I thought of this idea last night. I have been seeing lots of discussion about two problems currently on Lioden. The first is the over-abundance of lions of all types that is having a negative effect on the economy. The second one is the "Chased" NCL pool being flooded with potato NCLs. This change I am suggesting may help mitigate those two problems.

Introduction

As you know, we can sometimes meet an Elderly Lioness in explore who will give a special quest to claim 50 lionesses. This feature is generally well-liked by the community.

I propose to add a variant to this encounter. Instead of the Elderly Lioness, we can meet an Elderly King character who gives us a quest to either kill or nature reserve a number of lions (tentatively setting at 30). The quest will have the similar rewards as the Elderly Lioness quest.

How This Works

Just as the Elderly Lioness encounter has a chance to appear with a regular lone lioness encounter, the Elderly King has a rare chance to appear as a variant of lion battle encounters.

This means that the Elderly King encounter will not affect the chance of the Elderly Lioness encounter spawning. They are tied to independent events. If you would rather do the "Claim 50 Lionesses" quest you can always choose to ignore and keep exploring.


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You see the silhouette of a lone lion walking towards you from the distance. What could their intentions be?
> Fight him! (this enters you into one of the regular lion battles you can find year-round)
> Approach


You decide to take a closer look and slowly approach the lone lion, who stands his ground. Despite his apparent old age, this stranger exudes a noble aura that gives you the impression he was once a powerful king like yourself. The elderly lion dips his head to acknowledge you. "Greetings," he says, "now that I have handed my pride to my heir, I spend my days exploring and getting to know the other prides. You look like a capable leader. Why not pay the Quest Snake a visit? I am sure he will give you a task that will be a good exercise in leadership."

> Thank you, I am interested in the quest!
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Reasoning

Personally, the Elderly Lioness quest has been one of the greatest in-game incentives to mass-claim lionesses (the potential Lion Meat from the rewards is quite enticing after all). Unfortunately, I also end up chasing most of those lionesses because of territory space restraint, and because killing and nature reserving takes energy that can be used in exploring. When many players with this quest active are mass claiming and chasing NCLs, this floods the Chased pool and hurts the chance of getting an actual Chased that is bred by a player.

The Elderly King quest provides an alternative that does not have the same issue. It still encourages people to mass-claim, but instead of releasing those lionesses back into the Chased pool, those lions are deleted through Kill/Nature reserve. This can actually help clean up the current Chased pool as people hold onto the good Chased and get rid of potato Chased through the quest.

Additionally, it provides a much-requested opportunity to get rid of unwanted lions in their pride in masse and prevents the Giving Tree from being overloaded with cubs.

Additional Ideas

- Evil and good variants (kill vs. nature reserve) to this quest for kings who have different karma?
- For balancing reasons, I think accepting the Elderly King quest should lock you out of both Elderly King and Elderly Lioness encounters until you actually finish the quest. This is up to discussions though.

- Equagga|G2 Vagabond Splash (#105402): Have Great Tit and/or Red Cock as part of the rewards pool
- ❩ SiRah (#159527): Restrict eligible lions to adult females


Please feel free to let me know what you think and if there are potential pitfalls that I am not considering.