Portal Vault: Thieves' Market

[Tiber]

The story for this vault is that it's a refuge for the outcasts of society hidden in a pocket of a dungeon. Essentially, it's a gathering place for humanoids of all types, including those rarely seen outside of zigs and the abyss. There's also a good chance for an OOD enemy, such as a deep elf annihilator, a hell knight, or a lich. The reward for completing this is a shop biased for good items. Examples include a weapon shop with higher-tier weapons or rare brands such as vampirism or chaos, a wizard dropout's shop containing nothing but artifacts that have at least one bad property, or a mercenary shop that allows you to buy permanent allies. That last one may be a bit contentious, but I got the idea from nicolae's vault of off-brand ammo. It's a timed vault anyway, so it's not like players can save up for it. Spawn depth should be around the same as ice cave or labyrinth - late lair to mid elf, when players are typically in the mid-teens in terms of XL.

[roctavian]

I think the possibility of just one regularly-rolled shop should be good enough. Maybe a small chance for two?

[hxy]

Just reading the title, this image comes to mind:
An open level similar to a bustling market, some shops, lots of people, and all with with the ability to steal things off the player (like Maurice)

[Tiber]

Just reading the title, this image comes to mind:
An open level similar to a bustling market, some shops, lots of people, and all with with the ability to steal things off the player (like Maurice)

Yeah, I'm not the greatest at naming things, and this was the only name I could come up with for a town populated by criminals that didn't sound stupid.

[Tiber]

It would make much more sense to just put the monsters in bazaars.

Except that deciding whether or not to enter a dangerous portal to try for the loot, and deciding whether or not to enter a bazaar are two different things.

I also can't seem to remember the last time I actually saw a bazaar.

[bobross419]

It would make much more sense to just put the monsters in bazaars.

Except that deciding whether or not to enter a dangerous portal to try for the loot, and deciding whether or not to enter a bazaar are two different things.

I also can't seem to remember the last time I actually saw a bazaar.

Don't worry you aren't missing out on anything, just a bunch of shops with stuff for sale that is either worthless or completely unusable to you (3 food shops and a potion shop on a mummy... seriously)

[dpeg]

Missing a bazaar always hurts: you lose the option to see fair number of additionally generated items. Also, very often they come with a lot more interesting choices than three only shops of food (I don't believe the latter, by the way, in almost all bazaars shop generation is not fully random). As always with randomly generated content, duds are possible and completely acceptable, as long as they're rare enough.

The original poster's proposal sounds interesting. In essence, it's like a bazaar with guaranteed good content but also opposition. If you can (and want to), it'd be worthwhile to make a preliminary version and have others look at it. I'd definitely take a look.

[bobross419]

Missing a bazaar always hurts: you lose the option to see fair number of additionally generated items. Also, very often they come with a lot more interesting choices than three only shops of food (I don't believe the latter, by the way, in almost all bazaars shop generation is not fully random). As always with randomly generated content, duds are possible and completely acceptable, as long as they're rare enough.

The original poster's proposal sounds interesting. In essence, it's like a bazaar with guaranteed good content but also opposition. If you can (and want to), it'd be worthwhile to make a preliminary version and have others look at it. I'd definitely take a look.

Could have been an Orc:4 I was remembering, but I can't ever remember finding a bazaar and actually finding something worthwhile for sale.

[Galefury]

Often there is something useful. Also the prices tend to be better than for dungeon shops in my experience. Bazaars are pretty useful in general.

Also, a timed bazaar has the downside of having to rush through the level to find it or use mapping. Of course once you find the portal entering is a nobrainer, but it pretty much has to be for announced portals to be interesting.