Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders


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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Thursday, 19th March 2015, 00:31

Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

My suggestion is a unrand artifact legendary deck, appearing as 2% of legendary decks generated. Most characters would never see it, but Nemelex worshipers would probably get it eventually. Could still only be generated once per game.

It would contain exactly thirteen cards, from a fixed list. Preshuffled:
- Experience
- Genie (always acquirement)
- Trowel (modified version) *
- the Sage
- the Sage
- Vitrification
- Water
- Famine
- Wrath
- The Curse
- Damnation
- Shuffle
- Shuffle

These cares were removed from the game because they were scummy, game-ruining, or just annoying. The scummy ones were especially bad when combined with sac-based deck weighing and piety for sacs and card drawing. Now that those features are gone, I think it is safe to let Nemelex worshipers have a little bit of the good stuff back, in a strictly limited quantity. You get, at most, a potion of experience, a scroll of acquirement, a boost to some skills that you may or may not have wanted to train further, and maybe a portal. There are some cards you want to avoid in there, but you should know how to use Nemelex's tools to do that by now.



* Trowel card should give a portal to a bazaar or trove, but only if you haven't already gotten one, and it would make the one you get no longer eligible in the game. So you could still never get two bazaars or two troves in the same game. If both had already been generated, you get another zig entrance instead. If the player was on an ineligible tile, the portal would placed as close as possible to the current tile, so the card would not be wasted.

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Crypt Cleanser

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Post Thursday, 19th March 2015, 01:20

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

Why not Deck of many things?
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 19th March 2015, 17:59

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

Damnation from this deck should send you to a Pan floor with only abyss exits.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 19th March 2015, 18:13

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

I could see this being a one time god gift when reaching 6* with nem, although I'd personally not include the bad cards in it. But I suppose if you want to force a mark 5, you could. I'd say make it have only good cards, and pick something like 3 out of 5 good possibilities. Counting the sage, you have 4, so that's pretty close. Sage is a bit weaker than the others, but you could make this a very high power sage effect? Basically as strong or even stronger than a manual?

One drawback is that then the correct usage of this deck is to simply draw all the cards as soon as you get it, but I don't think that has to be too terrible.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 19th March 2015, 18:32

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

I would prefer it to be random than guaranteed, and definitely a one time thing.

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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Thursday, 19th March 2015, 20:02

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

I've thought about ti some more, and I think the chance to spawn is too low for a Nemelex worshiper, but improving it makes it too high for other players. So modify the suggestion: 5% of legendary deck Nemelex gifts, zero random generation (ordinary crawlers can't handle the power of this deck).

kuniqs great name, obvious D&D reference.

tasonir, I disagree with most of what you wrote. Giving it right away at 6* is too early, and encourages the old scummy behavior of picking up Nemelex and then dropping him after. Also Nemelex is random -- it might be the first legendary deck he gives you, it might not be in the first 100. But over half of his worhsippers would get it in their first 14 legendary decks, if it's 5% of legendary gifts.

I specifically intended that some good cards are stronger than others, some bad cards are nastier than others. This will vary by character. Some characters would be destroyed by Shuffle, but others will be nearly unaffected, and a few might even desire it. Trowel card is mediocre if you've already had both vaults. But a careful player who reads the deck and cards descriptions, and is familiar with Nemelex's abilities, will be able to get a nice boost from the deck.

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 05:14

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

You could make it so they need to gain X amount of piety to be able to draw another card, to prevent a player from just using it all at once. Basically, once they get the deck, they can draw 1 card from it, then be able to draw another every time they get a deck.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 06:58

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

would ID scrolls work on that deck?
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Tomb Titivator

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 09:31

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

Why the limitation on the trowel card for bazaars? Its already possible to get more than one in a single game (timed+untimed), although exceedingly rare.

Crypt Cleanser

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 09:36

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

The deck should be randomly stacked.
That way, players who stumble upon it have some chance of getting the benefits, while Nemelex worshippers have the means to avoid the 'bad' cards. It would also better fit for the theme of a Nemelex's final gift.
Also, the deck should be indistinguishable from other legendary decks.. maybe.
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Pandemonium Purger

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 10:42

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

le_nerd wrote:Why the limitation on the trowel card for bazaars? Its already possible to get more than one in a single game (timed+untimed), although exceedingly rare.

You can actually get multiple timed bazaars throughout the game, so it's not necessarily only through the timed + unannounced/untimed combo.
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Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 13:37

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

ID scrolls -- yes, of course.

Prevent players from using it all at once -- no, nothing wrong with using it all at once. You get it in the mid-late game, not on DL1. Forcing a delay between cards is really annoying too. Sometimes you'll want to save cards anyway.

I didn't know that about the Trowel card. The limitation I suggested was to prevent it from being "too good", but maybe that's not a big concern. Perhaps make it equal chances of bazaar, trove, wizlab, zig. Previously, Trowel could make labyrinths and baileys, but it always came at a stage when those were popcorn.

Yes, it would be randomly stacked. I said that above. All decks are randomly stacked...

I am leaning towards this being only available as a gift to Nemelex worshipers. But if was to be eligible for random generation also, then yes, any player could use it. ID the cards one at a time until you get one you can't deal with, probably Shuffle.

More feedback is welcome. I plan to post this to mantis sometime in the next couple weeks. Just as a feature request, not a patch -- I don't know the crawl codebase.

EDIT: Nobody asked, but the reason Shuffle is in there twice is so that if you got wrecked by shuffle, you can shuffle again and hope to get better. However, it would be more flavorful if each card only appears once. Though it does make the deck safer, because Shuffle is the only truly nasty card there.

Dungeon Master

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 17:01

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

Nemelex was deliberately shifted away from the problematic and uninteresting strategic freebies towards offering a better selection of tactical effects. I'm not really seeing any reasoning in this thread to make Nemelex start gifting strategic bonuses with a load of fiddly requirements again, other than that they're things that used to exist (which isn't a good reason, obviously).

Rast wrote:More feedback is welcome. I plan to post this to mantis sometime in the next couple weeks. Just as a feature request, not a patch -- I don't know the crawl codebase.

Mantis isn't the place for feature requests, it's just used for bug reports and patches.

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 17:53

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

MarvinPA wrote:Mantis isn't the place for feature requests, it's just used for bug reports and patches.


Or feature requests disguised as bugs.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 18:53

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

The OP literally listed the reasons their idea is terrible. I think it's pretty safe to assume that this is a joke.

Crypt Cleanser

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Post Friday, 20th March 2015, 19:26

Re: Unrand: Deck of Ancient Wonders

Those ideas were terrible back when the worst and most abusable cards (trowel, shuffle, genie) were available in unlimited quantity for nemelex worshippers, and made decks of wonders/dungeons hardly usable for non-nemelexians.
Those same cards, presented in OP's form, strike me as unique and interesting.
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