New Monster Nest/Pit rarity

[CunningGabe]

In the latest nightly, there are some changes to monster pits and nests. The two major changes are:
1. You can add types via the pit.txt edit file.
2. The rarities have been tweaked.

Let me expand on this second point. There are 5 kinds of monster "pits" (where you have an organized group of monsters): Orc, Troll, Giant, Dragon, and Demon. Whenever cave generation decided to build one, the way it would choose which one to build was to generate a random number between 1 and your depth. If that number was less than 20, you got an orc pit; less than 40, and you got a troll pit, and so on.

The problem with this is it means that at DL80, for example, 25% of all pits you saw were Orc pits. Orc pits are not exciting at DL80. Neither are Troll pits, and they formed another 25%.

A similar calculation happened for the 3 monster "nests": jelly, animal, and undead. At DL80, 37.5% of all monster nests would be filled with jellies and such.

Now I've changed that. The exact method of calculation is a little involved, so I won't get into it here. But now you are very unlikely to see orc pits beyond DL 50 or so. At DL35, approximately half the pits are orc pits, and half are troll pits. At DL55, approximately half are troll pits, and half are giant pits. And so on. There is a small chance of seeing an easier or a harder pit than these.

I hope to add more types of nests and pits in the future, as well as adding some variations on the room structure (for instance, small nests that are 5x5 or so instead of 5x13 or so). But for now, I hope you'll enjoy your more dangerous deeper nests and pits.

[Derakon]

Awesome. Moving more stuff to the edit files is generally good.

So now if we wanted to we could e.g. add treasure pits to the game? Or ant nests? Or holy pits (angels + priest-type 'p' monsters)?

[d_m]

Awesome. Moving more stuff to the edit files is generally good.

So now if we wanted to we could e.g. add treasure pits to the game? Or ant nests? Or holy pits (angels + priest-type 'p' monsters)?

Yes!!

I just want to say that I am hugely excited about CunningGabe's work on this... I think it will go a long way to making levels more interesting.

[CunningGabe]

Awesome. Moving more stuff to the edit files is generally good.

So now if we wanted to we could e.g. add treasure pits to the game? Or ant nests? Or holy pits (angels + priest-type 'p' monsters)?

Ant nests would be easy. Holy pits a little harder, since priestness isn't really captured well in-game, but you could probably hack it by looking at what spells priests have that other things don't have.

Creeping coin pits are possible, but pits with actual treasure are currently not doable this way.

I'd love to hear any and all ideas people have for pits like this -- if there are pits that are difficult or impossible to put together with the current setup, I can try to expand the file format to make it possible.

[dos350]

nice one, i like the idea of more variety of pit and nest, ee!~

but i disagree that orc pit etc is boring at deep depth.. ~ i hold down key on orc pit if im strong, ~ also troll.. maybe even dragon if im immune.. !! please no make them go away!

[Djabanete]

This is great. It would also be cool if there were pits of one single kind of monster.

Personally I think this scheme would be ideal:

1. Every kind of monster letter can appear as a pit.
2. Demon pits (both "u" and "U" together) and color dragon pits can appear too, as they do now.
3. Priestly pits (Novice Priest, Dark Elven Priest, Priest, Troll Priest, Novice Paladin, Paladin, Knight Templar, Patriarch)
4. Magely pits (Novice Mage, Gnome Mage, Dark Elven Mage, Mage, Ogre Mage, Dark Elven Sorcerer, Sorcerer)
5. Nests of the Jelly, Animal, and Undead variety, as now.

[Derakon]

I can just imagine it now -- the Morgoth Pit!

(More plausibly, imagine an Umber Hulk pit, or an Ethereal Hound pit, or an Archlich pit...)

[NotMorgoth]

I've seen (or rather, detected) a Q pit in Sangband - not dangerous at all unless you open the door...

[Timo Pietilä]

I can just imagine it now -- the Morgoth Pit!

(More plausibly, imagine an Umber Hulk pit, or an Ethereal Hound pit, or an Archlich pit...)

Black Reaver pit (Lich pit). No basic four Great wyrm pit. Hound pit. Ghost pit (early levels). Greater Q pit.

[PowerDiver]

The problem with this is it means that at DL80, for example, 25% of all pits you saw were Orc pits. Orc pits are not exciting at DL80. Neither are Troll pits, and they formed another 25%.

...

now you are very unlikely to see orc pits beyond DL 50 or so.

Orc pits are exciting at DL80 if you aren't strong enough to kill anything else.

DL54 is the cutoff where snagas become worth killing, as stat potion drops come into depth. IMO orc pits are mostly a waste *before* DL54, not after, but probably that's just me. You should make sure that the depth where orc pits stop showing up is not in the late 50s or else there may be a couple of DLs that turn into a new semi-official stat gain depth.

[Nick]

Quylthulg pit. I've also seen pits of g, H, h (scary), k, F, but my favourite is the Umber Hulk pit.

[fizzix]

Orc pits are exciting at DL80 if you aren't strong enough to kill anything else.

DL54 is the cutoff where snagas become worth killing, as stat potion drops come into depth. IMO orc pits are mostly a waste *before* DL54, not after, but probably that's just me. You should make sure that the depth where orc pits stop showing up is not in the late 50s or else there may be a couple of DLs that turn into a new semi-official stat gain depth.

My experience is that late gain orc pits aren't really worth it even for stat gain. Even troll pits are a close call whether I go for it. And this is assuming I have _dispel and can take them out easily.

Now dragon pits...they'll give you on average 3-10 stat gain potions.

[myshkin]

My experience is that late gain orc pits aren't really worth it even for stat gain. Even troll pits are a close call whether I go for it. And this is assuming I have _dispel and can take them out easily.

Now dragon pits...they'll give you on average 3-10 stat gain potions.

I am pretty sure that Eddie's characters are too weak to take on dragon pits when they first encounter orc pits at dlvl 70.

[bulian]

These changes sound like a really cool idea. Besides stat gain potions, increased dragon pit frequencies will also result in higher amounts of endgame consumables being available to the player (?Banish, !*Heal*, etc.), particularly in ironman games. I'd actually try to keep dragon pit frequency about where it is now but increase demon pit frequency, as those are more difficult than dragon pits but not so deadly to a level as undead nests.

Undead nests frequently cause an immediate decision to change levels, so I'm not such a big fan of increasing their frequency, actually. I think animal nests provide a nice challenge throughout the game, though, so gradually increasing their frequency relative to jelly pits is a good change.

[CunningGabe]

Undead nests frequently cause an immediate decision to change levels, so I'm not such a big fan of increasing their frequency, actually.

This is a concern of mine as well, and their depth and rarity were the parameters I was least sure of. These might need to be tweaked.

Another fix would be to introduce more nests at around the same depth, to reduce the relative frequency of the undead nests.