Crypt

What follows is a bunch of ideas to make Crypt more interesting (it is trivial with Dispel Undead and quite easy for most melee characters). — dpeg 2010-08-03 21:17 The list includes ideas from ogaz and porkchop.

• Foodless: There should be no food generated in the Crypt. In a larger context, item generation should be branch dependent.
  • Just for the sake of enemy variety, monsters that leave corpses should still spawn in the crypt, but leave rotting corpses for {insert flavour text} reason. — coolio 2010-08-03 22:47
    • I imagine this wouldn't work well with player vampires, unless perhaps monster vampires were a reliable blood source. Otherwise, I think it'd be more fun for every living monster that leaves a corpse in crypt to immediately rise up as a hostile zombie. – og17 2010-08-03 23:51
• Reduced LOS: Crypt could be a branch with reduced LOS (for everyone). This would have obvious implications for stabbing, ranged combat etc. Nightstalker Demonspawns enjoy such a reduced LOS, and it is a mixed blessing. For Crypt, it would nerf the curse skulls. (Of course, we're free to make curse skulls light sources…).
• Special effects: We don't want to copy hell effects but an idea I like is drawing more on zombies and graves. For example, there could be hands coming from the ground, grabbing your feet (making it impossible or harder to run away but not impeding melee combat — dodging might be harder…). This would be best if coupled to tension and/or called upon by Crypt spellcasters. (Each of these has its own merits.)
• Layout: Like many other branches, Crypt could really do with a dedicated map generator. For example, small rooms and corridors without bottlenecks (i.e. always wider than two cells), so that both ranged and melee attacks are harder for the player. The branch could consist of small rooms of varying size (between 4×3 and 6×7, say) and shapes — these are the crypts.
  • Maybe use predefined vaults for these? — coolio 2010-08-03 22:47
• Crypt could become “older” as you go down in depth. Decorations (e.g., statues) would change in description and appearance. Monsters would become less zombified and more skeletonized/ghostly, but also become different species (dinosaurs!). Example: one of the levels could be a legion of wights wielding “Roman” equipment, such as large shields, shortswords, slings, javelins. — eronarn 2010-08-24 21:31
  • Roman wights would be a great early-dungeon vault, I think, but wights are really weak at crypt. And I like the idea that crypt floors would become overall “deader” as you descend, though it'd be strange to describe them as older, as that's upside-down (maybe?). — og17 2010-08-24 21:52

I think the biggest thing crypt needs is more variety in enemies. Right now, everything except for the Crypt:5 vault, the Tomb entry vault, and the occasional curse skull is generic melee. [dcss:brainstorm:branches:ogaz]]
Also new behaviour of zombies (for example, all zombies on the map always know where you are.)

• Vampires are casters, for what it's worth. Flaming corpses spawning normally could make things more interesting, as could making n-glyph monsters more common in comparison to zombie/skeletons, even if they're still melee. — og17 2010-08-03 23:44
• I know undead is the name of the game – it being the crypt and all, but it'd be nice to have some living or plain lifeless units too. Different kinds of golems (or gargoyles?) could be added in vaults as guardians. I don't remember if necromancers spawn in the Crypt, but they should. — coolio 2010-08-03 22:47
  • There's necromancers, just not many. Gargoyles and constructs might make sense thematically and help break up the dispelfest, but they'd also just be more melee. — og17 2010-08-03 23:44
• There are some ideas to add spark to existing Crypt monsters, especially wraiths.

Note that the current monster set is mostly melee — this could be kept and hopefully made interesting by some of the above proposals.

The aim of the monster is to create a challenge for long-range casters in Crypt (conjurations and dispel undead). Radiates silence with range larger than LOS. They don't take stairs.

Some comments (I tried to edit to reflect the current situation):

evktalo likes how you see the wave of silence coming. st says below it doesn't translate to good gameplay, however.

og17: They trivialize the floor (casters, such as mummies, vampires or liches) they spawn on.

Thinking a targetted no-casting debuff would be a better concept than an aura, or some sort of flavor where only the player's spells are nullified when the ghost is in LOS, though this sort of thing creates problems of its own. — og17 2010-09-24 12:07

Smite-targeted silencing of the player would probably be nicely unscummable, although a little harsh. But hey, they're supposed to be dangerous. Perhaps it would only work when the spectre knows you're there, so distracting it would help against it. (That sounds a bit easy though.) — evktalo 2010-10-08 13:08

Another (probably bad) idea: adjust silence radius depending on player position, make casters try to avoid silence if feasible; perhaps make a bit faster if keeping spriggan centaurs from retaining ability to abuse. — mrmistermonkey 2010-09-24 12:39

I don't think this is a good enemy as implemented. Along with the already discussed abuse they're not really an interesting threat for casters beyond the first time you see them. It's easy to see them coming and prepare to lure them somewhere safely in crypt - I took one down as a deep elf with no weapon skill comfortably (I don't think buffing them is a good solution). In Tar it's pretty bullshit getting one dropped on you from hell effects by the way. — st 2010-09-29 16:27

I thought seeing it coming and adjusting your tactics would be good, but of course it's not a given. I would think buffing them would be a good solution, if it can be fixed with numbers, it's easy to try it out, DE caster with no weapon skills definitely shouldn't be able to take them down easily (in melee). Also, AC-skippping attacks would make them more of a threat (and thus less abusable) against melee characters. That wouldn't help against boots of running/spriggans/centaurs. Again, we could try it with numbers - increase the movement speed. These might not help, but they're easy to test out. I wouldn't mind if the silent spectre was also one of the hardest hitters in the branch. :P — evktalo 2010-10-08 13:08

Make silent spectres immobile, then remove them from Tartarus and Abyss so that they only appear in Crypt and vaults. Maybe rename them to “silent skull” or something. Then give them a good ranged attack (summon undead?) and make their silence the same radius as LOS. This pretty much eliminates the abuses entirely while keep the constant silence theme. Pure casters will gain the ability to kill them with Tornado or Ring of Flames or something, but who cares? — minmay 2011-04-12 23:43

from evktalo:

How to make the zombies and skeletons actually reach you in melee? Spawn them right next to you!

A wall suddenly turns out to be a small secret alcove containing a long-dead monster. To be more effective, they could be trap-like and trigger multiple alcoves at the same time, to surround you. Illustration:

1. cccccccccccc  2. cccccccccccc  3. cccccccccccc
   cccccccccccc     cccCCCcccccc     cccZZWcccccc
   ..........@.     ....^.....@.     ....@.......
   cccccccccccc     ccCCcCCccccc     cczZcWpccccc
   cccccccccccc     cccccccccccc     cccccccccccc

What looks like an empty corridor in figure 1. actually has alcoves and the trigger (C, ^, fig. 2.), which reveal the monsters when stepped on (fig. 3.).

Inspired by the above. The Crypt would be peppered with unmarked graves, which are basically traps (in floor tiles). Like any trap, they are invisible. They don't trigger on their own. Instead, they serve as corpses which can be raised by skeletal warriors and necromancers. Player can raise them too using appropriate spell or ability, but the unmarked grave must be found first using the Traps&Doors skill. Vampires, and especially Ghouls and Mummies could see the corpses without the skill. So unmarked graves would be basically corpses scattered around the Crypt, but being hidden and immobile they would hopefully be resistant to a lot of scumming. They also fit well into the theme.

By all means, post all half-fleshed ideas you have. You might inspire someone else. It's like ideas having sex. — b0rsuk 2010-10-08 20:39

Crypt was recently made “quiet” - that is, there's a stealth penalty, and noises that you make have more of an effect. This is pretty cool, but seems to cause some problems in the branch end. Recently I've had the church_of_pain Crypt:5 map a couple of times, and while autoexploring the level outside of the vault itself I end up running into and killing the majority of the contents of the vault - the “boss” liches, etc, are all attracted to the noise and leave the vault. This means that when I've finished exploring the level and it actually comes to venturing inside the vault there's almost nothing left inside but the loot, which is a little unexciting. I imagine this problem would also exist in the encompass Crypt:5 vaults, but to a lesser extent? Perhaps the noise reduction could be tweaked for C:5, or vaults could be changed so that the more important monsters are patrolling. — marvinpa 2010-09-30 05:58