So, recently I've been thinking about ways to make explore less monotonous, predictable, and strategy-less; and I think I've come up with an idea that would spice up exploring a little to give it a little bit more entertainment value while laos adding in some tactics to the usual "pick up all the items, fight the lowest level mob first".

My suggestion is.... POWER-UPS! ... and power-downs.

They way they'd work, is they would be items that were generated (just like the other items and monsters and obstacles) that could be picked up, and then on the next fight they would be active. They'd be auto-used as soon as you picked them up so, for example, if there was a strength+ powerup on the ground, you might save it until there's a monster you don't think you can defeat (like a red mob, or even a beast temple) and then you could pick it up and get a little bit extra OOMPH to beat that monster.

There would also be power-downs, which would work the same way and they'd temporarily lower whatever, like strength- which would lower your strength. Obviously if you can walk around the power-down then you can just avoid it, unless it spawns in a hallway or in front of a treasure chest or right in front of a red mob. Then you'd have to pick it up, and then you could either go find a weaker mob to defeat to get rid of the debuff or you would just charge in and hope for the best.

Either way this would break up the usual order of "pick up all the items, defeat all the mobs from lowest to highest" because you would want to use powerups to defeat the strong mobs and you might want to save a low-leveled mob to get rid of a debuff.

So, there'd be strategy involved in exploring, finally! Which would easily make it less monotonous/boring and make it more interactive/fun.

Anyways, so that's the whole idea. As always please feel free to like/dislike/discuss/add to this suggestion whatever you think would make explore better! And thanks for reading.

Sure, I'll support this. Sounds interesing.

Support. And I think it would be cool if you couldn't tell the difference between powerups and downs.

I'd be OK with not being able to tell if they were buffs or debuffs as long as there was an equal amount of each per island -- that way you couldn't get unlucky and have, say, 4 debuffs and 0 buffs on an island. Also, then there could be an item or upgrade or invite that allows you to tell the difference between them.

Though, if they weren't able to be identified until picked up this would probably detract from the original idea of adding STRATEGY -- since then it'd be luck as a primary factor involved. And, as well all know, luck is the opposite of strategy in terms of gameplay.

Support!

Or like Pokemon... you get ambushed by monstersss (no zumbat like creatures ever though... just too much :P). That could spice things up! Or random items.