Idea: Arcane Library Branch

[Knight9910]

This is an idea I just had, needs fleshing out. It would alternate with the Crypt. A few features I'm thinking of...

• Unique wall type: Stack of Books. A thick and heavy stack of books that has formed a wall. The books are too decayed and fragile to be used or even burned for Trog piety. They function similar to trees in some respects (they can't be targeted for Lee's Rapid Deconstruction, they can be ignited) but in other ways they do not (you can't see through them, also hitting them with certain attacks may cause books to collapse onto nearby enemies, damaging them). I also want to state, in order to get around the "fire users can burn down the level for an easy win" problem the Forest had, these book stack walls will be relatively rare and appear in addition to other wall types, namely stone and rock, which will have cosmetic book cases on them in the tiles version.

• Enemy types include spellcasters, golems, liches, other magical creatures.

• Minivaults include:

-> Miniature wizard laboratories. In some of these experiments have gone bad forcing them to be shut off from the rest of the library. Expect runed "warning doors," possibly with dangerous monsters or gas clouds within.

-> Burned up sections where Trog followers have tried to take the library, which are home to berserker-type enemies.

-> Enormous book piles surrounded by book bats (see below).

A few enemy ideas:

• Librarian: A guardian of the library who silences her surroundings and smacks troublemakers to death with a ruler.

• Scroll Golem: Special ability is to use pieces of itself as scrolls, essentially cutting its own HP to use scroll effects. Destroying the golem drops a few scrolls, but most of them would be too damaged to use.

• Book Bat: Uses similar AI to bats and unseen horrors, but with increased power. Damaging it spawns smaller paper bats.

• Origami Gremlin: A monster made of paper with the ability to assume different forms depending on need. If there's water on the floor it changes to an origami crane to fly over it (paper doesn't do well when wet, you see).

[TeshiAlair]

I like all of this except for the Gremlin. I imagine this branch being a lot of rows of shelves, and then suddenly large "study areas," each policed by a Librarian Statue that has an aura of silence and drops a book with 1 or 2 spells on death.

[Knight9910]

The Librarian as a statue is an interesting idea. I was thinking it would be a mobile enemy with the ability to create a temporary silence aura. A statue with perma-silence might be interesting too, but might be too easy to deal with.

[1010011010]

The books don't have to be spell books, description as such "A solid stone bookshelf Packed tightly with an assortment of history/alchemy/biography books, the books are wedged too secure to be removed"

spell books can be reserved for some single spell books scattered here and there and the final loot.

[Knight9910]

Good idea! And yeah, the final loot would be a ton of spellbooks and potions.

[reaver]

Since some people seem to be taking this proposal seriously:

Librarian as a statue would be awful except in vaults. However, Librarians are awful anyway since Silent Specteres already exist and giving them melee would not be much better. Worse yet, Silent Spectere spawn in the Crypt!

Scroll Golem would be awful as a monster that gives loot. Note that dragon give one item (hide) that has 0% redundancy, they give it out 1/5 the time and you need another item for the drop to be useful. Players still seek out dragons just to kill them for their hides.

Book bat actually seems Ok, monsters with batty AI that breed when you hit it would more heavily encourage corridor use and also be anti-melee but I don't see anything wrong with the design other than that.

Oragmai Gremlin is too illy defined to be discussed, a melee dude which looks slightly different depending on the level? I don't see much wrong with that but I also don't see much right with that.

Oh and you're going to need like 2-3x as many monsters minimum to make this branch work as a concept, which is going to be especially hard since 0.15 is looking toward a crack down on monster design that will raise quality standards for monster. Also it' going to eventually need level generation algorithms and end vaults and many many more minivaults and branch entry vaults and a unique or two and Donald lines etc. etc.

Hint: Start with a portal vault. Spider used this technique very well. Program a portal vault (or make a design so good somebody else does it for you [extra hint: this is super rare]) which has some of the monster designs in it. If that portal vault does well then it might become an actual branch at some point. The Forest didn't have this step but it did have a late D vault mock-up which is actually still in the game which you might want to look at.

[Knight9910]

I've actually played around with portal vault construction before, though I never actually finished one. I might try that, even if only to test the idea.

For the origami gremlin, I will admit that the idea needs to be more well explained. I was thinking something like... if you're far away it folds itself into a ranged attack form, folds into a flying form if you're flying over lava or something or if it's over water, folds into melee form if you're in close combat range, folds into a defensive form if they're at critical HP.

Does that sound like a good idea?

[Knight9910]

So, I've been thinking more about enemies. Here's some stuff I'm thinking of. Keep in mind this is still a rough draft. Feedback would be appreciated.

The Librarian
Unique Demonspawn
I thought about how to make this work and decided it would work better as a single enemy rather than a bunch of them. He functions as the "boss" of this portal vault. I want him to have silence but I don't want him to just be a weaker Mennas. I was thinking that he uses his mastery of language to alter the definitions of reality. Possible spell list includes Polymorph Other, Confuse, Silence.

Book Bat
"An old book which has found new use as an animated guardian of the Library. Beware when damaging it, as pages ripped free from the book may gain new life of their own."
A flying bat-like enemy that attacks and spawns Paper Bat enemies around itself when damaged.

Scroll Golem
A non-living that uses various scroll-like effects in battle, including a temporary Vorpalise effect, as well as Fog, Summon, Blink, Teleport, and Vulnerability. May also use Noise to attract enemies. May or may not drop scrolls on death (perhaps only less useful scrolls like random uselessness to prevent farming).

Book Burner
A rare enemy, humans of Trog who wield flaming weapons and use flame abilities at you. When in trouble they can also use Berserker Rage.

That's all I've got for tonight. I need to go to sleep now.

[twelwe]

you could put my vault idea in (not me, you) where an epic truckload of books avalanche owns a trog altar. also bookwalls, which is where you can hit them with buffbladed slings, new ego, that can knowck bog books off the shelf & onto the enemy. also i agree with knight9910 bookbats ,which he should code in immediately along with my all ideas

[Viashino_wizard]

Scroll Golems (Scrollems, if you will) dropping scrolls as loot would probably be okay for a portal vault, since iirc new enemies don't spawn in portals unless they're specifically scripted to (Zonguldrok's wizlab, etc).

For the Librarian, giving her Demonic spellcasting could be a good idea so that she doesn't shut off the rest of her spells after using Silence. You could flavor her as a Demonspawn who's learned to use demonic spellcasting through decades of painstaking research or something.

[XuaXua]

Check the dev wiki for Astral Plane portal.

[ontoclasm]

I'm skeptical of the idea of this as a branch, but a portal vault could be neat (and would also be much easier to implement).

When it comes to monsters, I realize it's easier to come up with the flavour and then try to make the mechanics fit (It's a golem made of scrolls; what would that mean? -> It can use scrolls, including A B C and D! It drops scrolls on death!), but that tends to make for annoying or uninteresting enemies. You get things with tons of random, unrelated abilities that rarely matter and just serve to make the monster more confusing. Good monsters are ones that offer a distinct challenge in a simple, straightforward way (vis: frost giants).

As such, it's generally better to design in the other direction. Come up with a few mechanics that make for interesting fights and then make monsters (or, even better, choose existing ones) to fit them. The Bailey is a good example of this; its theme is "weak humanoids with good equipment," and so it has lots of terrain designed to let the inhabitants use their weapons -- niches from which they can shoot crossbows, canals they can reach over with polearms, etc.

[tedric]

+1 for a portal vault, w/ Librarian unique and bookbats.

I also think this could work as a one-level branch in Vaults, either in addition to or as a 50/50 swap with Hall of Blades. As HoB rewards you with good weapons that you have to kill first, Library would reward you with magical books (in the form of bookbats, who would drop an advanced or high-level spellbook -- no starting books -- on defeat). If the Library were on the same level of challenge as HoB, it would present a similar choice to magic users -- especially those who don't follow Sif/Veh/Kiku for access to spells -- who would have to consider the risk of hunting down that particular advanced book they want, just as melee-focused characters (esp. non-Trog/Oka) have the risky option of hunting down an end-game weapon in the Hall.

[and into]

^ That sounds good, but first we should change HOB so that it actually rewards you with good weapons if for some reason you feel compelled to explore it.

[Knight9910]

One consideration is this: is this a Library? Or a Book Vault?

A Book Vault would be more like a depository for spellbooks and would be guarded primarily by non-living guardians.

A Library would still be in use and would be filled primarily with spellcaster type enemies, with a smaller number of golems, book bats, and other non-living guardians.

Or maybe something in between?

[and into]

What if there were animated books that cast a few spells at you, drawing the magic from their own pages, before tearing themselves apart from the magic they've unleashed (maybe leaving behind nothing, maybe leaving behind a randart spell book with a single random spell in it)? Animated "guard books" or something, that spawned alongside the wizards. Functionally these would be like little mobile magic turrets that get 3 to 5 shots, but flavoring them as animated books dedicated to defending the library would be a thematic way to work them in.

[bcadren]

I'd had a similar idea before. Only part that I wanted to share -seriously- though was the idea of a unique ravenous item mimic; that always mimics a Book of Annihilations and uses ALL those spells against you.

Permasilence as a branch feature is somewhat interesting, but has the flaw that unless the enemies are demonic, they would also be silenced...and the no magic conduct would scare away all pure casters, which seem to be the core of what a branch like this is trying to attract.

Symmetry with the HoB seems like a good idea here; though perhaps COMBINING with would be more interesting as that would add variety to the MOST monotonous branch in the game.

[Knight9910]

Or someone could just take a look at the Hall of Blades and make it not suck anymore.

[I want to believe]

Perhaps it could be a large, single level portal vault. A number of "Librarian" enemies would be placed around the map, and would each have demonic spellcasting and an aura of silence. For this to work, they'd probably have to have lots of health and assorted strongness. There would be a single cache of loot in the center, but the level wouldn't be a maze like the labyrinth. The librarians would patrol around the library, and any sound in the level would draw many nearby librarians. The challenge would be trying to kill non-librarian enemies silently, and to steal the loot without being caught, along with forcing the player to pick their battles and run before they get caught.

[BobIsDead]

The problem here is probably that there's not enough you can do with a library to make it an interesting multi-levelled branch. Aside from making it a portal, which has already been suggested a lot, making it a single-levelled branch would likely work well, much like the Hall of Blades. The other alternative is to make it part of a larger branch. For example, if there was a branch themed around a university, you could make it so a set floor of it was library themed.

Either way, the ideas you've had are interesting. I have a few suggestions for how to put them together.

The Librarian, for example, could be a statue that does nothing other than sit at the centre of the library, causing everyone on the floor to become silenced. Limited or no attacks of its own (aside from maybe summoning more minions), however it would be surrounded by a bunch of beefy librarian thugs. Once the Librarian is destroyed, it would allow wizards and worshippers of Trog to start spawning in and causing trouble, the librarian thugs trying to deal with them.

This would allow you to have your silencing-based enemy, your Trog worshippers and your wizards, without the silencing rendering the latter two useless. It also gives players the opportunity to decide what order they want to do things in. Do they fight through librarian thugs, golems, book bats and other such things in silence, mopping up the loot before destroying the Librarian? Or do they go for the Librarian first, then try and then grab the loot in the ensuing power struggle?

Another idea is to sort of shift certain ideas around. The scroll-using abilities of the scroll golems seems like it would be more suited to an origami gremlin. The reasoning behind this is partially flavour-based (golems, to my knowledge, shouldn't be capable of casting spells, being mindless), but is a handy and effective way of implementing the adaptability you want in the gremlins (using scroll-based spells on the fly would be easier to implement than general, all round adaptability). Meanwhile, the golems could be based around being weak and flimsy but with attacks that cause bleeding (nothing worse than a papercut, after all).

Book bats seem like an interesting concept, though I think the whole "separates into smaller enemies" might not be best suited for a library. This might just be me, but I'm imagining the library will be a lot of narrow aisles between bookshelves, which means you're less in risk of being surrounded by them. Other possible ways to differentiate them from regular bats (aside from making them stronger and hardier) might be to allow them to drain MP or Intelligence; or to allow them to steal and consume scrolls, (although that might make them more annoying than challenging); or to cause them to leak magic, their attacks having the chaotic brand.

All in all, though, I think this would make an interesting addition to Crawl. It's got a lot of potential for interesting ideas, I think the problem will be taking the idea in one direction and just sticking with it.

[Knight9910]

All interesting suggestions.

I think that the basic idea here presents an interesting risk/reward system. Silence and MP sapping mean that non-spellcasters will have an easier time of things, but at the same time it will be less rewarding for them since most of the loot is books which they don't care about. On the other hand, spellcasters will have a harder time since they can't use their spells, but if they manage to succeed they'll get good spellbooks as their reward.