Quest Complete! you've worked for, as well as giving a special mount, the thing Shanitt needed the Tycoon's parts for: the Tiny Tycoon, which plays 'A Long Fall' when you ride it. In addition, the two of them will also sometimes show up in Watts' Anvil to get plastered in true Dwarven fashion.



Whatcha all think, eh?

[Jeeqbit]

I don't feel one way or the other about it. They stopped doing hard mode (optional) dungeons except the 2 at expansion release.

But if you want to live in Japan, you could apply for a job as a dungeon designer. A short while ago, they were hiring them and wanted examples just like this.

[Insidhe]

Hey, nice, a response.

Unfortunately, I am a gaijin from Europe with no interrest in being exposed to the rigors of living in Japan, so that's off the table. I'd have totally gone for it if I was Japanese, tho.

[Renalt]

I miss making missions using AE when playing City of Heroes.

[Iscah]

I think you're too caught up in "this dungeon will shower you with minions and mounts". It's a dungeon; you'll get one minion at the end.

And your whole description of the dungeon is just a list of bosses that could come from any technological-themed dungeon, and I can't follow skill sheets at the best of times so I'm not going to try to read your massive paragraphs about them.

You've said nothing about the dungeon itself. The whole reason the Twinning was a great dungeon is that it was a lore bomb with amazing music – the bosses, besides the Tycoon as part of the story reveal, are the least memorable part of it. A repeat visit has lost that initial impact, so there needs to be either a good lore-expanding reason to go back in, or new things to stumble upon once we're in there. Not just a retread with some new bosses applied to it that have no connection to the CT/Alexander/Omega mashup that defines the dungeon.