Slime Squisher
Posts: 330
Joined: Thursday, 10th May 2012, 03:29
The Abyss, its monster set, and more!
Problems with the Abyss stem from it's dual purpose as an often random punishment for players and a difficult rune branch. Even the first floor has highly variable levels of threat. Presumably the abyss is not meant to be a death-sentence for early-teen characters who are unlucky against Psyche, Erolcha, or an orc wizard, but one might encounter a Starcursed Mass + Executioner and simply be unable to win or escape the fight. This is compounded by the abyss' preventing blinking and severely hampering teleportation. Perhaps powerful combinations of monsters like this are fine for strong characters who are looking for the rune or end up randomly banished, but then the more typical Abyss:1 fodder is just not threatening.
The immense variety of monster mechanics exhibited in the abyss might have been conceived to give strong characters something to think about but in practice it's bad. I recently had an XL27 character banished by a zot trap in Tomb. This character could handle all but the most improbable combinations of Abyss threats without any danger. However, monsters like Starcursed Masses, Wretched Stars, Zymes, Raiju, Tentacled Starspawn, Apocalypse Crab, Maelstrom, Lurking Horror (I'm trying to make a point okay!) each demand specific (read: slow) tactical moves to fight safely. This is made more tedious because the ever-changing layout in the abyss coupled with maprot promotes manual exploration where you stay familiar with the terrain and make sure you don't venture too far from a good corner to fight from. I experienced more than one several-minute stretch where I would explore as quickly as was comfortable for 2-5 minutes without encountering more than a handful of monsters. However, as soon I got impatient and started auto-exploring or just mashing hjklyubn too fast pairings of starcursed mass + anything else show up and then I'm either risking heavy damage or some longer term mutations/sickness all because I didn't have the patience to walk alongside a properly porous wall for 5 minutes.
Above I listed more than half a dozen monsters each with a unique mechanic but Abyss:1 also spawns your typical set of demons and a bunch of stuff from random other branches. There is also a monster called Worldbinder which summons from an arbitrary dungeon branch...
There are several things I do like about the abyss. Its flavor is awesome: An eldritch realm of chaos and bizarre horrors where the very constancy of matter is uncertain. Badass. I've had several fun abyss experiences, mostly on stealth characters. A stealthy character transforms the monsters from the myriad highly specific, time-consuming engagements to "I don't want to fight *anything*" which ends up being kind of cool. Other characters have been banished at a sweet spot of strength, and got lucky enough with abyss spawns and stairs/exits to have a challenging and once or twice even rewarding diversion. Most of the rune vaults I've gotten recently seem to be well designed around a specific gimmick and I tend to enjoy them.
In summary, the problems are: the branch attempts to accommodate teen XL characters as well as end-game characters; the plethora of monsters having unique mechanics, many of which attack something other than HP so even if your character is very strong you must engage them in whatever particular way they demand; the extreme variance of threat (combined with teleporting being bad) means sometimes a low-level character will just die; the tedium of exploration when an amorphous map is coupled with the particular monster set.
So I propose changing the abyss: The Abyss is 2 floors. When you are banished you land on a staircase down. Below is a frantic swarm of monsters, fatal to low-level characters but manageable for dudes who might do 2nd or 3rd rune branch ends. At the end of this gauntlet is the rune and an exit. The first floor is easier but does not have a rune, only an exit. The abyss spawn set is pruned, though maintains its uniqueness. Instead of whatever the abyss has now, it has -ctele. A reduction in the maximum strength of abyss:1 threats (aliches, executioners).