The Tavern

I had a LONe go through the depths the other day and I find them pretty good but I also have some problems with them.
For one thing I find it a good idea that "D" is overall shorter and think 22 levels is a good number for it, also the level of opposition I found in the depths was definitely strong and satisfying to beat, but there are some things I'd like to bring up for discussion:

While the sudden spike in difficulty is appropriate it may lead some weaker characters to having to do the other lair branch to scrounge up a bit of extra power to at least start making it through the depths. The same way I don't think it's a good idea to force people to do one of the lair branches via lock, I think maybe the first two levels could use a bit less lethal monster set so people do not have to slog through a second branch (that is normally not challenging after beating the first one) only to keep going down the depths without huge risk.
Also several really annoying monsters that I expected to be gone like giant skeletons and boggarts (both of which come in packs) spawn there which I find a pretty awful idea because giant skeles are horribly boring to fight and boggarts are the epitome of the summoner problem. Having packs of five really weak monsters that can snap their fingers and spawn stone giants and tmons and sphinxes doesn't sound like fun to me.
Other than that, well, I didn't see much crazy stuff just wandering around out of a reduced number of titans and tmons which aren't all that horrifying. Sphinxes I don't like but that's more of a disliking of paralysis as the terrible thing it is than anything else.

Now the most obvious problem I believe Depths generates is it makes V a joke. By the time you hit vaults you've already cut through basically 1-3 levels of V:$ monsters, so 1-4 are annoying and mindless and V: $ loses part of its charm, but is still okay. This is less aggravating now that spawn range doesn't reach U: 5 (which is where my LONe got V entrance) but it's still pretty silly that the subbranch is so much simpler.
Although I assume this last problem must be already being looked at, so the main point of this post is "fuck boggarts" I suppose.

Boggarts are great enemies. There are plenty of ways to kill them. You might have to walk away a little bit to set up a good way to get rid of them, but you have to walk away from lots of other things in this game too.

Boggarts are fun, they provide unusual choice - try to kill several boggarts and run away, then repeat. Some characters even can kill the whole group in one fight.

Boggarts are one of the very few reasons why the Wand of Polymorph is worth carrying around.

Boggarts don't normally matter because they often spawn in places where they need a lot of time to summon things that aren't trash, which makes them bearable. However if you let them spawn in a place where they can summon giants, liches and paralyzers then you're basically asking me to walk away from them every time they don't just walk up to my guy and try to smack him and wait a bit upstairs until they no longer summon giants, liches and paralyzers.
There is absolutely zero reason to kill them alongside summons that are actually dangerous and fun as the Depths may be everything there is dangerous.

What are wands, spells, thrown objects, ranged weapons, more wands and more spells, corners and doors? Yes they summon dangerous things, that's the point. Good thing they die from literally anything and their summons poof away. Like you may need to walk away a bit to get better los and positioning but that's kind of what Crawl is about, you shouldn't be able to hold tab against everything.

That is the whole point. A boggart is a hugely weak enemy that dies to basically anything that does damage and can summon very dangerous things, things that would be a challenge and interesting to fight if they were not just random puffs of smoke the boggart pulls out of his ass that you can defeat by walking upstairs and hitting 5, that is not a good enemy.
DE demonologists are awful enemies unlike DE sorcs (to some degree) because their only means of damaging you is very weak melee and summons, on the other hand liches are really good enemies because they are dangerous by themselves and don't just rely on getting a fiend to kill you.
And in fact what you do when the lich does get a fiend is either kill it faster than you already were or walk away until the fiend disappears and re-engage when the AI doesn't get lucky.

If summons stayed after summoner death, this could maybe be a valid complaint. Now that they disappear I think having to walk back to stairs every time you see a boggart is a gross exaggeration of how players actually deal with boggarts in practice (including you as I've seen in your game). Same for deep elf demonologists. In practice, players use a wide array of tools to take out high threat low hp enemies (many tools that aren't normally used at this stage of the game which makes this more interesting). Boggarts are threatening in an interesting way too.

The fact I personally am lazy or other players are doesn't change anything about how the threat is most efficiently dealt with and making me carry three wands of fire to clean out boggarts should they show up by using the very interesting "line up and use fire on man" tactic is not something I appreciate or think improves the game in general.
Similarly for DE demonologists, killing them in a hole is fast and simple but when they spawn in say vaults what you do is walk away to a corner and engage them in a corner next to a staircase in case they get smart on you.

They summon dangerous stuff, that seems to be a pretty good reason to kill them I'd say. Boggarts are great enemies and your arguments against them don't make any sense. Walking away isn't really a good strategy when they are so easy to kill.

That to me seems like a pretty good reason to walk away to the stairs where you can effectively kill anything they summon by hitting <, but I guess your plan works too if you want to die when they summon tmons and sphinxes on you because they got lucky with caster AI and your 6 evo wands of fire or disint missed or were resisted a couple of turns in a row.

Boggarts are ok now that summons are actually not the most awful thing ever to fight. You could argue that summoner enemies are still bad enemies and I might agree but the instant abjuration change makes them dramatically better both from a gameplay and design standpoint. I don't see why boggarts in particular should be removed though compared to other summoners.

Zombies/skeletons are absurdly terrible enemies (possibly the worst enemies in all of crawl from a design standpoint, except for the few that are actually faster than speed 10) everywhere so yes those appearing in depths is bad. Of course, zombies/skeletons appearing anywhere else in the game is also bad. Unfortunately the simple solution to this problem (removing them as enemies) will not be used.

Mind you this thread became boggarts only real quick but I was very disappointed when I saw skeletons and zombies spawned in depths like they did in late D.

They cast shadow creatures. If you can't stand staying next to the monsters they summons for a couple of turns, you should probably visit another branch.

While I think boggarts belong in Depths just fine, we should turn down the spawn rate. Same with ettins. Seemed like every room I walked into had ettins or boggarts.

I also second dck on two points:
1) Vaults:1-4 is now trivial compared to Depths:1-3. Only difference is vaults-unique monsters, which do not up difficulty/interest up significantly enough.
2) Spawn rate and difficulty in Depths:1-2 should be turned down. I think depths needs a slightly softer ramp-up.

Overall though it is already a vast improvement in late D.

Edit: What about adding more deep dwarf enemies as Depths-only monsters? They seem flavorful and I think there were some half-decent ideas kicked around in the Dwarven Fortress branch wiki.

Deep dwarf enemies are generally terrible because they do not heal. In basically every case they would be improved by not being deep dwarves.

So either make DD enemies into a different kind of dwarf, or do something interesting with their healing (e.g. a DD healer working like deep troll shaman, DDDK getting much more out of drain life and using it more at range, a DD which gets more dangerous as its health gets lower, DDBes using Trog's Hand - even go the whole hog of having a DDAK/Easygoing Deep Dwarf which can disappear and come back healed if you get it to low health and don't kill it quickly). Having one kind of magic-using, strong in melee pack which heals rapidly and one which doesn't heal naturally sounds like an interesting way of differentiating things.

Or just put in MD enemies and rename Depths to The Memory Hole

That's probably true. Really I was just thinking Depths could use some "signature" monster that differentiated it more from D and Vaults. Deep dwarves seemed thematic, but I'm sure there are other good candidates.

Make a deep dwarf priest who like to heal other.

Make every deep dwarf worship a god that gives some kind of healing even, they're supposed to be deeply spiritual beings anyways.

or how about instead of giving them a bad mechanic and coming up with increasingly convoluted ways to subvert it, we just don't give them the bad mechanic in the first place

Because deep dwarves as a player race work alright mechanically, even if the flavor of non-regenerative dwarves is weird as hell.

Or how about we ignore that I suggested deep dwarves and bash on boggarts some more?

Why not just let them regenerate in the Depths? It's their home and they're surrounded by their natural magical rocks/gems/space sheep/whatever. Of course, PC dwarves and deep dwarves found outside Depths have been gone from home too long and can no longer draw healing from the magical foo.

On boggarts: Alone (=a band of three boggarts with no other monsters) they're not threatening and mostly a gimmick. As soon as players realise that basically any effect will take care of them, they have solved the puzzle. Even as such they're not necessarily destined for extinction, in my opinion, but it should mean that they better appear alone very rarely.

However, part of the appeal of roguelikes are randomly generated scenarions, and boggarts become more interesting if they're accompanied by other, threatening monsters. As I see it, this is what they're good for.

I don't see why boggarts (and other summoning monsters) don't come with pre-summons. The players do.

Because it would be bad gameplay.

Why? It's the same thing as encountering a group, like 5 orcs and an orc priest, except it's a boggart and 3 summons with ownership assigned to the boggart.

More often than not, a summoner player is exploring with summons. Same concept.

Right, so having this happen would make summoners less distinct as a type of enemy / threat, which isn't good. "Kill this dude now or things could quickly get out of hand" is very different from a pack of orcs spawning together. That's a good thing, even if certain enemies that summon may need more tweaks. (Though with instant abjuration upon killing the summoner, I think they are good right now, honestly.)

I have no idea why would I sit in MY dungeon and spam Summon Shadow Creatures. I'm having fun with other summoners, having a nice conversation and playing boardgames. I don't need some ogres or ugly things or maybe fiends watching me and my friends.

I have died to boggarts twice. First time I met them. And once because I didn't have see invisibility when I started going down the dungeon levels.

In my opinion boggarts are funny and unique enemies, that can easily be taken care of even just by charging them. Even more easily if you have strong spells. Some time luring them to a corner or corridor also helps. Fighting against them might require you to carry scroll of tp if they summon something very deadly (or just blink away one too many times as they have summoned a mass of monsters)

I think they are well designed monsters. And are something you have to think about how to deal with before you start advancing in dungeon.

I'm thinking that the summon change might have gone too far in weakening summons. What would you think about re-parenting summons?
Suppose you have two boggarts and you kill one. The summons would look for another boggart within LOS. If they could find one, they'd reassign themselves. If not, they'd abjure.

Would that also be the same for other summoners/demonologists?

I see no reason to have heterogeneous behavior.

(I meant to click the 'Quote' button, not 'Thanks')

Ya i think for boggart the the flavor of summons staying for a while isn't too bad. At least it makes you think twice about diving a boggart, if he summons something nasty. (as now if you kill the boggart the summon disappears. I think the amount of round summons last after boggart is dead should be around 10-15 (if boggart summoned it just after dying).