The Tavern

Proposal:
Change the flavour of the hall of blades. Currently it is a bit repetitive and lacks variety (all dancing weapons are melee monsters, lack spells, have the same resistances, can't see invisible). The propossal is to add variety to the hall of blades. Make the level "the forge"; a place guarded by powerful automatons where the artificers and enchanters of all great races gather to create the weapons used in the dungeon.

Implementation
Changes may be done gradually by adding first some monsters that already exist in crawl and that fit the theme. Two or three new monsters could strenghten the flavour of the floor but I don't think that they would need many new exotic spells. I think that reflavoring a couple monsters and giving them appropiate spell sets and tiles could be enough.

Monsters
-Golems (half completed, guardians and working golems)
-Dancing weapons
-Artificers (different races)
-Enchanters (different races)
-Smiths (different races)
-Earth elementalists (different races)
-Beasts of burden (modified yaks, modified trolls)
-Dwarfs (but also other races)

Features
-Furnaces
-Iron walls
-Halls with steam and smoke
-Mechanical doors that close automatically after a few turns
-Storages with weapons and materials
-Monsters thend to be well equiped, many of them have crosbows, shields and plate armour
-half completed machines or artifacts (statues)
-Piles of coal (block sight, flamable, produce smoke when burning)
-An altar to okawaru

Disclaimer
Yes, I read rejected proposals and philosophy section. Hopefully I didn't miss a point.

Similar/related ideas and discussion
-Recent hall of blades improvement
https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=6628&nbn=1
-Rework/remove hall of blades
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=8536&p=124865&hilit=hall+blades#p124865
-Dwarven factory
https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... rf:factory
-Tukima's Srudio
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?t ... a's_Studio

I quite like this suggestion. Here's a thought- make this a neutral branch at first. If you are wearing/wielding a rand/unrand item though, they assume you are a thief and attack you. Additionally, if you try to grab any loot, they sound the alarm. This way, there's a risk/reward element like with the other optional branches

How about if they *see* you grab any loot or *notice* you wearing any artifacts, Stealty rolls would make the "sound the alarm" very interesting IMHO (Hmm, do I try to sneak in/out with the goods, and maybe get caught in the middle of everything, or try to blast my way through...)

I hope it will not be another spoiler. Dropping all artefacts near entrance to the branch is not fun.

Note the poster suggested being attacked if you were wearing or wielding, not merely carrying an artifact (Although myself, I'd say if they see you carrying an artifact *from the forge* they'd sound the alarm, not if you're just wearing what you brought with you.)

Perhaps also an expensive shop where only artifacts are sold, but at double-normal costs or something

This sounds like a good opportunity to turn HoB into an active environment with a very busy feel, with the neutral monsters concept a new concept to crawl can be added.

one particular direction could be splitting monsters into guards and workers:

Guards are hostile monsters such as the Golems, Dancing weapons, Beast of burdens and Vault humanoids (Warden, Guards ect...)
people and monster who's job it is to kill you, on the other hand you have the workers

Workers are non-hostile( in the sense that they won't attack anyone) monsters such as, Blacksmiths, Artificers/Master Artificers(harder than the current dwarven one), Earth/Fire elementalists. These lot don't fight or move from their work station unless attacked first, provoking too many worker also can make other nearby turn hostile, or by stealing from the final loot vault. These rules are summed up with "don't disturb their work" and "don't steal their work"

The dungeon layout is somewhat open but dotted with obstacles, furnaces which may blow out fire, the workers that turn hostile when hit and workbenches which can't be travelled through but can be shot over.

The overall effect from this is that it becomes the branch that you fight your way around people (unless you want a giant mob after you), steal the loot and unlike other areas have to fight your way back out against a completely different set of monsters

The branch could be 3 levels long and act as a parallel to the elven halls (magic verses metal) or kept as a single large mostly pre-designed level.

In general I would suggest to keep things simple when possible. That being said, I think it would be nice if monsters would have more specific dialog towards the player (a bit like Donald does) when aplicable. Something like:

-Guard: Stop right there you filthy <you_race>.
-The elf mastersmith chuckles when seeing your <weapon / armour / ring / amulet>.

For more complex behaviours perhaps vaults like "beogh.trap.des" can punish a player that steals an item.
Anyway, here is the image of a carrying golem just for inspiration.
http://magiccards.info/scans/en/9e/288.jpg

The mention of elven smith just got me into thinking-how about adding random artefact ring in the loot room? Dwarves would make weapons, and elves would make rings/amulets.

If elven smiths are to be added, make it a vault in Elf, I'd say. Elf 1 to 3 can use a bit more excitement, diversity, interest. But anyway...

I actually had a different idea for revamping HoB, but I won't post here at the moment. I think HoB might work better as a portal vault, and if that happens then maybe something like the Forge could become a guaranteed spawn branch in Vaults.

I like the flavor and idea of the Forge. Making stealth and looting a possible approach to an entire branch is an awesome idea in my opinion.

Another idea that might be thematic is to have few enemies with ranged attacks, but with other kinds of anti-ranged mechanics, like many enemies that are reflective, i.e., they intrinsically reflect (X% of the time) projectiles back at the player. (Also rF+, to make Fireball-cheese a difficult workaround.) Perhaps some decent resistances in general, too. Sturdy, resilient enemies all around. Another take on that theme would be enemies with no regular ranged attack, but which get an automatic "ranged counterattack" if struck from a distance, as a free action. (Turreted automatons... fits with the "we don't attack unless you strike first" theme developed earlier.)

In mid-game, characters who are strong in ranged combat do not have nearly enough threats. It would be great if this branch counterbalanced Elf a bit (which tends to be much harder for melee-focused characters). And mechanics that work well in the Forge could be made to apply occasionally in Dungeon, too, of course. Blaster mages in particular seem to have too much of an easy time once they are well established in mid-game, in my opinion, so the Forge might be a cool way to bend the stick back the other way a bit... Outside of ziggs, silent specters and ghost moths aren't enough, in my experience.

I think this is a great idea in several ways. Firstly, I really like it thematically - would seem appropriate as a branch off the Vaults, appropriate in the Dungeon per se, and certainly more interesting than the Hall of Blades.

Secondly, as others have said, this would make a nice counterpoint to the Elven halls, with a very different focus, and an obvious comparison between the kinds of attacks the Elves make and those the Dwarves can offer against you. Magic vs metal is a great idea.

Thirdly, some of the features sound interesting - I like the idea of the furnaces, halls with steam, doors that behave in new ways (I think the Runed doors are a step in the right direction, but doors seem like an area where more options could definitely be added), and the like.

Fourthly, the idea that the guards and similar will attack you on the way in, but those working there will only attack you after you steal stuff (i.e. on the way out) is a great one, and would definitely be an interesting change to have a branch with some neutral monsters. Particularly if you're using AoE attacks or similar, you might want to be careful on the way in to not trigger too many of the workers. I think they should definitely attack if you loot, but I don't think having them attack you if you just walk into the Branch with artifacts etc would make much sense. Overall, a really cool suggestion.

So, lets make this come true... no dev has said anything in the post (which would be nice in case this is a silly idea) but we can start adding monsters one by one untill we make a nice diverse ecosystem. In case the furnace doens't get implemented the code for the monsters will be there and they could be reused for other pourposes. Anyway, ideas, tiles, descriptions and help coding are welcomed.

I'm not good at programing so I'll recycle and modiffy existing code (no new abilities of behaviours for now).
For my first project I'll try to make a deep elf mastersmith!



I know that it is a bit simple and boring but I have to start with something
This monster should solve a bit the lack of range monsters.
Perhaps latter I can give him a spell to heal non-living creatures but that sounds complicated.

Transmutation spells sound like they would work in this environment.
Is there a reason why monsters don't have transmutation spells?

Unworked lifesteel

A durable statue type monster that does nothing on its own, but appears in bands near furnace vaults with one or two deep elf mastersmiths. The mastersmiths have a 20% chance each turn of activating any unworked lifesteel adjacent to them, immediately converting them to a random hostile dancing weapon.