I think Hall of Blades should be reworked (or removed?).

[nordetsa]

Especially with the new layout/monsters of vault, abyss, forest, crypt, and such. Right now I feel there isn't much reason to try Hall of Blades (will refer as HoB from now on).

There are other far more interesting place to go. The room is littered with dancing weapons. But that's just it. Besides random loot or unique, there isn't anything else. The weapon might be good for melee to use, but for others dancing weapons are tedious enemies that resist lots of magic and hit pretty hard. One can entirely skip the branch and find it not that hard to hit lv 27.

So what is the purpose of this branch, I wonder? For experience? As I've said before, skipping the branch does not seriously impede the character. For loots? The weapons aren't that good. If crypt got its new monsters due to the old one being a boring place of skeleton and ghosts that virtually became a piety farm for TSO followers, shouldn't HoB get same treatment because it's worse than the old crypt?

I feel removing HoB entirely wouldn't affect gameplay that much. If the place remains, then IMO it should be made more interesting.

[rchandra]

I go in Hall of blades if I need or want a weapon. I don't if I don't. seems ok - the weapon speeds and brands make it dangerous, the brands also make it rewarding.

Maybe the layout could use more changes or variety (the opening that came along with the second rare weapon was good).

Occasionally people suggest it be a portal vault - if so how about an untimed portal? This prevents the stairdancing approach but doesn't force you to go in right away.

[yogaFLAME]

So what is the purpose of this branch, I wonder?

Newbie trap.

[reaver]

I have never heard somebody recommend going into the Hall of Blades, or give a good reason for it's continued existence.

If the place remains, then IMO it should be made more interesting.

Already happened. As shown by this thread, it still isn't very good.

[nordetsa]

I have never heard somebody recommend going into the Hall of Blades, or give a good reason for it's continued existence.

If the place remains, then IMO it should be made more interesting.

Already happened. As shown by this thread, it still isn't very good.

I was thinking maybe the place can be renamed as 'armory' and have dancing weapons as well as living armors, perhaps add some variety as well. f the place is to stay, I think it should be more than a long room of mediocre-branded living weapons.

[WildSam]

Just think about flavour: loot which kills ya.
Awesome.

[crate]

blade is sometimes worth doing now that you get two weapons instead of one

[nordetsa]

blade is sometimes worth doing now that you get two weapons instead of one

What do you mean by that?

[Wark]

blade is sometimes worth doing now that you get two weapons instead of one

What do you mean by that?

I guess crate refers to the fact that now HoB contains 2 "rare" weapons instead of one.

[Bim]

I think it has a good purpose as somewhere to loot for good weapons if you don't have one - it's difficult enough that it's not a 'no-brainer' and it's interesting thematically (especially for people who haven't encountered it before. My only suggestion would be more layouts and I love the idea of walking animated armour to make it more like a 'proper' branch, rather than just weapons). Robes could be quick and shoot spells, plate could be plate.

[rebthor]

I don't think I've ever done the hall of blades, but on almost every character, I've been able to find an "end-game" quality weapon that I've sunk scrolls into by the time I'm doing vaults. So while it might be great to get an exec axe or bardiche or quickblade, I'll settle for my heavily enchanted battle axe, glaive or sabre (I'll grant this one isn't nearly as good).

[TeshiAlair]

Why not reflavor it into a portal vault with a terracotta-warrior kind of theme. Have it be the tomb of an ancient warrior guarded by rows of statues. Some of the statues animate and attack you, and when you kill them they crumble and you get the weapon and armor.

[WildSam]

Why not reflavor it into a portal vault with a terracotta-warrior kind of theme. Have it be the tomb of an ancient warrior guarded by rows of statues. Some of the statues animate and attack you, and when you kill them they crumble and you get the weapon and armor.

Loot. Which. Kills. Ya.
Seriously, if anything in HoB should be changed - it's not flavour. I find it pretty conceptual.

[TeshiAlair]

Loot which kills you is interesting for about 30 seconds. Then you either slog your way through trying to find a good weapon, or just leave.

As far as any remote functional purpose, i.e. "I haven't found a good weapon yet," a reflavor might be better for that purpose.

[njvack]

IMO, one of the biggest reasons HoB isn't super useful for getting a weapon is that weapon acquirement is extremely good and entirely safe.

As it stands, I usually step into the hall in hopes that a unique or two will spawn there, to remain forever parked.

[tasonir]

I would support adding armors to it, I think that would make it more interesting for most characters, as you generally only need one or two weapons, but wear 3-6 pieces of armor. You'd go in to check if you got lucky boots of running in just about any game you don't already have them. Picking up a crystal plate mail with an ego would also be a major reward. Bringing down a crystal plate armor with a short blade would be a hilariously impossible task, I want to see it happen

[reaver]

As it stands, I usually step into the hall in hopes that a unique or two will spawn there, to remain forever parked.

Note this does not actually work.

[XuaXua]

Needs some dancing artefacts.

[Speleothing]

Honestly, Hall of Blades would be a lot more exciting if the weapon code didn't force you to completely ignore 3/4 of the drops within the skill you've trained. As it is, you're just really really hoping you happen to find the top-tier of that line with a good brand, and you'll likely already have on by the time you get there.

[ontoclasm]

As it stands, I usually step into the hall in hopes that a unique or two will spawn there, to remain forever parked.

Note this does not actually work.

What, yes it does. If you set one foot on a floor, that floor is generated, and any uniques that are placed will be unavailable for generation from then on. So if you enter Blade, the game puts Nikola in a corner there, and then you leave and never come back, you will never see him.

[reaver]

As it stands, I usually step into the hall in hopes that a unique or two will spawn there, to remain forever parked.

Note this does not actually work.

What, yes it does. If you set one foot on a floor, that floor is generated, and any uniques that are placed will be unavailable for generation from then on. So if you enter Blade, the game puts Nikola in a corner there, and then you leave and never come back, you will never see him.

Suggesting that [stair dipping] might in some way result in skipping specific uniques sounds like crazy talk to me, and I know exactly how uniques get placed.

That came from here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7646&p=103301

This is similar to the myth that carrying a bunch of worthless consumables protects others from destruction. It's a common leap that's just wrong. Think about - if this was correct, wouldn't it have been removed years ago anyway as part of the anti-scummy anti-spoiler policy? Scrolls of Immolation are special cased to not destroy other scrolls, because players would drop their scrolls before read-IDing. If the dev team noticed that, wouldn't they notice and fix people stair dipping to trap uniques?

[mumra]

As it stands, I usually step into the hall in hopes that a unique or two will spawn there, to remain forever parked.

Note this does not actually work.

What, yes it does. If you set one foot on a floor, that floor is generated, and any uniques that are placed will be unavailable for generation from then on. So if you enter Blade, the game puts Nikola in a corner there, and then you leave and never come back, you will never see him.

But it doesn't lower your chances of getting other uniques on subsequent floors that you generate. If anything it simply increases the total number of uniques that generate in your game. So I think when people are doing this it's not achieving quite what they imagine.

[XuaXua]

It certainly lowers your chances of seeing Boris again.

[mumra]

It certainly lowers your chances of seeing Boris again.

Only if Boris is there.

If Boris isn't there, it raises your chances of seeing Boris on another different floor.

(If you don't want to see Boris again, don't kill him the first time...)

[njvack]

Wait, how does not seeing Boris in Blade increase my chances of seeing him on a different floor? Does the number of uniques generated on a new floor depend on the number of floors I've seen?

In other words: let's say I go to V:1 and there's a staircase to Blade. I go to Blade and no uniques are generated. Now I go to V:2. Are uniques more likely to be generated because I went to Blade?

I think this is different than the item destruction case -- I'm not carrying more scrolls, I'm generating one extra fire attack.

[mumra]

It's just a matter of probabilities.

Each floor that you generate has a given chance of uniques being placed. Therefore, visiting more floors will on average cause more uniques to be generated.

It's not like the game decides in advance which uniques are going to appear, in which case this parking thing might make sense.

Actually this is exactly like the item destruction case; just as carrying more items does not decrease the chance of a specific item getting destroyed, visiting more floors does not decrease the chance of a specific floor getting uniques.

Regarding the Boris case: again, each floor you visit has a chance to contain Boris. By dipping into a floor you wouldn't otherwise have visited, you're actually giving Boris a free bonus roll of the die. Also if some different uniques generate in Blade, there is now definitely a higher chance of Boris showing up later because there are less total uniques to pick from.

I am admittedly simplifying things somewhat here; but in terms of probabilities and averages, I can't see any way this parking tactic would provide any tangible benefit.

Besides which; killing uniques is fun, why on earth would you want to avoid them?

[Ramc]

Also if you do this you lower your overall odds of finding Donald. He hates that.

[battaile]

Regarding the Boris case: again, each floor you visit has a chance to contain Boris. By dipping into a floor you wouldn't otherwise have visited, you're actually giving Boris a free bonus roll of the die.

And you can just park him there, so you don't have to deal with him coming back later. This seems like a circular argument where everyone is actually saying the same thing.

[pickled_heretic]

I always clear hall of blades - makes a great place to store junk that I am not quite willing to throw in lava but is too dangerous to leave lying where I found it.

[xzanthius]

I wish the was something on the other side of the Hall of Blades... but that would probably mean even more Hall of Blades.

[reaver]

What about making the Hall of Blades a normal encompass vault that appears in the Vaults/D? That would force people to go through it when it generates, and we could tweak the weight so that it doesn't appear often enough to be boring. We could also mess with stair placement if we thought the floor would be skipped too much.

[crate]

how about not ever forcing me to go through blade,thanks

[reaver]

how about not ever forcing me to go through blade,thanks

This makes me think I'm asking the wrong questions. Do you mean "please don't make me do blade because it's boring" or "please don't make me do blade because it's too easy" or "please don't make me do blade because it's too hard." Could you try to give an example of when you would enjoy doing the Hall of Blades? I remember enjoying Blade the one time I did it, but that may have been novelty.

[dpeg]

This is off-topic, but here we clearly see the deficit of crate's reply minmay-style: there is just not enough context. Whoever gets the answer may feel smug about the abrasive and terse style; I don't think it makes for good communication (especially written, where we don't have anything else to guide us but the scanty words).

[TeshiAlair]

Not to bump my own stuff, but I wanted to bring up the idea of a hall of statues with weapons that come to life again.

I think it gives the flavor of "oh look, weapons attacking me" but gives it more of a concrete them, and adds a type of challenge not really elsewhere in crawl- not having a finite idea of where enemies are until they attack (save for I guess unseen horrors and trapdoor spiders?)

[njvack]

Could you try to give an example of when you would enjoy doing the Hall of Blades?

never

OK, that is possibly the least useful answer to an honest question. Seriously, trolling the thread doesn't make anything better. Let's try:

minmay (and crate), we hear that you don't like blade. Is it because the weapons hit too hard? Or not hard enough? Or they're too fast? Or they're melee weapons with no other tricks? Or because sometimes you find disto weapons and they're annoying? Or because you don't need weapons? Or because the extra XP makes the rest of the game too easy?

[crate]

Ok here are the problems with dancing weapons as enemies:

They have really big AC and EV but bad-to-average hp. This is a problem because you don't feel like you're making progress when you attack them, unless you use a few specific things. It is much better to fight high-hp, low-defense enemies (like giants or ogres) since then you actually feel like you're making progress when you attack (and it also doesn't bias toward specific types of attack for no real reason. Think about how undodgeable attacks make elves and spriggans go from "reasonably dangerous" to "entirely harmless"--this isn't a good thing to happen to an entire enemy set).
Every single enemy has a branded attack (this is specific to Blade). This is not fun because at least two brands don't actually attack your hp (distortion, draining) so they just annoy you instead of trying to kill you.
None of them see invisible so if you can stab they are lots of free xp (but this is a problem with stabbing in general imo).
Every single dancing weapon is fast. This is a problem because you combine it with the weapon brands so you don't even have the option of not fighting that distortion weapon.
They resist fire, cold, poison, and electricity (and have rN for what that's worth). Combine this with their AC and EV and you are even further limiting the attacks that are useful against dancing weapons.
They're all melee-only enemies.

I mean does anyone actually enjoy fighting dancing weapons? I have never heard that they are good enemies from anyone.

[nordetsa]

For me there are almost no reason to try HoB. Mages don't really need a melee weapon as by that time they would've come across some staff or some nice artefact weapon. There are no bow or crossbow so ranged class don't really need to go there to waste their ammo. Melee class might be tempted for the weapon, but every time I go HoB loots are not that good; by the time a melee is ready to do HoB, freezing, venom, and flame aren't that appealing, especially if you follow Trog or Okawaru. I suppose it would be useful for melees that don't follow Trog or Oka (maybe Abyssal knight?), though who would want to pick up a +2 elven long sword of venom to use it mid-late game?

[Baldu]

Blades has unnecessary XP and loot, no runes, enemies are either potentially extremely dangerous or trivial (orb of destruction, level 9 spell, high skill long/cross bow, high level stabber).

As for dancing weapons, I think they are a fine enemy as long as they are rare and don't have distortion, they present a very unique challenge that is interesting in small doses.

[dpeg]

Thanks for additional context guys!

I think everyone agrees that HoB is problematic -- it just wasn't ever a pressing concern. (Dancing weapons are annoying -- this is much less a probem than Hive being annoying: Hive came earlier and took longer.) There have been some obvious ideas about dancing weapons: for example, speed could be tied to weapon speed (something in this direction happened quite some time ago, but perhaps not enough.

Thematically, I think that dancing weapons are a great idea, and that they should be kept. A full level of them might be overblown, though. A really old I had was that the weapons *really* dance, i.e. they would move in patterns (as two: waltz, slow fox etc., but also in larger groups). It's a pretty silly idea but I really like the flavour of it, and it would make them unstabable too

[battaile]

blade is sometimes worth doing now that you get two weapons instead of one

I agree with this. I've gone in a few times recently when I didn't have a gifting god and hadn't gotten the top-tier weapon that I wanted by that point.

[jejorda2]

[Dancing weapons ]have really big AC and EV but bad-to-average hp. This is a problem because you don't feel like you're making progress when you attack them, unless you use a few specific things. It is much better to fight high-hp, low-defense enemies (like giants or ogres) since then you actually feel like you're making progress when you attack (and it also doesn't bias toward specific types of attack for no real reason. Think about how undodgeable attacks make elves and spriggans go from "reasonably dangerous" to "entirely harmless"--this isn't a good thing to happen to an entire enemy set).

In principle, I really like enemies that make certain kinds of attacks more or less useful. It gives more reasons to decide whether to use a given tactic. But when every enemy in an area has the same properties, the decision turns into "can I deal with that" and not "should I risk that."

If strength-weighted weapons had high AC and low EV compared to dex-weighted weapons, it might help. Or just assign weapon classes different defenses and resistances, or even roll them randomly.

Adding animated wands or rods could add some ranged threats. Stacks of animated ammo that fire themselves make as much sense as weapons that swing themselves. They'd still all be unliving enemies, though.

[jejorda2]

What if there were a unique in Vaults that animated the weapon in your hands and sent it to the hall of blades? Then you'd have to go in there to get it back. I guess it would need to be able to take floor weapons and weapons in your inventory so it didn't turn into an enemy of item management.

There could also be an enemy attack that pulls spells out of your mind and creates battlephere-like memory orbs that fire the spell at you. You can't cast the spell again until you defeat the memory orb or memorize it from a spellbook.

[nordetsa]

What if there were a unique in Vaults that animated the weapon in your hands and sent it to the hall of blades? Then you'd have to go in there to get it back. I guess it would need to be able to take floor weapons and weapons in your inventory so it didn't turn into an enemy of item management.

I don't think forcing people to go to HoB is a good idea. Besides, the unique you mention will be stupidly broken to melee class. How is a fighter supposed to reach HoB without his weapon?

[reaver]

It's nice to see some clear explanations for the problems.

The monsters are either completely trivial (you have invisibility or some good damage spell/launcher) or they repeatedly banish you (you try to kill them with melee).

Every single enemy has a branded attack (this is specific to Blade). This is not fun because at least two brands don't actually attack your hp (distortion, draining) so they just annoy you instead of trying to kill you.
None of them see invisible so if you can stab they are lots of free xp (but this is a problem with stabbing in general imo).
Every single dancing weapon is fast. This is a problem because you combine it with the weapon brands so you don't even have the option of not fighting that distortion weapon.
They resist fire, cold, poison, and electricity (and have rN for what that's worth). Combine this with their AC and EV and you are even further limiting the attacks that are useful against dancing weapons.
They're all melee-only enemies.

A lot of dislike seems to be coming from the monotony and loss of tactics caused by having the same enemies over and over. Would dancing weapons be passable enemies if they were mixed with other enemies? For example, would they be better if they were added to Elf or Late D?

Either way, I'm convinced now the best thing to do to Blade is to remove it.

[jpeg]

Could the idea be salvaged as a Bailey variant? (I don't know, I've only reached Blade once and never entered it.)

[nordetsa]

Wouldn't dancing weapon in early-mid game bailey be OOD considering their high speed?