Where are the mummy wardens?

[Patashu]

Vault wardens were added to make the stairdancing approach to Vaults:5 unreliable (if a vault warden comes around, you have to have a backup strategy in mind). But Tomb:2 and Tomb:3 are even MORE reliant upon stairdancing in the standard solution than Vaults:5 was. So if vault wardens were added to encourage variety/backup strats, why not add a mummy warden?

[onton]

Vault wardens were added to make the stairdancing approach to Vaults:5 unreliable (if a vault warden comes around, you have to have a backup strategy in mind). But Tomb:2 and Tomb:3 are even MORE reliant upon stairdancing in the standard solution than Vaults:5 was. So if vault wardens were added to encourage variety/backup strats, why not add a mummy warden?

It would turn tomb3 in a "make a noise - haha you're screwed" experience, wouldn't it? V5 has lots of space to flee, tomb3 does not.

[Bart]

Tomb is to me a rather boring relic (unless you try to teleport next to rune). The place is not very interesting once you learn its layout and strategies how to deal with it.

Stairdancing is boring, true, so I'd be happy to see an alternative to that. I emphasize - an alternative. You can't fix tomb by removing often the only reasonable way of clearing the level.

[bcadren]

Tomb really could use more variety. It's most monotonous branch. Other than the Sphinxes at the entrance there are three kinds of enemies...and two of those have the same spell list.

  Code:

guardian mummy (M) | Spd: 8 | HD: 7 | HP: 37-54 | AC/EV: 6/9 | Dam: 30 | undead, weapons, items, doors, fighter, evil, see invisible | Res: magic(46), cold, poison+++, drown, rot+++, neg+++, torm | Vul: holy++ | XP: 329 | Sz: Large | Int: normal.

greater mummy (M) | Spd: 10 | HD: 15 | HP: 184-212 | AC/EV: 10/6 | Dam: 35 | undead, weapons, items, doors, evil, spellcaster, see invisible | Res: magic(immune), cold, elec, poison+++, drown, rot+++, neg+++, torm | Vul: holy++ | XP: 6192 | Sp: sum.demon, smiting (7-17), s.torment, sum.undead | Sz: Medium | Int: high.

mummy priest (M) | Spd: 8 | HD: 10 | HP: 55-75 | AC/EV: 8/7 | Dam: 30 | undead, weapons, items, doors, priest, evil, see invisible | Res: magic(immune), cold, elec, poison+++, drown, rot+++, neg+++, torm | Vul: holy++ | XP: 1092 | Sp: sum.demon, smiting (7-17), s.torment, sum.undead | Sz: Medium | Int: high.

Honestly, if you are undead yourself; are of Kikubaaqudha or Zin; or have lichform. (To avoid the rot and torment)...Tomb is far easier than Vaults or Crypt. [Honestly, it pretty much always is, just people put it off because rot is pretty permanent.]

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Vault wardens were added to make the stairdancing approach to Vaults:5 unreliable

Vault wardens could not even seal stairs until some 4 months after they were added (they were created to seal doors of course). Additionally stairdancing V$ was only very rarely a good idea to begin with, and much like gold dragon armour and wielding bread, was mostly just uninformed people passing around bad advice to other uninformed people.

As for Tomb, the whole branch is essentially nothing but stairdancing, pressing 5, and quaffing curing whenever you get rot. I don't think a minor fix is going to do the job (and i think this particular minor fix will make it even worse).

Tomb is far easier than Vaults or Crypt.

lolno

[Sar]

If you possess undead resists or follow Kiku golden rune is probably easier than silver one, at least I think it is.

[KoboldLord]

Realistically, fixing Tomb is going to require making it easier. Currently, its non-random nature means that there's a small set of tactics that you can enter with and know that they will work, and the high stats and dangerous attacks on the numerous enemies mean that basically nothing outside that small set of tactics is going to work until you've otherwise completed the game entirely. Closing off a portion of the small set of tactics that works is not really going to help unless your goal is to prevent people from ever bothering with Tomb, since the smaller the set of viable builds and tactics the player is allowed to use the more repetitive actually using those builds and tactics is going to be.

If Tomb was to get a re-design from the ground up, the first thing thing that needs to happen is to randomize the layout. It really ought to have some sort of gimmick if it wants to stay as part of the post-endgame, since every other post-endgame branch has some sort of unique feature. An idea might be to generate levels without any doors, and disconnected areas are connected only through permanent Passages of Golubria, which may or may not be two-way. Full connectivity must be ensured to guarantee that the player can access the Rune and the loot and can never be trapped permanently, but the big danger to the player character would be the fact that you get repeatedly thrust into a dangerous situation without any guaranteed means of retreat. The monster set would need to be diluted to make this remotely fair, so there'd need to be a half dozen or so other sorts of caster mummies, plus some mummified dragons or something as decorative chaff to make the fights more crowded without actually being more dangerous. Greater mummies would be a rare nasty that only pops up a few times during the whole branch, and not in multiples unless the RNG really has it in for you.

[sgrunt]

I'm reluctant to draw attention away from the tournament or anything, maybe I should leave this here, as something I'm contemplating introducing in 0.15 after the tournament ends: http://sprunge.us/NVGM (more so the first commit than the second; I'm not necessarily attached to the designs in the second commit).

[spudwalt]

We could put in mummified felids. That'd fit in nicely with the whole theme.

[bcadren]

We could put in mummified felids. That'd fit in nicely with the whole theme.

I suggested this before; not finding the thread though. Roughly they were more fragile casters than the regular mummies, but also faster (speed of 12). {Bolt of Draining, Dispel Undead, Summon Undead, Heal Undead*}

Special effect that is Lesser Healing ALL things with undead holiness in LoS.

On their own they would be weaker than Vampire Mages, but with Guardian Mummies and Undead and Demon Summons (from Greater Mummies) around them...they are formidable without Smiting/Airstrike to get them at a distance and their bolt of draining goes right through everything (since undead/demons are unaffected). Make rN even more important there...

[crate]

The real problem with tomb is that the monster set just doesn't work when you have stairs (and the monster set has lots of problems in general, except for sphinxes).

Mummy and guardian mummy are terrible since death curses on a slow, melee-only monster are unacceptably bad design (there are so many different ways to get around the curse but they are all things that should not be encouraged if crawl wants to stick to its own design philosophy). And of course slow, melee-only monsters are pretty bad even without the death curses.

MuPr and Greater Mummies aren't bad enemies necessarily, but when they are the only threats in the entire branch they become bad very quickly (especially with the geometry you find in tomb, but that's a lesser thing). The fact that a torment + smite + summoning monster promotes excessive stairdancing shouldn't even need an explanation. They need some other enemies that aren't terrible to both 1) lessen the number of mupr/grmu that you find and 2) do something interesting and different.

Sphinxes are good but they aren't really tomb monsters (they cannot randomly generate there, and are only placed in one section of the entire branch).

[bcadren]

Sphinxes are good but they aren't really tomb monsters (they cannot randomly generate there, and are only placed in one section of the entire branch).

Which is largely because they are natural and don't have rTorm. Placing them with the Torment users would lead to them being much MUCH weaker. Only way to make them spawn normally is to make them Demonic or undead. (unlike other resists; there aren't any exceptions where anything living gets rTorm).

EDIT:

Mummy and guardian mummy are terrible since death curses on a slow, melee-only monster are unacceptably bad design (there are so many different ways to get around the curse but they are all things that should not be encouraged if crawl wants to stick to its own design philosophy).

To add to that; Guardian Mummies are probably the only monsters in crawl that are more dangerous to kill than to leave alive. It's quite possible to get to Tomb:3, cast a Level 9 Spell and wipe out 10+ Guardians in a turn and then die from a combination of Rot, Torment and Smite damage FROM THE CURSES.