The Tavern

This is a portal intended to replace labyrinths. The easiest way to describe it is "a ziggurat with 1 enemy and 1 loot per floor".

You start in a circular room, along with 1 enemy. Upon killing the enemy, an item and a portal appears. If you take the portal, you return to the dungeon. If you pick up the item, the portal disappears and a new enemy gets created. This enemy follows the same rules: if you kill it, another item and portal appear.

The enemies and loot would of course have incremental difficulty, with the later enemies being extremely difficult. If you can manage to defeat 5 enemies, the coliseum will be completed, and you'll receive the last item and portal.

I wonder if it would be possible to use Thunderdome code to do this.

This has been proposed before here and here

Anyway, I think the idea behind Labyrinths is to provide a more "puzzle" minigame for a while. I don't think it's done well, but it is something that no other aspect of the game provides. I think any replacement would need to capture that feeling. (I have an idea and will write it out if anybody wants). Otherwise, there isn't really any reason for this to replace Labs when they can just be added as a new portal. (Except for "Labs are bad," but if the devs accepted that they'd already be removed).

That's not to say this is a bad idea. I rather like it, particularly the betting version mentioned in the above links. I just don't think this will replace Labyrinths if it's implemented.

I don't think you're doing yourself a favour by suggesting this as a labyrinth replacement (for example, because discussion about your ideas will be -- completely needlessly -- superposed by discussions about the (non) merits of labyrinths, for which threads already exist). Regarding the idea itself, I think it is too blatant a ripoff of ziggurats to be interesting. There should be some variation, in my opinion, and here are some ideas:

In ziggurats, you have to make the decision "leave or progress" blindly (without knowing the contents of the next storey); this could be different for colliseums. One way to implement this: when you go to the next level, the exit portal is next to you and open, but closes after a few turns.
Choose a theme (like in ziggurats) but stay true to the theme throughout the colliseum

The coliseum could just have an announcer of sorts yell at you what your next opponent would be before choosing between grabbing the item or leaving.
I don't think sticking to a theme like zigs do is a good idea because in zigs you often have to fight tons of boring monsters alongside the interesting ones and some groups don't even have that many "interesting" monsters.

Spawning the next monster behind clear glass could work as a preview. That way you could xv them.

I think it is too blatant a ripoff of ziggurats to be interesting

If ziggurats were a common occurrence I would agree with you, but they're not.

Choose a theme

I envisioned it as a single monster set with a vague ancient greek/rome style. I agree with dck that there aren't enough groups to have multiple themes.

pubby wrote:
I think it is too blatant a ripoff of ziggurats to be interesting

If ziggurats were a common occurrence I would agree with you, but they're not.

i was also under the impression that Ziggurat were definitely not for medium level players. I have won once (Gargoyle EE with 4 runes), got to Zot 2 times in total and found runes in 10-15 games, but I never even considered the option of trying to fight my way through a Ziggurat. Am I wrong?

On the other hand, timed portal vaults are generally appropriate for the level they spawn in. I have rarely died in one, and when that happened, it was more due to my inexperience as a player than anything else. This proposal sounds interesting, and if this is what Ziggurats are like I find it disappointing that only 15-runers can try it.

I think I liked this idea better when it was attached to the revised demigod, whereby the other gods would challenge you with portals to coliseums on a gift timer. I'm not sure what happened to that proposal, but it felt a bit more flavourful than just the vault.

That said, I'm not opposed to this, pubby. I just wish the game would spawn portals we've already got more frequently. Make a coliseum wizlab and make them all more common and we've got a deal.

5ubbak wrote:i was also under the impression that Ziggurat were definitely not for medium level players. I have won once (Gargoyle EE with 4 runes), got to Zot 2 times in total and found runes in 10-15 games, but I never even considered the option of trying to fight my way through a Ziggurat. Am I wrong?

On the other hand, timed portal vaults are generally appropriate for the level they spawn in. I have rarely died in one, and when that happened, it was more due to my inexperience as a player than anything else. This proposal sounds interesting, and if this is what Ziggurats are like I find it disappointing that only 15-runers can try it.

3-runers can go to Zig, they just need to not go too deep. There is good loot even if you do just 5 levels. Doing all 27 levels is much harder than getting 15 runes.

In my opinion, it's good when portals force you to make risk vs reward decisions.

Obviousy not all portals should be attempted by all characters, but a portal that forces you to kill whatever's inside to get past doesn't fit well with a lot of character types. Smart players wouldn't take a heavily stealth-based character into such a place but it would be a really frustrating way to die for a new player. Even zigs allow you to just take the exit out if you somehow manage to do so.

archaeo wrote:I think I liked this idea better when it was attached to the revised demigod, whereby the other gods would challenge you with portals to coliseums on a gift timer. I'm not sure what happened to that proposal, but it felt a bit more flavourful than just the vault.

That said, I'm not opposed to this, pubby. I just wish the game would spawn portals we've already got more frequently. Make a coliseum wizlab and make them all more common and we've got a deal.

I do like the idea of god-themed challenges and the existing large god vaults have nice flavor to them (the sif vampire vault among others.) Having the portal be an arena of one of the more "violent" gods who give good items (monsters/loot themed from Vehumet, Trog, Okawaru, Kiku) would be a neat spin to put on this.

Mod note: dpeg was right; this devolved into another lab thread. Split.

The Tavern

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