Alternative to the Runelock

[Daggtex]

Tiktacy wrote:
The idea of all improvements in the game is to make it more enjoyable, right? Well, disadvantages =\= fun

Well, actually, that is not quite true. The entire mechanism behind game theory is that one is given to choices to make that will influence (not necessarily guarantee) an outcome. If one is given every advantage, those choices become meaningless and the entire fun of it being a 'game' is lost. Likewise, if someone is given every disadvantage (to the point that it is completely impossible or arbitrary) the choices again become meaningless. This one of the reasons why I love Crawl; its philosophy/constitution sets it dead against any no-brainers or anything else that would adulterate its pure gaming fun.

In this situation, it appears that players have a strong tendency to save Lair for the endgame as an optimal strategy; one which allows them every advantage. Thus, to make the game gain reach the sweet-spot of fun, a disadvantage must be introduced. Tiktacy, you yourself suggest that it may be too easy. That means that for the majority of hardcore players who save it for the end, it would be ridiculously over-the-top no-choice-involved easy. As such, in this case, disadvantage will equal fun.

[Sandman25]

I am not sure hardcore players will ever notice problems with that rune lock, it will affect new players mostly. Crawl is already punishing novice players for wandering into Orc/Slime/Elfs, now it can get just uglier.

[and into]

That's true, Daggtex, but the devil is in the details: How does one implement that disadvantage? You don't want it to feel unfair or arbitrary, that will indeed make the game less fun even if it also makes it more challenging. In short, having Crawl be challenging is necessary, but not sufficient, for the game to be fun.

Tiktacy: I'm OK with the water in Shoals, personally, but yes I agree Swamp can be annoying. It is definitely a lot better now than it used to be, but could probably stand further improvement in layout and enemy differentiation, and not having to deal with so many submerged enemies would help. (Or making the submerge mechanic more interesting, the swamp worms don't really cut it IMO....) But I see that as a bigger project that's only tangentially related to the question of rune lock. Oddly enough, I tend to find Spider tedious (personally), but I think it is better designed than Swamp. Snake and Shoals are well designed overall, in my opinion; I'm fine with the tide mechanic in Shoals but I could see how it might be annoying to some people. (I just happen not to be one of them.)

I think everyone has a favorite and a pet peeve amongst the Lair branches, and I'm not sure how much that is ever going to change. The fact that you only need one rune for the lock does at least mean that, worst case, you can still choose lesser of two evils. (I guess technically three, but unless you are going Jiyva / Lugonu, Slime / Abyss probably isn't an option realistically.)

[Daggtex]

@and into: Yes, the disadvantage should not push the choice aspect into the everything-will-fail why-even-try difficulty. It needs to hit the sweet-spot between too trivial and too impossible. (Also, part of Crawl's depth of choices relies on the arbitrary aka random generation of the game; arbitrary is ok, it just needs to average out well enough.)
This disadvantage thus should encourage /meaningful/ choice. (Challenging is /not/ actually part of it, more a product of it. Opening a jar can be challenging, but it does not have enough choice to be a good game.)

@Sandman: The question being asked in this thread is "will a rune lock will provide this type of disadvantage?". It may also have some other things going for it, like ease of implementation and increasing balancing infrastructure, but in the end, the this question is the one that is probably the most important. Honestly, it may not be enough of a disadvantage, but any push towards the sweet-spot is better than none. And the simplicity with which it can be added or removed makes it prime material for testing. Likely, it won't finish the job by itself, but in such an evolving game as Crawl, will anything ever truly be 'finished'? New players dealing with the game is a whole different issue, one which could probably be better addressed in an entirely different way than indirectly pulling them away from one danger by leaving the whole dungeon open (and thus giving them access to more dangers).

[dpeg]

I have a feeling this particular rule change has been inflated from all sides. It does not strive to single-handedly repair Crawl's midgame, nor will it render Crawl nightmarishly hard in one fell swoop. It is supposed to address something that is widely perceived as a real problem, and with minimal invasion (code and design). I am very happy to read that some of you will be unaffected because they always played like this.

Also, it's not that the rune lock was an inspiration on the spur of the moment. The idea is old, and it has been discussed for a while, including alternatives (like tempting players to do Lair branch ends earlier by putting more loot there). I don't think that Crawl is fundamentally broken in this regard, but I fully believe that the game will be better with the change. The only way to find out is by trying.

[nordetsa]

I think if the game is to challenge players to do the lair branches bit earlier, it would inevitably develop into making a rune lock, or something of a heavy restraint. I doubt placing loots would be enticing enough; if the branch's hard, the players will simply come back later. Elf:3 has nice loot, but not many want to do Elf:3 early because of that.

[dpeg]

I think if the game is to challenge players to do the lair branches bit earlier, it would inevitably develop into making a rune lock, or something of a heavy restraint. I doubt placing loots would be enticing enough; if the branch's hard, the players will simply come back later. Elf:3 has nice loot, but not many want to do Elf:3 early because of that.

That was precisely my reasoning. (Among developers, I've been one of the hawks who think only the stick will help. A definite favour of the lock over the doves' carrot --loot-- is that less work is necessary to get results. That's not just about effort, but also about balancing backload.)

[Tiktacy]

I have a feeling this particular rule change has been inflated from all sides. It does not strive to single-handedly repair Crawl's midgame, nor will it render Crawl nightmarishly hard in one fell swoop. It is supposed to address something that is widely perceived as a real problem, and with minimal invasion (code and design). I am very happy to read that some of you will be unaffected because they always played like this.

Also, it's not that the rune lock was an inspiration on the spur of the moment. The idea is old, and it has been discussed for a while, including alternatives (like tempting players to do Lair branch ends earlier by putting more loot there). I don't think that Crawl is fundamentally broken in this regard, but I fully believe that the game will be better with the change. The only way to find out is by trying.

Hmm, I think you are right actually. I'm sorry, I've been making a lot of assumptions on my part. =/

I say we should add it. But if you promise that we can expect further improvements towards crawls midgame than I believe that we will reduce a large amount of the opposing sides argument.

[earLOBe]

I'd count myself a supporter of the runelock, although I think it'll have to be coupled with improvements to swamp/snake/spider to be enjoyable as well as challenging. Perhaps it may be a good idea in the long run to expand the pre-D:15 midgame, say with an additional rotating rune branch coming off of Orc, which provides different threats to the rotating lair branches. This would be a long-term solution to the S/S/S/S problems of characters that, say, find no rPois, or low-aptitude characters that require more experience to take on tough branch ends. It would also allow a shortening of the post-lock dungeon and an increase in its difficulty (I presume I'm not alone in only really finding late D interesting when there are challenge floors/vaults?). I don't mean to start a discussion on that sort of thing now, but I'd like to point out that there are a lot of long-run improvements that can make the runelock into a valuable part of the game.

[Lasty]

Please keep in mind that this runelock is only meant to do one thing right now: force people to go into Lair rune branches before they would otherwise. There's no reason not to see what sort of effect it has before condemning it. If it turns out to be awful, I'm sure steps will be taken to fix that, either by removing the lock or resolving the awfulness in some other way, as appropriate. Other issues with the rune branches may exist, but those are separate issues.

I support trying out the rune lock. I think that restrictions breed creativity, and forcing players to encounter an area before they feel ready will force more creative play in order to survive. If it turns out to create an unfun level of challenge, we can always revert.

[Bloax]

I probably sound like a broken record by now, but a big reason of why the branch ends are 'saved for later' is because the lair runes are both guarded by relatively tough stuff - and without a pile of goodies that come with it.
The silver rune can suffer the same fate, but not because there's not enough loot - in fact Vaults:$ is one of the biggest collections of good stuff in the game - but because the baddies are very strong.

In fact the only other 'normal game' rune that doesn't come with goodies is the abyssal rune, and that one can't be expected to do so. The silver and slime runes are both found in places with a lot of potentially good items.
This trend isn't seen nearly as often (3 runes without loot, 2 with a lot) in the extended game though, what with only two runes (Glowing/Magical) barely having any loot, the Dark rune having a little bit, and most others having a fair amount of it - with the Fiery and Golden runes having truckloads of it; thus only 2 runes without loot, and 8 with. (The hilarious thing about this being that you'll usually be well-dressed by then, unlike post-lair-runes.)

So I can't really see the solution a rune lock would bring, since all it 'fixes' is forcing you to do the unattractive branch ends. Without fixing the unattractiveness of them. (Your big, fat reward for doing them is a rune. Yay, trinkets! Useful!)

[rebthor]

This will cause D:14 to D:20 and V:1 to V:4 to be easy bordering on trivial. Perhaps much of the later dungeon as well. This is why I think it's a misguided effort since you've just moved the boring part to a different area of the game. This will only be fixed by smoothing the difficulty curve. Right now there is often no reason to explore spider/swamp/shoals/snake fully and just dive for the rune because the experience you get there is low for the player's level and the loot varies. If one is forced to do the lair branch first, they will be fully explored and then D:14 through D:20 will get mostly skipped instead.

[and into]

So I can't really see the solution a rune lock would bring, since all it 'fixes' is forcing you to do the unattractive branch ends. Without fixing the unattractiveness of them. (Your big, fat reward for doing them is a rune. Yay, trinkets! Useful!)

We'll, Shoals usually has good loot and Snake sometimes does, but that's neither here nor there.

Part of what makes those branches unattractive for a lot of players is that they can (and from a survivalist perspective, usually should) be put off until they just kind of become a formality. And formalities aren't fun. The fact that the lair branches can also fail to give decent loot might rub some salt in the wound, but the deeper problem is that the lair branches are unnecessary until late game, at which point they tend to be pretty boring for most characters.

After the rune lock is added I think it may help bring other problems into clearer focus. Maybe improving quantity and quality of loot (at least in the harder lair branches) would be a good additional improvement after rune lock, but that would be a separate discussion to have after rune lock is implemented.

[Bloax]

Why is the rune lock necessary to improve the situation with the lair branches, then?
I mean it can be a temporary measure to analyze what's up with them, but that's not a reason to add it into the game.

[dpeg]

Bloax: We had three fully grown threads on that matter! I don't think you can except me to regurgitate the reasoning once more in a slightly different permutation. Hint: it really has nothing to do with loot.

[and into]

This will cause D:14 to D:20 and V:1 to V:4 to be easy bordering on trivial. Perhaps much of the later dungeon as well. This is why I think it's a misguided effort since you've just moved the boring part to a different area of the game. This will only be fixed by smoothing the difficulty curve. Right now there is often no reason to explore spider/swamp/shoals/snake fully and just dive for the rune because the experience you get there is low for the player's level and the loot varies. If one is forced to do the lair branch first, they will be fully explored and then D:14 through D:20 will get mostly skipped instead.

But making D14 to 20 harder is pretty simple, as all you would need to do is make some of the tougher stuff from lower dungeon spawn earlier. Also, you could lower the amount of experience given by some of the stuff in the lair branches. Those are relatively east tweaks, whereas "make lair branches harder" is a much more difficult task for multiple reasons, not least because you would be trying to balance them for a pretty wide range of character levels.

(Note that, with rune lock, that isn't so much of a problem, as we know that the branches have to be calibrated with a ~level 15 character in mind. Unlike now, where 90 percent of the branches are suitable challenge for level 15 or so, but then uniques that can spawn there and the more difficult rune vaults seem designed so that they'd present at least some challenge to the higher level at which most people tackle the lair vaults--because, at present, people *can* do that. You can't really balance difficulty across a 10-level spread and currently the lair branches suffer from a kind of schizophrenia as a result, whereby they are mostly appropriate for characters that have cleared lair, Orc, and half the dungeon, but then have some crazy stuff in them that is geared toward the fact that, in practice, most people unfortunately put those branches off until they are trivial.)

I think you are also overestimating how much the extra experience will affect dungeon. It will have an effect, surely, but I don't think it will be as great as you think. I've had one or two games where I had the crazy good luck of finding and using two pots of experience around or just after lair, and while those do buff your character up a lot, the difficulty curve of the dungeon catches up with you surprisingly fast. If this weren't the case potions and cards of experience would have to be removed. Fortunately they usually turn out to be less game-shattering than they might seem at first glance, even though they are very strong effects. I suspect that the extra experience from doing one of the lair branches is not going to require much more than (at most) some minor tweaks to address, if even that.

[Lasty]

Bloax, all the things you mention may be problematic, or they may not. However, arguing about whether or not they are critical issues isn't necessary, because we can instead get empirical data on the situation by implementing the lock and then seeing how it goes.

There's pretty much infinite latitude to resolve these issues or any others that come up, but there's no need to do so before we know that they are issues. There's also no cost to empirically testing this, so there's no reason to object.

[indspenceable]

(Shoals 5 being the most frequent exception to that, of course, for a variety of reasons. Less commonly, but nonetheless, Snake 5 can be tough even for high level characters, as well.)

I've been hearing this allot and i think it's the main problem some people have with rune lock, because if you get both the "hard" water level and the "hard" poison level your first rune could be almost impossible, I'm not sure if this suggestion has come up yet but i think it would be a cool idea to link spider with shoals and link swamp with snake so that you always have a more doable first rune.

There's no hard water branch or hard poison branch. Depends on the character.

What type of character would have a harder time with Spider than Snake? (I can think of exactly one set of circumstances that would make this true)

[Siegurt]

What type of character would have a harder time with Spider than Snake? (I can think of exactly one set of circumstances that would make this true)

Hm, I always have a slightly harder time with spider than with snake, I think that has a more to do with playstyle than monster difficulty though (My usual tactic is to draw creatures to me and beat the crap out of them at range until they're up close then kill them (if they're still alive) that obviously works better in snake than in spider.)

[Lasty]

Spiders are fast and nagas are slow, so characters that like to keep their distance and retreat frequently will have an easier time in Snake. Spider also has monsters that immobilize and confuse you from a distance, while Snake does not.

[rebthor]

Spiders are fast and nagas are slow, so characters that like to keep their distance and retreat frequently will have an easier time in Snake. Spider also has monsters that immobilize and confuse you from a distance, while Snake does not.

Spider is also generally wide open and snake full of corridors so that can also affect the approach although it's not as much an effect.

[Tiktacy]

Spiders are fast and nagas are slow, so characters that like to keep their distance and retreat frequently will have an easier time in Snake. Spider also has monsters that immobilize and confuse you from a distance, while Snake does not.

Spider is also generally wide open and snake full of corridors so that can also affect the approach although it's not as much an effect.

I think we can all agree though that shoals is the harder water branch, period.

[thevogonpoet]

Self-imposed rune lock anecdote:

I am a truly terrible player, I think I have only beaten the game with MiGl, SpEn or xxFE. I thought I would give the rune lock a shot with my current DsIE of Veh, which is admittedly a power combo, and did D1-Lair, Lair 1-8, Orc1-4, Drest-D13, rune. I had rPois, I had a choice between Swamp and Spider, so naturally I took Swamp.

Result: rune obtained, Lernaean Hydra slain at level 15.
It was ok. Actually, I had freezing cloud, so everything was a (very careful) cakewalk up until the Lernaean Hydra, which was also a (even more careful) cakewalk after quaffing a potion of speed, but did at least get my pulse racing. It was in fact fun.

The only threatening thing was Zot traps, and damn, they seemed to be everwhere - I actually ended up skipping almost all of Swamp 4 and 5 to avoid the Zot traps - I got hit twice anyway, getting horrible mutated by contamination (potion trip to stash) and petrified, but also detected quite a few more. If we do force people to do Lair branches at relatively low levels, and trap detection continues to be proportinonal to level, then perhaps Zot trap instance could be toned down a bit? As it was, I was pretty lucky to have a cure mut potion already, and I certainly don't feel my XP boost from doing Swamp was that great, because I skipped a fair chunk of it out of trap fear.

Thoughts: rune lock not as terrible as I originally feared - with a power combo, and some luck, it was not too bad for me, a truly crap player of roguelikes. I will probably die now on D23, or the first level of Vaults, which is the fate of most of my got-to-Lair dudes. On the other hand, I don't know how most other characters would have managed to defeat the LH... I guess invisi-ninja-ing the rune would be just about doable, as would luring the LH away (carefully, cos its fast through the water). Beserkers with flaming blades could just summon a bro, read a tele scroll, and beserk it (I did this once, and killed the LH the turn before my tele kicked in, but pretty risky I guess).

Anyway, seems like the sort of interesting idea that Trunk is made for...

[and into]

perhaps Zot trap instance could be toned down a bit?

Thanks for the anecdote! I think toning down frequency of Zot traps is exactly the sort of thing that would be reasonable to do if a rune lock were added.

[johlstei]

No zot traps before the rune lock would be a good change. Like zot's influence grows as you get lower in the dungeon, and past D:14 your character can't bear it without holding a rune. Zot's influence is too weak to trap people any higher.

Alternatively, increase your chance of detecting zot traps the more runes you are holding. That would actually tempt me to go for runes earlier even without a lock, since a single zot trap can be pretty devastating.

[ragnarokchu]

My 2cents here from a newer player that this change might effect the most.

To be honest most people have a problem getting 3 runes to begin with and then even getting to zot and getting back out with it. Your rune lock only effects players trying to meta-game the already weakness/issue in the game. While players attempting to play the game at a normal pace wouldn't be effected by it.

The issue is that the game doesn't have a proper logical difficulty curve nor reason for you to get more runes outside of 3. It would be logical that if I meet the orcish mines, I would be able to clear it out with some tact and exploring a few levels up and down. Currently it's a death sentence for 90% of character builds at that point which is why you also explore the lair. Even then at that point doing any of the side dungeons within the lair itself is a death sentence with the same with the lair bottom sometimes. Thus you avoid doing any runes until they become "trivial", because if you can do one of them then you can do them all in that part of the game (no scale of difficulty)

I think what you should do is not shove so many possible runes within at the start of the game and attempt to SPREAD them out the dungeon with varying depths that determines what could spawn in there.

IE elvish halls at depth 10 would be easier then one that you find in 15 which would have much stronger monsters. Every game then would be alot more unique because people would have to figure out what they want to tackle (choose the harder branch that they are better at fighting or the "easier" one that their current build might not be able to handle)

Part 2 you will want to add stuff to the zot levels that make it much harder if you don't have the runes to remove the type of "buff" it has, but every rune would reduce it the default difficulty level.

For example if you don't have the shoals runes, zot might have a flooded section with tons of eels and krakens in it and so on. Without the spiders rune you'll be swarmed with powerful spiders at certain parts or without the elf runes there will be elven mages and whatever ambushing you. So you could try winning the game with no runes but then you'll have to deal with 15 different ways (could be more then one way it effects the 5 levels as well for something different every game) you might find added difficulty in Zot on TOP of it's normal difficulty. Or vice versa while your escaping from the dungeon, every single rune you didn't grab. They will be trying to do things from stopping you to reaching back to the top and escaping (trying to steal it from you, Zot calls on them or help or w/e). So you can try to sneak in with the min bare 3 and get through Zot. But escaping with it is marginally MUCH harder for every single rune you don't have.

Although this might be a lot of work, I think something like this would be worth it because it can easily add alot more unique/interesting playthroughs in the game as well as make Zot feel more "epic" end game when you attempt to do it (and harder). Then most importantly gives people reason to grab every single rune unless they feel as though they can deal with the branches later on the game that they didn't do now.

Also I think it makes stuff like the shining one or the holy wrath brand still just as good, but other gears are more viable or types of gods because you could easily be fighting then just more then demons/undead or whatever as the game progresses.

[TeshiAlair]

While I like the fact that some early branches are more high-risk/high-reward than others, I do like the idea of scaling zot in some way. However, spreading the runes is a tricky plan, because it makes things more RNG dependent which is never a good thing.

[crate]

In theory the runelock is fine to me but in practice spider and swamp (and to a lesser degree shoals) are such a slog to navigate through that I would dislike rune lock even if those branches had no monsters at all.

If I get a game with spider + swamp I will convert to Jiyva because the alternative is too horrible to comprehend (and if I die, then great, I no longer have to deal with those branches anyway).

At this point I accept that swamp is a lost cause and I will never be happy with it, but spider is still fixable by removing naturally-generating webs.

[Lasty]

Wasn't there just recently a commit that removed naturally-occurring webs generating after the level first loads?

[Siegurt]

Yeah, it went in on the 22nd:

  Code:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
b0ee514 | Chris Campbell | 2013-10-22 14:57:40 +0100

Don't place additional webs over time in Spider
There are more than enough between the initial amount and those from
jumping spider attacks. Placing even more over time makes autotravel
through the branch much more difficult than it needs to be.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Before rune-lock was added even.

[Sar]

The "initial amount" still exists and is what crate is complaining about, I believe.

[TeshiAlair]

In my only win, webs saved me from Mennas. I like em.

[Siegurt]

Ah, I interpreted "Naturally generating" as "spawning on the level in spots you've already travelled".

[dpeg]

crate: If something is annoying -- you make a case for Spider, Swamp and Shoals -- then you shouldn't blame something else (in this case the rune lock) for it. Overcoming the annoyance by pure force can only ever be the second-best solution!

On the branches themselves: I myself feel rarely annoyed, but I certainly don't play enough to be bothered much (by most anything in the game) and I also play really slow. [I think to have noticed that regular and/or quick players have a lower threshold, which is natural and fine.]
If you have specific ideas for specific branches, please voice them! (Not here, in a separate thread but you know this, of course.) Perhaps the rune lock, however long it exists, can help in improving some of these branches.

[crate]

I'm not blaming the rune lock for making the lair branches awful. The lair branches are awful with or without the rune lock. It's just that I am allowed to skip them if the rune lock does not exist.

[and into]

I'm not blaming the rune lock for making the lair branches awful. The lair branches are awful with or without the rune lock. It's just that I am allowed to skip them if the rune lock does not exist.

Well, this is kind of what I meant by "bringing problems with the Lair branches into clearer focus."

If anything is or was a "band-aid" fix, it was allowing characters to do the Lair brances so late in the game that anything that many players found annoying or that might have been unbalanced for lower leveled characters, didn't actually matter, and so was, to a greater extent than it should, accumulated in the game. So some improvements have definitely been made (Swamp layout was improved by, IIRC, evilmike very successfully), but also a lot of non-broken but also non-ideal stuff has remained in. I'd like to see swamp improved, but—failing that—removed, rather than have it continue limping on, so to speak, and remain the red-headed stepchild of the Lair branches. If rune lock ends up initiating a movement in that direction, in the long term, that will be a net benefit, even if for a short window of time in trunk, some players experience a bit more tedium.

(Occasionally improvements take more than one version to really work out. 0.5 heavy armor was broken, but the fixes introduced in 0.6 over-nerfed to a point that the system was actually worse, IMO. However, over 0.7, 0.8, etc., it was improved gradually until now, where I think the current system is better than what came before. Yes it would have been nice to jump from 0.5 to now in one fell swoop, but even in retrospect that seems like it would have been very unrealistic. From 0.5 to 0.6 there wasn't progress, and arguably some regression, yet that more radical step (the "supernerf") ended up being necessary as the inception of building a system back up that is much better balanced—though I'm sure improvements can and will continue to be made. I think rune lock, while not really meant to improve the lair branches per se, might help move development in that direcation over the next few versions.)

[WalkerBoh]

Well, this is kind of what I meant by "bringing problems with the Lair branches into clearer focus."

Sorry if this is a minor derail, but it's semi-relevant. I think the only bad thing about the rune lock is that if you don't get rPois, it can be really hard/annoying to do any of the lair branches. In my first game with the lock, I drew Snake/Swamp and didn't get rPois through d14/orc/lair. I chose to go into Elf and died in a Wizlab. Anyways, although the lair branches are certainly doable without rPois, I find it pretty aggravating to be constantly resting off poison or burning curing every other fight. Especially around xl15 where you tend to take a lot of poison damage in a place like Spider or Snake.

So I guess my request would be to make some way of dealing with poison more common (curing or rPois, etc.), or to tweak the lair branches so that it is not so tedious to do them without rPois. I think in 80% of cases most chars won't have this issue, but it can definitely be aggravating for the 20% that do.

Disclaimer, I play almost exclusively melee-centric chars. I know things like ignite poison or freezing cloud make lair branches much easier without rPois, but I don't care much for being pigeonholed into learning a specific spell or two to be able to proceed.

[pubby]

I'm not blaming the rune lock for making the lair branches awful. The lair branches are awful with or without the rune lock. It's just that I am allowed to skip them if the rune lock does not exist.

This is exactly how I feel.

Sorry if this is a minor derail, but it's semi-relevant. I think the only bad thing about the rune lock is that if you don't get rPois, it can be really hard/annoying to do any of the lair branches.

rPois has literally become the most important resistance in the game. If you don't find it, you're in for a terrible experience.

[dpeg]

Well, now that the lock is there, I am eager for actual experiences from games -- whether you barely scraped by the lock or whether you lost. This will help to see which changes are most important to make Crawl-with-lock as much fun as possible. I believe that the game is playable in its the current trunk form (even though the lock is absolutely unpolished which would not be allowed to happen for a release) but it's also clear that there are a number of ways to improve it.

What I've read so far and like is addressing spawning ranges of some uniques, and generation of Zot traps. Guaranteeing rPois is of course not Crawl-style, but there are many other possibilities. Again, detailed feedback is welcome!

[XuaXua]

I was voluntarily rune-locked yesterday, but I had too much fun with a scroll of immolation in Orc and took myself out.

[nordetsa]

I haven't played the version with the runelock yet, but I managed to get both of the lair branch runes before heading down to D:15. It was really good that I got Swamp and Snake, as well as a relatively easy rune vault.

I think things would not be easy if there was the Shoals. I think that branch is way harder than vault, especially the floor 5.

[XuaXua]

I haven't played the version with the runelock yet, but I managed to get both of the lair branch runes before heading down to D:15. It was really good that I got Swamp and Snake, as well as a relatively easy rune vault.

I think things would not be easy if there was the Shoals. I think that branch is way harder than vault, especially the floor 5.

CAn't do Shoals without autoexplore.

[WalkerBoh]

What I've read so far and like is addressing spawning ranges of some uniques, and generation of Zot traps. Guaranteeing rPois is of course not Crawl-style, but there are many other possibilities. Again, detailed feedback is welcome!

I agree regarding rPois. I would rather tweak the branches than just make the soliton to them more common.

In my view, it is perfectly okay to have one branch that is really poison-heavy, and I think it should be spider. Swamp isn't sooo bad if you have clarity, though poison cloud is really annoying without rPois. The real problem in my mind is Snake. Snake already has a good gimmick with constrict, I don't think the abundance of poison adds anything interesting. Making nagas less likely to stand 3-4 spaces awa and spit at you would go a long way toward making snake less tedious without rPois.

[johlstei]

Well, now that the lock is there, I am eager for actual experiences from games -- whether you barely scraped by the lock or whether you lost. This will help to see which changes are most important to make Crawl-with-lock as much fun as possible. I believe that the game is playable in its the current trunk form (even though the lock is absolutely unpolished which would not be allowed to happen for a release) but it's also clear that there are a number of ways to improve it.

What I've read so far and like is addressing spawning ranges of some uniques, and generation of Zot traps. Guaranteeing rPois is of course not Crawl-style, but there are many other possibilities. Again, detailed feedback is welcome!

I posted this in the other thread, but may as well repost it if we are collecting anecdotes here. In summary, gargoyles make things easy and I got the shoals rune.

First post-rune lock attempt at an early rune was a great success. Of course, I was a gargoyle with repel missiles castable, which kind of trivialized shoals, but nonetheless, 1/1. My choices were that and spider, I chose to do D:1-11, Lair:1-8, D:12-14, Orc:1-4, Shoals:1-4, Spider:1-4, Shoals:5, and then died in Vaults.

I also got abyssed on orc:4 which helped get me a good bit of xp with my great mace of holy wrath. I was level 17 when starting Shoals:5. I considered going for the abyssal rune first just so I could post about my creative solution to the runelock, but I decided not to press my luck when I found a portal out.