Mountain

My ideas at the moment are regrettably vague. I might add more later, or someone else may help out.

Each level would be a narrow path of floor around a central mass of rock, with the occasional cave or large ledge at the edge. The outside of the level would consist of a new feature, “open air,” mechanically behaving somewhat like lava but having no glyph (?).

Levels higher up would each be smaller than the last. The top of the mountain, maybe five or six levels up, would be flat with a tough vault and some nice loot.

Shaft traps would be common, or perhaps some more complex feature flavoured as a landslide.

The enemies could be varied a bit. One possibility is to include the obvious Mountain Dwarfs, in flavours of fighter, priest, fire/earth elementalists, etc.. Kenku (or some other sort of flying creature) are another possibility, as I think it would be neat if there were enemies flying around outside the walkable area taking potshots at you. Yaks fit conceptually and could be popcorn.

The whole “climbing a mountain” thing offers some nagging questions - would flying monsters killed in the air leave corpses on lower levels (like a shaft), along with spent ammunition, or would they simply vanish? The former would be intuitively expected, especially if they're item-using kenku monsters, for example, but returning to lower floors to loot them would be rather annoying (as would making sure that they're killed over solid ground if the bodies and ammo otherwise vanish). There's also the silly/obvious question of why the player couldn't just fly vertically from level to level, though that's just thematic.

Overall, I think it'd be a better idea to make aerial areas “flat,” such as Floating Rocks, which seems more interesting to begin with. Also, I'd suggest that a dwarf-themed mountain start at the base (perhaps with surrounding forest or whatever), which would be followed by several enclosed floors of progressively smaller “fortress” levels, and end in an open-air mountaintop (where falling corpses and ammo could more easily be written off as lost to the mountainside, and vertical travel more easily handwaved as blocked by winds). — og17 2010-07-29 04:32

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that fallen items would just roll down the mountain or get lost to the winds. This wouldn't be more annoying than the deep water exterior of Shoals. The flying enemies could be limited to enemies that use melee or don't have good items, though. I don't know. — tgw 2010-07-29 05:11

Actually, conjurer-monk kenku would be entirely appropriate, which would nicely leave the majority of gear drops to land-based dwarves/whatever. I'm still not crazy about how this would play for ranged-weapon characters, though; people don't generally fight on the edges of shoal maps, making deep water less of a problem (also tides), while it seems like there'd be a lot more air than path on this mountain. — og17 2010-07-29 05:31

This could be an alternative Lair branch - the home of griffons and hippogriffs. Floating would probably be very useful here, as in Shoals and Swamp. I think it might be interesting for this branch to feature enemies with ice (for ex. Yetis) and/or lighting (for ex. Rocs or Thunderbirds) attacks like Swamps and Snake Pit have enemies with poison. There could also be environmental hazards based on those, like avalanches or storm clouds. I'll have to say that having a mountain inside of a dungeon is pretty bizarre, though :) — coolio 2010-07-29 12:46

It fits right in with our open sea inside a dungeon. :P — tgw 2010-07-29 17:08

I like this. A very strong visual and spatial theme. Somewhat similar to Floating Rocks (no floating around), but easier to implement. The mountain body could have all sorts of neat vaults. — evktalo 2010-07-29 20:46

I'd like to see Unicorns in the mountains. Unicorns would be about as strong as a yak and fast as a centaur, regenerate their health, run away after just a little damage, be immune to enchantments and poison, have holy wrath branded melee attacks, and reflect any damage done to them to all living non-demonic beings in LOS. There might be a message about your soul being torn by witnessing the suffering of an innocent beast. So if you're not a demon or undead, you'd need to summon some demons or use fog or corners or the lantern of shadows to put them out of LOS to attack them. When butchered, there's a chance of leaving a Unicorn horn that can be wielded as a renamed dagger of holy wrath that grants a level of magic resistance. Eating unicorn chunks removes mutations. Damage reflected from Yred followers onto Unicorns is not reflected back by unicorns, and damage reflected onto Yred worshipers is not reflected against Unicorns. Good gods don't like Unicorn killers. Perhaps they would be neutral to living non-demonic beings until something dies in their LOS.— jejorda2 2010-10-06 20:46

I really like the idea of a monster with an anti-mutagenic corpse (especially a monster where killing it has such major ramifications). Although, is there any reason that it needs to appear in the mountain branch? If anything, I feel like this idea belongs at the Holy Monster Overhaul page (https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:issue:4&s[]=holy). — wensleydale 2010-10-07 06:35

Regarding limiting the branch: I really like how I'm afraid to enter swamp without a Hydra Solution. I think if you knew there would be damage reflecting monsters in a branch, you'd have to prepare before you entered that branch. It could be the forest branch or some other branch instead, but I like the idea of guaranteeing a few Unicorns in a vault on the last level of some branch. I'm not against having additional specimens appear elsewhere. — jejorda2 2010-10-07 09:20

Yeah, anti-mutagenic corpses that come at a cost are a great idea. So are monsters with permanent damage mirror that you can't merely wait off and kill them before they recast. And I agree with Wensleydale, there's no reason to tie them to a mountain branch. — kilobyte 2010-10-07 10:19

“Beneficial effects from chunks” is on the kilobyte seems to approve, and he is a developer, so we may be able to get away with this. One potential issue is unmutated players deliberately leaving the unicorns alive and coming back when they need a mutation cure.