Something between 2000' and 5000'

[Timo Pietilä]

Hello.

I have read a few posts lately that just basically say that levels between 2500 and 4900 are not much different, and basic advice is to skip them.

So we must make them different.

Problem is that this can't be done with simple "add monsters" -strategy, because avoidance makes monsters easy to deal with no matter how dangerous any individual monster is.

Any ideas? Maybe something to do with landscape that makes diving thru those levels inconvenient and staying there interesting? Vaults? Some mid-way quest monster (Saruman?).

[Magnate]

Hello.

I have read a few posts lately that just basically say that levels between 2500 and 4900 are not much different, and basic advice is to skip them.

So we must make them different.

Problem is that this can't be done with simple "add monsters" -strategy, because avoidance makes monsters easy to deal with no matter how dangerous any individual monster is.

Any ideas? Maybe something to do with landscape that makes diving thru those levels inconvenient and staying there interesting? Vaults? Some mid-way quest monster (Saruman?).

I quite like all of these - extra quest monsters (Saruman a good choice, the Witch-King another possibility), different terrain or levels (strongholds?), etc. But I think the real issue is speed rings and 4000'. As soon as we fix the problem of multiple allocation lines (#1173), I'd recommend making speed rings generatable from 2000' at alloc_prob = 1 and from 3000' at alloc_prob = 10.

[ewert]

Personally I'd go with just plain "forcing" all levels past 50 to have a vault of some sort. I mean, a real vault would make even diehard divers stop and think about breaking it. There's some nice increased risk and reward in clearing levels then. If a level is just plain boring normal level, there is no way in heck I'll be romping through it much. Non-annoying/superdeadly pits also help me pull away from staircases.

1-20 is basic stuff, getting ready to go to statgain and beyond. 30-40 is more basic stuff, getting ready to delve deeper down. I'd even say 38 is where you either want to get a liveable char or play superparanoid when going down. Now, after 40 or at 50 and beyond, forcing dungeon generator to create vaults at every level ... that would make me clear levels.

If you think it is "too much", err ... well I won't nor will many divers stop at any level unless it has something really interesting. Some pits, and most vaults are interesting. Packs of some nice xp low dangerous monsters sometimes are interesting. Exploring and clearing a level is not interesting for those with diving tendencies, we have to see that there IS something interesting there, and if nothing is interesting in detection range, the knowledge that there is guaranteed to be a vault in every level past 50 would probably make me stop and go find it before descending.

As an aside, having lots more quest mobs could be kinda cool. One every 10 levels at 50 and beyond? It would drastically alter diving, as you would have to get ready for the next quest mob 10 levels deeper. It would diversify the gameplay experience though, as you would have start to aim to get spesific things at different points of gameplay, if the uniques are picked properly.

[andrewdoull]

For Unangband, I compressed levels 40+ so that they ended at 60 instead of 100.

Andrew

[fizzix]

This thread I made got no comments:

http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=3494

This was a game I played in which there was only one down staircase between levels 50 and 100, and other attempts at skipping levels (DD, trap doors, etc.) where removed. You had to find the staircase to descend. It was fun, and more difficult, but too cumbersome over 50 levels.

Compressing the levels seems pretty necessary to avoid this problem.

[ewert]

As an aside, I've even thought that most of the levels are useless... 1-20 is enough. 20 Morgoth, 19 Sauron. The rest maybe like:

1 = 1
2 = 3
3 = 6
4 = 9
5 = 12
6 = 16
7 = 20
8 = 25
9 = 30
10 = 35
11 = 40
12 = 45
13 = 50
14 = 55
15 = 60
16 = 70
17 = 80
18 = 90
19 = 99
20 = 100

I mean, nothing happens really at any level not a multiple of 5. In the end, it doesnt really matter unless you drop ten levels. This would be a level scheme I would like to test right away.

[Timo Pietilä]

Personally I'd go with just plain "forcing" all levels past 50 to have a vault of some sort. I mean, a real vault would make even diehard divers stop and think about breaking it. There's some nice increased risk and reward in clearing levels then. If a level is just plain boring normal level, there is no way in heck I'll be romping through it much. Non-annoying/superdeadly pits also help me pull away from staircases.

There is also the fact that currently floor is pretty empty of items. I have played priests with clairvoyance at 4000'+ dlvls and got something like three or four boring items in entire floor (squelch probably removed rest) way too often. There is no interest in clearing such level. No reward whatsoever. Not even potential reward.

We need to make levels less boring and increase floor items to at least twice maybe three times as many as it is now.

Vaults would do the trick pretty nicely, but before just boosting vaults I suggest that we go thru vaults.txt and remove or tweak some of the boring ones (so that level doesn't get feeling boost for nothing). Less is more in this case, because when game chooses to create vault, it creates a vault no matter how few vaults we have in selection. If we leave only DLV:s and CGV:s we get same number of vaults as before but all of them would be DLV:s or CGV:s (not that that radical is in my mind, just do some work for current selection).

About vaults, I really hate those GV:s with huge vertical lengths. They cause difficulties in targeting, more off-screen monsters and they just don't fit into screen. I would remove or tweak those first.

Maybe we could do some "vault is native to this or that depth" thing for vaults, with rarity and min-max levels, and make less difference between lesser and greater vaults. Something like CrownGV should be rather common in deep levels and treated more like lesser vault than greater one, while some Round, Cross or Octagon and similar -lesser vaults should be as common earlier and practically non-existant later.

[Derakon]

I'd support compressing the levels. The original Angband just doubled the number of levels that Moria had without really considering if that was appropriate, and frankly it wasn't. ewert's mapping looks reasonable to me. As a hack job to try it out, we could tweak the code for going up/down stairs to do a table lookup and hop you multiple levels up/down, so e.g. down staircases on dlvl 1 would take you down 2 levels, while up staircases on dlvl 20 would take you up 4.

[nullfame]

I don't think a vault on every level would change things. You stop for vaults because you're not guaranteed to find them. If you are guaranteed to find them on every level you would still dive past 50-80, look for unidentified speed rings in the local vault, dive to 98 once you find a good one, scum the 97-98 vaults.

If you accept the premise the most effective ideas would be compressing the levels or the 1 stairs.

I don't accept the premise. I don't think the current behavior, if accurately described, is broken. What are you here to do? Kill Morgoth or explore his dungeon?

I also don't think people literally skip large swaths of levels. 1 or 2 along the way if you land next to downstairs, sure, but not too many. You stop for unidentified flavors and good risk-reward fights. I could be wrong here since I'm not the most accomplished player, but consider this recent gem of advice and the source:

Your complaint sounds as if you are diving just a little too fast. When diving, you will usually find most of your endgame kit very deep, so that is typical. However, if you are really hurting for equipment on the way down you need to figure out how to kill a bit more. There's also the growth curve that means if you get behind, you cannot find as many easy kills as you go and you keep getting further and further behind the power curve you want to follow.

I.e., of course you find the best stuff at the bottom so you want to get there as soon as reasonably possible but if you dive too fast you don't have enough equipment to fight and since people note the floor is pretty empty your prospects for finding better equipment diminish. Or something.

[Timo Pietilä]

I'd support compressing the levels. The original Angband just doubled the number of levels that Moria had without really considering if that was appropriate, and frankly it wasn't.

I don't support compressing because I like exploring more than I like winning. To me it's not about destination, but journey. If it were up to me I would rather add more quest monsters and move bottom to dlvl 200 than compressing the few levels we currently have.

[EpicMan]

But how many levels are there?
An infinite nubmer.

You must descend 99 levels' worth to get to Sauron, one more to get to Morgoth, but at
any given depth you can recall out and back in, star scum, cast Alter Reality, levelport,
etc and *poof*, a brand new level.

Angband encourages skipping less than ideal levels because there is always more levels
to get stuff from. Missing something? Just scum and grind for it.

If you really want clearing levels to be worth it you need to limit the levels the player will see
i.e. Persistent levels. Which would probably force rebalancing so you don't need a big stack of
consumables to win (maybe possible now w/Vanilla's new !CCW ?).

Another thing might be to stop or severely curtail monsters spawning during play. That makes
levels grow in danger the longer you are there and so encourages leaving the level as quickly
As possible.

I do like the idea of compressing the number of levels, past 50 almost no new monsters appear,

[fizzix]

I don't support compressing because I like exploring more than I like winning. To me it's not about destination, but journey. If it were up to me I would rather add more quest monsters and move bottom to dlvl 200 than compressing the few levels we currently have.

It sounds like you would enjoy playing with fewer stairs. Try it out. I can give you a buggy patch if you want.

(the major bugs are that DD is replaced with alter reality, but i couldn't figure out how to id it on use. and that trap doors are still called trap doors even though they go upwards)

[Timo Pietilä]

But how many levels are there?
An infinite nubmer.

You must descend 99 levels' worth to get to Sauron, one more to get to Morgoth, but at
any given depth you can recall out and back in, star scum, cast Alter Reality, levelport,
etc and *poof*, a brand new level.

Brand new level that is same as previous level. Journey needs change. Otherwise it is not a journey, even if destination is not important.

For that reason we need more variance between levels. Not less levels.

[ewert]

But isn't changing the lvl when going up/down mostly an alter reality in current game? =P I mean there is zilch difference in 73 vs 74 really, for example.

I definitely do a lot of scumming for good levels. When any of my chars get clairvoyance (palantir, spell), it's all "vault? pit? if not, switch level". I prefer strongly guarded items, so vaults, rather than just more items in general.

If there was a level scheme such as I posted, I would be way more likely to clear levels, because you need to so you gain xp to get more power as every lvl is a definite increase in risk. You could even add in fizzix's fewer stairs mod to it to force clearing the levels, as there are so few it would not be so bothersome.

Personally I would HATE having 200dlvls. Even now I mostly have, erm, lets say 5 levels. There is lvl 10, for some cash / items for basic weapon/gear, lvl20 if missing something for statgain, lvl30 to get some basic stat upgrades to be able to tackle higher end stuff, levels 40-74 are a blur and semi-passed (mages and rogues for example may drop them STRAIGHT down, near zero fights unless real opportunity picks). Then 81-98 (with my modded object.txt, I am more tempted to go into the bit more dangerous 95+ as soon as possible, but 81 is mostly enough) And finally the big 2 fights. Really there is so much increased risk from 40 already that chars with detection and players with diving habits tend to drop fast from there to 75+ atleast, I reckon.

[nppangband]

Hello.

I have read a few posts lately that just basically say that levels between 2500 and 4900 are not much different, and basic advice is to skip them.

So we must make them different.

Problem is that this can't be done with simple "add monsters" -strategy, because avoidance makes monsters easy to deal with no matter how dangerous any individual monster is.

Any ideas? Maybe something to do with landscape that makes diving thru those levels inconvenient and staying there interesting? Vaults? Some mid-way quest monster (Saruman?).

1) I like the topic. I think this could improve the game a great deal.

2) Adding monsters does help, as long as you also filter out weak monsters below certain depths.

3) Although it kind of an evil idea, I somwehat like the idea of taking out continued stairs, so the player has to explore the level to get to find the new down stairs.

3) Adding more fixed quests besides Morgoth and Sauron is a great idea. Sauraman, Shelob, Glarung, Gothmog and the Witch King of Angmar are all good choices.

4) Place guards by all of the down stairs. But they can always just be banished, so, here is my real suggestion:

5) Have only one down stairs per level. A randomly assigned monster on each level holds a unique "key" to thestairs. You have to unlock the downstairs entry by killing the monster, who drops the key as part of their treasure drop, and carrying the key to the stairs entryway.
Maybe that idea is too much for every level. Maybe one in ever 2-3 levels.