Why are the lair branches in lair

[genericpseudonym]

Wouldn't they make more sense in the bottom of D

and then put slime in U or something

basically their current position exists entirely to kill new players who haven't consulted a spoiler about branch order.

[Sprucery]

The placement of Elf in Orc is also regularly brought up. Nothing has happened in that regard, so I assume it's ok (by the devs) that branches show up earlier than they should usually be entered.

Plus, it's ok to kill new players (ok I mean characters) :) Die and learn...

[Gongclonker]

You run into them earlier so you know what branches you got. That helps you know what to try for in terms of items and equipment.

(That's what I take away from it, anyhow. For instance, if I know I rolled Spider, I grab lots of poisoned/venom-branded stuff I'd otherwise ignore.)

[duvessa]

What you're really asking is "why have nonlinear branches at all", which is a good question.

[PleasingFungus]

elf is specifically designed to have introductory 'ambushes' to try to scare away new players. ditto v:5. if that doesn't work, and players die, that's ok too. crawl's expectation is that players should be able to beat it unspoiled, but probably not on the first try

[tedric]

players should be able to beat it unspoiled, but probably not on the first try

when the thing that kills you on your first try is not "the game is hard and sometimes you die" but "the game gives you places to go way before you're ready, and you're meant to learn you're not ready by going in there and dying" -- that's a spoiler

(this is different from all the other stuff you learn by playing, e.g. encountering new monsters, because [a] you mostly encounter them at the depth at which you're likely to be prepared for them and [b] the game gives you clear indicators of their relative threat level and interface tools to learn detailed info about their power level, spells, resists, etc. and it gives you similar information about items and spells. in fact, when a monster's deadly abilities or an item's functions are not properly documented in-game it's considered a breach of the "clarity" design goal. but the placement of branches seems to break this pattern on purpose)

otoh i bet it's pretty rare that somebody reaches Lair on their very first game and dies by immediately entering an S branch, but it's still flawed reasoning

[Sandman25]

Another bad thing is presence of high power banishers in Elf, I always make sure to check "?/mdeep elf sorc" before entering Elf.

[genericpseudonym]

players should be able to beat it unspoiled, but probably not on the first try

otoh i bet it's pretty rare that somebody reaches Lair on their very first game and dies by immediately entering an S branch, but it's still flawed reasoning

This post was actually inpsired by seeing a new player post on /rlg/ complaing that shoals was too much of a difficulty jump from Lair and that it had killed his best MiBe yet.

[PleasingFungus]

when the thing that kills you on your first try is not "the game is hard and sometimes you die" but "the game gives you places to go way before you're ready, and you're meant to learn you're not ready by going in there and dying" -- that's a spoiler

(this is different from all the other stuff you learn by playing, e.g. encountering new monsters, because [a] you mostly encounter them at the depth at which you're likely to be prepared for them and [b] the game gives you clear indicators of their relative threat level and interface tools to learn detailed info about their power level, spells, resists, etc. and it gives you similar information about items and spells. in fact, when a monster's deadly abilities or an item's functions are not properly documented in-game it's considered a breach of the "clarity" design goal. but the placement of branches seems to break this pattern on purpose)

otoh i bet it's pretty rare that somebody reaches Lair on their very first game and dies by immediately entering an S branch, but it's still flawed reasoning

crawl throws excessively dangerous monsters at you all the time. 'oods' are not actually rare, and many common monsters (the d:1 gnoll!) may be too tough for some characters. it is a core dcss skill to be able to recognize, 'this situation will kill me if i stay in it, and i need to flee immediately'.

branches are not fundamentally different. when you enter a new branch, you encounter new sets of monsters, and have to evaluate them accordingly. you can examine them and see, oh, all these monsters are marked 'very dangerous', they all seem to be pretty vicious compared to the stuff i've just been fighting, they're doing a lot of damage, maybe i should run away! i don't think this situation is perfect - i think we could give more information about monsters than we currently are - but the basic approach is, to me, reasonable.

it's not even a fundamental difference between new & experienced players - though of course it'll happen less often, there are times when i've entered a branch, discovered i'd overestimated my character's strength, and had to bail or die.

as long as extended exists, this mechanic is going to exist - a player entering hells, or tomb, or pan, is going to be entering a branch that's significantly harder than the one they came from. i think it's much better to introduce the concept of "harder sub-branches" earlier in the game - the earlier we get characters killed off, the less pain we inflict.

[Sandman25]

crawl throws excessively dangerous monsters at you all the time. 'oods' are not actually rare, and many common monsters (the d:1 gnoll!) may be too tough for some characters. it is a core dcss skill to be able to recognize, 'this situation will kill me if i stay in it, and i need to flee immediately'.

Except there is no way for a new player to see that the gnoll can one-shot many characters on D1.

I liked the rest of the post.

[MainiacJoe]

crawl throws excessively dangerous monsters at you all the time. 'oods' are not actually rare, and many common monsters (the d:1 gnoll!) may be too tough for some characters. it is a core dcss skill to be able to recognize, 'this situation will kill me if i stay in it, and i need to flee immediately'.

Except there is no way for a new player to see that the gnoll can one-shot many characters on D1.

I liked the rest of the post.

Well, maybe not in the very first game. But over several games, I expect it would become obvious which D:1 monsters are extremely dangerous and which are less so.

[PleasingFungus]

Except there is no way for a new player to see that the gnoll can one-shot many characters on D1.

Again, we could probably do more in this regard (as I did note in my earlier post!), but there are hints: