Rune screen and rune effects


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Post Sunday, 10th January 2016, 21:29

Rune screen and rune effects

This has come up recently in the DCSS reddit, so I think I'll mention some ideas here. There does not seem to be much concensus for this, but perhaps I am wrong.

Rune screen
There is now a screen listing all runes, and highlighting those you have collected (I think it is accessed by the } key.) My first two suggestions are for that screen:
  1. For runes picked up, print and sort them by turncount of collection.
  2. For the abyssal rune, print a short (fitting on the line) statement about its properties, such as: "(more abyss exists and monsters spawn)"

Rune effects
Seeing how the abyssal rune actually has an effect on the game: why not other runes as well? This comes up from time to time, but the proposal are too power game-y for my tastes -- I don't want resistances etc. So I started to think whether I can find thematic branch restricted effects for some runes. Here are my ideas:
  1. Slime: Carrying the slimy rune makes you immune to acidic wall damage.
  2. Shoals: Carrying the barnacled rune changes the height map of all Shoals levels until there are only small puddles of water left.
  3. Tomb: Carring the golden rune makes you immune to mummy death curses.
  4. Vaults: Carrying the silver rune makes you immune to door sealing by wardens.
  5. Spider: Carrying the gossamer runes makes you immune to spider webs (but not nets).
Some of these encourage ninjaing the rune, which is probably bad. It seems natural to give hell runes the power to stop hell effects (in their respective branch of hell), but if at all, that should be given for killing the hell lord, in my opinion.

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Post Sunday, 10th January 2016, 22:34

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Yeah maybe it encourages ninjaing the rune, but the effects don't seem like they would be all that valuable if you're already in a position to do so. With the exception maybe being the golden rune. In any case, ninjaing the rune isn't as easy as it used to be with ctele being axed (and honestly cblink should go too). If you want to fart around and burn teleport scrolls, that's fine, there's at least some risk involved with that.
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Post Sunday, 10th January 2016, 23:55

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

I like the effects, but I wouldn't say the main issue is encouraging ninja'ing the rune. That said, I can see a trend where initial floors are skipped in favor of the branch end in order to make the rest of the floors faster: Shoals and Spider could potentially be faster to fully clear if you have the rune effect, for example. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but it's what I would do unless I desperately needed items and experience and couldn't afford to fight my way through a branch end.

dpeg wrote:It seems natural to give hell runes the power to stop hell effects (in their respective branch of hell), but if at all, that should be given for killing the hell lord, in my opinion.

If anything, hell effects stopping in the branch when you kill its respective hell lord seems thematically appropriate, since you're often being trash talked while eating hell effects. :P
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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 00:11

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

What's the point of branch restricted effects for branches you'll never return to?

Perhaps the solution is for the abyssal rune's effect to not be announced to the player. Just treat it as an internal mechanic to make the game more fun to the player, not something they need to know about.

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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 00:27

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

I'm with chequers - I can't think of any siutation where knowing the effect of the abyssal rune would change my decisions anyway.

Why don't we want to encourage ninja-ing though? Unless ninjaing usually means "randomly teleporting until something good happens" - I honestly don't know, I pretty much always clear branch ends myself.

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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 01:07

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

chequers wrote:What's the point of branch restricted effects for branches you'll never return to?


It definitely feels like most of these effects would be more just fun little easter egg/flavor effects than meaningful mechanics. The Abyss rune's effect is mostly a convenience because leaving the Abyss after you've proven you're strong enough to get the rune is just tedium, but Pan is the only other branch that's ever tedius to leave after getting the rune and Abyss is the only branch in the game that you might get stuck in involuntarily after getting the rune.

That said, I do like the idea. It provides a sort of fun, flavorful little trivia/easter eggy type deal without having any meaningful impact on the gameplay, so why not? Those sorts of details are good to avoid when they have a meaningful impact on the game because they increase the learning curve and can be spoilery, but if the effects are mostly insignificant anyway then it seems fun.

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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 04:00

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

dpeg wrote:Tomb: Carring the golden rune makes you immune to mummy death curses.


This seems like it'd make some Zig levels significantly easier. I doubt it's a huge issue, but it does make the effect a little less localized.

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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 04:14

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

phloomp wrote:I'm with chequers - I can't think of any siutation where knowing the effect of the abyssal rune would change my decisions anyway.

You can use the rune's effects to scum for XP and items; finding exits reliably makes Abyss considerably safer and you can just "re-roll" maps by exiting and entering again if you're just trying to find items (combine this with item detection and you can just re-roll as soon as you don't detect anything right away).

The previous thing is just for scumming of course, but for the uninformed, non-scumming player you should still be interested in the effect because it lets you know that after grabbing the rune all you have to do is get out of the vault and look around a bit. The resources you potentially need for 1. getting out of the vault and 2. wandering Abyss:3 for a long time is vastly different than 1. getting out of vault and 2. look around for several screens.
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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 05:16

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

I can't really see any issues with this as long as the effects are explained to the player and not spoilery. It just seems like a fun way to add to the flavor of acquiring runes without making anything game changing.

Honestly, the question doesn't seem to be why, the question seems to be "why not?"
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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 09:15

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

My motivation was mostly a combination of flavour ("You now own this place.") combined with convenience, e.g. you could fully explore Slime or Shoals with rune, if you want to (Slime has lots of experience). I want to avoid strong, permanent effects for probably obvious reasons (for one, we have too many runes for that).

By the way, the Slime rune effect should come with a wall change colour (back to normal green in console), to visually clue you in that walls are now harmless.
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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 10:05

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

If you can grab the slime rune it means you have killed TRJ, which means you can already safely full explore slimes - barring perhaps Dissolution. Plus the fact that you don't really need slimes experience if you killed TRJ.
Similarly with all other runes, if you dived for any reason to the bottom and cleared the worst part of the branch, it's really really unlikely this minor and flavor bonus will change the odds to clear or die after in the branch - if you want for any reason to clear it after getting the rune.

As noted, probably the only *noticeable * diffeence would be in zig mummies floor. If other runes granted some kind of resistance - like rcorr or rpois - the effect would be at least visible and somewhat useful for a not totally ridiculous part of the game - otherwise I don't see anything sensible this change could bring.
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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 10:33

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

dpeg wrote:My motivation was mostly a combination of flavour ("You know own this place.") combined with convenience, e.g. you could fully explore Slime or Shoals with rune, if you want to (Slime has lots of experience). I want to avoid strong, permanent effects for probably obvious reasons (for one, we have too many runes for that).

By the way, the Slime rune effect should come with a wall change colour (back to normal green in console), to visually clue you in that walls are now harmless.

I think messing with different ways of introducing flavor into areas is a good idea, and this looks like one way of going about it. It sounds like a fun little experiment if nothing else, so hopefully it makes it into trunk at some point.

E: in this case, the game would benefit from having something other than a screen flash and "feeling the rune's power" for every single rune in the game.
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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 11:15

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

dpeg wrote:Some of these encourage ninjaing the rune, which is probably bad.
Why is that bad? I think that's kinda cool. I've never actually done it and more incentive would be neat.

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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 13:02

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Shard: because some players keep saying that ninjaing runes/orb is already the best and safest way. That does not really match up with my experience, but I am not a very good player.

nago: I've explained why I don't want resistances on runes. And being immune to acidic walls certainly makes Slime exploration much easier. (I do Slime often, and I can never explore it fully. I also think the experience there is worth exploring, even after collecting the rune.)

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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 13:10

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

While it sounds like its nice (mostly) flavour, I would like to invoke the complexity argument. There are monsters axed left and right with the argument "one useless uninteresting monster that players need to learn about", and now we want to introduce 14 more interactions that might (abyssal) or might not be (shoals getting drained) relevant to gameplay.

This seems like a lot of extra complexity without enough justification.

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Post Monday, 11th January 2016, 14:18

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

le_nerd wrote:While it sounds like its nice (mostly) flavour, I would like to invoke the complexity argument. There are monsters axed left and right with the argument "one useless uninteresting monster that players need to learn about", and now we want to introduce 14 more interactions that might (abyssal) or might not be (shoals getting drained) relevant to gameplay.

This seems like a lot of extra complexity without enough justification.

Not to speak for the dev (or the people in DCSS reddit), but I think "it sounds fun" is enough justification. :P
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Post Tuesday, 12th January 2016, 05:23

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

the spider nets one insn't good because it would encourage start scumming for spider on mega zig characters. shoals one would be bad for merfolk. Maybe make the rune effects limated to the branch that the rune is in.
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Post Tuesday, 12th January 2016, 18:46

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Sounds like a lot of fun, but these should probably not apply to Zigs (as mentioned previously). I think each of the proposed effects essentially removes some of the frustration of exploring the branch at low cost. I don't know how hard this would be to code, but it seems like a splendid idea.
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Post Tuesday, 12th January 2016, 21:52

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

le_nerd wrote:While it sounds like its nice (mostly) flavour, I would like to invoke the complexity argument. There are monsters axed left and right with the argument "one useless uninteresting monster that players need to learn about", and now we want to introduce 14 more interactions that might (abyssal) or might not be (shoals getting drained) relevant to gameplay.

This seems like a lot of extra complexity without enough justification.


I think the difference between this and things like monsters is that, given that they'd be inconsequential for gameplay in most situations, you don't actually need to know about them. When you have an extra monster in the game, players have to be able to understand what the monster does when they encounter it in order to react properly. If this mechanic only affects the branch you find the rune in, then a player being unaware of it will rarely actually make incorrect decisions as a result. Thus, it almost serves more as a fun little bit of trivia/easter egg than a big thing new players have to learn.

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Post Tuesday, 12th January 2016, 22:03

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

I like all of the effects except for the tomb one, which as ion_frigate stated, would impact ziggurats considerably. An alternative could be to have it destroy all traps in tomb, which there are a considerable amount of. Not quite as powerful, but convenient and good theme. Won't save you if you tried to ninja it from a pack of mummies chasing after you, and doesn't impact ziggurats.

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Post Tuesday, 12th January 2016, 22:15

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

I said this in the OP: the effects were intended to only work on the branch itself (this would also address the point on Spider).

Regarding Merfolk and barnacled rune: this is the one species (well, except Tengu I guess) that does not need additional convenience from the rune. On the other hand, by pulling the plug from that giant tub that is Shoals, you have an easier life with kraken, even as a Merfolk.

I had hoped there would be more ideas for little effects. At least Snake and Swamp! :)

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Post Tuesday, 12th January 2016, 22:38

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

I feel like most of these effects are convenience for getting out of the branch (which is good, once I have the rune getting on with the gabe is what I want to do)

To that end, I would acutally rather have the golden rune open up a shortcut so you don't have to do the long awkward traversal between levels going back.
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Post Wednesday, 13th January 2016, 00:03

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

dpeg wrote:I had hoped there would be more ideas for little effects. At least Snake and Swamp!

Well, there was a thread about this a couple of months ago. I suggested the following:
The barnacled rune could give permanent water-walking, gossamer rune could make you immune to webs, decaying rune could show the position (and identity?) of submerged creatures in LOS, serpentine rune could make you immune to constriction. There should be a message when you leave the branch that the rune's effect is switched off.
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Post Wednesday, 13th January 2016, 02:55

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

dpeg wrote:I said this in the OP: the effects were intended to only work on the branch itself


On that theme, my suggestions:

Slime: Picking up the slimy rune turns all walls in the branch to ordinary rock.
Shoals: (same as your original suggestion)
Swamp: Drains most of the water, removes all cloud generators.
Spider: Picking up the rune removes all webs in the branch.
Snake: ? no suggestion
Tomb: Portions of many walls on levels 1 and 2 crumble away, at random.
Vaults: Picking up the rune pacifies all the special vault humans and they head for the stairs. Player gains half xp, as with Ely. No additional vault humans generated.
Vaults, alternate suggestion: Carrying the rune disables spellcasting for the special vault humans, but only in the branch.

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Post Wednesday, 13th January 2016, 11:18

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Here's my suggestions for extended:

Gehenna: Lava pools turn into solid basalt or obsidian (can walk over it).
Cocytus: Deep water turns into shallow water (or just disappears).
Tartarus: Turns all walls into diggable walls.
Dis: Turns all walls into diggable walls. (maybe metal walls could turn into rusty, brittle walls?)

Demonic Rune: Increases the rate of random pandemonium portals. It'd be like the abyssal rune but it increases entrances, exits, and abyss exits.

Basically, they're mostly flavor in that the branch would visually "lose power", but since everyone wants to leave ASAP after grabbing the rune (except maybe look for vaults with treasure which is not a big deal IMO), those effects would also help you move around faster.

Don't have any suggestions for the unique pandemonium branches.

In addition, killing the hell lord could just end the hell effects for that branch. You could require both grabbing the rune *and* killing the hell lord for this to take effect.

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Post Wednesday, 13th January 2016, 23:49

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

If the effects are intended to be 100% branch-only, I'm definitely in favor of them being things that modify the branch itself (or the monsters in it) rather than the player. That way, there's no potential confusion for things like web immunity or mummy curse immunity only applying to the branch.

I like most of the suggestions so far. I think removing hazards in branches that have the obvious hazards (webs, water, etc) makes sense. The hard thing is Pan (more exists for either all 5 or the Demonic rune is obvious, but it has the property of being a branch that you don't leave as soon as possible upon finding a rune) and branches like Snake or Vaults that don't have much in the way of environmental hazards.

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Post Thursday, 14th January 2016, 00:12

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Maybe the bonus for pandemonium could be that if you get all 5 runes then you gain an ability while in pandemonium that spawns a portal to exit pan? You could add a several(maybe 10?) turn requirement as to not make it easy too escape dangerous situations in pan.
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Post Thursday, 14th January 2016, 00:37

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Tiktacy wrote:Maybe the bonus for pandemonium could be that if you get all 5 runes then you gain an ability while in pandemonium that spawns a portal to exit pan? You could add a several(maybe 10?) turn requirement as to not make it easy too escape dangerous situations in pan.


Or an exit could be guaranteed to generate on every subsequent pan floor. Equal chances of a real exit or an abyss exit.

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Post Thursday, 14th January 2016, 02:15

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Tiktacy wrote:Maybe the bonus for pandemonium could be that if you get all 5 runes then you gain an ability while in pandemonium that spawns a portal to exit pan? You could add a several(maybe 10?) turn requirement as to not make it easy too escape dangerous situations in pan.


I don't like adding an ability, that increases the learning curve whereas I think these things shouldn't be things that are important to know about to benefit from. So I'd definitely say make Pan exits more likely is better than giving an ability to spawn them.

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Post Thursday, 14th January 2016, 06:00

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

You could also just always put pan exits on rune floors, not sure if that's better or not.

The snake rune could give you a (small) slaying/spellpower boost based on how poisoned you are.

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Post Thursday, 14th January 2016, 06:26

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

The snake rune could make you immune to naga constricting, and Guardian snake encircling, those being the two things that prevent you from just walking away from snake once you have the rune.
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Post Thursday, 14th January 2016, 06:43

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

johlstei wrote:The snake rune could give you a (small) slaying/spellpower boost based on how poisoned you are.


That's an incredibly awkward mechanics in general that I think, if it has any place in the game at all,would be much better on a species or god (combined with other mechanics that synergized with it) rather than an effect on a rune that appears in 50% of games. Also, it would either have a potentially non-negligible effect on the game outside of snake, or would be confusing if it only worked in snake.
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Post Thursday, 14th January 2016, 12:36

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Merfolk and octopodes can have the opposite happen when they pick up the shoals rune: the tide level does not decrease from the maximum, so most of shoals is flooded.

Snake idea: implement an environmental hazard (pcloud generators, constricting walls, whatever) and disable it when the rune is picked up. The cost is in making and having the new feature. You could also do nothing, or just drain all the pools.

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Post Thursday, 14th January 2016, 13:11

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

For swamp, the only obvious effect is preventing submerging... It's small, avoids an annoyance, and adds negligible power.
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Post Wednesday, 27th January 2016, 19:07

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Introducing rune-effects mechanic could be interesting in the way people play if:

-extended runes could give 'essential' powers
-only 3 first runes sustain their power

I'm not seeing people instantly hunting for tomb and hell runes as their first ones but at least that would make certain rune-order not that obvious like it is now ( lair->vaults->abyss->slime->tomb-> (hells+pan).

Personally i would still go for harder runes if they could interact just anything like characters title.
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Post Wednesday, 27th January 2016, 19:23

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Current rune order is different from what you described.
People normally do the Lair runes first, but Abyss and Slime are both much easier than Vaults for quite number of builds.
And I know people who have gotten the Golden Rune for their third rune before.
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Post Wednesday, 27th January 2016, 19:40

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Elemental Evocables could be revamped as Hell or Pan Runes. Lom Lobon's rune=Fan of Gales, Cerebov's= Lamp of Fire, Dispater Stone of Tremors, and Antaeus Phial of Floods.

I dunno if those evocables are enough a reward to dive for them in a non-speedrunning sense but I don't think it would be harmful to lock those particular evocables away behind a rune retrieving challenge.
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Post Wednesday, 3rd February 2016, 22:37

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

Getting the rune in the Snake Pit slows S monsters to N speed?

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Post Thursday, 4th February 2016, 02:00

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

dpeg wrote:Shard: because some players keep saying that ninjaing runes/orb is already the best and safest way. That does not really match up with my experience, but I am not a very good player.

nago: I've explained why I don't want resistances on runes. And being immune to acidic walls certainly makes Slime exploration much easier. (I do Slime often, and I can never explore it fully. I also think the experience there is worth exploring, even after collecting the rune.)


I am of the opinion that ninja-ing runes is evidence of good design. It's beneficial to the game that there be multiple solutions to major problems, so long as all of these solutions are interesting and challenging. If stealing the Runes without killing anything was a trivial problem, then it should be tightened up to make it an interesting problem, but shutting down the option entirely forces the player into a narrower approach than is currently required.

If you can kill Cerebov, and you don't care about turncount, then you should probably kill Cerebov because that means you don't have awkward Cerebov-related complications on another Pan level with a harder native monster set. If you can't kill Cerebov, well then good. He's not supposed to be trivially killable, and it would cheapen his game function if he was killed by literally every single character to pass through Pan. If killing him was mandatory, he would need to be watered down so bonus content players don't need to farm Abyss or something equally stupid to get their Cerebov Kit in order before challenging him.

I don't believe it is standard practice to ninja the Lair Runes, barring speedruns or peculiar tournament banners. The branch ends for the main four give a lot of xp, which is a useful resource even for a strong character at that point in the game. The Pan and Hell Runes are more common ninja targets, since by that point in the game the player's build is probably already finished and gaining more xp actually just makes gameplay less interesting because a character who is omni-competent is therefore generic and boring. A ninja run of the post-endgame stays fun all the way through, while a steamroller run is prone to getting boring after the eighth bonus boss.

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Lair Larrikin

Posts: 28

Joined: Tuesday, 17th April 2012, 14:31

Post Monday, 8th February 2016, 14:32

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

I think the proposal overall is really great. I agree that it makes the most sense for the changes to occur in the branches themselves rather than having a diret effect on the player.

Some well-written flavor text can also make it more fun: "You pick up the slimy rune and feel its power. The oozing walls begin to harden and crack as the power of the dungeon diminishes."

The theme of Pan is "lots of crazy, chaotic stuff happening". A thematic change for the levels and a boon for the character could be that each rune acquired increases the likelihood that they will be dropped on a rune level. This helps reduce tedium and plays to the concept that, as runes are picked up, Pan is losing power through its randomized nature.

Snake: "You pick up the serpentine rune and feel its power. Its warming glow fades, causing the dungeon to cool. The inhabitants of the branch grow weary and lethargic." -> Permanent metabolic englaciation effect on all serpentine enemies within the pit. (The snakes have lost their heat lamp.)

Shoals Surfer

Posts: 297

Joined: Wednesday, 9th July 2014, 08:20

Post Monday, 8th February 2016, 20:40

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

hermbot wrote:Snake: "You pick up the serpentine rune and feel its power. Its warming glow fades, causing the dungeon to cool. The inhabitants of the branch grow weary and lethargic."

This is also a very good excuse for raising enemy nagas to speed 10, which should happen already. Want old lure heaven Snake back? Go grab that rune.

Spider Stomper

Posts: 206

Joined: Saturday, 4th April 2015, 13:56

Post Sunday, 14th February 2016, 01:43

Re: Rune screen and rune effects

phloomp wrote:I'm with chequers - I can't think of any siutation where knowing the effect of the abyssal rune would change my decisions anyway.

Why don't we want to encourage ninja-ing though? Unless ninjaing usually means "randomly teleporting until something good happens" - I honestly don't know, I pretty much always clear branch ends myself.


I often grab the abysmal rune when clearing elf because being banished is annoying and it usually happens to me more than once. So the first time I'm banished I usually dive to the rune so I won't be stuck looking for a way out half a dozen times.

Also, getting out of pan. I'd probably keep grinding out floors looking for a way out if I didn't know that abysmal exits were pretty much the same thing once you have the rune.

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