kieranmillar
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There was a fun discussion in CaravelNet chat so I thought it might make for a fun forum thread too.

Put yourself in the shoes of an architect or player back in the olden days of yore. Heck, maybe you were one of those people. If you could have added one element to DROD Architect's Edition that was in Journey to Rooted Hold, what would it have been, and why? For the sake of interesting discussion, some elements you can safely group together if it's sensible like Mud and Mud Mothers, or bombs and fuses.

Would you have gone for something that massively expanded the play space, or something convenient, or something that just fit more thematically with its existing element set?

Might as well extend this same question to the later games in the series. If you could have added one thing into JtRH from The City Beneath, what would it be? If the answer is too obviously pressure plates, then pick something else.

And again, but skipping Gunthro because it didn't add much, what would you have taken from The Second Sky to add to TCB?

Insoluble
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Either pressure plates or conquer tokens. Probably the two most game changing elements in the DROD sequels. Those two seem to be the ones responsible for shifting the game to a more puzzle oriented focus. I definitely find that architecture got a lot better and more interesting after those two additions.

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kieranmillar
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To answer my own questions, I think the best element to add to AE from JtRH would have been rock golems. In AE elements are very destructive, you spend most of the time slowly getting rid of things and making space, with the exceptions of serpents, which are always moving, trapdoors (they make new obstacles but don't move) and yellow doors I suppose. Rock golems are essentially moving walls that you can fix in place, and this alone opens up a lot of gamespace. But also the fact they have a different type of movement would have added nicely to the 4 monsters that move like roaches.

I will have to think a bit harder about JtRH and TCB. Well, specifically I want to ignore pressure plates so that the JtRH question is more interesting, but that means I'll have to think about it.

Nuntar
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Well, I'm already in the middle of making a hold on the theme of "what if KDD had rock golems?" so that's a strong contender for the first question. They are extremely versatile as puzzle elements and enforcement mechanisms, with their non-sliding movement and making rock piles when killed (although with AE elements alone, there's no way to move or remove rock piles, two facets that will give them even more puzzle potential).

The only other JtRH candidates I'd consider would be Halph and the Slayer -- both elements that have a lot of potential uses; but the disadvantage is that to make them as versatile as they are, they have to be highly complex, whereas rock golems have an extremely simple ruleset that can be fully learned in a minute.

From TCB, in chat I suggested adders as a tool for dealing with wubba hordes but a more serious suggestion would be the speed potion, which is a complete game-changer and gives the player a lot more power when manipulating monsters. It's surely not an accident that in between the releases of JtRH and TCB there were at least six Feature Requests threads requesting the speed potion!

From TSS... my gut instinct answer is either gentryii because they're so cute, or time tokens because they have absolutely huge puzzle potential. That said, I find time token puzzles to be a bit hit-or-miss because they can get so confusing that it's easy to get really stuck and have no idea what a room is asking of me. So after more thought, I'll go with the ability to change weapon, which is both another complete game-changer and simple enough to be comfortable to play with.

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Someone Else
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I also would steal gentryii from the future.

I would not give it to the present, the past, or any other time.

In all seriousness, though, I would have brought sister gates forward to JTRH, and the clock forward to KDD. Really, I hit Enter so many times during KDD, and a clock would have been so nice.

Xindaris
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AE <-- JtRH:
Maybe decoy potions would be pretty neat? A way to lure monsters around other than Beethro opens up a lot of possibilities, as well as the "one-use remote stabbing" that decoy placement provides.

JtRH <-- TCB:
Maybe powder kegs or mirrors? JtRH introduces bombs and fuses and stuff; it'd be pretty cool to have the newer elements to futz with those fuses with.

TCB <-- TSS:
I'm torn between stick, caber, or time token. Pushing weapons are so cool, and it's hard for me to say whether "kills" or "doesn't kill" is neater, but I'm kind of a sucker for temporally knotted "recording" puzzles that twist one's head into a pretzel trying to make sense of.

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