The Tavern

In the Hells, it's somewhat annoying to collect hell loot and travel back to stairs after you've done the nasty business.
It used to be that picking up the rune removed -cTele, letting you quickly get back to a portal, but cTele is gone now.
A bit of a denouement as you track back to the vestibule would be nice, like a mini orb run.
It would also feel great/empowering to have put an end to Hell Effects.

We don't really have a firm rule about this or anything, but as a note, polls on GDD tend to just create arguments about how well the poll was constructed, and since the game isn't a democracy, the fact that many posters feel a certain way isn't an argument likely to sway the devs. If it was, the game would still have Mountain Dwarves.

That said, I'd be totally fine with hell effects ending after the player picks up the rune.

OK, it's not meant to be act as a petition of any sort

https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/search.php?keywords=Award+killing+unique+lords&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=all&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=a&st=0&ch=-1&t=0&submit=Search

It does feel a bit anti-climatic that killing a hell lord and snatching their rune does nothing to deter the hell effects. Please make a branch's hell effect end once a certain condition contained within that branch is met. I think killing the hell lord would be nice.

It wouldn't be as cathartic, but simply giving the player some sort of option to hightail it out of there once the hell lord is dead could also work, like a portal that spawns where the hell lord died, or a "exit hell branch" ability that becomes available once you grab the rune for that branch.

I just realized that killing Hell Lords to end Hell Effects has a precedent with the TRJ situation:

With an infernal noise, the power ruling over this place vanishes!

Two reasons why it could be nice to tie this effect to the rune:

1) The abyssal rune is currently the only time that has a passive effect when carried. More of these effects would make the runes feel a little more like magical artifacts and a little less like philately.

2) If you're planning to kill the hell lord, It's usually easier to kill the lord before picking up the rune. If this is implemented, then it might be easier in some (strange, unusual) cases if you ninja the rune before murdering its owner. New decisions!

If either proposal is implemented, there should be messages that appear whenever a hell effect is blocked. This would let the player know that hell effects are being blocked, and stops Hell flavour from turning fully into standard flavour.

"You are not welcome in this place!"
Something reaches out for you.... but your Iron Rune of Zot repels it.

"Suffer!"
Your Iron Rune of Zot vibrates violently.

The thing is, it takes exactly one staircase to leave a hell branch. How often do you experience more than, like, three hell effects between the rune vault and the stairs? I feel like this difference would be so small as to be unnoticeable for both gameplay and flavor.

If anything, carrying a hell rune should intensify hell effects for as long as you remain in the branch.

Yes, hell effects on the way back are harmless compared to what you have to go through to get the rune and kill/escape the hell lord. But hell effects continue to divert your IRL resources. The amount of time/attention allocated to something in-game can be considered proportional to its impact.

You're neglecting the vaults full of treasure that are in every Hell end. Right now it doesn't matter whether you go for the treasure before or after getting the rune / killing the lord. It would be nice to incentivize getting the rune as quickly as possible.

It's not so much about making a big difference, tedric, but as bananaken points out, about catharsis. You want to feel that you have utterly fucked and thoroughly had your way with this demonic society. That you have crippled the basic functionality of their infrastructure. That a previously sustainable environment is now in tatters. You want to waltz through their vaults and rummage through their booty without interruption. After all, the hard part is over. And you can do this four times, busting one hell after the other. Which is why these messages are inappropriate - they convey that the forces of Hell remain powerful as ever, just not in relation to you:

"You are not welcome in this place!"
Something reaches out for you.... but your Iron Rune of Zot repels it.

"Suffer!"
Your Iron Rune of Zot vibrates violently.

Next time, ponder the nothingness that happens when you pick up a rune from Hell.

tedric wrote:If anything, carrying a hell rune should intensify hell effects for as long as you remain in the branch.

This would encourage getting all loot, and clearing the path to stairs if you took a hatch to floor 7, before you attempt to get the rune. It would also make you desperately scramble for the exit like a petty thief, DEFLATING the well-earned sense of victory.

BONUS PROPOSAL
This can be extended quite easily to the Golden rune, as it is with the Slimy rune. You know the two big treasure rooms on Tomb:3? Well, they can be locked out completely. Let's say the doors have a permanent sealing rune applied to them. After you pick up the rune, the sealing rune deactivates. It's a bit of harmless flavor, since you've won tomb if you got to either the doors or the rune, but at least it makes the rune itself a goal to some degree, not just something to grab on your way out.

Pollen_Golem wrote:BONUS PROPOSAL
This can be extended quite easily to the Golden rune, as it is with the Slimy rune. You know the two big treasure rooms on Tomb:3? Well, they can be locked out completely. Let's say the doors have a permanent sealing rune applied to them. After you pick up the rune, the sealing rune deactivates. It's a bit of harmless flavor, since you've won tomb if you got to either the doors or the rune, but at least it makes the rune itself a goal to some degree, not just something to grab on your way out.

Do those room have enemies in them. If so then locking them would make tomb 3 easier and would encourage apportation .

They have monsters yes but the vast majority of the mobs are waiting on the tomb:3 ambush just out of LOS of the stairs in the "center" of the map. Locking the doors might make a small difference but it'd be hard to notice. Would possibly mean that if you firestorm/shatter the mummies that you'll only get a swarm of 40 instead of 50, although shatter would probably just break open the loot rooms itself...

archaeo wrote:We don't really have a firm rule about this or anything, but as a note, polls on GDD tend to just create arguments about how well the poll was constructed, and since the game isn't a democracy, the fact that many posters feel a certain way isn't an argument likely to sway the devs. If it was, the game would still have Mountain Dwarves.

That said, I'd be totally fine with hell effects ending after the player picks up the rune.

I've gone ahead and mentioned to avoid using polls in the GDD readme (and removed the poll).

Hell being a bad place that doesn't really care about what you do there and keeps being bad regardless seems like pretty decent flavour to me, and since they're still potentially dangerous for plenty of characters it seems perfectly fine to have them keep going.

It's pretty decent flavor and it's a flavor already very well fulfilled by Pan, which doesn't even offer up any obvious threats that picking up the rune could neutralize, unlike Hell.

from my perspective, the purpose of stopping hell effects when you kill hell lords is to make it so that getting the optional loot in some hell ends is sometimes a good option (currently this is basically never the case)
i don't think it has a significant impact on anything else

duvessa wrote:from my perspective, the purpose of stopping hell effects when you kill hell lords is to make it so that getting the optional loot in some hell ends is sometimes a good option (currently this is basically never the case)
i don't think it has a significant impact on anything else

If you want to be picky about it, it would have an impact on people trying to do the fastest 15-rune wins possible as it would save you some time, probably both turn-count and real-time. Then again, there's changes all the time that significantly affect how fast the game can be completed.

MarvinPA wrote:Hell being a bad place that doesn't really care about what you do there and keeps being bad regardless seems like pretty decent flavour to me, and since they're still potentially dangerous for plenty of characters it seems perfectly fine to have them keep going.

I disagree, aside from Pan, Abyss also has that vibe going for it. Pan is an infinite demonic realm, Abyss is an infinite chaotic realm, and then hell is a finite demonic hell.. but with infinite miscast effects.

An arguably more important side-effect of changing how this works would be to make Hell a little less tedious. It's highly unlikely that a character is going to suddenly die to hell effects if they're capable of killing a hell lord + taking the rune, so instead it's just a boring slog to get back out of the usually maze-like branch endings.

bananaken wrote:
duvessa wrote:from my perspective, the purpose of stopping hell effects when you kill hell lords is to make it so that getting the optional loot in some hell ends is sometimes a good option (currently this is basically never the case)
i don't think it has a significant impact on anything else

If you want to be picky about it, it would have an impact on people trying to do the fastest 15-rune wins possible as it would save you some time, probably both turn-count and real-time. Then again, there's changes all the time that significantly affect how fast the game can be completed.'\

How on earth would it save you time? You would have to kill the hell lord and no turncount speedrun is going to do that.

duvessa wrote:How on earth would it save you time? You would have to kill the hell lord and no turncount speedrun is going to do that.

I mean, 4tharra killed some Hell lords.

This is somewhat detracting the thread, but perhaps close enough: Crawl Light had branch-wide effects for runes picked up. I cannot tell you what these are, but it should be possible to find out. I think it'd be nice to have something like that, if it's good enough. Many proposals along these lines were "innate rP for this Lair rune" etc. which is out of the question.

Desiderata:
1. Rune effect affects its native branch, not more.
2. Effect is desirable (otherwise we encourage players to clear the levels but leave the rune).

I really like how Slime works, and that's an effect not even tied to the rune

Anyway, some ideas:
Hells: killing the lord disables hell effects (picking up the rune does not); I think this is also what dtsund has.
Slime: picking up the rune disables acid walls.
Silver: carrying the rune lets you pass through sealed doors (from wardens) -- runes *are* keys, after all.
Golden: carrying the rune reduces mummy curses.

And that's all I have.

archaeo wrote:
duvessa wrote:How on earth would it save you time? You would have to kill the hell lord and no turncount speedrun is going to do that.

I mean, 4tharra killed some Hell lords.

Well, yeah, with some vaults it can be easier to kill Antaeus and (with Chei specifically) Ereshkigal than to not do it, I was more thinking of not-Chei games and lords other than Antaeus. Actual speedrunners feel free to tell me I'm wrong, but I really can't think of any reason to do it without Chei (which is not the best speedrun god anyway). Not that removing hell effects that close to getting the rune would help speedruns anyway.

dpeg wrote:This is somewhat detracting the thread, but perhaps close enough: Crawl Light had branch-wide effects for runes picked up. I cannot tell you what these are, but it should be possible to find out. I think it'd be nice to have something like that, if it's good enough. Many proposals along these lines were "innate rP for this Lair rune" etc. which is out of the question.

Desiderata:
1. Rune effect affects its native branch, not more.
2. Effect is desirable (otherwise we encourage players to clear the levels but leave the rune).

I don't like this (and I actually don't like rune/lord removing hell effects either for the same reason): if you can get the rune on Snake:4, surely you can do Snake:1-3 just as easily. What does the game gain from making Snake:1-3 even easier once you get the rune? I have the same complaint about rune lock: if you make the player do the harder level before the easier level (whether by forcing them to via rune lock, or just by increasing reward enough that it outweighs the risk), the player is still left with the easier level and it's going to be boring when they do it. A rune effect that only affects the rune's branch seems especially bad in this regard, since it's only going to be affecting the levels that are absolutely certainly already easier than the rune level.

For what it's worth, Crawl already tried doing pretty much exactly this: before -cTele was removed, picking up Hell/Tomb runes removed -cTele from their levels/branches.

Hell branches do not easily parallel other branches in this regard.

Compare:

If you get the rune on Snake:4, surely you can do Snake:1-3 just as easily.
vs
If you get the rune on Tart:7, surely you can do Tart:1-6 just as easily.

It doesn't matter that Tart:1-6 becomes easier - you're done.

Why is vulnerability considered good in a hell you've already plundered, but not in the (quite safe) vestibule?

duvessa wrote:
archaeo wrote:
duvessa wrote:How on earth would it save you time? You would have to kill the hell lord and no turncount speedrun is going to do that.

I mean, 4tharra killed some Hell lords.
Well, yeah, with some vaults it can be easier to kill Antaeus and (with Chei specifically) Ereshkigal than to not do it, I was more thinking of not-Chei games and lords other than Antaeus. Actual speedrunners feel free to tell me I'm wrong, but I really can't think of any reason to do it without Chei (which is not the best speedrun god anyway). Not that removing hell effects that close to getting the rune would help speedruns anyway.

Experience - At least for Berserkers, you're entering Hell at like XL 20-21. Lords give a good chunk of XP and you can drop them easily with an angel and a Berserk potion, so you can conserve Haste for later. Also, it can be tricky to get by some of them, particularly Asmodeus, without dying, due to the structure of the end vault.

It's also a decent idea to kill the unique Pan lords so that you don't land on one when teleporting about to save time and encounter e.g. Cerebov with a pack of fiends. Ideally Lom spawns last, so that you don't have him chasing you through pan. He can kill you in a very short time as a result of the monster spell frequency changes, sometimes before a teleport can go off, and is hard to kill in melee due to him repositioning you, blinking, and spamming healing.

Other branches aside, to summarize how I feel on Hell branches:

The bulk of a challenge lies in reaching (and killing) a hell lord, so the process of leaving being a lesser, repetitive challenge seems unnecessary; you've already been booty blasted by 7 floor's worth of miscast effects! Most hell branch ends are also designed to deliberately take time to find the hell lord + rune (Antaeus seems to be the biggest offender here), so you're going to be eating even more miscast effects. The trip back quickly gets old and repetitive as a result.

As duvessa mentioned, -cTele and possessing the rune removing it used to be a thing, so I see this thread's general idea as a chance to implement something similar in a fun+flavorful way. I didn't realize how much I missed teleport control until I had to make the "victory lap" out of a hell branch over and over.

@dpeg, as far as other branches go, I think some minor, positive effect sounds fun and would add to the feeling of accomplishment, though I think ideally each effect should be tied to a specific objective that follows after getting the rune or killing the main target in that branch: Killing TRJ lets you loot Slime:6 easily, Abyss rune lets you escape more quickly, etc. In this thread's case, killing a hell lord would let you escape more quickly as well.

[lame]Shoals: tides are set to lowest possible value and never change again.
Spider: all webs are removed.
Swamp: mist stops generating.
Snake: snakes are turned into ladders.[/lame]

Pollen_Golem wrote:If you get the rune on Tart:7, surely you can do Tart:1-6 just as easily.

It doesn't matter that Tart:1-6 becomes easier - you're done.

If you remove hell effects it does matter, it means you can go back and explore them for easy experience (this is a bad thing).

Pollen_Golem wrote:Shoals: tides are set to lowest possible value and never change again.
Spider: all webs are removed.
Swamp: mist stops generating.

These are great ideas, except they should happen when you enter the branch, not when you pick up the rune

If you do not remove hell effects, it means you can camp near a portal and indefinitely farm spawns from hell effects for easy experience (this is a bad thing).

duvessa wrote:If you remove hell effects it does matter, it means you can go back and explore them for easy experience (this is a bad thing).

I can't agree with your reasoning at all, hell effects themselves already provide a pretty large boost in experience since most of the time you get monsters dropped on you they don't count as summoned monsters, providing XP. This includes tier-1 demons that provide a lot of experience. Yes there's effects that may affect your character strength over the long term like drain/stat drain/contamination, but most extended-ready characters can handle a very large amount of that already. If I needed experience that badly I can just stick around and eat some more hell effects until I get the experience I need.

e: Pollen beat me to it

By the time you are doing hells there are already more efficient and safer grinding methods than both waiting for hell effects and clearing hell floors. I don't think any argument regarding hell EXP being too easy is a particularly strong one.

By the time you clear the hell lord and grab the rune, hell effects are barely more significant than randomly spawned monsters walking into your line of sight as you travel between floors. Once in a blue moon they're threatening but most of the time they just make the trip take 10x as much effort without being difficult at all.

duvessa wrote:
dpeg wrote:Crawl Light had branch-wide effects for runes picked up. I think it'd be nice to have something like that, if it's good enough.

Desiderata:
1. Rune effect affects its native branch, not more.
2. Effect is desirable (otherwise we encourage players to clear the levels but leave the rune).
I don't like this (and I actually don't like rune/lord removing hell effects either for the same reason): if you can get the rune on Snake:4, surely you can do Snake:1-3 just as easily. What does the game gain from making Snake:1-3 even easier once you get the rune? I have the same complaint about rune lock: if you make the player do the harder level before the easier level (whether by forcing them to via rune lock, or just by increasing reward enough that it outweighs the risk), the player is still left with the easier level and it's going to be boring when they do it.

I think you just expect too much from the mechanic. Also, two different issues are conflated: the rune/sentinel effects I have in mind are minor, and wouldn't affect actual gameplay very much. They are more a non-distracting, quality-of-life ways of padding you on the back for doing the rune. PollenGolem's proposals also fit with this (Snake obviously exempted).
For example, with my Vaults rune suggestion (it allows you to use sealed doors/staircases): it'd rarely matter, occassionally it might safe your life if you get caught, but can soldier on and fetch the rune. I don't think it's a big deal.
Clarity should not be a problem: rune effects should be simple and could be listed on the new } screen.

Regarding the rune lock, my perception is different (obviously):

(a) Players can skip dangerous content for quite a while, and are actually well advised to do so. This is an innate problem with a non-linear game structure, where content generation is static (aside: it wouldn't have to be; we could make Shoals monsters harder after having entered Swamp etc.).

(b) As long as we have branches, that's a given. The idea to force players is to increase overall difficulty: yes, some generic level will be easier after a Lair branch rune. But the branch end itself will be harder. I think this way of doing it leads to more tension, more deaths and hence to more depth.

(c) The rune lock was always intended as a first step, or a guinea pig. To get people thinking about global rules for the dungeon in the first place. I think a lot more could be done. Or it could be retracted. But having completely open, parallel branches is not a given, the rules are ours. I wanted a simple test balloon to make lives a bit harder for players, and one (just one) branch end a bit more exciting.

duvessa wrote:A rune effect that only affects the rune's branch seems especially bad in this regard, since it's only going to be affecting the levels that are absolutely certainly already easier than the rune level.

Yes, but I don't have a problem with this. Again, different expectations what this is about. There's a flavour component, too, and we all know what you think of flavour.

duvessa wrote:For what it's worth, Crawl already tried doing pretty much exactly this: before -cTele was removed, picking up Hell/Tomb runes removed -cTele from their levels/branches.

This was not removed because the mechanic (rune effect) was so bad, but because cTele stopped existing.

The barnacled rune could give permanent water-walking, gossamer rune could make you immune to webs, decaying rune could show the position (and identity?) of submerged creatures in LOS, serpentine rune could make you immune to constriction. There should be a message when you leave the branch that the rune's effect is switched off.

You climb upstairs.
Welcome back to the Lair of Beasts!
You are no longer immune to constriction.
You climb downstairs.
Welcome back to the Snake Pit!
You become immune to constriction again.

wtf

such effects, if they are to exist in Crawl at all, should be instantaneous and one-time-only. Not "you can dig/disint stone walls, while you're in the Slime Pits" but "stone walls in the Slime Pits have now become rock". Not "you are immune to webs while in Spider" but "all webs throughout Spider have just been unravelled".

On my first character that reached Hell, I assumed killing the lord would end hell effects, because descriptions like "you sense a presence watching you" made me think he was the source of the effects. So I was rather disappointed when killing Asmodeus had no effect (especially since my teleportitis dropped me into his throne room before I had hardly started clearing the level).

To my mind, this change would make the Hells more interesting; it would encourage infiltrating and assassinating the lord as rapidly as possible, then cleaning up in relative safety to collect loot and experience.

The Tavern

pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects (poll)

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects

Re: pick up rune and/or kill lord to end hell effects