The Tavern

I splatted an Octopode IE of Hepl last night in Orc:1 which featured 3x Orc Warlords! There were also several orc knights and some high priests around. Admittedly it didn't get bad until I was forced to start using Mephitic Cloud and Lightning Spire, but I was being as stealthy as I could for as long as I could.

I remember when Orc first changed from 4 floors to 2, it seems like the first floor was still mostly orcs/wizards/priests/ogres/wargs and you didn't get knights, warlords, and high priests until Orc:2. Have there been any more changes, or did I just experience a really bad Orc:1?

Had I known, I might have cleared to D:15 before attempting, but it was too late for blinking scrolls to save my by the time the writing was on the wall.

Orc knights have always been able to spawn in Orc:1. Here's some stats:

[11:35 AM] Patashu: !lg * place=orc:1 s=cikiller recent
[11:35 AM] BOTCerebot: 6313 games for * (place=orc:1 recent): 924x an orc knight, 734x an orc warrior, 693x an orc warlord, 439x an ettin, 434x a stone giant, 400x an orc sorcerer, 368x an orc high priest, 275x a two-headed ogre, 250x an orc priest, 149x a troll, 143x Snorg, 135x a player ghost, 125x an ogre, 123x a cyclops, 113x Donald, 101x Saint Roka, 69x a warg, 66x, 64x Josephine, 50x Urug, 50x a deep elf mage, 49...

[11:36 AM] Patashu: !lg * place=orc:1 s=cikiller recentish
[11:36 AM] BOTCerebot: 10344 games for * (place=orc:1 recentish): 1515x an orc knight, 1209x an orc warrior, 1185x an orc warlord, 749x an ettin, 718x a stone giant, 623x an orc sorcerer, 590x an orc high priest, 418x an orc priest, 382x a two-headed ogre, 233x a player ghost, 230x a troll, 226x Snorg, 199x a cyclops, 192x an ogre, 177x Saint Roka, 172x Donald, 123x a warg, 117x, 102x Josephine, 83x Azrael, 82x Urug, 7...

[11:36 AM] Patashu: !lg * place=orc:1 s=cikiller
[11:36 AM] BOTCerebot: 23143 games for * (place=orc:1): 3397x an orc warrior, 3162x an orc knight, 1959x an orc warlord, 1747x an orc priest, 1213x an ettin, 1126x an orc sorcerer, 1103x a stone giant, 945x an orc high priest, 691x Snorg, 646x an orc, 535x an ogre, 524x a troll, 471x a player ghost, 470x an orc wizard, 455x a two-headed ogre, 443x, 329x a warg, 294x a cyclops, 260x Saint Roka, 200x Donald, 189x Josephi...

That change brought a fairly high variance to orc:1, because anything that could generate in orc could now show up on orc:1. Sometimes it's trivial, sometimes it's like what you encountered. Here's the full commit message from that change:

I checked out that commit, which was Oct 2015; and it looks like spawns have not changed at all since then. It really is just bad luck on my part. Maybe I'll wait a bit after Lair to start doing Orc.

I have recently seen stone giants in Orc. I believe that it did not happen in older versions.

I recently saw a hippogriff on D:2, I had never seen that before. I've seen the occasional stone giant in Orc for a least a few versions now

There are a few (not very new) ways for stone giants to place in Orc:$, and they can rarely place a random monsters. Before the change mentioned above they could only place on orc 3-4, but now they can appear on orc:1. So I think it's just that harder monsters are more noticeable now that it can happen right away. Personally I don't think I wait any longer to do orc than I used to, but I'm more prepared to bail depending on what shows up.

2 floor orc is *slightly* harder than 4 floor, but the difference isn't huge. It does bump up the odds of some "out of depth" things like orc warlords, which are possible but I consider "OOD" for orc:1. Orc knights are a normal and fairly common monster, but warlords are still thankfully rare.