The Tavern

The current slime pits are quite fun, but could still use some extra spice, some "je ne sais quoi".
One could for instance

1) Add a jelly with a trample attack. That would serve to push players into the acidic walls and into the acidic pools (see below)
2) Acidic pools: small pools (3-4 squares) away from the walls that work like shallow water with extra acid damage and potential corrosion. They should be somewhat rare - no second shoals please.
3) Maybe modify the acid blobs so that they burst into short lived pools of acid upon death.

Thoughts?

But I don't wanna another Shoals

can we maybe

not

make slime

more obnoxious

thx

I really like the first suggestion

slime is already obnoxious as fuck

But part of why it's obnoxious is the sheer monotony and boredom.

FR: Add Caustic shrikes to slime

Because of all the disconnected areas and the lack of loot, it makes a lot of sense to dive to the bottom of slime and only clear the lowest level. The Royal Jelly is interesting enough that the rest of the level doesn't really need more. And the other levels won't really be interesting because they will be skipped.

Adding vaults that have loot and no enemies (and no easy access to enemies) would encourage exploring Slime, which would make more complicated enemies more relevant.

How about we just make Slime 1 floor? Or at most 3? Really, there is no point to having 6 floors.

In Slime the player often gets surrounded by enemies that are often strong in melee, in a cramped area. This is what stands out about the branch compared to other branches. I think this makes the branch pretty interesting. I can't possibly imagine what the people who think Slime is boring/bad like about Crawl.

Single level slime pits would be a significant, interesting difference from other rune branches. You'd probably have to bump up the initial monster density on the floor though.

tabstorm wrote:Really, there is no point to having 6 floors.

There's a point, because Hell is designed in the same way. There's no loot, so no incentive to explore; the entire goal is to create an "interesting" dive, where most of the level's challenge or whatever comes from just getting downstairs. Extended is just this in four different ways (with Tomb as the somehow-more-unpleasant exception).

Personally, I think Hell and Slime don't work because a) upstairs and b) overlong dives. The only way to get an interesting challenge out of these dives (more than once, at least) is to go in underleveled, which requires some skilled and lucky speedrunning to even attempt, honestly. To me, a sufficiently friendly Pan and Abyss are the two enjoyable extended dives; if they drag on, they're terrible, but as long as they stick to a reasonable number of level/turns, there's some legitimately fun gameplay. I don't know how you do that for Slime and the Hells, but I suspect it's not "spicing up" the dives, if only because it'd be really hard to do.

(That said, spitballed ideas: each Hell branch forbids certain items/weapons/spells, each Hell branch has very small levels between the vestibule and the ends, Slime gives you cursed-star-style passive mutations the longer you stay there, Slime becomes a "living branch" where you have to destroy pseudopod mini-bosses to open staircases, turn Lair:8 into Slime:6 the way Elf:2 has Hall of Blades, etc.)

archaeo wrote:Personally, I think Hell and Slime don't work because a) upstairs and b) overlong dives. The only way to get an interesting challenge out of these dives (more than once, at least) is to go in underleveled, which requires some skilled and lucky speedrunning to even attempt, honestly.

Getting into Slime underleveled is pretty trivial, unless you're a lot better at Slime than I am

tabstorm wrote:How about we just make Slime 1 floor? Or at most 3? Really, there is no point to having 6 floors.

lets cut dungeon to 10, orc to 2 and lair branches to 3 while we are at it.

Look, I'm actually reasonably likely to find an interesting challenge in the lair rune branch levels, and on the D levels. I find slime to have 7 identically annoying levels and then one cool level. I'm not thinking of any way to really make it more interesting... Maybe making a pile of vaults could help.

Hells is actually challenging and interesting to me. You end up exploring a decent amount, and facing monsters that aren't essentially trivializable. You have interesting terrain instead of equip-check terrain. You have to prep for essentially god wrath at all times. By contrast slime is pretty much same-old same-old.

Add sealed vaults with minor treasure and either a human or human bones, so there's some point in exploring Slime

byrel wrote: I find slime to have 7 identically annoying levels and then one cool level.

Slime is only 6 floors. And I think that's a good amount of floors - most of these levels are basically single rooms with the downstairs in sight of the upstairs as soon as you enter, or you have to go 10-15 tiles in one direction to find the next floor. It's very fast, and basically means you have to clear one fight and then move on to the next fight. The final floor is usually a bit of careful pulling to clear the outer areas, and then the very specific fight against TRJ, which is one of the cooler fights in the game imho. Predictable, sure, but it's still an interesting boss.

tabstorm wrote:How about we just make Slime 1 floor? Or at most 3? Really, there is no point to having 6 floors.

But then it wouldn't be a pit.

byrel wrote:Hells is actually challenging and interesting to me. You end up exploring a decent amount, and facing monsters that aren't essentially trivializable. You have interesting terrain instead of equip-check terrain. You have to prep for essentially god wrath at all times. By contrast slime is pretty much same-old same-old.

Really? From my perspective, everything about Hells:1-6, top to bottom, is "trivializable" insofar as the average character has no business being challenged by any of it. Even if it was enjoyable, 1) we already have two other extended branches where "find the staircase and dive" is the major design component, and 2) there's no way it stays enjoyable when you do the same thing 24 times, imo. Even if they're good, there's just no reason for there to be so many of them.

But back on topic,

tasonir wrote:Slime is only 6 floors. And I think that's a good amount of floors - most of these levels are basically single rooms with the downstairs in sight of the upstairs as soon as you enter, or you have to go 10-15 tiles in one direction to find the next floor. It's very fast, and basically means you have to clear one fight and then move on to the next fight.

I guess? Given that Slime encourages a ton of amulet swapping and a fair bit of stairdancing, it never feels particularly fast. And if the idea is to just have five warm-up fights before the main event, why are the levels still so huge?

The final floor is usually a bit of careful pulling to clear the outer areas, and then the very specific fight against TRJ, which is one of the cooler fights in the game imho. Predictable, sure, but it's still an interesting boss.

Slime:6 is the best part of the branch, just like Hells:7 are the best part of those branches. I'd prefer it if we could skip/shorten the boring parts and get right to the good part.

I don't really think slime:6 or hells:7 are very good honestly. They are pretty much the same puzzle (or one of a few puzzles for hell ends) every time.

If there's one thing Crawl really needs more of, it's those five encompass vault categories. I'm not really sure what other good ways exist to shake up the "same puzzle" format though; that's a harder problem.

Irrespective of the length of the slime pits, one of my major gripes with the place right now is the omnipresence of slime creatures in it. Hence, some new kind of jelly that tramples would be nice in that:

1) it is not a monster that is designed around an equipement check ( like the giant eyeball (stasis), golden eyes (clarity), shining eye (rmut), acid blobs (rcorr), azure jellies (rC) or death oozes (rN))
2) it might occasionally prevent people from going up a stair and hence make the "stairdiving" hairier than usual.
3) It would add some variety and be synergetic with the environment, since the walls cause damage

Oh come on, Slime is great as is. It's a short dive (in practice way shorter than the other lair branches) and great end with a nice theme and unique enemies and a ton of loot already. I for one would not it shorter or longer than it is already.

And the hells are good too. They just aren't that long given that you're diving, they each have a flavorful theme, random effects can throw some curveballs at you to keep it interesting and tense.

If there are any parts in the game that are overly long and samey grinds, it's the demonic and abyssal runes. Hell and Slime are nice, themed, well-paced, defined length, fast dives to good final levels.

archaeo wrote:Personally, I think Hell and Slime don't work because a) upstairs

Somewhat off-topic, but what is the deal with this? If Hell is supposed to be a dive, why not regenerate the maps every time the player resets to the vestibule? As a fairly paranoid player, I see the first level of Gehenna way too many times.

phloomp wrote:If Hell is supposed to be a dive, why not regenerate the maps every time the player resets to the vestibule? remove the exit portals?

Hah good point.

The Tavern

Spicing up the slime pits

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