TeshiAlair wrote:Easy freaking solution.
1. Buff minotaur. Guarantee him with some form of projectile and a decent weapon (pref axe), give him better MR. I'd also give him a boulder beetle type charge to make the corridors of the laby more interesting.
2. Put loot behind runed door that he can't open.
Presto. You've removed the swingy nature of "lol random polearm" and made him actually a challenge.
Except that's exactly what DCK mentioned earlier - either you enter lab because you know you can handle it, or you don't bother at all. How is that interesting?
XuaXua wrote:Many of the minotaur vaults spawn unattached to walls, so during these times you can draw the Minotaur out, get around him and get out
How many of them do? 50%? What am I supposed to do if my lab is in wrong 50%? Is additional thrill, or I'd rather say risk, really needed? To be clear here - even if vault cannot be run around, most of the times it is possible to bypass the mino next to him. The problem is - if mino gets axes or any other ranged attack, you will die during this process.
Bim wrote:The point of the discussion is to make that a less trivial question to answer. Currently he's pretty easy at most stages in which you encounter him (except for a really low lab spawn or if you're using an unusual/challenge combo) so it's easy to decide if you can beat him or not - giving him more variety (or just making him stronger so there's a higher 'floor limit' on him) would make that more of a gamble. As it's optional, characters that don't want to take that gamble don't have too, but adding a bit of unpredictability into non-mandatory things can only be a good thing!
If you shift difficulty or, even worse, make difficulty even further random, you will simply get less characters bothering to enter and more deaths amongst these who try. Getting a character from selection screen to labyrinth takes already some effort (time) and deadly unpredictability is not a good thing when escape is not an option.
Lab is unique by the fact that you don't know exactly what to expect inside, but once you enter, there's no way back. If you feel that such uniqueness is worth preserving, I wouldn't just buff minotaur unless you want it to be uniquely deadly experience. In my opinion such design does not suit crawl philosophy and I'd prefer an escape hatch if it gets too hot inside. You can beat minotaur? Cool, here's your loot. Mino got crazy? Run for your life, but it's no need to create new character yet.