An idea for some later version...

[Therem Harth]

An option (maybe call it "Force unusual rooms" or something like that) that sets DUN_UNUSUAL to 0. Of the various changes I made messing around with Vanilla, I found that forcing unusual room generation did the most by far to make the game less tedious.

(This option is already present in Z-based variants, but I don't think it works as well there. In ToME and Heng and whatnot, greater vaults are way too common, whereas V produces more pits, nests, and lesser vaults.)

If you guys don't think this is an awful idea, I can cobble up a patch...

[fizzix]

It's not a bad idea if only to see what the dungeons look like. I take it you've tried this. Do you wind up getting a whole bunch of moated and cross rooms?

[Therem Harth]

A fair number of cross rooms (if those are what I think they are). Not sure what you mean by moated rooms. Lots of weird pit-like structures. Checkerboards, empty pits with little rooms in the center, pits with only a few monsters in them... Stuff like that.

Level 1-5 or so looks mostly like normal dungeon generation, though with more of the room types I mentioned. After that you start seeing orc pits, jelly pits, and eventually troll pits, along with some lesser vaults and more weird rooms. Somewhere in the 20s ancient dragons started showing up IIRC, and I definitely remember some levels I had to abandon because they were full of Dreads. More lesser vaults start appearing as you go down, so I'm guessing you might see greater vaults with some frequency at the bottom.

Overall it seemed like the unusualness and danger level of the dungeon structures went up pretty steadily as I descended.

(I didn't get to test it as much as I'd have liked... Maybe I'll give it another go later.)

[Derakon]

Moated rooms are the rooms with a 19x5 rectangular room in the middle and a corridor (moat) all along the outside. They're used for monster pits, but also for several other special room types like the checkerboard.

[fizzix]

A fair number of cross rooms (if those are what I think they are). Not sure what you mean by moated rooms. Lots of weird pit-like structures. Checkerboards, empty pits with little rooms in the center, pits with only a few monsters in them... Stuff like that.

These pit-like structures are the moated rooms I was talking about. They're considered unusual to the game along with crosses. There are also some 'unusual' rooms that don't effect item/monster generation like pillared rooms, and double rooms (two rectangles next to each other). Unusual rooms like this don't help at all with making levels interesting, since terrain is pretty low on any player's interest list. You probably never even considered these double rectangle rooms to be interesting.

Level 1-5 or so looks mostly like normal dungeon generation, though with more of the room types I mentioned. After that you start seeing orc pits, jelly pits, and eventually troll pits, along with some lesser vaults and more weird rooms. Somewhere in the 20s ancient dragons started showing up IIRC, and I definitely remember some levels I had to abandon because they were full of Dreads. More lesser vaults start appearing as you go down, so I'm guessing you might see greater vaults with some frequency at the bottom.

Bringing higher pit frequency earlier in the dungeon could help a bit, I guess. It won't help later on where you have a very high chance of generating a pit or a nest. (Most often these are pits that get put in after a failed vault attempt). Boring pits are already too frequent on the bottom of the dungeon. Also, you can only have one pit or nest per level.

Overall it seemed like the unusualness and danger level of the dungeon structures went up pretty steadily as I descended.

(I didn't get to test it as much as I'd have liked... Maybe I'll give it another go later.)

If you get the chance you should try playing it all the way through. Currently, when you get to the bottom of the dungeon you have so many of these 'unusual' rooms that your change won't make much of a difference. So this change could make the earlier game more interesting, but it'd make dlevels 50-100 even more boring than they already are. Or at least that's my prediction. You might find differently, and that'd be good to know.

Part of the problem is the current lack of 'unusual' rooms. Flooding vaults.txt with 100 or so new rooms (not vaults, just rooms) is an option, but not that good of a one. What we have to do is work harder at creating themed areas of the dungeon level, and creating treasure equivalent to the danger of the area. All this needs to be done without invoking the call for special rooms.

[Therem Harth]

Good points... Messing with DUN_UNUSUAL is a crude hack, and from what you say probably not the solution to a boring early game.

Perhaps a better measure would be an option to boost monster density on low levels. The main problem I've had in V is that the early dungeon is mostly empty.

[PowerDiver]

Did someone put this into the development branch? I just hit 5 consecutive moated rooms at DL4.

These rooms are supposed to be danger *in excess of the norm*. To misquote from _The Incredibles_, "when everything is special nothing is special".

Whether this was by design or I just got lucky, I don't much like it. It feels like this is an attempt to balance so warriors find the first levels interesting, which will just make the game impossible for pure mages and overly difficult for new players playing any class.

[Therem Harth]

Hmm interesting, my expectation was that it would be much more difficult for warriors. Casters and half-casters with utility spells I'd expect to meet with somewhat less difficulty.

[Derakon]

Warriors come roaring out of the gate and can mow down practically everything with impunity. Casters and half-casters have to be much more timid.

[d_m]

Did someone put this into the development branch? I just hit 5 consecutive moated rooms at DL4.

These rooms are supposed to be danger *in excess of the norm*. To misquote from _The Incredibles_, "when everything is special nothing is special".

Whether this was by design or I just got lucky, I don't much like it. It feels like this is an attempt to balance so warriors find the first levels interesting, which will just make the game impossible for pure mages and overly difficult for new players playing any class.

It seems like Takkaria was testing this and accidentally put it in. I have reverted it in staging.

[Bostock]

There are also some 'unusual' rooms that don't effect item/monster generation

You're being evil, aren't you.

[fizzix]

You're being evil, aren't you.

no, I'm just error prone with homophones. It's weird, because I can immediately spot mistakes when reading, but when writing I invariably screw them up.