The Tavern

as I am getting better at this game, I am finding myself going down quickly (almost diving) for the runes in the two S-branches.
If many better players also do this, it would be cool to have a mini "orb run" type of escape out of those branches
Edit2: ...with only the branch's monsters zoning in on you.

What are your thoughts?

Edit: I should add that those branches are never revisited usually unless there is a shop or an item left behind needed later.

Usually you want the XP and small chance for items + larger chance for shops (snake/shoals) rather than diving. Despite popular opinion otherwise I'd rather see Shoals than Swamp on most builds, assuming the game doesn't both utterly gimp me out of any MR and pair it with Snake..

I generally clear out Spider and Snake because for Spider there are generally swarms of enemies and for Snake some nagas have teleport other which makes it safer to clear out the floor. I generally dive Shoals because of how dangerous it is and because I generally have to use several consumables here. I will generally magic map the last floor, get the rune and get out. It seems like it would be fine to dive Swamp as well, but generally swamp isn't threatening so I clear it for xp.

This could be implemented as: if you have the rune for a branch, you are permanently marked while in the branch.

I'm opposed. Right now you have the option of diving vs clearing (I almost always clear). I suspect clearing or mostly clearing (perhaps skipping something dangerous) is usually optimal, enemies in elf/vaults/depths aren't easier.

As such this would be introducing a mechanic to punish an already-suboptimal approach, assuming someone isn't trying for turn-count or real-time speed runs.

I don't get it. If levels are cleared, mark does absolutely nothing (probably except giving you some easy XP for 1-2 monsters which somehow avoided you while you were clearing the level). If levels are not cleared, it means that character is too weak to clear levels (ignoring speedruns here). So we punish weak characters by making it harder to dive and we punish strong characters by forcing them to clear levels instead of diving which they currently can do if desired.

OP, if you find S-branches too easy, you can always switch to playing harder characters, there is no reason to make life harder for everyone. New traps are more than enough