Lair Branches

[danharaj]

I've played a lot of lair by now, enough that I have personal preferences for which branches I like. I figured I'd give some feedback.

Slime is a really good branch. It's probably my favorite part of the extended endgame; so much in fact that I will grab the slimy rune for the fun of it in a short game. I think that's a good sign for a branch: if people do it even though they don't have to and they're not trying to 15-rune it means the branch is rewarding by its own merits. What makes slime good? I like how the layout encourages diving to the branch end. I also think it has one of the best monster sets in the game. Jellies provide a large variety of threats in melee and range while eyes present themselves as high value targets once in a while. The only monster in slime I don't like is the golden eye, because it tends to spawn in groups and getting confused from multiple sources at once can be annoying even with !cure. On the other hand I like how slime rewards having many amulet types with all the eye types. You won't have all of the ones you'd want in a majority of games so your inventory shapes your threat prioritization. To complement the monster set is the sparsity of monsters in slime. Monsters tend to be in small groups which makes fights feel compact and limited in scope. This is good because constant fighting can be tiresome. Finally, the royal jelly is a really fun boss to fight although it can be a little too easy for some characters (storm characters demolish trj because if you storm it, that storm will also hit the jellies it spawns on that very turns; then again, they're storm characters so whatever). The royal jelly fight is probably the most rewarding in extended play because it is short, sweet, and has quite a nice loot pile to go with it.

Overall I think slime is pretty close to perfect. On paper slime looks pretty annoying. Even with rCorr you will get corroded gear when you do it and even with rMut you might gain an annoying mutation. The fun outweighs the unfun so to speak, which is a notably good thing.

My next favorite branch is snake pit. I think a lot of people would disagree with that. I like it because of the mix of threats between fast snakes (anacondas, really) and slow nagas. Naga Warriors and Greater Nagas are probably the most interesting slow monsters in the game for me. The others either are too rare or just not interesting because they are slow. Naga Mages feel a bit lacking though. Their hp is so low that they don't cast many spells in a fight, and their spells suffer from their low HD which means they don't hurt anywhere near as much as their greater brethren. I like the convenience rPoison gives you in Snake Pit. It doesn't feel necessary to do the branch, but it makes it less stressful. I don't think any of the standard rune branches should require a resistance, but it's also nice to give the player a perk for having one. Finally, I really like the snake endings. They provide a nice variety of terrain so they don't really feel the same, which is good. I also like the salamander ending because it gives a nice twist on the standard monster set. Overall doing snake doesn't feel repetitive. It's a very fun branch for me.

The only issue I notice about Snake Pit is that it has a lot more XP than the other lair branches. In my opinion a standard game should have about the same XP regardless of the branches you roll. I think the rune vault alone in Snake Pit tends to have more XP than the entirety of a branch like Swamp or Shoals. That seems like a small problem.

I have a lot of thoughts about Spider Nest but since it's the new branch and deserves the most feedback I'd like to type up a post about it another time. I have to go back to winning a game I took a break because I just finished clearing Snake Pit and I thought to myself "Gee, I really like this branch. I should tell someone!"

[evilmike]

The only issue I notice about Snake Pit is that it has a lot more XP than the other lair branches. In my opinion a standard game should have about the same XP regardless of the branches you roll. I think the rune vault alone in Snake Pit tends to have more XP than the entirety of a branch like Swamp or Shoals. That seems like a small problem.

Snake xp depends a lot on the branch ending. The Salamander ending is the most XP heavy one by far. The ambush one also gives a larger than normal chunk. On average though, Snake XP is fairly balanced with the other lair branches (not counting Slime). They're not all the same, but last time I checked the numbers were close enough not to be a serious imbalance.

If there's an issue with Snake it's that the branch endings vary wildly in xp value. The other branches don't have this issue quite as much.

[danharaj]

It goes to show how a few exceptional circumstances can bias what I think about the game :3

[XuaXua]

The problem I have with Snake is the seeming lack of interesting S1-S4 vaults.

[rebthor]

I guess my earlier message got borked, but I wrote that I really like what was done with shoals to make it really feel unique. It has monsters not seen pretty much anywhere else, it has the interesting tide mechanic and in tiles, the tileset is also really well done and changes the feel of the whole branch.

With the changes to snakes and nagas with constriction and to a lesser extent only 90% rPois, I think the difficulty level between shoals and snake is much closer as well. I wonder if snake could be made slightly better by using something more like the spriggan forest level generation (I think that's set though and not random) so as to have more "curvy" lines in the snake pit instead of all the right angles and blocky layout that it currently has.

Clearly swamp is the odd man out here is swamp. It really has no hook. I'm loathe to recommend something like muddy ground that acts like leda's liquefaction since that will just make flight even more useful to swamp. It's already too useful to have there and in shoals too for that matter. The point is, it just doesn't feel very swamp-like right now. And that, combined with the guarantee of no shops, unlike snake and shoals, really annoying monsters (vampire mosquitoes, swamp worms, and I guess wisps) plus the sheer number of "explorable" squares compared to snake (and to a lesser extent shoals since I guess you could explore all the water if you were a Mf or had flying) means that it's basically just dive, dive, dive there.

[dpeg]

I absolutely agree with danharaj that Slime is one of the better branches -- it is certainly the branch I like most, as player or designer.

But you should be aware that a lot has been done for Slime. DCSS 0.1's Slime was really different from what you get now. Off the top of my hat, here are the modifications:
* don't need cTele to enter loot chambers
* loot chambers become transparent as TRJ dies
* TRJ boss fight (spawns enemies as you attack her, does not regenerate)
* Jiyva
* acidic walls (with layout adaptions)

The strong point about Slime was that it always had such a strong theme, which made it easy to come up with ideas for the branch.

One hope about constriction was that it should make Snake more interesting. I don't know if that worked out...

[danharaj]

Give the nagas throwing nets too!

[dpeg]

That is the gnolls' schtick. I have a hunch that consistently 2-wide corridors and competent slowing would do the trick.

[evilmike]

Another big change to Slime is that it didn't always guarantee a rune in ancient versions. Unlucky people would sometimes be blocked from doing a "real" all-rune game.

[XuaXua]

That is the gnolls' schtick. I have a hunch that consistently 2-wide corridors and competent slowing would do the trick.

I was just going to come in here and suggest refusing 1-wide corridors and have naga monster groups vary to have a mix of reaching and non-reaching weapons to encourage approaching non-blatantly-melee players for constriction attacks.

A naga with a reaching weapon does not approach.

[smock]

A naga with a reaching weapon does not approach.

Yes: constriction is a much bigger threat than a halberd.

I have a hunch that consistently 2-wide corridors and competent slowing would do the trick.

Is Leda's Liquefaction destined for a unique? In any case, Naga mages might make good use of it, especially in open layouts.

[dd]

One hope about constriction was that it should make Snake more interesting. I don't know if that worked out...

I think it does. Earlier, snake was in my experience very easy as long as you had rpois and a few good spells such as poison arrow, IMB or lightning bolt. Constriction adds to the challenge - it can make levels with an open layout very dangerous, as nagas storm you - you can't stair hop them, if they gang on you near the stairs you have to either blink and risk not reaching the stairs again, or you have to take your chances at close range combat.

[Eji1700]

On swamp-
I think the most tedious thing about it is the pure size. Why not have areas of trees, mangroves, deep swamp, water, whatever to thin out the number of tiles you can explore. Just a high chance on each floor of a very large cluster of trees or deep water to help cut down on pointless explore time. Final floor could be the usual GIANT floor.

[dpeg]

Eji1700: I agree. Could also simply cut the size of Swamp:1-4 levels.

I would bet there must be ingenious solutions, playing on the swamp theme. To get thinking started: marsh, fen, bog, mire, morass -- surely no shortage of synonyms I think it is good that Swamp has no items and no shops -- the levels are thematic and nice (to look at, for me, that is) but surely painful. Don't want to encourage players exploring every nook and cranny. What about this: After a certain (randomised) period on a Swamp:1-4 level, you get a message: "Movement has become ardous." and you're slower. To indicate what has happened, the floor tiles could change colour, indicating they don't provide tight grip anymore. If you leave the level and come back, movement is still ardous, chaps!

Obviously a nerf, but like the acidic walls of Slime, I have a feeling it could make Swamp better:
(a) No more dawdling around on Swamp:1-4. Find staircase and use it.
(b) Less stairdancing on Swamp:5.

[dpeg]

minmay: I have a really opinion of your (non-snippy) comments, but you'll understand coders are loathe to remove a huge chunk of code like Shoals has. Never a good reason to keep something, I know, I know, but it is easier to lobby for someone else's work. And in this case we're talking about greensnark stuff... Of course, you address that via Ilsuiw but isn't that parking the code in some remote corner?

So let me try to salvage first what's there: Is drowning a serious issue? If so, we could do something like this: you do not drown on squares that are accessible at low tide (should then visually mark those water squares). However, you'd be gimped if caught in deep water on them, e.g. unable to move, while the sharks come or something.
Or is it the inconvenience?

[roctavian]

Is Leda's Liquefaction destined for a unique? In any case, Naga mages might make good use of it, especially in open layouts.

I was thinking something like this the other day: I'd love to see a sludge elf unique with Leda's show up at some point.

In terms of how vaults work, is it possible to make vaults that only affect the hallways between rooms? If all hallways in snake were "serpentine" in shape, it would look suitably snaky and allow Nagas to use their constriction as suggested above.

Something that would look like this, perhaps:

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[evilmike]

I've said before that a big improvement to swamp would be to change its layout a bit:

Make large, "solid" sections of trees in the level. Instead of being one giant open room, swamp levels would have a bunch of wide, meandering paths through a solid forest of "swamp trees". This would reduce level size (the levels would have a much larger proportion of "wall") and would also make each level of Swamp feel a bit different. Right now one level looks like another.

[dpeg]

minmay: Yes, you're right about autoexplore. It would probably already help if autoexplore was smarther on Shoals? For one, it should stop at a point But seriously, I believe that autoexplore could keep track of islands (this is just what the player sees) and give feedback like: "Cannot reach another island right now, have to wait for low tide."

[XuaXua]

A naga with a reaching weapon does not approach.

Yes: constriction is a much bigger threat than a halberd.

I don't know if that's sarcasm, but constriction + halberd (or an axe-like weapon) is a much bigger threat, which is what I was getting at.
Constriction + small weapon combined with reaching allies is even bigger threat.

[galehar]

Fixing autoexplore in Shoals is tricky. I guess it needs to be less ambitious somehow. I don't see what's the problem is with drowning. The game does everything it can to warn you, pushes and the shore, etc... You really have to be careless to drown.

[pratamawirya]

One thing I don't like about Snake Pits is that the nagas can be an absolute joke if you're proficient in ranged combat.

Naga warriors defending themselves with a large shield is a good thing, but not enough.

[TwilightPhoenix]

What about this: After a certain (randomised) period on a Swamp:1-4 level, you get a message: "Movement has become ardous." and you're slower. To indicate what has happened, the floor tiles could change colour, indicating they don't provide tight grip anymore. If you leave the level and come back, movement is still ardous, chaps!

Obviously a nerf, but like the acidic walls of Slime, I have a feeling it could make Swamp better:
(a) No more dawdling around on Swamp:1-4. Find staircase and use it.
(b) Less stairdancing on Swamp:5.

Oh please no. That would just make Swamp even more annoying and lev/flight/Merfolk/Octopodes/Ice Form even more useful there.

[dpeg]

TwilightPhoenix: You are aware that players told me exactly the same when I suggested acidic walls for Slime?

It is true that doing something about flying would help... for example "The air is to thick and humid that air-borne movement is not faster than walking." Better explanations welcome!

The rules are ours and I see basically two ways to address the fact that Swamp's an area painful to explore: (1) Make it easier to explore, for example by making it smaller and/or, as evilmike suggests, by having less open space . (2) Make it clear that it's undesirable to explore everything. My suggestion does this: as Swamp has no loot anyway and with the severe handicap of slow movement after a while, you'll be happy to have found the staircase and proceed to the next floor.
No reason not to combine both approaches.

[roctavian]

What about maprot? It's a heavy suggestion that the region is not worth the time exploring in detail. It would also keep player attention/memory on the location of the stairs more, making the hunt for them more interesting.

[njvack]

(2) Make it clear that it's undesirable to explore everything. My suggestion does this: as Swamp has no loot anyway and with the severe handicap of slow movement after a while, you'll be happy to have found the staircase and proceed to the next floor.

If there's no loot and exploration is hard, then I'd support this. There's really nowhere in a three-rune game that encourages diving right now.

[ebarrett]

What about maprot? It's a heavy suggestion that the region is not worth the time exploring in detail. It would also keep player attention/memory on the location of the stairs more, making the hunt for them more interesting.

1. maprot is probably the single most hated interface screw crawl ever got rid of, suggesting it is a heavy suggestion that you're out of the loop
2. swamp levels being blatantly unrewarding should be enough of a suggestion that the area isn't worth exploring fully already; the problem lies in that annoying habit among bad players of thinking that they'll be underleveled for the rest of the game if they fail to kill that couple of swamp worms hiding in a corner, or that they'll be severely impaired in resources if they never find that potion of agility (that they'll probably forget to use when it matters) that's behind a couple trees in another corner

(2) Make it clear that it's undesirable to explore everything. My suggestion does this: as Swamp has no loot anyway and with the severe handicap of slow movement after a while, you'll be happy to have found the staircase and proceed to the next floor.

If there's no loot and exploration is hard, then I'd support this. There's really nowhere in a three-rune game that encourages diving right now.

this sounds good - maybe adding a (small) amount of guaranteed (mundane) loot to the rune vault or its surroundings to ensure the branch is not a guaranteed net loss on resources?

[njvack]

or that they'll be severely impaired in resources if they never find that potion of agility (that they'll probably forget to use when it matters) that's behind a couple trees in another corner

This is totally me. But it's reinforced by the fact that one of my casters found a Robe of the Archmagi on Swamp:2.

[XuaXua]

Also, ever since the widened hallways patch was applied to slime, the only problems one encounters with slime walls is teleportation traps or ammo retrieval (apportation resolves this one).

I like the idea proposed a long while back of the walls "budding" (or transforming into!) more slime monsters.

You kill TRJ, the walls around the loot become transparent, but all other walls on all other floors become slimes; good luck getting out.

[dpeg]

minmay: You know very well that popularity is not the ultima ratio. I happen to have played "new" Slime (like most everyone else here), and they certainly deliver what I wanted from them: you treat mobs differently, and you cannot tunnel scum the TRJ.

If there are issue, mention them (like you did) and they'll get addressed. If you know problematic vaults, please point them out or, if you can, fix!

[njvack]

you cannot tunnel scum the TRJ.

Wait, do the vault walls burn you now? Because I recently tunnel-scummed TRJ in the map center.

Unless "tunnel scum" doesn't mean "fight in a 1-width corridor..."?

[dpeg]

nvjack: No, those don't. The tunnel scumming I knew of is digging a corridor into the rock wall, so that you can fight the TRJ minions one on one.

[XuaXua]

nvjack: No, those don't. The tunnel scumming I knew of is digging a corridor into the rock wall, so that you can fight the TRJ minions one on one.

Rather than have the walls burn, if removing it is a possibility, instead have digging transform walls into random slimes, and have slimes actively corrode slime vault walls they touch, transforming those into random slimes.

[dpeg]

minmay just fixed the offending vaults, and evilmike immediately pushed the patch to trunk. Thanks!

[evilmike]

evilmike just fixed the offending vaults. Thanks!

minmay deserves the credit, I just used the fix he put on mantis.

[KoboldLord]

How about changing Swamp's layout to a modified Orc/Slime layout? The same number of monsters should be crowded into that sort of bubble layout, with limited connectivity between bubbles, so you're likely to take a few trips up or down into ambushes by multiple hydrae or alligators. Inside the bubbles are pools of deep or shallow water, with a modest amount of dry land to walk on but not so much that you can expect to stay out of the water entirely. The walls are made of trees, so you can technically burn them down if you like and have the resources to do so, but once burned down the tile left behind will be deep water. No loot anywhere until Swamp 5, where some mundane loot should be added to the Rune vault.

The bubble layout doesn't get used all that often, and areas of shallow or deep water would make bubble-Swamp significantly different than the other two.

[mageykun]

I've said before that a big improvement to swamp would be to change its layout a bit:

Make large, "solid" sections of trees in the level. Instead of being one giant open room, swamp levels would have a bunch of wide, meandering paths through a solid forest of "swamp trees". This would reduce level size (the levels would have a much larger proportion of "wall") and would also make each level of Swamp feel a bit different. Right now one level looks like another.

This is what I would like to see from swamp some day.

Especially if large regions of trees mean forest fires can both be a serious danger to players, and used tactically if you're clever.

[o_O]

Swamp's layout would lend itself well to some kind of ambush mechanic, especially if it replaced the stupid fleeing. Something to the effect of: Several monsters jump out of the water/trees around the player! now you must either fight them at close range or wade through shallow water to run. Threats that you can't demolish from range are in short supply anyway.

[danharaj]

Steal bog monsters from Brogue.

[dpeg]

Swamp's layout would lend itself well to some kind of ambush mechanic, especially if it replaced the stupid fleeing. Something to the effect of: Several monsters jump out of the water/trees around the player! now you must either fight them at close range or wade through shallow water to run. Threats that you can't demolish from range are in short supply anyway.

This is true and there have been proposals to turn the submerge mechanic into that: instead of the current, rather uninteresting, variant, have submerged monsters be completely hidden (cannot detect, cannot damage) until you're really close: usually, that means they're next to you, so they bite at once; however, if you're attacked, monsters may unsubmerge also at distance 2 or 3. Would also be fun for leeches.

By the way, I thought that new mimics fall under threats you cannot demolish from long range.

[dpeg]

That tells you how much I got around to playing lately

The way I thought it'd work is this: mimics only turn into proper monsters when next to you. And after that, they cling -- I've definitely had them chasing me, but I might make up the leech-like clinging. Pity that. Would be awesome for the grown up mimics.

[danharaj]

Mimics have constriction and there are points in the game where they are threatening to certain characters because of their weird depth scaling. Some of my winning characters haven't been able to kill mimics past a certain depth.

[pubby]

The two things I know about the swamp is that it's very large (I never seem to explore all of it) and that levels 2-4 are entirely forgettable.

My suggestion is to make the swamp two levels - the upper swamp and the deep swamp. The mechanic is based on the idea of diving for treasure.

The upper swamp would be very much resemble the current swamp, although with more plants to make movement slower. The interesting feature is that it contains ~9 down staircases (or perhaps portals, with only the rune vault allowing multiple visits) each leading to a unique vault which is part of the deep swamp. It would probably make more sense to have each vault be on a separate map, but still be considered the same floor.

The deep swamp vaults would each have a unique theme, but generally be made up of impassable trees and deep water. Zig-style layout seems ideal with the up stairway/portal on the other side of the vault along with a small loot, or rune if you're lucky.

[Grimm]

How about have the clumps of trees grow thicker as you descend. So Swamp 1 would be open as now, and Swamp 5 would be full of trees and pin you in to the vault fight.

[TwilightPhoenix]

Forgot about this topic.

Anyway, Swamp is already regarded as one of the most annoying branches. I don't see how making it more annoying with forced slow movement and zero reason to do anything other than ninja a rune would make it anymore welcome. Getting Shoals in your game would be preferable almost every time (Spider and Snake will always be the other branch, correct?) since Shoals would be less annoying, have loot, and have XP. Sure, the tide mechanics do result in some annoyance, but not as much as open levels with forced slow movement.

Not to mention, if spending time on the levels makes it permanently get worse and there's no reason to go there except for a rune, then there would be utterly no reason to ever do Swamp ever until you're about to do Zot. Why do something annoying and unrewarding at the appropriate level when you can put it off until you can trivialize it when the annoying mechanics won't matter? Okay, yes, you can do that now, but it's my understanding that's a problem thats to be fixed, not encouraged, and at least in current Swamp there's the prospect of decentish XP from hydras and swamp dragons, not to mention a pretty good shot at Swamp Dragon Armor if you've been lacking decent armor or need rPois for Snake/Spider.

Besides, we already have a branch that forces you to DIVE NAO. Four in fact, unless you count all of the Hells as one branch.

Slime also encourages a bit of diving, but if you want some XP, the stuff there provides decent amounts if you can handle the acid and eyes. And it also has good treasure there too, so there's some incentive for not putting it off until absolutely last. And the acid walls, while a bit annoying, can not only be avoided, but also mitigated with smart play (and Dig), unlike a forced slow movement all over the map.

Yeah, Swamp needs to be more interesting, but I don't think the "force you to move slowly if you take too long" gimmick would be ideal, if just for the fact it'd give players even more reason to put it off until they're forced to do it to win the game.