Welcome to Gaia! ::

I know this has come up a few times, and at least once during a dev meat.

Let's have the ability to take the fight to the bugs. Break out of that one room death-trap and go hunting. If the Undermountain maze can have randomized elements, why not the Hive Catacombs? After reaching a certain milestone, either in number of waves or activated by a quest, a crew can go charging off through the Hive in search of the bug overlords. And by that I mean the Queen Bug.

Of course, reaching her would be hard, and slaying her even harder. She could have some kind of regenerating protective membrane to shield her from attacks, countless minions to throw at you, possibly adding some new varieties not found elsewhere, and even some nasty attacks of her own.

Heroachles - A powerful guardian with a tough shell and strong knockback attacks.
Zinger - Fast, winged foes that can dart in and out of melee range, shooting poisonous stingers.
Royal jam - Queen's signature attack. Causes a long-term DOT with multiple debuffs.

I was playing Metroid Prime the other day, and I reminded myself of Hive. Actually, 'the other day'' was quite a long bit ago.

And one thing that crossed my mind was that, given these creatures dominate the fauna of their own homeworld, they would be perfect the creatures would be for conquering other worlds. So I had a different idea for the final boss. Rather than a Queen in the nesting grounds we'd be faced another sentient alien race, breeding the Hive dwellers to use in their ranks. And we'd have to stop them.

The idea would be rather opposite to what a queen would pose.
While the queen would probably send minions to kill you, against this foe, we'd crack eggs being brought to the environment in a way to release bugs that are hostile to the Boss, temporarily removing their defenses. That's really the only thing original I thought about that, the fact that we'd send stuff that usually kills us to help us kill something else worse.

On the battle itself: The Royal Jam. A signature attack. A badly hurting signature attack! 4laugh How don't we have this yet? Well, Sealab X Body kinda does have one, but it's more of his only attack as well. rolleyes

Also, as for the Hive Catacombs design... I picture, from the Halloween event, the Under Mountain being a series of rooms, with alternating surprises in each. However, maybe from the insect-like idea I get from Hive, I see the Catacombs as less rooms and more tubular branching corridors with lack of space to move around in and easy to get lost in, with the occasional room similar to the one we start in where several waves would ambush us.

Well, buggers. They do those during my afternoon now?

Those... Those are beautiful!
Oh man, I'd kill for the swing version.

...
eh?

It's the same album as always. These pictures are coming from the same photo bucket account as the other concepts did.

Hmmm... Brb, hiring hackers. Spoiling everything for myself, leaking none.

Like I said, I knew the idea had been tossed around already. Queen pics look good, and I hope some of the other ideas we generate influence the end result.

As for myself, I can't hardly ever make the meets anymore, unless they're late at night. I have to work most of the day on Fridays.

Oh, now that's an idea! Alien currency as zOMG Loot, which isn't much use unless you can somehow exchange it. Probably through Nicolae or some such.

they may or may not use gold, but it wouldn't be Gaian coinage.

I see lots of potential for espionage and such. What if G Corp is willing to buy your alien coins because they are amassing currency in these other worlds as part of their effort to take over those worlds? What if they are secretly manipulating us to fight their battle for them?