Abyssal rune idea

[minstrel]

I was just walking through the Abyss, scumming around for the rune and partially nodding off today when I had the thought "Why not just skip it, it's trivial difficulty...", which led me to wonder why.

The reasoning I came up with was that Banishment would be too severe, if the Abyss were cranked up to 11 so that it's actually a challenge to get the rune by the time most characters bother getting it. (Or to rephrase, by the time most characters could bother to get it, since I've heard many people get it out of the way early)

What if the Abyss instead borrows from Zot's code, so that once you pick up the rune (perhaps with a warning "The inhabitants of this place will NOT be happy if you pick this up! Are you sure?"), the spawn rate of 1s or other Abyssal nasties drastically increases? Then it's actually a race to get the hell out of the Abyss rather than a tiring slog to find another portal, and Banishment is no more difficult to survive than before.

[Zzz]

+1

...Wait, so the Abyss forgot you stole its rune when you get banished afterwards?
Oh ho no no no I won't have any of this leniency in my dungeons. Always crazy mode after rune. That's final. XD

[TwilightPhoenix]

Neat idea, but then everyone will just get the Abyssal rune last so they don't have to deal with a deadlier Abyss when they get banished.

[minstrel]

Neat idea, but then everyone will just get the Abyssal rune last so they don't have to deal with a deadlier Abyss when they get banished.

There are runes that tend to be last already anyway, so I don't see that as a negative.

Though if it were an issue, hard mode Abyss could just last until you make it out with the rune.

I see either situation as preferable to the current, where Abyss is a low-mid level danger and cause of YASD (that wouldn't change) and a chore to scum for the rune later.

Alternate idea - just get rid of the Abyssal rune for the same reason as above. By the time anyone wants it, it's trivial to get and only involves running around slowly while watching your message log to see it pop up.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Most people wait on the runes because the rune vaults themselves are dangerous. The difference in difficulty between Snake 4 and Snake 5, for example, is pretty dramatic. However, you only need to wait for Snake 5 until you can handle that difficulty spike. It's also worth pointing out that you have to handle this difficulty in some way or another before snatching the rune, less so after. Having the Abyss become permanently more dangerous (it can already kill XP 27 characters) from touching the Rune will just make absolutely sure nobody grabs it until they're about to go for the Orb and possibly after they've cleared to the Orb so to avoid having to get banished to a more dangerous Abyss. Making the Abyss only temporarily more dangerous won't change much. You'll still spend most of your time running away from everything and the Abyss may only be more dangerous for 1 turn (find exit, stand on exit, see rune, apport rune, grab, leave. I've done that before) or for several thousand turns, so the danger may never really get a chance to come into play.

[smock]

The new abyss is much nicer and even makes me giggle sometimes. Still not fun searching for the rune, tho. I hope that the new abyss rune vaults in trunk, in combination with a way to lessen the searching tedium, will make it fun.

[minstrel]

Having the Abyss become permanently more dangerous (it can already kill XP 27 characters) from touching the Rune will just make absolutely sure nobody grabs it until they're about to go for the Orb and possibly after they've cleared to the Orb so to avoid having to get banished to a more dangerous Abyss. Making the Abyss only temporarily more dangerous won't change much. You'll still spend most of your time running away from everything and the Abyss may only be more dangerous for 1 turn (find exit, stand on exit, see rune, apport rune, grab, leave. I've done that before) or for several thousand turns, so the danger may never really get a chance to come into play.

I'll grant the first part, it's probably not good for Abyss to go to perma-deadly mode. Given the number of times you can get banished in a given game, it could be too dangerous and push the Abyss to last on the rune list, which is spoilery.

As for getting lucky and having an exit near the rune, that can happen near other runes. I'm not sure why it would be a major consideration, but if it were, the abyss could be triggered to shift on pickup of the rune, and exit generation probability decreased.

I'm not sure I follow you on it being dangerous to XL27s: I've never felt much danger beyond 20 at most. I suppose you could get really really unlucky and have a handful of hellions all show up at once with no walls in sight to run behind, but that's about the furthest I can stretch it.

Can't we just cut the abyssal rune entirely? There are a few players who like being in Abyss, but I haven't seen a single person who has ever claimed to enjoy searching for the rune.

That's where I'm leaning at this point. It's entertaining to get banished and have to escape, but unless there's some element of danger, getting the rune isn't much fun.

Alternate, alternate idea: Have the abyssal rune appear in a mini vault, with nasty things guarding it (no idea if the abyss shifting makes this too difficult to code).

[galehar]

Alternate, alternate idea: Have the abyssal rune appear in a mini vault, with nasty things guarding it (no idea if the abyss shifting makes this too difficult to code).

We already have many rune vaults. Maybe they should be more common or have their spawn chance increase with time just like the rune (may be the case, haven't checked the code).

[minstrel]

We already have many rune vaults. Maybe they should be more common or have their spawn chance increase with time just like the rune (may be the case, haven't checked the code).

Wow, I had no idea and I've gotten the rune many times (many meaning more than a dozen anyway). The only vault like things I've seen in the abyss are the ruined temple with altars to all the gods and those areas with tons of tons of doors (don't know if those are really vaults or just normal map features).

[evilmike]

I believe the abyssal rune only has a 1/10 chance of appearing in a vault.

[galehar]

I believe the abyssal rune only has a 1/10 chance of appearing in a vault.

Then let's make that chance 1 so it always appears in a vault. Most of them are defended. Then we can increase the chance of the rune spawning without making it trivial to get.

[evilmike]

I believe the abyssal rune only has a 1/10 chance of appearing in a vault.

Then let's make that chance 1 so it always appears in a vault. Most of them are defended. Then we can increase the chance of the rune spawning without making it trivial to get.

Something like this would be nice (assuming both changes go at the same time). The abyssal rune will still be able to show up on the floor though, if all of the rune vaults generate and no rune is still obtained (unlikely, but possible). I think it might be worth always having a small chance of finding the rune on the floor outside a vault, because of this.

I also think a couple of changes are warranted with the rune vaults. One of them (the seething chaos one) is a bit silly the way it is now, since there is no way to avoid the clouds. I think the cloud generators should be made less spammy.

Another one (with the siren) apparently no longer works as it was intended to, since mesmerise doesn't affect the player though glass any more (I think this vault can be salvaged with a few changes though). I think the changes should be fairly easy to make. If you want I can upload a patch for them, I don't mind doing that (it really should only be a matter of changing a few lines).

[galehar]

I think the changes should be fairly easy to make. If you want I can upload a patch for them, I don't mind doing that (it really should only be a matter of changing a few lines).

Yes please, that would be nice.

[evilmike]

I think the changes should be fairly easy to make. If you want I can upload a patch for them, I don't mind doing that (it really should only be a matter of changing a few lines).

Yes please, that would be nice.

Alright, I just uploaded a patch mantis with the changes I mentioned. I didn't touch the line at the top of abyss.des which dummies them out, though.

[minstrel]

Cool - sounds like it will be much more fun to snag the rune now and very nice to feel involved in development, in however a small way.

[galehar]

I think the changes should be fairly easy to make. If you want I can upload a patch for them, I don't mind doing that (it really should only be a matter of changing a few lines).

Yes please, that would be nice.

Alright, I just uploaded a patch mantis with the changes I mentioned. I didn't touch the line at the top of abyss.des which dummies them out, though.

I didn't either because I'm not sure about the syntax. If I want 9 chances in 10 for a vault and 1 in 10 for the rune on the floor, do I just need to change the abyss_rune dummy chance from 90% to 10%?

[dpeg]

evilmike: Thanks for abyssical content!

galehar: Yes, as far as I understand. CHANCE: 10% means that the dummy vault comes up in 1/10 of the generated maps.

[minstrel]

Just a followup to say I had my first run at an abyssal rune vault and it was quite fun. Two ophans, an angel and a daeva were not what I expected to see in the Abyss! And that eudemon blade was a nice bonus on top of getting the rune itself.