Barkeep
Posts: 1788
Joined: Saturday, 29th June 2013, 16:52
Orb Run Reform
The problem: the orb run isn't very good. Even if the occasional panlord makes it dangerous -- I've died on the orb run before, actually -- it's never particularly interesting. It's just a quick walk back to where you started, aided by the fact that a) you probably killed most of the things living between Zot:5 and D:1, and b) you probably still have stacks of consumables and since you only have a few hundred turns left, you're totally free to use them liberally. It's a sad state of affairs when NetHack can one-up you, but I think its ascension, weird planes and all, is far more interesting and tension-filled than anything crawl has to offer.
The fundamental problem is the fact that the dungeon is exactly the same as it was when the orb was still behind an army of OOFs. This leads to the orb run only really being interesting for speedrunners, since they often get forced into unmapped territory they left behind.
I'm interested in hearing other ideas for reforming the orb run, but here's my suggestion: make the orb of zot load-bearing. Arrhy is the originator of this idea, usually brought up in conjunction with the Cave of Wonders sequence from Aladdin. What if, after picking up the orb, the dungeon started falling apart? You could have the map generator create big chasms of lava, use some of the Qaz wrath code to create big elemental effects. You could outright throw out all the maps drawn before and replace the entire orb run with a new set of this-place-is-falling-apart maps. You could make it so that levels are randomly "being torn away into the Abyss" or "falling into Hell" or "being taken over by Pan," changing big swaths of floors or replacing them entirely with Abyss, Hell, or Pan floors.
Even if my ideas are half-baked, though, it still seems like we could have an orb run that was more fun.
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- Arrhythmia, bananaken, grisamentum, mps, rockygargoyle, Sar