One weird trick to make pandemonium faster
Posted: Thursday, 12th October 2017, 00:42
Pan is too damn long. Supposedly an average game takes ~27 levels to generate all four unique panlords. That's already an unreasonable amount of floors, but since it's only an average there's a reasonably high chance of getting a 35-40 floor visit (or more!) which is just ridiculous. I'm aware that there are various extended rework proposals in the works that will probably address this if they ever get implemented. But it only takes one line of code to fix the problem now.
The chance of placing a unique panlord level is determined by one statement in dungeon.cc:
Change this formula to something that takes fewer floors. I suggest x_chance_in_y(1 + place_info.levels_seen, 20 + place_info.levels_seen). That ups the odds of getting a unique lord to 1/20 on the first floor and just over 1/3 per floor after 10 floors. This one line change suddenly makes Pan a more reasonable length, there's no commitment to any specific extended rework and you're not doing a lot of work that will have to be undone later. You don't even have to commit to stopping people from scumming Pan for experience. There's no need to wait for a comprehensive rework. Make Pan better today.
The chance of placing a unique panlord level is determined by one statement in dungeon.cc:
Change this formula to something that takes fewer floors. I suggest x_chance_in_y(1 + place_info.levels_seen, 20 + place_info.levels_seen). That ups the odds of getting a unique lord to 1/20 on the first floor and just over 1/3 per floor after 10 floors. This one line change suddenly makes Pan a more reasonable length, there's no commitment to any specific extended rework and you're not doing a lot of work that will have to be undone later. You don't even have to commit to stopping people from scumming Pan for experience. There's no need to wait for a comprehensive rework. Make Pan better today.