Thread:Marstinson/@comment-32769624-20180216060651/@comment-1055267-20180226215513

I've been thinking about your earlier question (somewhere - I forget these things sometimes) about organizing locations and had an idea that may or may not be exceptionally impractical, but strikes me as useful. I'll use the Emperor's Palace as the example because it was the location that generated the idea.

Each exploration level of a location changes not only the items the player is asked to find, but their locations. This holds true for all locations, but in the Palace, for example, the Umbrella is an item that appears from Level I. It only appears in about two or three places and is always open until you hit Level III or so. After Level III it begins appearing in about three or four other locations and in different forms (open or closed). The Chameleon doesn't appear before about Level III or so and only appears in about three places at that point (the cart curtain, the tree branch and in front of the picture), but by Level V it also appears as a gold leaf drawing at the base of one of the pillars and on the handle of the drum. The Dragonfly doesn't appear until about Level IV, the Letter and Yin Yang symbol don't appear until about Level V and that kind of thing. Some items appear pretty much from the get-go (I'm thinking specifically of the Pipe that sits in front of the cart or the Comb on the coin pile, but there are others), but the player isn't asked to find them until much later. By the same token, the game stops asking about some items after a while. I don't think it's asked about the Gong in a couple or three levels, for example.

All of which leads to a few questions. First, would it be useful to list the items that are added at each exploration level? Maybe put that information in the table with the energy cost, experience, and gold awarded at each level and maybe link to the location descriptions farther down the page. On the location descriptions, would it be useful to indicate the exploration level at which the items appear in those locations? I'm at Level V on the Palace and have not yet been asked about things like the Dog, Fortune Cookie, Ladybug, Magnifying Glass, or Moon, for example, so these must show up at Level VI. Of course this all assumes that the game is static and that new items (or old items under new names) and new locations won't be added, and how to get that information, especially stuff like Level I of City Hall, but it struck me as an approach that could be explored and perhaps turned into a page template of some kind.