WalkerBoh wrote:For what it's worth I'm in the middle of a DDFi speed run that took the D:15 shaft and went straight into Vaults at xl15. It was easily one of the most fun, challenging crawl experiences I've had, and I would normally have never tried it if not for the rune lock (I got the silver rune successfully btw). I understand the issues with the shaft concept, but in general I just wanted to say that bypass routes can be very interesting and I think a hard lock would not be as fun. I'm still in favor of a bypass route through Elf:3.
Edit: my char had no rPois, and decent MR but no dig/disint. So I felt lair branches/elf were too high risk/too low reward compared to vaults.
As far as more bypass routes, an idea I had was to make an early (intentional) trip to the abyss an option:
1.) a chance for a normal gate to the abyss (so abyssal rune is an option) on D13 or D14
or
2.) a chance for a special, new type of gate to the abyss that is special-cased so that, if you use it to enter abyss and then survive to find a gate out, you enter D15 and bypass the runelock entierly. So if you can withstand even just Abyss:1 for a good length of time, you can bypass the lock, explore rest of the Dungeon, and then try for the silver rune or the abyssal rune (from a later, standard Abyss gateway)
Actually: Perhaps a *standard* gateway to Abyss should be guaranteed on D14 anyway?
Right now you can "access" the abyss in a grindy and spoilery way via Elf, by keeping one of the weaker banishment-casting elves in LOS without any MR gear on. You could always do this, of course, there just wasn't much point. Now, with runelock, there conceivably could be, so we should make this sort of grindy, spoilerish workaround unnecessary. I'd like to keep banishment as a legitimate threat (unintended trip to abyss), so a guaranteed D14 abyss gateway seems like a good thing: If you want to take a shot at the abyssal rune, go for it.
Now, if abyssal bypass is *also* thought to be a good idea, you can either have all the guaranteed D14 abyss gateways give the bypass option, or have a
chance for your guaranteed gateway to be the special kind that gets you into D15 without having to deal with any rune vaults (either in abyss or lair branches). I could in particular see fast species, and especially fast but low-HP, armour-restricted species (such as felid) opting for "mad sprint through abyss:1 to bypass" rather than deal with branch ends or abyss:3, which is scarier than abyss:1 and may generate nasty, lich-filled rune vaults.
So I'd recommend: Guaranteed D14 abyssal gateway that allows bypass in all cases, or guaranteed D14 abyssal gateway with a decent chance (one-in-three?) at it being a special "bypass" gateway.