Gauntlet


Ask fellow adventurers how to stay alive in the deep, dark, dangerous dungeon below, or share your own accumulated wisdom.

Temple Termagant

Posts: 12

Joined: Wednesday, 14th November 2012, 14:45

Post Monday, 11th February 2019, 17:33

Gauntlet

I entered one and died after burning a lot of resources. There was a lot of good stuff, but it was a total death trap. I was wondering what everyone else's experience has been.

Zot Zealot

Posts: 1004

Joined: Thursday, 16th August 2018, 21:19

Post Monday, 11th February 2019, 17:49

Re: Gauntlet

I entered two. Both times I saw an exit I could take if I didn't want to fight, and examined the loot I could win by fighting, and the monsters I would need to beat to take the loot.

The 1st one I entered, I decided to fight some monsters above my level (because they were guarding really good loot), and got killed.
The other time I picked a group of monsters I was well equipped to fight, killed them, took the loot, and killed the Minotaur.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Monday, 11th February 2019, 19:02

Re: Gauntlet

The only out-of-line gauntlet monster is death scarab imo. The rest can be killed by well-built characters.

Cocytus Succeeder

Posts: 2229

Joined: Sunday, 18th December 2011, 13:31

Post Monday, 11th February 2019, 21:14

Re: Gauntlet

I haven't a lot of experience of gaunlets but it seems to me it's likely most normal-power-char should got at least one "path" with reasonable monsters.
Obliviously, don't go against hexers if have poor MR, fire immune monsters if a DEFE and so on.

Moreover you often land near the next teleport, so you can just grab the loot and proceed further.

Finally like most of portals, you can just take the exit if you aren't really able to clear it.
However, unlike most portals, the player doesn't need to be spoiled to know what loot is going to miss or what monsters is going to face.
Well, the minotaur chamber is unknown but I think that is okay.

Overall the worst portal, by far, has become one of the best for me.
screw it I hate this character I'm gonna go melee Gastronok

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TheMeInTeam

Swamp Slogger

Posts: 167

Joined: Friday, 23rd October 2015, 03:12

Post Tuesday, 12th February 2019, 02:54

Re: Gauntlet

Would it be possible to reveal the whole level (and list all monsters and items found in messages) as soon as you enter? Taking time to look around before entering the first portal is kind of annoying.

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byrel, duvessa, nago, VeryAngryFelid

Blades Runner

Posts: 616

Joined: Thursday, 25th October 2012, 03:19

Post Tuesday, 12th February 2019, 06:06

Re: Gauntlet

I had a bad experience with a shape changer which turned into a storm dragon on a D:11 vault. It didn't feel like a fair fight at all. On another occasion, it seemed pretty bad as well. I found it more sensible to plot a route to snatch the best loot and just ignore a good amount of the monsters until the minotaur, which seems like a goofy, easy monster compared to the rest of the vault. All in all, doesn't seem that well balanced to me. It should be easier stuff, the loot is insanely good (so many artefacts), and then the minotaur is too easy, with another huge pile.

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 6454

Joined: Tuesday, 30th October 2012, 19:06

Post Tuesday, 12th February 2019, 17:05

Re: Gauntlet

svendre wrote:I had a bad experience with a shape changer which turned into a storm dragon on a D:11 vault. It didn't feel like a fair fight at all. On another occasion, it seemed pretty bad as well. I found it more sensible to plot a route to snatch the best loot and just ignore a good amount of the monsters until the minotaur, which seems like a goofy, easy monster compared to the rest of the vault. All in all, doesn't seem that well balanced to me. It should be easier stuff, the loot is insanely good (so many artefacts), and then the minotaur is too easy, with another huge pile.

The last gauntlet I did had one artifact in each path, plus a bunch of useless crap (not even plausibly-useful consumables), and the minotaur had one artifact as well, and was the hardest critter of the lot.

Maybe your experiences (or mine) were atypical?
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Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 8786

Joined: Sunday, 5th May 2013, 08:25

Post Tuesday, 12th February 2019, 17:53

Re: Gauntlet

Loving these sample sizes of 1 and 2.

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nago

Blades Runner

Posts: 616

Joined: Thursday, 25th October 2012, 03:19

Post Tuesday, 12th February 2019, 20:33

Re: Gauntlet

duvessa wrote:Loving these sample sizes of 1 and 2.


I'll be sure to let my QA department know that their efforts to test beta aren't satisfactory.

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Rast

Dungeon Master

Posts: 388

Joined: Monday, 18th August 2014, 20:04

Post Wednesday, 13th February 2019, 00:25

Re: Gauntlet

So far, gauntlet has a slightly higher death rate than labyrinths in the last tournament (14% vs 9.5%), but nothing shockingly high. Current portal death rates after 5 days of the tournament:

  • Bailey: 16%
  • Gauntlet: 14%
  • Ice cave: 9.5%
  • Desolation: 8.5%
  • Volcano: 8.5%
  • Ossuary: 5.5%
  • Sewer: 4%
  • Wizlabs (aggregated): 2.4%

These all include chars that left quickly, as well as players in a portal branch when I ran the queries.

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Airwolf, nago

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5382

Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Friday, 15th February 2019, 02:20

Re: Gauntlet

That about matches my expectations. Gauntlets are tough, but doable. I haven't died in one yet, but I've definitely walked all the way around and looked at the monster sets, and then chose the easier one for safety. Which IMHO is what makes them such a great portal - you can choose to fight specific groups, or skip them entirely.

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nago

Blades Runner

Posts: 593

Joined: Tuesday, 11th December 2018, 19:14

Post Wednesday, 27th February 2019, 18:19

Re: Gauntlet

I'm actually surprised gauntlet and bailey are so high in terms of death rate. I'd suspect a lair-spawned volcano or ice cave to be among the most dangerous portal vaults in the game, depending on type generated. The only bailey that comes to mind where you can just die before being able to bail is that one where you start in a spiral of water with lots of orcs/centaurs, former having weapons of returning. If you go into one of those early I could see dying fast to ranged spam. Another variant where you have successively harder rooms I've been pushed out w/o completing the thing but not killed by it.

Desolation can be pretty bad with the guardian serpents there.

Dungeon Master

Posts: 388

Joined: Monday, 18th August 2014, 20:04

Post Wednesday, 27th February 2019, 21:00

Re: Gauntlet

In case anyone is wondering, here's the updated deathrates at the end of the tournament (% of games that entered who ended the game there). I used very unsophisticated queries for this and rounded to half percents; these includes bots and quits, but there weren't very many of those.

  • Bailey: 15%
  • Gauntlet: 14.5%
  • Ice cave: 10%
  • Volcano: 8%
  • Desolation: 8%
  • Ossuary: 6.5%
  • Sewer: 5%
  • Wizlab (aggregated): 4%

For reference, here are the numbers for the 0.22 tournament, computed in the same way:

  • Bailey: 16%
  • Ice cave: 9.5%
  • Lab: 9.5%
  • Volcano: 9%
  • Desolation: 9%
  • Ossuary: 6.5%
  • Sewer: 5%
  • Wizlab (aggregated): 3%

It would probably be interesting to figure out how many of these games involve leaving rapidly, but I don't have the sequell patience for that right now.

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tasonir

Temple Termagant

Posts: 12

Joined: Wednesday, 14th November 2012, 14:45

Post Thursday, 7th March 2019, 17:50

Re: Gauntlet

Thanks for the replies and stats. Since my first post, I have been into more Gauntlets. It would seem that the first Gauntlet that I saw was just exceptionally hard. The combination of traps and monsters was much harder than any I have seen since -- it was a net trap that led to my demise. I was also playing a slow developing character, Demigod Artificer, which had no business attempting those monsters on Lair 1. I just gave it a go to see the new level.

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