User:Loggers

I like to think I'm halfway competent, but it's probably more around 23%

stuff I'm working on

page for hidden dungeon from evil

the fabled yani stream of consciousness

these are ideas I have for a variant I'd like to make. the formatting is not good.

branch (quest?) idea

ok so I had this fire idea for a branch earlier today when I was Chilling. there's this old anishinaabe story I heard a few years ago that involves a big lake with a house fulla evil spirits and one really big snake. it goes something like this:

so nanabozho (a prominent trickster/hero in anishinaabe folklore), comes back from hunting one day to notice his cousin's missing. he also notices a giant snake trail leading away, so it's pretty obvious what happened. there's a giant horned snake called mishi-ginebig (literally "great serpent") that lives at the bottom of a nearby lake in a big house with a ton of evil spirits. nanabozho heads over to the lake, looks down and sees the big snake kill his cousin, which rightly pisses him off a bit. so he tells the wind to stop blowing, the clouds to blow away, and orders the sun to shine as hard as it can onto the lake, to make it boil (nanabozho is sometimes a very powerful force. it varies from story to story). then he disguises himself as the stump of a tree and waits. sure enough, the snake and his evil spirit ensemble has to leave the boiling water. since nanabozho got rid of the wind and clouds, the only shade is beneath the trees in the forest, so they head into the forest. they suspect the stump IS nanabozho, but after they harass it for a little while it provides no reaction so they ignore it. everyone goes into the forest besides one little serpent, who keeps watch. as soon as the little serpent's head is turned, nanabozho stops looking like a stump and shoots mishi-ginebig in the heart while he's lying relaxed. mishi-ginebig knows he's gonna die, but he decides everyone else is going down with him, dammit, so he literally floods the entire world and nanabozho and his people only escape by climbing to the top of the tallest mountain in the land and making a raft. eventually the water dies down, mishi-ginebig is found dead, and all the spirits fuck off back to their house in the lake, too scared to ever come back.

that was a lot of yapping, but I think it's a cool story so I put it all down even if it's not all relevant. basically, I think it would be cool if there was a mostly-underwater branch that was the spirit's lake, that culminated in the house of mishi-ginebig, and his spirit gang. for mishi-ginebig himself, there's a lot to work with with various interpretations; horned/great serpents are a recurring aspect in a lot of native american mythology. the one I like the most is a description of mishi-ginebig with extremely hard, brilliantly shining scales, and big horns. so lots of AC, probably reflection, and/or some sort of archon-like aura. probably really fast with butt, bite and wrap attacks. the spirit ensemble I'm less sure of, as they're never really described in detail. I could pull some random ones maybe. something to think about.

I know at least one tribe believes that horned serpents have a crystal on their head that can be used for divination (I forget which.. cree or sioux maybe?) so a potential reward for defeating mishi-ginebig could be a crystal that does something related to that. invoke magic mapping or identify, boost divination spell power, something like that.

this could also be attached as a quest to a role loosely based off of native american mythology, but I'm not sure how well that would translate to nethack. it doesn't have the same issue as something like samurai feeling very ignorant-touristy because I actually AM of the culture the role'd be based off of, but I'm not sure if other nethack players would really enjoy the theming all that much. it seems very easy to theme around a quest, though... leader nanabozho, big snake stole his cousin and some precious item of his. go through some woods and reach the locate level at the shores of the lake, go through some filler underwater levels and then get to the big house. hm. something to think about.

this yani has a lot more to it but this is the basic stuff

the old dragon yani

I like evilhack's dragons. I'm going to steal those and increase their speed to 15 (18 for shadow dragons, 20 for blue dragons). then there could be a third age group for dragons, let's call that ancient. gnollhack has these but they're lame so it's going to be different. these guys would only generate in special rooms deep in the main dungeon or gehennom. call it a dragon hoard. a fuckton of cool loot awaits ye if ya can kill the big lizard. they're greedy and lazy so never leave their hoard unless you piss them off. these are meant to basically be optional pseudo boss fights. they occupy a strange space in between random fodder and unique.

general stats : all will be speed 12 besides shadow who will be speed 15 and blue who will be speed 17. old and slow but not trivial, you get it. let's say like... -10 AC somewhere around there. doesn't matter too much. their scales got fuckin tough, 's the important thing to convey. I don't think they can actually get bigger per se, because the regular dragons are already like the biggest thing in the game. actually, maybe they get skinner. old n withered, type shit. whatever, I'll think about that later. let's make their claw attacks 8d4 and their bite 5d8. the exceptions are shadow dragons and red dragons. ancient shadow dragons can have 8d6 claws and ancient red dragons can have 8d5 claws. ancient red dragons also get 5d9 bites.

ancient dragons also won't have digestion attacks. past a certain point the digestion attacks either don't do anything or just work in the player's favor. flavor-wise they are old and don't like eating things live. Sea dragons still get their engulf. It’s not a digestion attack and it’s actually scary.

breath weapons are kind of boring. once you have reflection and/or the appropriate resistances no one cares. lame. how do you get around this? good fucking question actually. I have no idea. my genius has limits. this is depressing. let's talk about the individual guys now. as an update, I think some of the less interesting dragons could be able to strip your resistance like the vulnerability spell, with their breath. they should use their breath in melee too, if that is a thing.

blue: they can jump! acrobatic guys. their breath can temporarily strip your shock resistance, and their claw and bite attacks do shock damage.

green: they trail stinking clouds like a hezrou. their claw attacks are just poisonous, but their bite is disease-inducing.

red: their breath attack can temporarily. strip your fire resistance. claw and bite attacks are fiery.

yellow: their breath can temporarily strip your acid resistance, and their claw and bite attacks are acidic.

Orange: their claws slow and their bite paralyzes. This one’s really nasty.

Gray: instead of claw attacks, they get a magic missile attack with level-based damage (identical to that of an angel), and an arcane casting attack. Let’s call that one 4d6. Their bite cancels your inventory.

Silver: I'm not sure about this one. displacement, maybe? and their claws and bite should prolly deal cold damage.

Shimmering: They can teleport to you like a tengu, and have a gaze attack that makes you hallucinate. Their claws stun you, and their bite is just normal phys damage.

Gold: They have the same gaze attack as an archon (“you are blinded by the ancient gold dragon’s radiance!”) their light aura is larger than that of a gold dragon’s. Their claws and bite are fiery.

Shadow: They have a blinding gaze (but not stunning), and their darkness aura is bigger than that of a gold dragon’s. Their claws drain levels and their bite is death magic.

Black: Their claws deteriorate equipment and their bite deals disintegration damage. Very mean.

Sea: these I’m not sure of. I feel like they should keep their wrap drown, but I don’t know how to make them dangerous if you have magical or water breathing.

White: Their breath attack can temporarily strip away your cold resistance. Their claw attacks are replaced by two cold spellcasting attacks like Asmodeus’. Their bite slows.

Celestial: I don’t think these should exist. Celestial dragons are in a weird spot where they're kind of badass but not quite as badass as the ancient dragons. however, they're not easy to avoid. they seem fine.

also, some dragon hoards should be customized depending on what kind of ancient dragon is in them. like, white dragons have ice in theirs, sea dragons have water, orange dragons have sewage. this shouldn't be the case for all, but for some it could be cool.

I might decide I want to add other types of dragons. if I do that, I'll put them here.

the blacker the berry

the sweeter the juice?

werebane should be removed

you know I'm right

dungeon gen

current dungeon gen is boring. should be more lush and vibrant toward the surface, then dark and foreboding near the bottom. boxes in space are dumb. have a lot more plant life, and let rivers cut through the dungeon or have pools of water. Make the current box gen less restrictive, have more organic, natural but not totally cavernous. more vaults too. been playing dcss and their vaults are cool sometimes.

mines

mines needs reflavoring. top of the mines can be brightly lit and tunneled through and all that, bottom half of the mines needs to be more interesting. I like the water in evilhack's mines. sewage is lame though, don't steal that. as the mines get deeper, get more supernatural and spooky. unknown shit in the dark! mine's end'd need to be changed too. currently the gnomes have been down there already, and in some cases messed around and hung out. I think there should be spooky things lurking down there, and potentially some scary skellington or shadow man guarding the luckstone. also should be random "themed rooms" or "vaults". bunch of gnome corpses and a loathsome cave creature, stuff like that.

actually, remove all the banes

I've thought about just making them less shit, but then I realized this was not in fact a Growth Mindset. The banes are shit, and their theming is boring. It would be better to remove them and just replace them with actual interesting artifacts.

don't approach development in a mean way

hackem has been doing this lately and it annoys me. don't remove or nerf things purely because they benefit the player. that is silly

wait it's adom?

complete pie in the sky, have an overworld that connects multiple dungeons and locales. I don't know how this would work and I don't want to think about it either, but it would be so neat.

plants

tall grass that blocks vision. small grass that is just visual and/or burnable but is basically ground. shallow water. saplings. more kinds of trees. I want the early levels of the game to look nice. think the first levels of Brogue. other miscellaneous plants with different effects when utilized in some way, whether eating or attacking would be cool. ADOM has interesting herbs.

gods

nethack gods are a bit boring. they should do/help you with more stuff, and the stuff they currently do should be adjusted to be less RNG-dependant. I don't propose something like DCSS gods, where they are all unique, but some more tangible effects could go a long way I think. Effects specific to your role, like gods of melee chars giving melee buffs like speed, enchants to your weapon, gods of spell casters giving power refill, decreased fail on spells, etc etc

cultist

a role where you can put summoning circles on the ground using resources (probably max HP and some candles), and toss corpses into the Monster Realm to potentially attract the attention of a powerful monster. Many of those would be unique to summoning circles, but not all. Some combat element against the monster before you're allowed to tame it could be interesting. 'fight the guy before he wants to be your friend" is a little weird flavor wise but whatever.

mind flayer branch

idea. subterranean flayer city. filled with mf/mmfs, also put elder brains in. those are cool in dnh I think. perhaps to go along with this there could be a flayer caster, it and the elder brains could cast spells off a special psionic list. in any case, flavor-wise it's clammy, cold and wet. structures are clearly buildings but you have to kind of squint to tell it apart from typical caves n stuff. I think usually there's only one elder brain per city traditionally, if that's true it'd have to be quite scary. I also want to fit neothelids into this somehow but I like brains more and brains and neothelids don't really coexist. reward? probably something that grants psychic resistance at the end (should probably make psychic stuff more prevalent and dangerous for this to be relevant), and a bunch of cool loot in ye olde city itself.

basilisk

when you look at it it should stone you. make it a snake.

special rooms

special rooms currently are mostly like 'here's a boring room full of a million of the same guy with potentially some loot'. the only one I like is throne rooms. they should be more of an attention-demanding thing. also make the flavor better. like, a cockatrice nest should be more than just a box in space with 40 cockatrices. put some eggs around, make them not occupy EVERY space, add some statues... put SOME effort into it.

theme rooms

they are not common enough. make more of them. literally at least 10% of rooms should be themed. no one cares about empty boxes in space yo.

monster that can drown you on land

funny? flavor it as 'interdimensional mollusk.' ;. actually, this is a fire idea. here is what ideas I have for funny squid:

-opens a tear in reality to somewhere with water and shoves your head in it! can only do this if it's grabbing you. maybe if it's not grabbing you it can be a water blast a la sea dragon.

-opens a tear in reality to horrors beyond your puny mind's comprehension. this paralyzes you similar to ghost scaring.

-opens a tear in reality to a dimension with a really pissed off tentacle monster! you get slapped for a lot of damage.

-opens a tear in reality to Where the Dragons Went (pratchett refrefcne!!!1!!1). get hit with a random breath attack nerd

the tear effects would probably be only one at most per turn, and maybe could fail. in addition the interesting squid should have a couple melee tentacles that do things like hallu and stun, and a grab. I don't know where I would put this. it's kind of crazy, huh? maybe this could be the ultimate cultist pet. that's a good idea. though, I'd like it to be relevant to other roles too.. hm. future log problem

artifact idea

trident that gets a damage bonus or something. can invoke it for earthquake. it gives water walking and magic breathing when wielded. damage bonus prolly like 1d7 or 1d6, against everything. shouldn't be too crazy but def good. maybe you could zap it for a water blast? I'm not sure if that's realistically implementable and it's probably overkill anyway. probably don't do that.

qa changes

-make tsurugi of muramasa deal double damage and give half phys. remove luck property because it seems kind of random. possibly invoke it to do something cool, but I can't think of anything cool enough yet.

-make ahriman not ass. extrinsic flying and curse resistance sounds good. change invoke to something barbarians could utilize well in combat, like berserking you or healing.

-make mitre let you pray in hell. remove the invoke and make it just give energy regen. invoke changed to an effect that blesses a couple items in inv.

-make sceptre of might not exist. replace it with a wooden aklys with d10 (maybe a little more) damage bonus to everything. throwing it never goes wrong. can still be invoked for conflict but doesn't give MR. maybe also reflavor the quest a little because it would be kind of weird if tiamat really wanted a stick on a rope.

-make the longbow give a +2 multishot bonus for everyone.

gnolls

I like evilhack's gnolls. they are Flavorful. steal the base gnoll, I don't want the others. any other variants would be my own. I would like to do flinds also, but make them a bit different from evil's. along with those I think there should be brigands, chieftains and some sort of magical fellow. I'll put ideas here when they find it appropriate to drift into my brain.

mishi-bizhiw

I was thinking about these earlier. they are like underwater panthers that can command all water creatures and water itself. thunderbirds don't like them. with reference to the mishi-ginebig yani maybe there could be an optional deeper section to the lake containing a mishi-bizhiw. it's a consideration. maybe mishi-ginebig will be demoted to a non-unique very strong monster. I don't know. I'll come back to it.

dungeon draft

The Hidden Dungeon is a dungeon branch that appears in EvilHack. It is an optional one-level branch containing the unique beholder Tal'Gath, who must be defeated in order to genocide beholders.

The entire branch is non-diggable, no-teleport, and dark.

Generation

The Hidden Dungeon is accessible via a magic portal that always appears in the Valley of the Dead.

Map

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Tal'Gath is generated meditating atop a crystal chest in the top left corner. The chest contains two potions, a scroll, a spellbook, an amulet and two rings, all random. Additionally, it has a 15% chance of containing a magic marker. One of the buildings is an abandoned barracks, and the other a mind flayer nursery. Scattered randomly around the level are four giant cockroaches, four giant leeches, a crocodile, a giant crocodile, a troll, a basilisk, a beholder, a magical eye, two revenants, and a skeleton. Additionally, there are 11 player monster corpses, six traps, and four rock traps, all scattered randomly.

Strategy

tba

History

The Hidden Dungeon is introduced in EvilHack version 0.8.3.

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