Talk:Location Quick Reference

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Talk:Location Quick Reference/General Path Discussion Archive - Archives of the discussions from the previous iteration of the Location Quick Reference article

Editing Notes

General Guidelines

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• Write-ups must be brief, without losing the meaning. For example, in the Bazaar, players are not just advised to visit the Cartographer, but also informed of the reasons why.
• Each location section should be self contained. With the exception of the Prerequisites and Next Recommended Destination subsections, the only link players need to follow is contained within the section and do not lead to other sections.
• It is acceptable to repeat what was previously mentioned in another section as long as it makes sense for the section in question.
• If a cheese/trap combination is specific to catch 1 to 3 breeds of mice out of the many others in a location, it should not be put under recommended traps or recommended cheese, but should instead be included in the recommended to-do list. An example would be catching Monsters in the Laboratory. Catching Monsters there require the specific use of Radioactive Blue, along with a good physical trap. But using Radioactive Blue results in poor or negative gold returns in the Laboratory, so not exactly a good choice unless the player is aiming for a heavy Monster. Hence RB is not recorded as recommended cheese, but can be included as the writeup under the To-Do list as "Catch a Monster Mouse using Radioactive Blue."
• Do not include SUPER|brie+ as recommended cheese, although it can be suggested for a particular mouse catch, like Cook or Worker.
• Editors should note that these set of guidelines are just that. They are not concrete rules. Do exercise logic and common sense if something seems out of place, or if there are certain missing links that need to be added in.

Sectioning

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Newcomers Section

• Section is reserved for locations accessible to minimum ranks from Novice to Journeyman. This is to ensure that players new to the game have less text to read through and to prevent information overload.
• New locations should first be placed within the respective rank sections, and then in alphabetical order of location.

Experienced Hunters Section

• Section covers the locations that can be accessed by all other ranks from Master and beyond. Mainly used to hold the remaining locations. It must not be split into further sections unless there is an absolute need to. For example, splitting further into Master-Grandmaster and Legendary & above for cosmetic purposes is not acceptable, unless game design happens to make a clear distinction in future.
• New locations should first be placed within the respective rank sections, and then in alphabetical order of location.

Subsection guidelines

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Prerequisites

• Prerequisites for experienced hunters should not include the rank requirement, as that is already covered in the general section heading.
• In the event where one Map or Key grants access to multiple locations, that location where it is found/crafted/purchased should be listed, as well as any previous location that should not be skipped. For example, in the Pinnacle Chamber, it is written as "Visited Meditation Room and previously purchased Furoma Map Stitch from Bazaar", thus covering both the travel requirements, as well as the need to have collected a sufficient amount of shards, which is itself mentioned within the Things you must do section within Meditation Room.

Recommended Ranks

• Recommended Ranks is exclusive to the Newcomers section, and is meant to guide players to avoid spending too much time in a location. It should not be added to the Experienced Hunters section as the game has many branches at this point in time and players are expected to decide which location to move to themselves based on their current progress.

Recommended Cheese

• Recommended Cheese mentions the most useful cheese(s) for the location that is available to the majority of players. Thus SUPER|brie+ is not mentioned here as it is almost always the best choice in place of Brie or Gouda, but is restricted mostly only to donors.

Minimum and Recommended Traps

• Minimum Traps does not refer to the bare minimum trap possible, ie Tacky Glue Trap in the Harbour. Rather, it would be a trap(s) that has players seeing red boxes or stolen cheese often in a particular location, and yet still make a reasonable gold and points profit. Therefore an important point to note is that just being able to catch some mice in a location using a particular trap does not qualify it as a Minimum Trap.
• Recommended Traps contains the next better trap(s) that helps improve catch rates. However, there is usually an element whereby players might (and probably will) hold back from buying the trap due to the amount of usage the better trap will see in the current and further locations, or that players will only be able to afford the trap at the tail end of their visit to a location. Therefore for most players, the Recommended Trap is typically out of reach on their initial visit to a location unless they came fully prepared from prior locations.
• Both Minimum and Recommended Traps do not have very precise guidelines. This becomes especially obvious for newly introduced locations, thus care should be taken before including a particular trap in either of the subsections. It should at the very least be backed by experience from a reasonable number of personal hunts (for example, at least 300 to 500 trap checks in a location), or ideally with data from a large sample of players, or by inference when only a single trap Power Type works well against the mice in a location.
• When unsure of what could be fall under the Minimum Trap, editors can look at the list of possible Recommended Traps instead, and work backwards by considering traps that are somewhat weaker.
• Minimum and Recommended Traps include both the Weapon and Base for Newcomers, but only mention Weapons for Experienced Hunters. This is to ensure that Newcomers acquire at least the basic Bases for use further down the line.
• Do not include any time limited traps in the write-up. They are not readily available and would very likely end up confusing newer players.

Things you must do / Recommended To-do List

• These two subsections typically covers the mice that players have to (or should) catch and the loot drops they need to acquire from these mice, such as a Map or Key or Crafting ingredients etc. The main difference being that the former is firm on what needs to be done, without which players will be unable to progress in the game, while the latter mainly advises players, and this advice can be safely ignored at this point in time.
• Do not include any time limited mice in the write-up. They are not readily available and would very likely end up confusing newer players.
• For crafted items, do not list down individual ingredients or additional notes. List only the final product. Further details should be easily available in the respective articles.

Next Recommended Destination

• Recommended Destinations should either be of the same or higher rank requirement compared to the current location. Players should not be sent back towards a lower ranked location unless it is part of game design, such as from the Jungle of Dread to the Acolyte Realm. Otherwise, for example at the Pinnacle Chamber, players are sent towards the Catacombs or S.S. Huntington II, rather than to lower ranked locations.

Please do not make any major changes directly to the guidelines. They should first be discussed below. -- Grexx 20:02, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I would like to add a link on the word "Recommend Traps" to link to the various Trap Setup Option Pages. This would provide easy navigation to hunters for a list of options. Any concerns? -- Ralphminer 03:06, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Don't think it would be a good idea as the links can already be found through the location articles. Most importantly, the recommended traps and trap options are not completely in sync, so it would put that difference in the spotlight. Would like to avoid this since questions about consistency would crop up about the bases and cheese. I would rather it be put up under a brief writeup in the introduction on how to navigate the quick reference itself and further links that can be looked at. It is on my list of things to do currently, but won't be getting to it so soon. -- Grexx 06:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

While on the subject, unless I'm missing something, there is no wikilink back from the trap setup option pages to the location page. People often post the trap setup option URLs in the forum but if a user goes there, they can't easily get back to the location page to find further info about that location. --Winelight 10:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

It'll be something useful, so why not. Don't even need to talk about since it's an obvious improvement to link back to the location article. You can probably put the link right at the top, with a brief introduction paragraph for every trap option page. -- Grexx 12:09, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Lagoon

A special note is in order regarding the Lagoon. For those who are trying to catch rare shadow mice, for example to collect pictures, it is reasonable to use the BG and ACRoNYM traps. However, these traps are ineffective against tactical mice (which are a significant proportion of those in the area). In the case of the BG, it also has very low power, so it is ineffective against the Hydra Mouse, which is one of the major goals (perhaps the major goal) of being in the Lagoon in the first place. I think we need to be careful about suggesting these (or any shadow and arcane traps) for general use in the Lagoon. -- Pakaran 03:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Section Titles

The list of locations is getting longer and is making the search for a particular location somewhat harder than it should be due to the inclusion of the rank requirement. Planning on doing minor revamp of the way the experienced hunter sections are laid out by dividing based on rank, namely Master, Grandmaster, Legendary, and Hero and above, removing the rank requirement from the title. Rank requirement in the location title will be retained for the newcomers section. Thus 'Laboratory (Minimum Rank: Master)' will become 'Laboratory' under the section header 'Minimum Rank: Master' or similar. Comments/violent objections? --Grexx 17:25, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I second this notion! Go for it!! _____m. 22:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Alphabetical ordering of locations

Path information should not be implied in the ordering of the locations simply because there is no fixed order of progression with the various paths the developers have added, hence the list will be properly alphabetized within each rank section, once again. By ordering the locations in a certain way, one would just be trying to push personal views of game progression onto other players. Progression information should be contained within the specific location sections instead. As for those wishing to undo previous changes, I, and other editors kindly ask that proper justifications be given. Empty comments, as well as consecutive minor edits, show a lack of thought into each edit, as well as making it much harder for history checks. -- Grexx 17:19, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

• In some cases, certain locations are perquisites to other locations (an example being the SSH2 and Derr Dunes). Since the link to Location Quick Reference on the main page says "Walkthrough," it seems (at first) to be absurd to list Derr Dunes before the SSH2. But then when I thought about it some more, it seemed more okay. It's still a brief walkthrough of sorts for each location individually (even if not perfectly tied together), so the name still fits, and hunters would only need to look up what to do in their current location (which has to be one they can travel to), so if Derr Dunes wasn't available to them yet, they'd know to skip over it and come back later when they meet the prerequisite. Alphabetical ordering is also less controversial. No one can argue it's alphabetized one way while another argues it's alphabetized another way... unless the devs start making similarly-named areas with very strange ASCII characters, but I'm rather certain that won't happen. :) --Dreamwalker 19:07, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Next possible location(s)

Planning on adding links at the bottom of each location section, listing out the possible exit points to other locations. The links will lead to the other sections within the Location Quick Reference article, rather than directly to the location page, ie Location Quick Reference#Catacombs rather than Catacombs. Exit points should not be entry points, thus players at the Meditation Room are not directed back to the Dojo to farm for more tokens. Exit points will not replace the Things you must do section, but instead is meant to lay out clearly the possible paths that players can take after each location. I haven't completely thought over the issue, so am looking for some feedback. No rush in this either, since the current form should be quite clear in itself. The naming itself isn't finalized either. Let me know if you have any comments on this :) -- Grexx 17:01, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea! I'll think about whether I can come up with a name for it. -- Camomiletea 19:50, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm... it's a decent idea, but the "things you must do" talk about map pieces and such, so people should already know what new locations they've unlocked. However, those don't have links to another part of the Loc Quick Ref (as you said, they go to the article for the location itself, as it should be), so perhaps the extra stuff at the bottom of each location section would be worth it. I suppose I'm neutral on the issue. --Dreamwalker 22:35, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Well, the intention behind this page originally was to be a kind of walk-through, with locations listed in the order encountered. But devs introduced the alternate pathways, so that it became somewhat impossible to do this in a linear format. Adding the "next stop" sort of thing brings back the original purpose. Oh, btw, "Next Stop" is what I came up with so far: short, simple. -- Camomiletea 23:21, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

As Camomiletea mentioned, the original plan we had was for it to flow in a linear pattern, following the layout of the locations at that point in time in March 2009. Quite a good amount has changed since then, and the layout needs some updating to stay relevant and useful for players. The new subsection will be very brief. A full explanation of the new links will be given under the "For Experienced Hunters" section. The links themselves will just be simple location names, without any further elaboration, which should have been done under the "Things you must do" row.

There will be a couple of "dead-ends" to mark the end of a path. I'm still thinking through if we should link dead-ends back to an earlier location, or the next equivalent location. For example, after the Pinnacle Chamber, marking it as a dead-end is not exactly correct, but neither is linking to a starter location such as the Calm Clearing. Alternatively, we could link it to an equivalent rank location, which in this case would be the Lagoon, or direct players to a higher ranked area such as the Catacombs. So as can be seen, it can get a little complicated. We'll need to decide on an ideal solution that makes sense, and is not confusing either.

A possible solution to this is to add an "Entry Point" link at the top of the Location, thus making it very easy to navigate around the various locations within the Location Quick Reference article. So we'll have something similar to what is shown below. Alternatively, was also considering consolidating in this case, the Previous Stop and Travel Requirements into one renamed as Prerequisites. Let me know your comments and any further suggestions on all of these. -- Grexx 16:16, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Town of Digby

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Previous Stop	Laboratory
Recommended Ranks	Master and above
Travel Requirements	Key to the Town of Digby
Recommended Cheese	Swiss or Brie
Minimum Traps	▪ Swiss Army Mouse Trap
Recommended Traps	▪ Mouse DeathBot ▪ NVMRC Forcefield Trap
Things you must do	▪ Buy a Sinister Portal or Ambrosial Portal for use in the Mousoleum
Recommended To-do List	▪ Catch a Mole Mouse with the Back Cover of Plankrun's Journal ▪ Catch a Mole Mouse with the Shredded Furoma Map Piece ▪ Collect Meteorite pieces dropped by Granite mice for crafting Moon cheese
Next Stop	Training Grounds

I was reading old discussions about this page, when it was just a draft. And look, you proposed "Next Destination" even back then. I like that wording. Not sure about what to do about the "dead-ends"... I think I would prefer the combined Prerequisites cell. -- Camomiletea 02:12, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Lol, didn't recall that suggestion until you pointed it out, and still don't remember it after! Regardless, I like my own idea past idea :D Looking at things now though, we're trying not to herd players in a particular direction, so I think it would be better to name it Next Recommended Destination. We'll stick with Prerequisites, since that is a firm requirement, thus merging the previous location with travel requirements, so we'll get something like "Prerequisites: Visited Laboratory and collected Key to the Town of Digby"

As for the dead-ends that we haven't decided on, we will not add the Next Destination for those locations. Hopefully again, everything will fall into place once the big picture gets clearer. -- Grexx 06:02, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

In Summary from the previous reply, this is the final draft of changes that will be made:

Town of Digby

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Prerequisites	Visited Laboratory and found Key to the Town of Digby
Recommended Ranks	Master and above
Recommended Cheese	Swiss or Brie
Minimum Traps	Swiss Army Mouse Trap
Recommended Traps	Mouse DeathBot NVMRC Forcefield Trap
Things you must do	Buy a Sinister Portal or Ambrosial Portal for use in the Mousoleum
Recommended To-do List	Catch a Mole Mouse with the Back Cover of Plankrun's Journal Catch a Mole Mouse with the Shredded Furoma Map Piece Collect Meteorite pieces dropped by Granite mice for crafting Moon cheese
Next Recommended Destination	Training Grounds

-- Grexx 07:28, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

About the edits made by M., just like to clarify that ONLY location links under the Prerequisites and Next Recommended Destination will lead to a related section within the Location Quick Reference article. Other location links will remain the same, ie linking to the actual page. This is to get players accustomed to using the top and bottom rows as an easy navigation tool, and to give players a feel of the location flow that we used to be able to present when the progression was linear. At the same time, the aim is to keep the main bulk of the information easy to link to the other relevant links within the wiki, which is also the original intention of this article. Concise and to the point, with further required information that can be found a click away in the link.

As for the ▪ ▪ ▪, I'm not sure we should do away with them. When the text is lengthy, they will appear to be flowing to the next line, making it seem like one paragraph rather than separate items. Let me have your comments on this. Also, if there's any suggestions to improve the visual presentation of the individual sections, let me know. The original thick blue border with thin cell lines was actually a skeleton layout. If anyone can come up with a better design/layout, do share. If you're unsure, you can throw out some ideas here and see if anyone else can work on it. -- Grexx 15:14, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me that the next location after Town of Digby is Mousoleum, unless you are skipping it (which isn't the regular route). Both could be listed in the Next Recommended Destination, I guess.

I found it interesting that M. made Mousoleum internal link to a related section, but I tend to agree with you that such links should lead to the actual location page. Keep the intra-page navigation in the top and bottom row.

I'd like to keep the bullet points ▪, especially in cells with lists. What I mean is in the Town of Digby example above: Recommended Traps, Recommended To-Do List. But if you bullet point the Recommended To-Do List, it doesn't look right to leave the Things you must do without a bullet, even though there's only one item there. So at least those 3 in that particular example. Does this make sense? -- Camomiletea 15:37, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Well I almost forget there's 2 routes out of the Town of Digby, since I was just considering that players get lucky enough in the town and pick up the map piece and can head to the TG. No harm in listing the Mousoleum as well, since that's the route the majority of players will probably end up taking. Anyways most importantly is to get the rows in once we're decided. Once that is done, there will be more eyes on it and corrections will be made as needed. -- Grexx 16:15, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Am editing the Prerequisites and Next Recommended Destination in at the moment, and I realized that the Recommended Ranks row is relatively redundant, since it doesn't have very much effect on catch rates, as compared to using the right traps, as well as repeating information that is available in the section or location headers. Thus I will be removing them as I go along. -- Grexx 13:45, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Completed the changes. There might be some debate about the Prerequisites and Next Recommended Destination due to some ambiguity with the location flow. But before anyone makes any further changes to either of the rows, please make sure to explain fully your rationale here. -- Grexx 15:46, 17 August 2009 (UTC)