Thoughts on endgame

[Pete Mack]

1. BR_SOUN wakes up nearby monsters.
2.

name:700:Crystal Hound
base:zephyr hound
color
info:135:20d100:100:0
power:95...
blow:BITE:HURT:10d10
blow:BITE:BLIND:10d10
blow:CLAW:HURT:10d20
blow:CLAW:HURT:10d20
flags:KILL_WALL |SHIMMER NO_CONF|NO_SLEEP|FORCE_SLEEP |INVIS|DROP_DIAMOND
spell-freq:3
spells:BR_SHARD |BR_LIGHT|BR_SOUN
friends:100:2d7:Same
desc: A crystaline canine shape with claws and teeth of diamond. You see it only as flashes of color, as light glints through it's gem-like body

[debo]

Yes let's improve angband by adding more hounds, please!

[Pete Mack]

People asked for a way to make scumming the last few levels painful. I figured there's nothing more painful than kill-wall hounds that wake up everything in the dungeon. And yeah, it is a huge advantage for mages with Banish.

[wobbly]

Yes let's improve angband by adding more hounds, please!

What if they were rocket breathing hounds?

[PowerWyrm]

My experience of Steamband was that it handled that problem by making the last few levels so horrendously dangerous that you were hurrying to the bosses to escape all the stuff firing rockets at you (side note - has debo played Steam?). Of course that may just have been me, but making the bottom half of the dungeon ramp up a bit more in difficulty seems worth considering.

In my variant I've added Ancient Wyrms for the last 15 levels. The Great Wyrms are now a bit weaker, but summon dragons. The Ancient Wyrms are a lot tougher, and summon ancient dragons. Very nasty encounters if not prepared...

[PowerWyrm]

Yes let's improve angband by adding more hounds, please!

Cyberhound
spells:BR_DISINTEGRATION|BR_NUKE|BR_WASTE|ROCKET

[PowerWyrm]

People asked for a way to make scumming the last few levels painful. I figured there's nothing more painful than kill-wall hounds that wake up everything in the dungeon. And yeah, it is a huge advantage for mages with Banish.

ToME has unmakers...

[Nick]

So I guess that's the question. How do you make the last few floors difficult?

Here are a few thoughts. I don't think any one solves it completely, and some may not be sensible, but some of them might form part of a strategy:

• Less items on the floor, more carried by monsters
• More monsters and effects which destroy walls
• Monsters can pick up anything, including artifacts
• More monsters native to deep levels (is there a good reason why there are no non-uniques native to level 80 or below?)
• Less weak monsters at deep levels
• More sophisticated stealth, noise propagation and monster tracking
• Endgame consumables appear in stacks
• More smaller levels

All this is also in the context of planned changes to dungeon generation and terrain.

[Pete Mack]

I suspect making sound/shard breaths wake up monsters with a damage-dependent radius would be a big enough change for waking monsters.
And yeah, monsters that tunnel in packs is hugely dangerous. That's Why I recommended hounds with high HP.

[debo]

Here are a few thoughts. I don't think any one solves it completely, and some may not be sensible, but some of them might form part of a strategy:

• Less items on the floor, more carried by monsters
• More monsters and effects which destroy walls
• Monsters can pick up anything, including artifacts
• More monsters native to deep levels (is there a good reason why there are no non-uniques native to level 80 or below?)
• Less weak monsters at deep levels
• More sophisticated stealth, noise propagation and monster tracking
• Endgame consumables appear in stacks
• More smaller levels

All this is also in the context of planned changes to dungeon generation and terrain.

A lot of these are zangband ideas, aren't they? Some others to consider stealing might be giving some dangerous monsters follow-teleport and/or teleport resistance, although the latter may be too "weird" for vanilla.

[fizzix]

All this is also in the context of planned changes to dungeon generation and terrain.

I think we need to start here, because otherwise a lot of the changes are problematic. Here's a standard endgame strat for levels 95-99.

Scum up and down stairs, leave immediately if you don't get an omens of death message.

If you do get an omens of death, detect around for vaults.

If you find a vault, destruct around the level, but not the vault, then loot the vault, teleporting away dangerous monsters.

Repeat until you have good enough endgame gear.

This is probably close to optimal play for turncount and even player time. Vaults are just that good of a source of endgame gear. Yet, they're also exciting for players. How can we keep the vault excitement, but prevent this playstyle? Do we care? Should we just let the scummers scum and balance for everyone else (like, balance for forced descent players?)

Are we thinking about nerfs to destruction, teleport level, and teleport away?

[Nick]

How can we keep the vault excitement, but prevent this playstyle?

I think having monsters that pick up or crush gear, having them native to deep levels, and maybe tweaking the monster selection algorithm a bit will go a long way toward that.

I can certainly sympathise with why this led you to the forced descent idea - I guess allowing some degree of scumming is kind of inevitable if we want to retain the Angband "play at your own pace" ethos.

[fizzix]

I think having monsters that pick up or crush gear, having them native to deep levels, and maybe tweaking the monster selection algorithm a bit will go a long way toward that.

Personally I think crushing gear is an awful mechanic. We have the technology to just put the gear in the monsters inventories now. Maybe we should just do that.

[AnonymousHero]

I can certainly sympathise with why this led you to the forced descent idea - I guess allowing some degree of scumming is kind of inevitable if we want to retain the Angband "play at your own pace" ethos.

I must admit (and even though it really goes against the playstyle I've adopted) that some kind of clock may be necessary to be able to balance things. That could take the form of a literal clock (like in Sil), but it could also be made more subtle. Here are a few options off the top of my head:

• Reduce experience per kill based on number of previous kills of a monster of a that kind.
• Reducing drops (to near-zero, or at least arbitrarily close to zero) the further away (up) you are from your "ideal" level.
• Reduce monster spawns the further away (up) you are from your "ideal" level.

(These could and probably should be mix-and-matched.) I think they could mostly be explained in-game as Morgoth focusing his attention on @. Why would he have huge hordes of monsters focus their attention on L5 when @ is at L75? (Of course this explanation depends on the premise that Morgoth has some sort of vague idea where @ is... but that can be hand-waved with Morgoth having spies all over the dungeon, I think.)

The idea here would be to not actively force players, but just to make it pointless to stick around too long.

The above options may be a little too subtle to really notice quickly enough without a few in-game hints, so they could lead to the forum getting 'spammed' with "why am I no longer finding any lootz!?!?", but I don't think adding hints would be too difficult. Even something as crude as an "enter-level" message depending on how close you are to "ideal" depth could work.

[Derakon]

It was suggested by somebody awhile back (might've been me, I forget) that you should get at most N vaults per game, or at most N "value" worth of vaults, or something along those lines. The idea being that you should see a few vaults in a game, but you wouldn't be able to scum for them because there'd only be so many. This lets them remain special without making them scummable.

Also, disable level feelings. Make players scum the hard way, by actually exploring a portion of the level and/or burn an Enlightenment potion. Seriously, guys, if you play without level feelings you'll realize you're really not missing anything important.