Based on the first and fourth part of the labs, I have done a lot of exploration around the game and tried to use various items and walk through walls. There are almost no surprises in the game or advantages for exploration (other than exploration poles). I think that is a great opportunity to add something.

1. Have secret areas and change them up.
Just make a wall so you can walk through it or make a light usable to give you a key or something. Easter eggs are a good example of this except you don't have to do any exploration to get them and they take up all your inventory. You would probably want to change these areas every couple months or so.
2. Lockboxes
This was talked about in another thread. Drop lockboxes in areas that are rarely gone to. I'm pretty sure I've never seen someone in the pentagram quest below sergeant major, for example. I'm sure there are other places no one goes. You can drop them in all areas, but the longer they go without getting picked up, the more valuable or rare the item in them becomes. If they sit for a full year, they would become very valuable.
3. Trivia Quest
Have a trivia quest where you have to learn obscure trivia. At first, it's the same for everyone because that will be super easy to create, maybe someday you can request a topic.

You go the trivia quest giver and he says "I am currently fascinated by ratlings. Do you know a lot about ratlings?" You can say yes and the trivia starts immediately. You can so no and he says "You have one year (or however long is left on the quest in game time) to learn everything about ratlings. I will reward you greatly." When you come back, he just asks the same thing but the time he says will now be like 10 months. No new logic required. If you come back in 20 hours, then the first quest will have ended and the new quest will be about greenlings and you missed your boat on ratlings.

I think also the more trivia quest you do, then the more of an explorer you are. The more of an explorer you are, you can go up to a guy in town and tell him where you want to go (Let's be real, it's going to be the pentagram quest or AT) and you just go there without having to walk. You have to have answered the questions about that area to get that ability, though. So if you answer ratlings, you can go straight to the ratling king perhaps. If you answer about AT, then you can go straight there. It shouldn't be "once an explorer, always an explorer." If you do an AT trivia quest and get the ability to go straight to AT, then there is a second AT trivia quest and you don't do it, at the end of the second AT quest you will lose your ability to go there.

Obviously, this would also give experience.

I can make this a lot more complicated with things like an actual explorer skill that helps you find missing walls and traps and lockboxes, but what I listed above would probably be a good starting place that would be easy to make.

Lab 9, Forbidden Cave, and a few other areas have trivia and riddles. We also used to have Live trivia but it's been a while.

The "secret" areas that you find while exploring are now in the form of random appearing portals. Aladdin portals look like a spiraling rainbow and teleport you to a special treasure area that has rank specific rewards. These random portals are changed up during different holiday events and incentivize exploration while at the same time giving random rewards which is something I think you requested as well.

To make them change to different areas randomly or at different times would require building more areas to send characters to.
Expanding the areas throughout All of Aranock where we can find these portals could encourage more exploration. Even putting some behind secret areas...

One thing I would say about exploration as someone that has touched every square and clicked every item, you will be surprised how many secrets there are already in the game.
After years of touching everything possible I still find hidden rooms, chests, notes, signs, and poles...

Keep searching.


Z

Once I pass lab 9, then it sounds like it's just Forbidden Cave. Can you do Forbidden Cave more than once? Do people? Is the Trivia the major part or a minor part? Are there lots of questions? Do they questions require exploration or are they known/enumerated?

I have never known what Aladdin portals meant. I assume those are only in some higher ranked areas. Is that right? I certainly have never seen one and I think I explore a lot.

I may find things over the years, but I looked behind all kinds of walls, used every usable item and checked every single grave when I started and the only interesting thing I found were Easter Eggs and an ancient belt that gave +1 strength and +1 something else. I just barely quit checking graves. I have found one secret wall that wasn't required for a quest but it just had an empty chest. I also found a door in Sewers I that was locked and I don't know where it goes.

Disclaimer: not all info is explicitely listed. Friendly likes to find out things for himself, so various things are abstracted.

Forbidden cave has 2 parts. There is the cave itself, with a quest from Vivianne (she lives in there), repeatable, not that amazing, but handy at some moments.
Als 2 poles (hidden). Some fk's. And a quest item for poison.
The other part is Lost cave. 3 kids have lost their way. You need to lead them to safety. Reward is cave amulet (check /amulet) or a stat scroll. Since it requires luck to get it the first time, you will probably have to repeat it a few or many times to get that amulet. There is also a pole in there.
There are no switches with questions, but there are riddles.

Aladdin portals are randomly place portals. When you enter the game, you might see a message that there are some amount of portals available. Use /countp to check while playing for a count.
The portals are quite visible, hard to walk them by missing them. But...they can be all over the map. That is: town (including inside quest areas, Red Back, Haunted Tower), SF, LV (including UW part), general clan area, smugglers swamp, prospect peak, ruins, RD1, RD2. And I may have missed a few in this list...
They are generated by some admin who can. With some luck there are quite a few and looking for them explicitly is very worth it. When there is just one left, you might just stumble across it. But if you are tired of penting, AT-ing and such, then it can be a very welcome change
Inside the portal there are easy rewards, but there are also rank-fitting fights and rewards somewhere.

If you have done only the basic parts, as in old v2, then there will be a lot to still discover for you. Castle Quests for example, are labyrinth-like quests. Emerald cave is quite a challenge solo, the first time. So would be lab 11, 12, each in a different way.
And many other parts that aren't just/only based on kill efficiency.

Of course the game can use additional content. Last year Castle Quest 5, Memory Lane and the Catacombs were added. Personal Quests, also last year. Castle Quest 6 was added this year.
And there is plenty of room for more. I wouldn't mind more
Might work best to place workable, more explicit ideas in the suggestion box to feed the developers?

Thanks. I didn't realize all of these things existed in the game already. I have never seen an Aladdin portal although I am constantly exploring. I guess the game is so big that that makes sense. It sounds like the general agreement is you have to do lots of AT/penting before you can do most of the areas I was hoping for in my suggestion. I can see why that would be since everyone else is a high rank. I will have to wait until I'm a much higher rank and then I'll come back and make suggestions.