Remove either orb run or digging

[duvessa]

It is really bad that for any character that has spare digging when they reach Zot:5 (which is almost all characters), especially LRD/IOOD, they are faced with the choice of either digging shorter paths through 25 levels, or voluntarily taking a higher chance to die on the orb run.

If the game didn't have the spoiler test that is the orb run (trivial once you know what it does, also rather tedious...), and instead just ended upon leaving Zot:5 with the orb, this wouldn't be an issue. But removing digging instead would also technically solve this specific problem.

"Make orb run better instead" is not a reasonable answer, so I request that nobody waste time pretending it is. The only way you could solve this problem while keeping both digging and the orb run is to have the orb run change the terrain (reverting the levels to their original pre-digging versions, generating new levels, whatever) which just makes the mountain of spoiler-reliant orb run mechanics even taller.

[Leszczynek]

"Make orb run better instead" is not a reasonable answer, so I request that nobody waste time pretending it is.

You make it sound like an opinion established in older times when I wasn't around, would you mind explaining? The first few orb runs I did were pretty exciting so I don't think removing it entirely would be a good idea. And why the alternative is digging removal of all things instead of forced stasis or disabling healing/regeneration or not allowing teleportation or any of other possibilities?

By the way, "taking a higher chance to die on the orb run" and "trivial once you know what it does" contradict one another to me.

[duvessa]

And why the alternative is digging removal of all things instead of forced stasis or disabling healing/regeneration or not allowing teleportation or any of other possibilities?

Because none of those possibilities do anything to solve the problem. Nothing about forced stasis, disabling healing/regeneration, or not allowing teleportation would do anything to discourage digging tunnels in advance. In fact, they would just encourage it more.

[Sprucery]

Another solution: make digging a temporary effect. Dug walls revert back after a while. Now make sure you have enough charges before you dig yourself a killhole... :)

edit: grammar

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Another solution: make digging a temporary effect. Digged walls revert back after a while. Now make sure you have enough charges before you dig yourself a killhole...

Another way to cause death by starvation, cunning!

[ion_frigate]

Solution idea: convert all tiles without a floor tile in a 2-tile radius into permarock.

It keeps the use of digging for making kill holes, and the use of LRD for making the walls attack monsters, but gets rid of degenerate uses like the one in the OP.

Crawl tends in general to get rid of weird, degenerate behaviors (like that infamous stabwound game that led to the OOD timers), but for some reason it's still possible to manually clear out all the walls on most levels (all it takes is LRD/Shatter, lichform, and a LOT of tedium). There's really no good reason for that ability to exist. Making the walls be only destructible to a depth of two tiles is reasonably intuitive, and doesn't require introducing more special-cased orb run mechanics. Plus, it preserves most of the ninja strategies that I gather some people are fond of.

[Sprucery]

It keeps the use of digging for making kill holes, and the use of LRD for making the walls attack monsters, but gets rid of degenerate uses like the one in the OP.

But you would still want to dig shortcuts through walls that are 1 or 2 tiles deep. So it doesn't really solve the problem.

[andreas]

Why exempt killholes from being a degenerate tactic? It is good for players, in playing the positioning game, to have to adapt to randomized terrain. Killholes exchange that for doing the same boring thing whenever you can, to the extent that you can. It is boring because is far too strong, and because it is the same every time. It is a tactic that is cheesy but, much worse, is not fun.

It takes effort to keep digging from being too strong and too obvious an option---as we see from the need to make the recent changes to Elf 3, for example. I don't mean that those changes were bad ones in themselves, but I worry that they were ad hoc patches on a mechanic that does not deserve work to save. On the other hand, I have trouble seeing what is added by the presence of digging: when and how to use the abundance of digging charges (if you're willing to use them to the hilt, anyway) is seldom a tricky or interesting question---or, crucially, one that gets an especially different answer from game to game (or even so much from branch to branch). Duvessa's problem with the orb run seems like a special case of this.

Edit: I don't mean that ability to change the dungeon layout is per se or always bad, but it is too cheap, easy, and reliable right now. It could be fixed, probably; the elf:3 changes, troll mages, etc., are a step in that direction. But I am skeptical that there is much to be gained by the fixing.

[Malevolent]

Am I the only one who sees no issue here? It seems that some people want to apply the letter of the Crawl philosophy in an inflexible and frankly absurd manner to every single minor facet of the game - I, for one, think that removing either the orb run or digging would objectively make the game less fun, no matter what kind of philosophical justification can be lawyered to defend it. You are saying that there is a problem when the player takes a voluntarily higher chance of dying by not digging out every floor before the orb run beforehand (mind you, this is a very, very minuscule increase in the chance of dying, especially compared to the almost as effective and much less grindy strategy of just digging out walls as you go whenever you need to shorten your path), but then again, I technically voluntarily take a higher chance of dying by using autoexplore in an unexplored and potentially dangerous floor. So what? I don't really mind. To draw an analogy, you could well make a similar thread titled "either remove autoexplore or improve the autoexploration algorithm so that it always does the hypothetically optimal movement" - except that the latter is pretty much impossible, so you'd practically be proposing that the game be less fun for narrowly interpreted ideological reasons devoid of context. Much like you are doing in this thread. Besides, nobody would really consider digging out all the levels in a 100% optimal manner before the orb run, so your proposed dilemma is false, and you are fighting a non-issue.

I, for one, happen to think that reducing the number of most consumables (including digging wands) would solve a lot more balance issues in the game, including most of the issues raised in this thread.

[crate]

Besides, nobody would really consider digging out all the levels in a 100% optimal manner before the orb run, so your proposed dilemma is false, and you are fighting a non-issue.

Crawl actually explicitly tries to avoid having behaviour that falls into this category. If your argument is that digging existing is enough of a benefit that it outweighs this drawback (or, alternatively, that the dev work required to remove digging is better spent on other things), then okay (I don't personally agree and would probably remove digging, but I don't feel like saying more on this). But this argument alone is worthless.

[andreas]

Besides, nobody would really consider digging out all the levels in a 100% optimal manner before the orb run,

Of course they would. I did this on my first (and only) nethack ascension. I was hardly going to lose all that work just because of failing to put in that bit of effort at the last moment.

(Edited to remove response to the argument from analogy; on reflection I do not think I understand how it is supposed to work.)

[ion_frigate]

But you would still want to dig shortcuts through walls that are 1 or 2 tiles deep. So it doesn't really solve the problem.

Perhaps not, but it gets rid of most of it. One- or two-tile walls are pretty rare outside of those godawful "city" layouts unless I'm mistaken. Also, since a 1- or 2-tile wall only takes one turn to dig through, players would be more inclined to do it on the Orb Run, although I guess the "hypothetically optimal" issue still exists.

Why exempt killholes from being a degenerate tactic?

I don't - personally I'd rather just see digging removed entirely - but I was trying to think of a way to keep the other functions of digging intact.

One problem with removing digging is that LRD then becomes its tedious substitute (and LRD is worth saving IMO). Perhaps exploded walls should leave behind fields of rubble that are either impassable or impose super-nasty action penalties (like shallow water on steroids), so it can't be used for making killholes.

[crate]

LRD works fine without destroying walls.

[Sprucery]

For gods who have piety decay over time, there's also a natural drawback to going back and digging optimal paths on all levels.

Maybe zapping a wand of digging should cause draining or contamination :)

[moxian]

I like the rubble idea.
Should, maybe all digging (not only LRD) leave behind rubble?

[Psieye]

the spoiler test that is the orb run (trivial once you know what it does, also rather tedious...)

The only way you could solve this problem ... which just makes the mountain of spoiler-reliant orb run mechanics even taller.

What if it was de-spoilered? Details of 'how' can be discussed later, what is the argument for the policy to keep it a spoiler test?

[HardboiledGargoyle]

I, for one, happen to think that reducing the number of most consumables (including digging wands) would solve a lot more balance issues in the game, including most of the issues raised in this thread.

Huh? The game is winnable without any consumables, and on many common char dumps you see almost no use of potions/scrolls/wands past XL 14 or so.

[dynast]

Lets remove dig so players are forced to master passwall for the orbrun, then lets remove passwall... As much as i hate digging being on the game i cant deny it leads to more interesting gameplay overall, specially on the orb run, double if playing summoner. Its a love-hate relationship.

[Tiktacy]

I suggest reverting walls that have been destroyed back into walls when the orb is picked up.

it could turn all dug up or removed walls into spaces occupying some magical translucent wall created when picking up the orb. The flavor could be "The Lords of Pandemonium are attempting to block your path of least resistance,"

This way, none of the mechanics need to change, it just gets rid of the obscene preparations.

[amaril]

Tiktacy: That would contribute to the "mountain of spoiler-reliant orb run mechanics."

This topic is tough because I like having both digging and the orb run in crawl. The orb run, while spoilery, leads to some unique and dangerous situations that you usually can think your way out of. A lot of my most memorable moments playing crawl have involved the orb run. Likewise, a lot of my favorite crawl moments have involved fighting through enormous vaults for the first time. But if you wanted to make the version of crawl with the greatest amount of tactical depth, with all information available to the player at all times, you would have to remove the orb run, along with all of the vaults.

Even if you are ok with some amount of fluff for the sake of fun or whatever, Duvessa's point is real. Maybe dug spaces could reset once you leave the level. It would be tough to distinguish 'dug spaces' from 'ordinary spaces' though.

[amaril]

Why exempt killholes from being a degenerate tactic? It is good for players, in playing the positioning game, to have to adapt to randomized terrain. Killholes exchange that for doing the same boring thing whenever you can, to the extent that you can. It is boring because is far too strong, and because it is the same every time

Most consumables in the game are strictly positive: you want to use might or haste whenever you can, to the extent that you can. Arguably, digging is more interesting than most consumables, because it is somewhat unpredictable. You can dig through a wall and reach another open clearing, and additionally digging often comes with the drawback of cornering the player. It is probably true that the player has access to too much digging/disintegration

[Malevolent]

Huh? The game is winnable without any consumables, and on many common char dumps you see almost no use of potions/scrolls/wands past XL 14 or so.

That's very interesting, do you have some sort of statistical data to back it up? Because aside from the fact that my experience has always been the opposite when watching others play, that sounds like a feat only the best players could consistently pull off. A lot of the times, people will get into bad situations due to sloppy play that they need to burn consumables to get out of - one thing that contributes to Crawl potentially being too easy is that you can get away with too many such mistakes due to the abundance of consumables. Though it's an interesting dilemma, how to balance the challenge so that it is reasonable for the expectations of new players, average/experienced players and superveterans.

But if you wanted to make the version of crawl with the greatest amount of tactical depth, with all information available to the player at all times, you would have to remove the orb run, along with all of the vaults.

Which is exactly the problem - this obsession with perfect design and extremely deep tactics might get in the way of plain old fun. Or, in other words: the cure is worse than the disease. I cannot possibly understand what kind of mindset would be necessarily to seriously, without any hint of tongue-in-cheek or sarcasm, suggest removing the orb run. It's utterly alien to me.

The simplest solution to this "problem" would be to make digging rarer. That's all that'd need to be done if we think Duvessa's original post reflects a real issue. And unlike pretty much every other proposal so far, it doesn't reduce the fun factor, nor is it hard to implement for that matter.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Huh? The game is winnable without any consumables, and on many common char dumps you see almost no use of potions/scrolls/wands past XL 14 or so.

That's very interesting, do you have some sort of statistical data to back it up? Because aside from the fact that my experience has always been the opposite when watching others play, that sounds like a feat only the best players could consistently pull off. A lot of the times, people will get into bad situations due to sloppy play that they need to burn consumables to get out of - one thing that contributes to Crawl potentially being too easy is that you can get away with too many such mistakes due to the abundance of consumables. Though it's an interesting dilemma, how to balance the challenge so that it is reasonable for the expectations of new players, average/experienced players and superveterans.

I suspect it's rather worse players who use fewer/no consumables. Dying with good consumables in the inventory seems pretty common in dumps, but of course that's anecdotal too.

[amaril]

Good players get into fewer situations that require consumable use, they use consumables preemptively so they don't need to use more, and they build their chars in such a way that they can win most fights without consumables.

The third point is the main reason why having excess consumables is good--they make the game winnable, even with suboptimal character building decisions. If there were exactly as many consumables as needed to win an optimally-built character, there would be no strategic leeway. Starting a gladiator and hybridizing for some sweet midlevel conjurations around lair is not usually 'correct,' but an unspoiled player would not know this. Plus, such a character can actually be fun (i.e. have an atypical set of options).

It is also ok for the player to have excess consumables because, ultimately,

Dying with good consumables in the inventory seems pretty common

. No single consumable is a 'get out of any situation free' card. You can always fuck up and die. Consumables just need to be scarce enough that a player feels pressured to conserve them.

[infinitevox]

I'm another person who doesn't see a problem here.

So you use a wand of digging to make shortcuts to the stairs on the very last part of the game. What's the issue?

I mean, I dig my tunnels while orb running. It's never occurred to me that it was a problem, and I still don't see why it would be one.

[dowan]

The reason it's a problem is because digging through each and every floor to get a faster orb run is boring as hell. But, if you're trying your hardest to win, you should do it.(I don't and never have, but I have had some close calls I wouldn't have had if I did pre-dig.)

Part of crawl's philosophy is that the most effective way to play should not be to do things that aren't fun. This is an example of a thing that is most effective and not fun or challenging.

I think an ideal solution would be to collapse any dug tiles back into wall tiles when you pick up the orb (including tiles dug by enemies, otherwise captain tedium could have a troll earth mage dig him some tunnels). Also, show a message onscreen saying "When you pick up the orb you hear a thunderous crash as the tunnels that were dug out collapse" (It should be worded better than this).

There, no more spoiler problem, no more tedium problem, and we can keep digging. The obvious technical issue is that crawl would have to keep track of tiles that were dug out vs tiles that spawned as floors to start with, I don't think it does this already (why would it?).

Of course, having to just get the orb out of zot 5 would be the ideal solution to me, but some people do really get some joy out of the orb run for whatever reason, so this is the second best solution to me.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Other options:
1) Limit total number of times you can use wand of digging on every floor (you can dig up to 3 corridors at most, for example)
2) Limit total number of times you can use any (major and digging) wand on every floor (so if the limit is 5 and you have already used wand of teleportation wand twice, wand of heal wound twice, you can use wand of digging just once. I suspect players will prefer to avoid digging to be able to heal or teleport during orb run
3) Make wand of digging (and disintegration too) cause draining so you cannot just spam it. Killholing must not be free.

[Shard1697]

I wouldn't miss it but wowzers are people ITT exaggerating both the tediousness of doing this and the benefit it gives you during part of the game which is frankly just not really hard.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

FR Pan joins forces with Abyss and corrupts terrain , i.e. turn all levels into Abysslike levels seeded with the original level, without the random teleports, but don't destroy staircases without re-generating them.

The obvious technical issue is that crawl would have to keep track of tiles that were dug out vs tiles that spawned as floors to start with, I don't think it does this already (why would it?).

It kind-of does this for Zot:5 at least, so you cannot use digging to reduce your chance of teleporting to the lungs.

Other options:
1) Limit total number of times you can use wand of digging on every floor (you can dig up to 3 corridors at most, for example)
2) Limit total number of times you can use any (major and digging) wand on every floor (so if the limit is 5 and you have already used wand of teleportation wand twice, wand of heal wound twice, you can use wand of digging just once. I suspect players will prefer to avoid digging to be able to heal or teleport during orb run
3) Make wand of digging (and disintegration too) cause draining so you cannot just spam it. Killholing must not be free.

ugh, just make digging fireball-shaped + orb run should a time to encourage players to go all-out, not be stringent.

[duvessa]

I suggest reverting walls that have been destroyed back into walls when the orb is picked up.

I think an ideal solution would be to collapse any dug tiles back into wall tiles when you pick up the orb (including tiles dug by enemies, otherwise captain tedium could have a troll earth mage dig him some tunnels).

Apparently, even when I make an OP less than 1000 characters, people still won't read past the first sentence.

[archaeo]

Or they disagree with you? I'd rather see a "better" orb run than no orb run at all, and the idea that it'd add to the "mountain of spoiler-reliant orb run mechanics" strikes me as overblown. The end of the game makes the game different? You don't say?

Of course, I'd prefer an orb run with a whole new set of maps, ideally with plenty of lava and chasms and other evidence that the dungeon is collapsing.

[duvessa]

No, because I mentioned the exact same idea in the original post:

The only way you could solve this problem while keeping both digging and the orb run is to have the orb run change the terrain (reverting the levels to their original pre-digging versions, generating new levels, whatever)

[andreas]

Killholing is too good and boring, blah blah blah. [A paraphrase.]

Most consumables in the game are strictly positive: you want to use might or haste whenever you can, to the extent that you can.

There are relevant differences, though. Potions of might are much more limited than disintegration charges. While with a bit of patience to kite you can use and reuse a killhole to take out a whole branch endvault or even a whole floor, a potion of might will wear out much faster. It would arguably be a problem if a limitless plenty of might were available to any character for free or for a nominal cost.

Haste, like might, runs out quickly; haste is also different in that it works by opening up more options (including maneuvering positionally) for the player, making for a strong but still interesting consumable. Anyway I am quite open to being persuaded that there is too much haste in the game, once you get a wand!

It might help the problem to limit digging and disintegration charges more, by making the wands have fewer charges (and remove the effect from LRD and OOD)). This is complicated by the way digging is tied to other consumables by being on wands and there being scrolls of recharging, but probably not impossible to finesse. As far as Duvessa's problem goes, if you were willing to dig out everything beforehand, it seems now you'd be willing to carefully work out how much excess digging you have and dig out just to the corresponding extent. At least this would be faster and less tedious behavior, I suppose, for those who actually do it.

As I said I don't really see why this is something worth working hard to keep, but it does seem others find the existence of digging more fun than I do!

[amaril]

There are natural killholes too, and stairs.

[andreas]

Many people, including me, think stairdancing is sort of regrettable. Anyway, one problem at a time.

I am better with natural killholes though, if they are not too plentiful; like using corridors heavily, at least this falls under adapting to the randomized terrain.

[amaril]

I am saying that one of your problems with digging--that you can use it to clear a vault or a floor--is actually a problem with luring. Sure, stairdancing is OP, but the real problem is that it is so easy to lure enemies back to stairs, which are basically better killholes. If stairs didn't exist, there would still be more/less favorable terrain, and luring would still exist. In the case of luring, though, I think that the real culprit is speed 10 enemies, not wands of digging or whatever.

Anyways, as far as I can tell there are two situations where you dig/disint:

1) You are in combat with too many enemies but believe that you could win combat if you fought these enemies one-on-one. This is 'interesting' as far as I am concerned. Assuming you are currently taking damage, you are deciding to trade a few turns of nonaction/movement + a consumable charge for better terrain. This requires you to make a judgement call of your strength vs. the strength of enemies, and if you are wrong you've cornered yourself.

2) You see or anticipate (in the case of vaults) a pack of enemies in the distance and decide that they would be too difficult to take on without perfect terrain. This is less 'interesting,' but it is at least convenient. A lot of the time you could have lured them farther, but your killhole saved you the trouble of having to do so. It is worth noting that you can still misgauge these situations; combat is swingy. This may be a key point of disagreement, though: you seem to believe that combat is over/solved when you have perfect terrain. I do not, even though you have fewer options/a greater chance of winning.

Situation 2 appears degenerate against certain monsters that need space between you + them in order to be threatening: squishy summoners/ ranged attackers being the obvious examples. Even in pre-elementalist elf, though, where kill-holing was at its best, tricky situations still came up often: a demonologist's executioner rounds the corner, instead of the demonologist, or else there are more elves than anticipated, some of which are blademasters.

For the most part, digging a killhole makes combat simpler, but it comes with the downside of cornering you. I don't think it is a bad thing that the player has this option, but if the player is able to do this in every nontrivial situation then there is probably too much access to digging in the game.

[scorpionwarrior]

Make wand of digging on floor X not work after you've been on floor X+1, then make them work again after you've picked up the orb.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

so that players take some time out to plan for the orb run before descending on every single level of D/U/Z?

[chequers]

Is it possible determine how many won games use the strategy of pre-digging the ascent route? I wonder if this is a mostly theoretical problem.

[duvessa]

People do it all the time, actually.

[andreas]

I am saying that one of your problems with digging--that you can use it to clear a vault or a floor--is actually a problem with luring. Sure, stairdancing is OP, but the real problem is that it is so easy to lure enemies back to stairs, which are basically better killholes.

Yes, luring is probably related. But you can killhole (and stairdance) without luring: use sound. Perhaps luring exacerbates the problem, but that doesn't mean there isn't another problem that interacts with it, and could be addressed as well. Since luring is a large and difficult problem, there is good reason to divide and conquer.

I think killholing (or just digging a corridor without kinks and with an outlet) is very strong in many situations, and the combination of the strength, the availability, and the predictability of the tactic is bad. I don't think, and I don't see what I said suggests I think, that everything is solved once you can killhole or that nothing can go wrong once you're in the hole.

Anyway the focus on killholing is a bit of a tangent for the thread. Let us rest by saying that if and to the degree one finds killholing objectionable, then they have a reason to prefer a certain answer to duvessa's request, and we may disagree about the antecedent for now. Please have the last word, if you'd like it.

Is it possible determine how many won games use the strategy of pre-digging the ascent route? I wonder if this is a mostly theoretical problem.

Even if you don't exhaustively dig out every level every time, you might take related halfway measures. For example: you might make a habit of scrolling through all the levels before entering Zot to check if there are any that will especially problematic to cross, and dig out just those. This just seems prudent (though I don't do it! maybe I will start....). This little habit is much less tedious than the thorough task duvessa imagines---perhaps there is less reason to want to get rid of it---but it still does not seem like captivating gameplay to me.

[Siegurt]

I am not sure this is acutally a problem, on my orb runs, I have pre dig tunnels exactly 0 times, have died once, a very long time ago, due to (really dumb) unrelated reasons.

My strategy for the orb run looks like: take the shortest route to the next up stair on every level, use digging and disintegration if they will save me a notable number of turns, use haste when it looks like I might get cut off or a critter might endgame up adjacent to me, if something does follow me up some stairs kill it, heal as needed.

I have killed *maybe* 3 pan lords in total on the ascent, and typically kill 1 or so thing per ascent.

Note that "spend the fewest turns on each floor as possible" is not the same as taking the shortest overall path, and auto traveling will almost never be a good idea

[nago]

People do it all the time, actually.

What, really?
Whoa I hope they are doing a very long streak because the boredom of that doesn't match the dangers of common orb run at all

[Croases]

Is there any non-degenerate uses of digging that aren't covered more effectively by passwall?

Just remove digging altogether (and especially the stone/metal wall digging nonsense from LRD and Shatter, which exists for no other reason than to make people create "optimal" level bypasses by casting LRD at a wall 300 times), give players a rare passwall wand (rare because it's still a very, very good escape item, especially if it's instant or uninterruptible, since you leave the offending monster behind), allow Formicids to make innate, fast passwalls in an experience-gated manner, and remove slime vault walls altogether when you kill TRJ, like how it happens for Jiyvites at 6* piety.

[Sar]

What if dug out terrain was reset every time you leave the level? I think that would be pretty easy to explain to a player and would remove that particular tactic without touching the tactical uses of digging by player and enemies.

[casserol]

Have the ascension monster's generation concentrate on two random stairs up on each level (and unavoidable-ish fights on zot-to-depths and depths-to-dungeon).

Or one or two randomly chosen stairs "collapse" on each level (except zot-to-depth and depth-to-dungeon).

Or one stair collapse and one by flodded by monsters.


edit : anyway even without digging the ascension really is trivial, I remember my first one, with 3 runes, I was so disappointed on reaching the first level that i went back and hung around a little to see what those pan lords were supposed to be about.

[Psieye]

So to sum up the recent posts, people are beginning to overcome skepticism and are proposing solutions in the direction of "when orb run begins, revert pre-digging." To repeat the OP's concern: this is more spoiler test. To repeat my suggestion: should orb run stay a spoiler test?

When I first started playing even figuring out which meat was poisonous (or worse) was a spoiler - I've lost an earlygame character to that spoiler. The trend in development has been to remove 'spoil-or-die' facts: monster AC/EV/MR/speed is no longer a spoiler - you even get hex success rates. What's stopping the orb run from being de-spoilered? For example, on entering Zot:5 you get told "you feel the orb's will to not be removed. It will make your life difficult by: *list of orb-run mechanics*". I'm sure there's more elegant ways to doing it, e.g. drip feeding that list as you go down each floor of Zot for the first time.

[Wahaha]

I don't see how making the orb run not a spoiler fixes the problem with digging passages in preparation for it.
Edit: ok the dug walls would be restored. That's a pretty ugly fix in my opinion.

[Psieye]

That's a pretty ugly fix in my opinion.

duvessa has already covered that - it's only one possible fix. Generating new levels is another possibility. All these new ideas are currently blocked because orb run mechanics are a spoiler.

It's unfortunate this issue has become One Of Those Things where this community triggers immediate-response routines instead of actually reading.

[Wahaha]

That's a pretty ugly fix in my opinion.

duvessa has already covered that - it's only one possible fix. Generating new levels is another possibility.

And that's an ugly fix too. You're incorrectly assuming that I'm "triggering immediate-responses"? which is slightly insulting. If there was a good solution I would have no reason to be against it. Just have to keep in mind that digging is such a tiny issue that the solution would have to be very clean to be worth implementing. Sar's idea of restoring walls when leaving the floor is great. They could be restored as rubble for flavor.