Stealing runes should make Zot 5 harder

[VeryAngryFelid]

As far as I know it is commonly recommended to apport extended runes and teleport away.
I believe devs want to keep ability to apport runes so we cannot change this and I suggest the following:

1) If player enters Zot 5, s/he cannot apport runes (a confirmation dialog is given before entering Zot 5 with less than 15 runes, the dialog can be disabled by init.txt setting).
2) If player apports a rune from Hell/Pan, there is a chance (rather high one, about 20%-25%) that corresponding Hell/Pan lord will be spawn in Zot 5 (not during orb run but during level generation).

So players still can apport runes if they want but apporting all of them will be rather dangerous so players would need to make decisions regarding which rune masters they should kill to make Zot 5 easier. Currently there are no such decisions, it's extremely rare for skipped unique pan lords to generate on level with another unique pan lord so player can just skip the level.

[Sar]

That's a very misleading title because I thought it was specifically about the spell Apportation and not about what it actually is (stealing runes).

Anyway, IMO the point of being able to avoid the lords is being able to avoid the lords. I don't think every character should be built to be able to kill them. If you don't, better propose something like making them drop runes on death, sounds less spoilery then meeting all the lords in Zot:5 chilling with all the other stuff you have on Zot:5 with your translocations barely working.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I think it is fine to steal a few runes. It's just too cheap to steal 10 of them IMHO. What's the point of having unique pan/hell lords if it is trivial with level 1 spell which can be cast by Mi in CPA?

[kuniqs]

If you decide to apport the rune, it means you can't just kill the guards. Therefore, making Zot5 harder will only make the game harder for non-usuall combos like spellcasting Trolls and such, something I don't wanna see happen. Extended is optional so I don't see the point of balancing the game around optional parts. It's like nerfing Mummies because they have easier time in Ice Cave.

[ONIchinchin]

commonly recommended to apport extended runes and teleport away.

Huh, why would you do that? The hell and panlords are weak enough that a melee Felid can kill every single one of them. Don't speedrun

[Sar]

A melee Felid can be a very strong character.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Huh, why would you do that? The hell and panlords are weak enough that a melee Felid can kill every single one of them. Don't speedrun

The same felid also can die due to how combat in crawl works. Nothing compares to apporting the rune from the edge of view and teleporting away. You can see how devs are trying to change the situation by putting runes behind closed doors or in random locations. I think there should be a better way to fix the problem.

[ONIchinchin]

The same felid also can die due to how combat in crawl works

Not true. It's extended, you should have a lot of tricks up your sleeve by then to the point that dying in 1v1 is impossible.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Not true. It's extended, you should have a lot of tricks up your sleeve by then to the point that dying in 1v1 is impossible.

Let's not derail the thread further. Please write me in PM how you always kill Antaeus and 6 fiends in less time than apportation + teleport.

[Psieye]

This thread boils down to "it feels sad all these unique Pan/Hell lords are best dealt with by not fighting them - can't we incentivise killing them?"

Print out a message at the end with a kill list of the Pan/Hell lords and we've solved this. "Don't fight what you don't need to" is something hammered into you as you learn crawl, no need to throw that lesson away at the end.

[VeryAngryFelid]

This thread boils down to probably the best spell in the game which is called apportation.

Why is it level 1??? To allow hunters apport their missiles? Make 2 spells then, one for runes and another for everything else. Move the former to level 5+.

[Sprucery]

It would be quite simple to make apportation scale by spellpower much more than it currently does, so that you would need a lot of spellpower (at least 100+) to apport runes or the Orb.

[Croases]

To be perfectly honest, stealing runes is easy (and I guess optimal) even without apportation anyway.

The spell should probably just be removed.

[ONIchinchin]

Remove the ability to use teleportation in all PanHell rune floors and Zot:5 unless it's from a trap.

[KoboldLord]

A monster that dies every time it spawns is a punk, even if the devteam writes a bunch of flavor text in its description trying to make it sound awesome. The Pan and Hell Lords are way cooler optional bosses if most players choose to avoid them whenever possible. If you force players to kill them, they will do so, and at that point in the game there's really nothing you can throw in the way of a moderately determined player that can actually stop them. If they started with an unsuitable build for killing optional bosses, well, just grind hell effects at tedious length until the problem goes away. So you shoot flavor in the face and add some tedious grinding to boot.

To be clear, I am opposed to your goal and not just the method you propose to reach that goal. The Rune Ninja player behavior is more desirable than the Genocide Mode player behavior.

[dynast]

The Rune Ninja player behavior is more desirable than the Genocide Mode player behavior.

Im a Genocide Mode player and i aprove this.

[VeryAngryFelid]

The Pan and Hell Lords are way cooler optional bosses if most players choose to avoid them whenever possible.

I like your idea. Let's generate skipped Pan/Hell lords everywhere i.e. they chase you on every level like Ignacio.

If you force players to kill them, they will do so, and at that point in the game there's really nothing you can throw in the way of a moderately determined player that can actually stop them.

I don't get it. You are saying that players can kill those lords but choose to avoid them because it is what? Saves time? More fun? Or do you agree with me that it is the safest approach and apportation is OP spell? Let's remove apportation and see how easy it is to steal runes without it (though a better solution would be to delay teleport like on Zot 5 in trunk).

If they started with an unsuitable build for killing optional bosses, well, just grind hell effects at tedious length until the problem goes away.

That's a different problem and should be fixed in its own away. For example, hellcrawl made it impossible to grind pan/abyss as far as I know.

To be clear, I am opposed to your goal and not just the method you propose to reach that goal. The Rune Ninja player behavior is more desirable than the Genocide Mode player behavior.

I agree Rune Ninja is fun, it is great when your uncannily stealthy Spriggan takes the rune and runs away without even being noticed. It is too cheap IMHO when minotaur in CPA apports the rune and teleports away.

Let's make the lords spawn only if they noticed you with the stealed rune.
If they have never seen you with their rune (or you apporting the rune), they don't know who stole it and don't chase you.

[Doesnt]

There already is a punishment for ninja'ing pan runes: the corresponding lord gets put on the Pan spawn table, which can fuck you over in both Pan and in the orbrun. Most characters do not want to see a unique pan lord ever again:

  Code:

126244 | Pan      | Entered the realm of Cerebov.
126624 | Pan      | Noticed Cerebov
126687 | Pan      | Noticed Lom Lobon
...

138910 | Zot:5    | Got the Orb of Zot
138962 | Zot:4    | Noticed Rujuezxy the pandemonium lord
139007 | Zot:2    | Gained mutation: You are resistant to electric shocks. (rElec) [mutagenic glow]
139030 | Zot:1    | Noticed Lom Lobon
139038 | Zot:1    | Noticed Firulal the pandemonium lord

This was a Demigod with no divine abilities to rely on, who had to give up on extended because it couldn't get through Dis, and it nearly died *after* giving up on extended because it had dipped into Pan. Would it really be ideal for it to also have to deal with Mnoleg and Cerebov at the same time as Lom in order to beat the game?

[dynast]

It is too cheap IMHO when minotaur in CPA apports the rune and teleports away.

Yeah, thats shameful display, the minotaur should just swagger walk his way to the rune and then to the portal out.

edit: to be clear, the only time a cpa minotaur should get apport is to steal the rune in front of the unqiue lord, say "do you want it back? then come and get it!" and then kick the lord's ass.

[Siegurt]

Honestly I think if each rune you obtained (Whether stolen or not) made Zot generally harder (and you couldn't obtain any more runes after entering Zot) Getting more runes would be more interesting than it is now (As is, the process of getting more runes makes your character more powerful, which makes Zot increasingly anticlimactic)

[VeryAngryFelid]

Honestly I think if each rune you obtained (Whether stolen or not) made Zot generally harder (and you couldn't obtain any more runes after entering Zot) Getting more runes would be more interesting than it is now (As is, the process of getting more runes makes your character more powerful, which makes Zot increasingly anticlimactic)

It was partially implemented in circus animals fork as far as I remember - it was impossible to leave from Zot without picking the orb. It was fun, entrance to Zot 1 was very dangerous and that's even without delayed teleport from trunk.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Would it really be ideal for it to also have to deal with Mnoleg and Cerebov at the same time as Lom in order to beat the game?

Why not? 15 rune games should be harder than 11 rune games I think. If you can deal with one pan lord but not with two, don't steal the second rune: either skip it or kill its guard.

[Siegurt]

Would it really be ideal for it to also have to deal with Mnoleg and Cerebov at the same time as Lom in order to beat the game?

Why not? 15 rune games should be harder than 11 rune games I think. If you can deal with one pan lord but not with two, don't steal the second rune: either skip it or kill its guard.

What if you can deal with 0 pan lords?

[Quazifuji]

Pan lords can already spawn in both future Pan levels and the orb run if you take their rune without killing them. Something similar could also be done with the Hell Lords.

That said, I like KoboldLord's reasoning. The fact that it's often easier to steal the Pan and Hell runes than kill the lords makes the lords more intimidating.

And even if it isn't necessarily reflected on the score screen, there is a certain satisfaction to killing the Pan and Hell lords. My run feels more special if I take them all down instead of just stealing their runes. I'll often carry the Sword of Cerebov or the Staff of Asmodeus or Dispater with me on the Orb run so that they'll appear in my inventory in the victory dump as trophies

So maybe the solution here is to promote killing them with trophies or mentions in the chardump rather than gameplay purposes. Make every Pan or Hell lord drop a unique item like Cerebov, Dispater, and Asmodeus do, or mention defeated Pan and Hell lords in a special place near the top of the dump instead of in a huge list of all defeated enemies at the bottom. Don't make players who steal the runs feel like wimps, make players who kill the Pan and Hell lords feel like badasses.

[VeryAngryFelid]

What if you can deal with 0 pan lords?

Then you win with 3-6 runes. Do you think it should be possible for every character to get 15 runes? Anyway I believe it is possible for experienced player to win with 15 runes (and kill all rune guards) with any combo/god.

[VeryAngryFelid]

The fact that it's often easier to steal the Pan and Hell runes than kill the lords makes the lords more intimidating.

Why? I am much more afraid of orb of fire than any pan/hell lord just because it is much harder to escape from the orb. It does not matter how many HP and how high melee attack a pan/hell lord has if you ignore it completely. Even alone Antaeus is trivial because you haste yourself, run around its vault and then get the rune while Anteus is still trying to get you in its view.

[tabstorm]

Every character that can do extended can kill all the pan/hell lords without much trouble, except stealth stabbers, and perhaps some "hybrids" who distribute their skills too widely for no good reason. All this change would amount to would be a nerf to such characters for extended. Stabbers are already not very good if you are not a spriggan or felid. This would also encourage even more focused character builds, so that some players wanting to get 15 runes would build their characters in a certain way from the beginning of the game.

[VeryAngryFelid]

Every character that can do extended can kill all the pan/hell lords without much trouble, except stealth stabbers, and perhaps some "hybrids" who distribute their skills too widely for no good reason. All this change would amount to would be a nerf to such characters for extended. Stabbers are already not very good if you are not a spriggan or felid. This would also encourage even more focused character builds, so that some players wanting to get 15 runes would build their characters in a certain way from the beginning of the game.

I would be really interested to see a normal speed stabber who gets 15 runes. I mean I believe they already cannot do it because extended is full of monsters, especially in hell where monsters from hell effects ignore stealth completely.

[Quazifuji]

The fact that it's often easier to steal the Pan and Hell runes than kill the lords makes the lords more intimidating.

Why? I am much more afraid of orb of fire than any pan/hell lord just because it is much harder to escape from the orb. It does not matter how many HP and how high melee attack a pan/hell lord has if you ignore it completely. Even alone Antaeus is trivial because you haste yourself, run around its vault and then get the rune while Anteus is still trying to get you in its view.

I mean more from a flavor standpoint than a gameplay one. Obtaining the rune would be more intimidating if you had to kill the demon lord, but from a flavor standpoint, the fact that they're powerful enough that most adventurers seeking their rune just trying to steal it, rather than killing them in 1 on 1 combat, works nicely I think. Smaug would have seemed a lot less powerful if Bilbo had just stabbed him to death instead of stealing the stone.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I mean more from a flavor standpoint than a gameplay one. Obtaining the rune would be more intimidating if you had to kill the demon lord, but from a flavor standpoint, the fact that they're powerful enough that most adventurers seeking their rune just trying to steal it, rather than killing them in 1 on 1 combat, works nicely I think. Smaug would have seemed a lot less powerful if Bilbo had just stabbed him to death instead of stealing the stone.

But it does not take anything special to steal a rune, just checking des file or lots of experience to know where the rune can be located. You don't need Controlled Blink, Necromutation or stealthiness, for example, just the most common consumable and a level 1 spell is enough unless you are Formicid.
Bilbo was a stealthy halfling as far as I know, I cannot imagine him being a Troll and still successfully stealing the stone.

[dynast]

At this point you just want to ruin extended for unspoiled players because of experienced players. We have tiles chat for that.

[Shtopit]

Smaug would have seemed a lot less powerful if Bilbo had just stabbed him to death instead of stealing the stone.

Turin did quite the sneak attack, though. With a longsword, too. On an opponent with Paralysis and Forced Amnesia. Turin instead had the Mask of the Dragon.

Anyway, having the Demon Lords appear because you stole a rune would IMHO detract from the fact that the Orb is much more important, and that they appear because you stole the bloody Orb, not some silly rune they use to open their garage.

It would also make the Orb Run less interesting, if the heavyweights were there in Zot when you get there. And there's the fact that you can steal the Orb and raid Pandemonium with 3 runes during the run, in which case, if you stole his rune during the run without killing him, Cerebov would reappear in Zot 5 instead of the level where you are.

Anyway, if anyone likes fighting all of the Archdemons all at the same time, there's |||||||||||||||| for that, although it's an easy terrain.

[VeryAngryFelid]

It does not matter if I like to fight rune guards, my point is that apportation + teleportation trick is too cheap and does not require any significant investment especially by extended standards.

[pedritolo]

It does not matter if I like to fight rune guards, my point is that apportation + teleportation trick is too cheap and does not require any significant investment especially by extended standards.

So is it ok then if I use a cblink to pick up the rune directly once it enters my los (instead of using apport)?
Who cares if the trick is cheap or not? Do we have some code of ethics for playing crawl?
Really, It's bloody dangerous already to ninja an extended rune as a stabber. How can one seriously expect a stabber to be able to reliably dispatch dispater? It's very likely to wake up before I sleep stab it, no matter how high my stealth is, and then what? Sure, with the right skills and some luck I could kill it through distraction stabs, but I'd be taking a much higher risk than any other class. Unless I grinded beforehand and became an improvised melee/mage dude just for these occasions.