Few Simple Branch Seeds
The following are three basic concepts for a branch that I think could grow into something:
- The Heavens
- Monsters: Lots of holy, electric and flying creatures. Few dragons. Demigods may also spawn. Creatures like to use Cleansing Flame. Packs of creatures with rElec and Lightning bolt will shoot through each other heavily. Moves with knockback are also common (force lance and similar). Though many enemies fly, they are likely to punish you for flying (hexes that knock you down, Airstrike, etc.)
- Unique Features:
- Branch is backwards and very deep. (Heavens: 6 is the highest floor, Heavens 1 is the lowest).
- All floors contain 'white fluffy' clouds which have no effect except preventing placing any other cloud.
- There are no walls, instead there are sizeable holes between patches of floor. The holes are difficult for the player to fly across because of enemies using spells to knock you back or down when flying, but enemies fly through them no problem. Holes act like Shafts except they are the size of pools of magma or water and never close.
- Heavens have a huge spawn rate and never stop spawning. Furthermore, being shafted/falling through a hole has a special effect to immediately call more enemies, make noise and place a sentinel's mark on you.
- Placement: The heavens randomly replaces one of the hell branches; with a higher spawn rate if you are of a race that is weak to Holy (DS, Mu, etc.); Considered similar difficulty to Zot/Hell, but unique focus on Holy and Electric creatures. It also has a 'helllord' tier unique (uses Seraph as the base creature).
- The Desert
- Monsters: Heavy 'earth' theme. Most monsters are somewhat slow and tanky as the terrain makes even slow creatures hard to avoid. Gargoyles, golems, emperor scorpions, Sphinxes, Manticores. Also insects that spit poison and acid and use an ability like submerge to hide under the sand; sand sharks and sand krakens also possible
- Unique Features:
- You are constantly 'buffeted by a sandstorm' [low power sandblast from 'god']. Effect is stronger while flying. Having decent AC will completely negate the effect for non-fliers (AC high enough to make spellcasting difficult is necessary)
- The desert is an endless open area. There are no walls outside of vaults, but it's noisy (enemies don't hear you very easily and there's an innate Stealth boost to everything).
- To add to the 'endless' part. The desert cannot be mapped and doesn't have outer walls. Instead it's a Cartesian plane, (when you hit the upper wall you are warped to the bottom wall without noticing). It's also constantly shifting. (Areas that are solid vs. quicksand change; new monsters spawn).
- Quicksand is everywhere. This is land under permanent Liquefaction enchantment, which pulls you towards shafts.
- Shafts in the desert may take you to the next floor as normal, or to a 'trap' room; which contains several monsters (poisonous insects and ghosts common) and a trapdoor back up only.
- These trap rooms are spawned like portals; they disappear after leaving and aren't actually on the next floor.
- Sand swallows all corpses making the branch near corpseless, without quick use of apportation, raise dead, etc.
- Placement: Replaces Crypt and is far more difficult to leave than enter. (Effects pulling you into shafts make it hard to climb back up). There is a semi-normal end vault on Desert: $; which also includes a Tomb entrance, but the rest is...easy to get lost in.
- The Overgrown Temple
- Monsters: Almost half the kinds of creatures in the overgrown temple are immobile. (Statues and Plants). The other half are quite the opposite (very fast and elusive). Tele Other is very common, forcing you to get close to statues if you have low to semi-low MR or no stasis. Confusion, Stat Drain, Bolt Spells (all elements) and corrosion are also common. None of the statues are Disintegration vulnerable.
- Unique Features:
- Having a large amount of immobile enemies is of itself a unique feature.
- It's a branch that you'd want to dive, but have a difficult time diving due to needing to clear a path (destruct enough statues/plants to reach a downstaircase).
- Walls are reflective (all attacks bolt bounce off of them, this includes Arrows) and nigh indestructible (requires shatter to have a chance).
- Trees are as common as the reflective walls and are alive (will spawn tentacles if you get close).
- Both water and lava flow through the temple, sections may be completely flooded.
- Branch is made of semi-narrow tunnels, which force you to face multiple statues at once and (if you used stasis the whole way) clear large swatches of land from Plants and Statues before reaching any stairs.
- Floors random spawning may build new statues and place new immobile plants (no other areas places new statues beyond the ones that spawned in).
- Placement: This replacement for the Slime Pits fortunately has no malmutate; but is just as annoying. The endvault instead contains a plant and statue pair of immobile enemies, which heal each other, summon and (obviously) cannot be separated. Plants are harmless if of Fedhas (but going Jiyva already made the old branch trivial); statues get no such luck, leading to you having to face slightly more than half the normal monsters if you are of Fedhas.