Patreon Weekly #24 - Nov 15th, 2019
Added 2019-11-16 04:18:14 +0000 UTCHello Patrons!
This week I'm going to go over my thoughts and rough plans for the demon halls! The demon halls differ from the previous two regions, because I'm already fairly happy with the existing enemy designs. Evil eyes have already been overhauled, succubi work fairly well with the changed charm mechanics from 0.7.0, and scorpios were always fairly interesting enemies (though acidic scorpios are obviously getting changed). While I may still make changes to these enemies, they will be pretty minor, so for this weekly I'm going to be focusing on new stuff and other demon halls problems I'm addressing.
Loot changes:
It's no secret that people like to rush through the demon halls, and a big part of that is there is very little loot there which is worth looking for. One major change I'm trying to make is to amp up the available items in the demon halls, without risking destabilizing the current game flow.
In terms of general drops, I'm making some slight tweaks to which tiers of item spawn in which stage of the game. I'm removing T2 items from the Caves+, and T3 items from the Halls, and putting those odds more towards T4 and T5 gear. This shouldn't have a huge balance impact (though T5 is notably more common in the dwarven halls), but will make it less likely that the player will encounter gear that is completely under-tiered for the stage of the game they're in. Here are the full changes to droprates by tier:
I'm also improving item drops from the enemies found in the demon halls. Succubi now have a chance to drop random scrolls, with the RNG weighted a bit more towards rare ones. Evil eyes are now guaranteed to drop dew, and also will have a chance to drop a random seed or runestone. Finally, Scorpios will now have a chance to drop random potions, with the RNG weighted a bit more towards rare ones. Note though that Scorpios will not be eligible to drop healing potions, that item will be given out by a new enemy...
I have considered other changes, such as random drops having increased upgrades, but I have decided to hold off on those for now. I don't want to further encourage people to hoard upgrades or to dump all upgrades into a single item, and I worry that giving better lategame loot will encourage just that. It is possible to add conditions so that later loot is only upgraded if the player is using their scrolls, but doing this properly (to not encourage hoarding or dumping) makes for a specific and seemingly arbitrary set of restrictions. Ultimately I'm okay with player builds being decided before the demon halls, so long as there is otherwise still a reason to explore them.
-----
New Enemies:
The two new enemies I'm adding to the demon halls are actually designed to work together! They are Ripper Demons and Demon Spawners.
Many dwarves died in the demon halls before the halls were totally lost, and their desiccated corpses are outside of the Dwarf King's necromantic influence. Rather than just letting these dwarves rot, Yog-Dzewa decided to put them to use. Demon spawners are large conglomerations of dwarven flesh, twisting and morphing together to create functional soldiers for Yog. Ripper demons are the result of this process, they are undead monsters that strongly resemble dwarves, but with modifications that make them more lethal. Their unstable form makes them somewhat frail, but their large claws and light frame also make them fast and deadly.
Spawners are created as a part of levelgen and Ripper Demons are generated by spawners, neither enemy respawns normally. Spawners have a big health pool and resist damage taken past a certain threshold (similar to slimes), but cannot move and have no innate defense except spawning more rippers. Ripper demons aren't too nasty if you've got some armor or enough damage to kill them quickly, but as long as the spawners are alive they'll just keep coming.
There's an incentive to hunt down demon spawners as well! Every demon spawner grants a hefty chunk of EXP and is guaranteed to drop a potion of healing. There will be 1 or 2 spawners per floor, depending on how far in the region the player is. I'm undecided on this at the moment, but I may also add some extra incentive to hunt down and kill spawners. I may make it so that some ripper demons may show up in the Yog fight, depending on the number of spawners left alive...
-----
My current plan is to hopefully start the beta for 0.7.6 sometime in this coming week. I'm currently working on getting as many enemies into a working state as possible, though it's looking like DM-200s, reworked Golems, and reworked mimics might have to wait until a bit after the beta's release. As mentioned already I am planning to make boss changes after the initial beta, but before the full release. 0.7.6 is looking to be such a large update I may actually decide to rename it to 0.8.0, given that it's starting to look closer in scope to a major size update.
I've also got the next Patreon poll finished and ready to go, so look forward to that first thing next week!
Comments
As mentioned I don't expect the change to tier distribution to have a huge balance impact, but it should eliminate the annoyance of finding hugely under-tiered gear, if nothing else. There are plenty of other ways to encourage demon halls exploration but I'm taking things one step at a time so as not to overdo it. Scrolls will interact with spawners just like any other mob, but their damage resistance will mean that killing them instantly won't be possible.
Shattered Pixel
2019-11-16 18:22:13 +0000 UTCI was originally planning this but decided against it because I suspect it'll encourage dumping. Those increased natural upgrades are only really usable if you don't already have a higher-upgrade item in that equip slot, so players might continue to upgrade only one item and them look to the demon halls to fill them out with +2/+3 gear in other slots. While that does definitely make the demon halls worthwhile it's not a strategy that I want to encourage. To address this I'd need to put lots of restrictions on it, like "better naturally upgraded gear only spawns if you have spent at least X scrolls across Y different items", and then it risks becoming very arbitrarily restrictive.
Shattered Pixel
2019-11-16 18:19:40 +0000 UTCPerhaps if these 4 and 5 tier loot in demon halls were more likely to be upgraded to like 2+ or 3+ it would encourage exploration and discourage upgrade dumping? also I love the ripper idea the demon halls needed something.
KylePop39
2019-11-16 12:50:34 +0000 UTCi love the idea of the extra incentive to explore halls! usually by the time one finishes metro they're basically prepped for yog, but additional drops and xp rewards will make for a much more compelling reason to explore this final chapter. the idea of rippers spawning in the yog fight is tricky: they'd need to be dangerous enough to the point where you'll be able to net more hp by simply taking out the spawners, and as such fighting through the brutal enemies everywhere. i think that the gear drops will actually make very little difference, due to the fact that identify scrolls aren't usually abundant, and more importantly that they take up an equipment spot. i think consumables, throwables, and most importantly wands will be much more of a tempting reward for players with builds already prepared for yog. also, how will MagMa, retri/psion, and mindvis interact with spawners?
Lassoloc
2019-11-16 04:36:26 +0000 UTC
