User:Bluescreenofdeath/Branches

Compared to vanilla, SLEX's dungeon is quite a bit longer and also has many more additional sub-branches, some of which are essential to winning the game while others are optional but can provide potentially useful rewards when completed. The player may also obtain trophies for completing optional branches, which are useful mainly during Junethack.

Plot-critical areas

For a summary, refer to the tldr section below

The main dungeon is 100 levels in length. Of these, the first 50 are the Dungeons of Doom, with the castle being on level 50; there may be a wand of wishing there, but it's not guaranteed as some castle variants lack the wand. Level 51 to 100 are Gehennom, where the player cannot pray and it's not possible to convert altars to Moloch. The Valley of the Dead is on level 51, the Wizard Tower spans levels 75-77 and is accessed via a fake tower on a random level below, and level 99 has the Vibrating Square and the Seven Deadly Sins who chase the player and resurrect after being killed while the player searches for the square. On dungeon level 100, Moloch's Sanctum houses the Amulet of Yendor in the possession of the High Priest, and can only be accessed if the player completes the invocation ritual on level 99.

In order to complete the invocation ritual, the player has to collect three items: the Bell of Opening, Candelabrum of Invocation and Book of the Dead. The bell can be found in the Quest, which is usually accessed via a magic portal on dungeon level 15-49, but in about 3% of all games the portal is on a random level in Gehennom instead. Entering the level that has the quest portal will give a message hinting at its presence. There are 7 levels in the Quest, with the last level forcing the player to battle their quest nemesis who has the bell. After obtaining it, the bell also has to be imbued: in order to do so, the player needs to find a magic portal somewhere on level 2-6 of the Quest and enter it, which leads to the new Subquest branch. If the quest nemesis has already been defeated, being on the level with the subquest portal will display periodic messages hinting at its presence. The Subquest branch is 10 levels in length, and on level 6-10 (placed randomly) there's a pink staircase that leads to the Bell Caves. Upon entering the Bell Caves, the player receives a full-screen message and a trophy, and the bell is imbued. However, the player then needs to make their way back out; level teleportation is not permitted within the Bell Caves or Subquest. Also, upon imbuing the bell, a clone of the quest nemesis is spawned along with some hostile quest-specific monsters. Trying to perform the invocation ritual with a non-imbued bell does not work.

Obtaining the Book of the Dead is similar to vanilla: the book is held by the Wizard of Yendor, who is always found in the center of level 75. Here, the player can either enter the tower from below by finding the fake tower with the portal, or wake him remotely via e.g. mind flayer psychic blasts or a drum of earthquake; killing the Wizard causes him to harass the player for the rest of the game, although the frequency of harassment is reduced compared to vanilla. The Candelabrum of Invocation is found in Vlad's Tower, but before the player can enter that, they first have to find the entrance stair to Sheol somewhere in Gehennom. Finding this stair can take a while, since there is no in-game hint pointing the player in the right direction, so unless the player randomly stumbles upon it during their Gehennom explorations, they may well have to look for it everywhere. Sheol itself is 25 levels in length, most of them ice-themed, and the stair to Vlad's Tower is on a random level in Sheol, once again potentially requiring the player to search everywhere. When the player enters Vlad's tower, they may stumble upon various doors that require specific artifact keys to unlock; two of the three alignment keys are needed to reach Vlad normally, although methods to wake him up remotely can be used too. In any case, Vlad holds the candelabrum and the player needs to fight him to obtain it.

With all three invocation tools in their possession and the Bell of Opening imbued, the player is now capable of performing the invocation on level 99. For this level, the player has to find the Vibrating Square, which is on a random floor square and can only be found by stepping on it, so the player has to walk everywhere; this is complicated by the fact that the Seven Deadly Sins are chasing the player. They resurrect like Riders and any attempt to get rid of their corpses just causes them to resurrect instantly; if the player tries to eat them, it's DYWYPI. When on the vibrating square, the player needs to ring the Bell of Opening, light the Candelabrum of Invocation (which needs to have seven candles attached; a bunch of them can be found in Vlad's Tower) and read the Book of the Dead. Compared to vanilla, the invocation tools stay primed for quite a bit longer after being used, and the bell has many more charges so a mishap is less disastrous. Also, while the invocation tools work best when noncursed, even a cursed one may still work occasionally (the player will have to try repeatedly if they are cursed).

After the invocation is complete, a downstair appears that leads to Moloch's sanctum. Here, the player needs to make it to the High Temple and defeat the High Priest who holds the Amulet of Yendor. The priest also has a sidekick named Amudor, who may be slightly annoying but shouldn't pose a big threat by this point. Once the player picks up the Amulet, it cannot be dropped any longer, and unlike vanilla it also cannot be named; care should be taken since fake amulets also exist, and those likewise cannot be dropped but weigh 500 units. With the amulet in their possession, the player now needs to find the portal to the Yendorian Tower; this portal is somewhere in the sanctum and can only be used after the player has already obtained the amulet. Simply walking back up the dungeon after obtaining the amulet is a bad idea and won't allow the player to win. Instead, the amulet needs to be imbued before the ascension run begins. While holding the amulet, the player branchport or be banished at all, and horizontal teleports may randomly fail. In order to imbue the amulet, it needs to be taken to three sub-branches of the Yendorian Tower: Ordered Chaos, Forging Chamber and Dead Grounds. After entering all three of them, the amulet is fully imbued and the player is transported back to the bottom of the Yendorian Tower, where they can now finally use the portal to go back to Gehennom and start the ascension run. If the player didn't defeat the bosses of the three alignment quests, the ones that are still alive will spawn in the three side dungeons in much stronger form.

Once the amulet is fully imbued, the adverse effects of carrying it become much worse: from that point on, it completely prevents all forms of teleportation, Rodney's harassment becomes a lot more frequent, and spellcasting costs much more mana. Also, while the player is making their way to the upstair on dungeon level 1, the monster spawn frequency is maxxed and they often spawn on the upstairs of a level. Unlike vanilla, cursed potions of gain level cannot be used to skip levels, but on the bright side there is no mysterious force. Taking the pink upstair on dlvl1 while having the amulet takes the player to the Plane of Earth, and then the player has to find magic portals to go from plane to plane until they reach the Astral Plane, where offering the amulet on the altar of the player's alignment wins the game.

At this point, the player gets the option to continue playing in freeplay mode, and if they accept, the character is placed back on dungeon level 1 where the negative effects of carrying the Amulet of Yendor cease. The Elemental Planes are locked now, but can be accessed again if the player ventures to the sanctum of Moloch on dungeon level 100. All forms of teleportation also become available again as soon as the player enters freeplay mode. In order to leave the planes, the player may now simply press < while on any high altar on the Astral Plane, which will teleport them back to dungeon level 1 again.

TLDR summary

TLDR In order to win the game, you need to obtain three invocation artifacts. The Bell of Opening is found in the Quest, which is somewhere on level 15-49 of the Dungeons of Doom. You must imbue the bell after obtaining it, by finding the subquest portal on level 2-6 of the quest and then, on level 6-10 of the subquest, finding a pink stair to the Bell Caves. Obtain the Book of the Dead on the wizard tower level, which is level 75 of Gehennom. Find the stair to Sheol somewhere in Gehennom and within Sheol find the stair to Vlad's Tower somewhere, kill Vlad to obtain the Candelabrum of Invocation. Take the three artifacts to level 99 and perform the invocation. Go to level 100, kill the High Priest of Moloch for the Amulet of Yendor and, on the sanctum level, find a magic portal to the Yendorian Tower. Scour the entire tower for three staircases that imbue the amulet when entered. With a fully imbued amulet, make your way back out of Gehennom and use the stair on dungeon level 1 where you started your game. Reach the Astral Plane, offer the amulet on the altar of your own alignment, and celebrate your well-earned victory.

Semi-critical areas

Some dungeon branches in the game should be completed, because not completing them causes certain other, mandatory areas of the dungeon to be much harder. These are shown in this section.

Optional areas

Here, the various optional dungeon branches are shown. The player is free to ignore them, as completing them isn't required for winning the game. Most branches give at least one Junethack trophy when completed, and usually also have some sort of reward.

Note: Unlike vanilla NetHack, most special levels in SLEX aren't guaranteed to exist in a given game; they may randomly be replaced with filler levels. This includes levels that have trophies on them. If the trophy is granted for beating a boss, the player can still get lucky to have the boss spawn randomly somewhere; for such trophies it doesn't matter where the boss was when the player killed them. However, trophies obtained by picking up specific items on the level, e.g. the luckstone in Mines End or the prize on the final Sokoban floor, cannot be obtained if the pertaining special level didn't generate, because there is no way to make the item in question appear after the level was generated. This means that the player has to get lucky to have the special levels generate if they want a trophy, and may have to try repeatedly with several characters until the trophy-bearing level generates.

Rival Quest

Found somewhere in Gehennom, the Rival Quest is accessed by a hidden magic portal, but it's closed as long as the player has not obtained the Bell of Opening. The bell doesn't have to be carried to access this branch; as soon as the player picks it up for the first time, the portal opens and won't close again. Inside, the player encounters the quest of a different playable role, chosen randomly, complete with that role's nemesis and quest artifact at the bottom; killing the nemesis gives a trophy, but there is no guarantee that the player will be able to pick up the artifact, because it may evade their grasp if it's of a different alignment. Very occasionally, the rival quest nemesis can happen to be the same as the player role's own quest nemesis, in which case killing the nemesis in the regular Quest will automatically mark the Rival Quest as completed too; the nemesis and quest artifact will not appear a second time in the Rival Quest in that case.

Like the regular Quest, the Rival Quest is 7 levels in length. It should be noted that if the player gets a different role's quest artifact here, carrying it around will increase sanity and contamination over time, and equipping it even more so, making it a risky-to-use reward even if the player is capable of picking it up.

Town

A five-level branch found on level 10-12 of the Dungeons of Doom, accessed via a pink upstair. Most of the time, the first four levels are just rooms and corridors, although they have a low chance of being replaced with special levels. The actual town is at the top and usually has a couple of shops that may provide services and equipment for the player.

The Wyrm Caves

This branch is from SLASH'EM, but modified to be two levels in length; the second level is randomized (i.e. can be any special level) and has a downstair to the Ice Queen's Realm.

The Ice Queen's Realm

Accessed from the second level of the Wyrm Caves, this branch features three ice-themed levels. On the final level, two high-level unique dogs guard the entrance; the player has to get past them to reach the boss: Vera the Ice Queen, a high-level spellcaster with cold attacks. She spawns with an amulet of reflection and a cloak of magic resistance, making her impervious to various forms of attack. Additionally, she wears gauntlets and a pair of cyan sneakers; the latter is a randomized appearance and may or may not make her harder to defeat depending on what its base type is. Vera will spawn with an athame. Defeating her may let the player claim some of her equipment and trains all of the player's skills by one point.

Once Vera is defeated, Elaine the Enchantress spawns, who will be hostile and is likewise a powerful spellcaster. Her level is even higher than Vera's, but she moves at a slower speed and lacks the resistance-granting equipment that Vera spawns with; she still resists most elements though. Elaine also spawns with yellow sneakers, which may or may not make her harder to defeat depending on what its base type is. If the player defeats Elaine, 5 potions of tech level up are dropped as a reward.

Both Vera and Elaine grant a trophy when defeated, so a player who isn't ready to fight Elaine can just try to escape after offing Vera and will still earn at least one trophy (the one for defeating Vera) in the process.

Devnull Challenges

A series of one-level branches found early on, taken from the Devnull tournament. The actual challenges aren't playable in SLEX; if the player enters all of them within the same game, a trophy is granted as well as +1 to a random stat. These are the challenges:

• Grue challenge - accessed via a magic portal on level 7-8 of the Gnomish Mines. The player may find a blindfold here.
• Joust challenge - accessed via a stair on the top floor of Sokoban. This level has an ostrich, a bounter, a hunter and a shadow lord for the player to fight.
• Pacman challenge - accessed via a magic portal on dungeon level 8-12. Here, two skeleton keys and four beartraps can be harvested, but the player has to watch out for Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde.
• Pool challenge - accessed via a stair on dungeon level 4-6. There are several pits and boulders here, plus a bohemian ear spoon.
• Digdug challenge - accessed via a magic portal on level 3-6 of the Gnomish Mines (can be in Minetown). Loot on this level consists of a pick-axe and several wands of stun monster, but there's also some pookas and a Fygar.

Illusory Castle

This dungeon branch is found in the lower part of the Dungeons of Doom, with the entrance stair normally on dlvl35-49. It is 30 levels in length and the main special effect consists of the player being permanently confused. This makes the branch hard to play all by itself, but it's further complicated by the fact that there is a lot of random terrain including water, lava and other hazards. Without confusion resistance (which is a property that restores the yes/no prompts when entering a harmful square, but doesn't suppress confusion altogether), the Illusory Castle will be incredibly tedious. Flying is also recommended as it means the player doesn't have to fear falling into water or lava, although stalactites and crystal water will then be dangerous.

There's a 50% chance that the lower half of the Illusory Castle has a special level named "Machine", where an artifact pair of speed boots can be obtained. These cannot be obtained via wishing or random generation, and they grant aggravate monster and confusion resistance when worn, but actually reaching them without being confusion resistant is quite the task. Furthermore, wearing the boots also displays golems and nonliving monsters on the current dungeon level.

On the bottommost level, the Motherfucker Glass Golem is waiting: a very fast level 50 golem whose weapon attacks cause insanity, intelligence drain and contamination. He also has ranged banishment and weeping attacks, and has innate reflection, -20 AC and resists basically every element. Additionally, the golem can tunnel through rock and therefore easily chase the player. If all that wasn't bad enough, the player also has to fight him while permanently confused; he lacks the stalker flag and so he normally doesn't follow the player through levelports. Defeating the golem rewards the player with an artifact helm of telepathy that can be invoked for identify, and the secure identify technique is unlocked if the player didn't know it already, otherwise the technique's level is increased by one. Also, for the remaining game, the average timeout of the secure identify technique is greatly reduced, allowing the player to use it more often.

Deep Mines

A branch similar to the Gnomish Mines, but found much deeper in the Dungeons of Doom, usually with the entrance stair on level 30-49. This branch is 25 levels long. The filler levels are cavernous like the ones in the Gnomish Mines, however these can be filled with various types of humanoids, generally themed: randomly one of G, C, O, o, k, @, T or a mix of Z/M, or occasionally a wild mix of all of those monster types will be found on a given filler level. The type of monster is rolled for each filler level individually. This results in the branch being very combat-heavy, and all the various humanoid monsters are likely to provide plenty of weapons, ammo and armor for the player.

About halfway through, there's a large chance to encounter a special level named "Orc Barracks", which has a ton of orcs and contains an artifact luckstone that can be invoked for perilous identify. This lets the player identify some items just like a regular identify invoke, but also curses the stone and causes random bad effects. Additionally, a town level similar to Minetown (but with different layouts to choose from) is usually found rather early-ish in this branch.

The trophy is obtained on the bottommost floor: a cursed stone of magic resistance. A symbiote token can also be obtained on the deep mines end level. Since the stone of magic resistance causes the player to take double damage from everything while cursed, and also cannot be dropped or stashed while cursed, it's probably a good idea to uncurse it; however, carrying it in open inventory will randomly cause it to re-curse itself, so a steady supply of holy water or remove curse is likely going to be needed to use it effectively. If the cursed stone is left in inventory for too long, the curse can progress resulting in a heavily cursed stone, then eventually prime cursed etc., making it increasingly harder to uncurse it while also causing additional detrimental effects.

ZAPM

ZAPM is originally a roguelike game based loosely on NetHack, but in space. The ZAPM dungeon was recreated for SLEX, and can be accessed by a pink downstair that will be found on a random level from 2 to 49 in the Dungeons of Doom. Certain roles and races will start in this branch, and activating the "zapem" (sic) birth option has the same effect. This branch has three additional sub-branches; upon entering, the player is first placed in the Space Base, which has 12 levels, with side branches at the bottom. These are the Sewer Plant, Gamma Caves and Mainframe, accessed via pink staircases on the last three Space Base levels. Characters who start the game in the Space Base will have to reach the bottom of the Sewer Plant before they're allowed to exit back to the main dungeon, but may opt to clear out the other two sub-branches first.

While the Space Base is a rather unremarkable dungeon with mostly rooms-and-corridors levels, the three side branches all have their own special rules. They have to be completed in order: at first, only the Sewer Plant is open, and the player has to make it to the bottom of that to unlock the Gamma Caves, then get to the bottom of that branch too to open the stair to the Mainframe. On level 8 of the Space Base, the Robot Town special level can be found, which has several shops and a locked nurse hall. The latter may become important later (see the Gamma Caves section below).

In the Sewer Plant, the player encounters lots of moorland and water. Swimming in moorland is possible, but deals continuous HP damage. Also, just being in the sewer plant will occasionally hit the player with poison damage unless unbreathing, and players who have to breathe will regenerate HP and Pw at half the normal rate. It helps a lot to have flying in this branch, which allows the player to pass over the harmful liquids. There are a total of 5 levels in the Sewer Plant, with the bottom being the waste processing facility, a special level that has a few random armor pieces and nothing else of value.

The Gamma Caves are characterized by having a background contamination effect that causes the player's contamination to go up quickly over time. Also, monsters with contamination attacks are very common here. Contamination resistance helps, but is a very rare property; alternately, the player should probably try to finish this branch quickly, then get out again and take care of the contamination. This may be done by going back to Robot Town and chatting to the nurses; if the RNG is kind, one of them will offer a decontamination service, but that costs a couple buckazoids. The Gamma Caves branch is 6 levels long.

Finally, the player will reach the Mainframe, which is entered from below so you have to make your way up to the top. While in the Mainframe, teleports cannot be controlled, and major demons are more common. The Mainframe opens up with a special level, the Rabbit Hole: a large open area with various hostile rabbits. Most of them are easy to defeat. A few of them are not. In particular, the moon rabbit and eastern rabbit can cause confusion, and the killer rabbits are level 16, deal high damage in melee and can cause fear. After fighting or sneaking your way past them, there are mostly maze levels up to the top; there's 5 levels in the Mainframe (counting the rabbit hole), and at the top, the BOFH is waiting. He's the boss of this branch and needs to be defeated to claim a reward.

Fighting the BOFH as a low-level character can become a war of attrition; all he ever does is using a 2d12 damage melee attack, but he has a lot of health as well as good armor class and 100% monster magic resistance, and is covetous to boot. Since there is no upstair on the level, the BOFH can't warp to it to heal, which makes it easier to pin him down but at the same time also makes him more dangerous as he'll just keep attacking even when wounded. While a powerful player character can probably just overwhelm him, weaker characters will have to hope they don't run out of steam while the BOFH batters them. Since the BOFH lacks player-style magic resistance, a death ray will kill him, and he can also be turned to stone, but the player still has to be capable of actually hitting him with such attacks.

Once the BOFH is defeated, the player gains several rewards: up to three random skills are unlocked or may have their skill cap increased, and the player also receives a random artifact as well as a guaranteed branchporting artifact. The latter can theoretically be used immediately to warp out of the entire ZAPM branch. However, using it too often will eventually start afflicting the player with long-lasting inertia, which can be very detrimental, and it lasts longer the more often the artifact is used.

Void and Nether Realm

The Void is a dungeon branch always accessed via a staircase on level 98 of Gehennom. It's 30 levels in length, and has a randomly placed branch inside that leads to the Nether Realm which is likewise 30 levels long. While the player is in the Void or Nether Realm, there is permanent map amnesia, meaning the map will continuously get erased from the screen. The goal in this branch is to first reach the bottom of the Nether Realm, which causes the boss to spawn on the bottom level of the Void, and then fight Tiksrvzllat at the bottom of the Void.

All forms of level teleportation, branch teleportation and other methods of instantly warping to different dungeon levels are impossible while in the Void or Nether Realm. The Void also spawns some nether mist tiles that have giant chasms on them; inside the nether realm, nether mist is more common, but has a lower chance of spawning with giant chasms. While the player stands on a nether mist tile, their experience is slowly drained; drain resistance provides partial protection from that effect. There are many void rooms (filled with high-level ghosts) in the Void, and the Nether Realm has random monster group spawns on most floors as well as a high concentration of random special rooms. It should be noted that monsters in the Nether Realm spawn awake when they're generated as part of a special room, so if there's e.g. a roomful of trolls, they'll all come for the player immediately!

Tiksrvzllat, the boss, is a level 120 ghost with very fast speed (25), good AC (-20), resistances to basically every element (including time stop), and can walk through walls and blast the player with disenchantment, time, insanity, psywaves and nether, plus she has arcane spellcasting. If the player defeats her, there's a permanent +1 increase damage and +5 accuracy for the player's attacks, 10% better spellcasting chances, and the player receives 5 random artifacts with a chance of unlocking or boosting their corresponding skills.

Angmar

A dungeon found in Gehennom, accessed by a pink staircase on a random level. 15 levels in length, Angmar features rooms-and-corridors levels with lots of sand terrain and some shifting sand. The regular sand slows down movement of non-flying players, and being on a sand tile has a chance of blinding the player for a few turns due to sandstorms. Shifting sand, on the other hand, is a very deadly type of terrain: players who cannot fly or levitate will have three turns to move to a different tile or die, and being pulled into it by a monster with drowning attacks will just kill the player outright, no questions asked. Unlike water, unbreathing does not help. Therefore, the player is advised to always have a charged wand of teleportation or similar item at hand to deal with eels and the like if they get a grabbing attack off, because allowing the eel to get another turn while it has already grabbed the player can end the game.

On the lowest level, the Witch-King of Angmar is waiting, the boss of this dungeon branch. He's a high-level wraith with good speed (20), decent AC (-10) and powerful level-draining melee attacks as well as a ranged beam attack that heals him by the amount of damage he does to the player, and additionally he has full arcane spellcasting. While the Witch-King is a formidable opponent who can also fly over terrain obstacles like water or lava at will, he's vulnerable to fire, and a player with strong weapon attacks won't have too much trouble hitting him in melee or with powerful ranged weapons, and it may well be a good strategy to kill him quickly before he gets his pain train going. After defeating the Witch-King, the player receives a trophy and 5 extra skill slots that can be spent to increase the character's skills.

Emyn Luin

This dungeon is accessed by a pink staircase found on a random level in Gehennom, and spans 20 levels. Dungeon levels in Emyn Luin are usually rooms-and-corridors levels and caverns (the latter having layouts similar to those seen in the Gnomish Mines). The main gimmick of this dungeon is that all the walls in Emyn Luin are displayed in blue, and player characters who bump into any such wall take damage and may lose intelligence or wisdom; rarely it also causes amnesia. It is therefore a good idea to not play too fast, as a single mistype may result in lost stats, and holding keys down is particularly ill-advised as the game doesn't automatically stop when bumping into a wall (although this can be configured with the MSGTYPE option).

On the bottommost floor, the player encounters Kalwina, the boss of this dungeon. She has a ranged shredding attack that damages and disenchants the player's gear and also deals considerable damage, as well as a kalashnikov with lots of ammo which she'll likewise use at range. When the player defeats Kalwina, the kalashnikov can be looted off her body, and a few permanent passive boosts are given to the player character: learning a new spell gives 10% extra spell memory, technique timeouts are 2% faster so they can be used a bit more often, and using a skill has 5% chance of training the skill by double the usual amount. Additionally, once Kalwina is defeated, the blue walls effect inside Emyn Luin ends, making the branch safe to traverse.

Minotaur Maze

This dungeon branch is found on the second level of the Giant Caverns. It's 25 levels in length, filled with nothing but mazes. These mazes do have rooms and other dungeon features, unlike the regular full-screen mazes from vanilla. However, the player cannot dig holes as a method of shortcutting, and level teleportation in this branch can't be controlled. To further complicate things, the game doesn't remember the map for you, i.e. you have permanent map amnesia while in this branch.

On the bottom of this branch, the Minotaur of the Maze is lurking. He's essentially a slightly stronger minotaur, so the strategies for dealing with normal minotaurs apply for fighting him as well. After he's defeated, the player receives a random artifact and may also have a random skill unrestricted or its cap increased, plus the character learns the cure amnesia technique, which cures temporary map amnesia (caused by e.g. triggering a lasting amnesia trap). It should be noted here that using the technique in this branch does not remove the ongoing map amnesia effect inside the Minotaur Maze, and defeating the boss doesn't make it end either.

Swimming Pool

This 15-level dungeon is accessed via a pink staircase somewhere in Gehennom. The levels have a lot of water tunnels, which can be entered only when the player character is not flying or levitating, and even then it requires swimming or magical breathing, plus the player's items get wet just like when coming in contact with regular water. Also, mixed pools and diver's paradises are common special rooms here.

When the player enters the lowest level of this branch, there is a trophy. However, the actual reward consists of a bunch of rings and amulets hidden in the water tunnels of the lowest Swimming Pool level; since the final level doesn't have a fixed layout, the player will have to either use object detection to find the randomly placed jewelry, or dive into the water to find them. Retrieving the items will most probably require the player to equip gear that lets them survive underwater, although it may also be possible to dig out the water tunnels (which transforms them into regular water tiles) and then fish out the items with fishing poles or similar tools, or characters with certain combinations of in/extrinsics may be able to simply pick them up while flying over the water.

Hell's Bathroom

A short side branch in Gehennom, accessed via a pink staircase on a random level. Hell's Bathroom spans 3 levels and has lots of urine lakes as well as some toilets; being in this branch without magical breathing causes the player character to occasionally be affected by a background poison effect. Swimming in a urine lake does nothing if the player's alignment record is positive, but causes severe acid damage to the character and their inventory if it's negative.

The bottommost floor of Hell's Bathroom spawns Erogenous Katia, the boss of this branch. She is fast and has a couple of resistances, as well as powerful melee attacks including one that causes random status effects, potentially including illness, plus she can fart at the player to cause random bad effects. The biggest danger is her ability to paralyze the player when she moves over a toilet though, as it allows her to continuously attack while the player cannot do anything. When she's defeated, the player gains a trophy and an artifact bath towel that may increase the character's charisma if they use a toilet while wearing it.

Minus World

Entering this branch isn't normally possible for the player. The only way to end up in the Minus World is by getting banished, which has 1% chance of depositing the player on the lowest level of Minus World from where they have to make their way back up. Any form of levelporting, branchporting or banishment is disabled, but horizontal teleportation within a level is still permitted.

The Minus World consists of five levels filled with chaotic terrain. Shambling horrors, missingnos and other random-stats monsters generate very frequently in this branch. Other than that, the branch is fairly unremarkable; as soon as the player leaves via the pink stair, a trophy is obtained and the character then lands in the Wyrm Caves branch. As soon as the player exits the Minus World, it then also becomes possible to travel back to it by branchporting.

Green Cross

SPOILER WARNING!

The Green Cross branch is normally found on dungeon level 31-49 of the Dungeons of Doom. It is entered via a magic portal, and the game tries to make a green cross room (which has mostly paved floor and grassland) to put the portal in. If the creation of this special room fails, the portal can also spawn somewhere else on the level. However, there is only a 1 in 20 chance (rolled at game start) that the portal is actually open, otherwise the branch is inaccessible. For the walscholar and gang scholar roles, the chance is 1 in 4, and the preversioner, camperstriker and spacewars fighter roles are guaranteed to have the portal be open. Preversioners also start the game in Green Cross and have to make it all the way to the bottom before they can leave.

If the branch is not open, alter reality will reroll the random chance, giving the player another shot at maybe being allowed to enter. Alternately, recursion may randomly turn the player into one of the roles that have better odds of the portal being open, allowing you to enter. As soon as you entered Green Cross for the first time, the portal stays open even if you later use alter reality or recursion.

Green Cross is a rather barren dungeon that spans 60 levels, which are mostly rooms-and-corridors levels interspersed with a few special levels. It is possible to levelport past everything if the player wants to, and on the bottommost floor a boss is waiting: Stahngnir, the Steel Giant Lord, a very strong giant that appears with an entourage of other steel giants. While regular steel giants are already rather dangerous, the boss additionally has active and passive disenchantment attacks, making him a huge nuisance for weapon-using characters, and he resists death rays, disintegration, petrification, sleep and magic. His monster MR of 95 means that most other magical effects aren't very effective against him either.

Defeating Stahngnir rewards the player with a trophy, a random material kit and several material-altering scrolls. The latter have 60% chance to be inferior material, 30% regular material and 10% superior material; this is rolled for the entire stack, meaning the player always gets three scrolls of the same base type. Additionally, the boss drops an artifact hammer that deals double damage and grants petrification resistance when wielded; this hammer can only be obtained this way, as it's not wishable and cannot be randomly generated. However, picking up the hammer summons another boss: Ariane, Lady of the Elements. (If the player lets a monster, e.g. a pet, carry the hammer to a different level and then picks it up, Ariane will spawn on whichever dungeon level the player was on at the time of picking it up.)

While Lord Stahngnir was already difficult to begin with, Lady Ariane is designed to pose a huge challenge even for player characters in a full ascension kit. She's fast and has -20 AC, high monster magic resistance, many elemental resistances and innate reflection, hits very hard in melee and can also blast the player with fire, cold and shock at range. Additionally, Ariane is covetous and has a bunch of healing items as well as a wand of teleportation which she'll use when her health gets low, and she possesses the super regene ability that allows her to naturally regenerate several hit points per turn.

If the player manages to defeat Ariane, there is another trophy as well as two random artifacts and potentially up to three skill unlocks, plus the player learns the elemental imbue technique that allows the character to turn mundane melee weapons into elemental-branded artifacts. Considering the difficulty of killing Ariane in the first place, and the fact that the artifacts created by this technique are rather weak, the technique isn't very likely to be of much use, although the player may get lucky and obtain useful random artifacts or skills. However, these artifacts may also turn out to be useless if the RNG is in a bad mood.

The Giant Caverns

This branch exists in SLASH'EM, but in SLEX its size has been increased to two levels; the second level can be any random special level. Access to the Minotaur Maze subdungeon is via a pink stair on the second level of this branch.

Resting Zones

These one-level branches are found in Gehennom, the Yendorian Tower and some of the subdungeons in Gehennom; their main purpose is to provide areas where the player can access their god, as the resting zones don't count as being in Gehennom. This means that it's possible to pray in there, as well as convert Moloch's altars. It can be a good idea to bring a scroll of consecration or scroll of create altar, both of which can be used to erect an altar on an ordinary floor square.