Fixing end-game boredom

It seems a lot of people get bored around DL7 and end up skipping down to DL10 to knock off Lord Dredmor. In my experience the problems with the deepest levels are:

• Top-tier equipment drops too early / need higher tiers. By DL7 you start commonly finding Serpentine Plate / Armored Archmage / Rocket Boots / etc. which makes scavenging pointless.
• Leveling slows down and you've already got all your important skills (so you're typically picking extra unnecessary stuff).
• Monsters deal unblockable exotic damage which makes prolonged stays costly for little benefit (see above points)
• Generally getting a bit sick of the same-old-same-old dungeons.

This thread is for ideas to improve the end-game to reduce boredom. My ideas:

• Expand the top-tier of equipment. Keep the best stuff rare instead of having them lying all over the place.
  • Maybe make some equipment unique to certain dungeon levels?
• Speed up leveling while making deeper monsters exponentially harder (so jumping from DL7 to DL9 isn't as feasible).
• Add more items that have guaranteed resistances (like the Torque of Kanada) but make them rarer.
• Add more wacky dungeon rooms. E.g.
  • 1 tile wide bridge across lava full of Fire Eelys that ends with a Chest of Evil.
• Add more wacky monsters. E.g.
  • Mimic that uses the same attack/spell that you use against it.

Any other ideas/opinions?

 

I've only made it through to DL10 once so far, but I think they are good ideas.
One idea that I have is why not have Lord Dredmor appear randomly? So you really never know where he will appear, and you can't just make sure that you're prepped up for him at level 10. Anywhere from Level 7 up, you could just open a door and he'd be there in front of you. Maybe he goes to higher levels to check on his 'troops', you never know. Why does it have to end at Level 10? Personally, I'd love it if sometimes he was on level 12, or 15 instead. But if you're on level 7 and suddenly he's right there, it would have that oh crap! factor.

The monsters should get much more powerful from seven on, and on those floors you should be able to slowly find/buy/craft much better weapons and armors with the resistances against the 'exotic' damages. I know that personally, by the fifth floor I already had my rings, necklace, armor, hat and boots, and never bothered picking up another. Part of this was that nothing was better, but also I had put so many enchantments on from the Anvils, that nothing else could compete. Maybe blacksmiths would have another ability at level 6 or 7, which could transfer these enchantments from one sword or item to another. There could be a chance of losing some of the enchantments, or of some of them being corrupted, but that would make it much more tempting to actually switch gear rather than just live with what you got earlier and that you've heavily enchanted.

Each of the skill sets could have further spells/skills for them. I'm sure people on these forums would have quite a few suggestions for some of them. I'd like to see the smith be able to craft very powerful weapons, but maybe it uses quite a few ingots, and some of those ingots aren't as easy to get until a certain floor. For example, you have to build a katana first, and then you combine it with two electrums and a sapphire and then it's a rough lightsaber, and it takes a combination of electrum and rare potions to get it all the way up to a fine lightsaber.

Vampires could have charm abilities, or ways to turn mobs against each other. Imagine that you're fighting a monster zoo, use your new ability and the first few monsters that were attacking you turn around and start defending you instead.

Don't just have one monster zoo on a floor, have four or five of them! Only fix it so that when you open a zoo, it doesn't show you where the other zoos on the floor are. Or when you open a room, you might have thirty enemies in there that all run out at you. Or you walk into a room and there is an invisible plate that you can only see if you are at max perception. If you step on it, suddenly extra chambers in the room open up and you're surrounded completely by ten or fifteen bad guys. The walls can already change with switches, so I would think this would be do-able.

Maybe give bad guys the teleportation spells too. You're walking along, and instantly you have someone right next to you, attacking.

Some of the rooms could have the lights be extinguished when you walk in, so you'd only see a the tiles one space out from you. You'd have to fumble around the room, have no idea what monsters are in there, or where anything was. Archaeology would have a skill to brighten those rooms, but the other adventurers would have to struggle through them.

Spike traps, saw blades across the floors or giant boulders? Puzzles where you have to walk across certain pressure plates to solve a riddle, and if you get it wrong the floor drops away and you end up on the floor below, in the middle of a monster zoo?

Maybe instead of a lutefisk cube, you have a mr. fusion. Put enough items into it, and then if you attach your sword or something to it, you'll get a random set of enchantments, based on what you've put into the mr. fusion.

I love this game, and there are all kinds of fun ideas to make it even better.

 

If you really want to have an homage to Nethack, you'll need to add a side-level that goes through a Sokoban puzzle. Put in some sort of unique, really useful item at the end. Maybe a bag of holding. Or something defensive that anyone can use.

 

At first I really like some of your ideas.

I like to add my 2 cents:

I get a little bored towards the end because of the missing feeling of something new, I think thats strongly connected to the enemies, the first levels of the game present new ones right when they´re "needed", but the deeper levels have a lag of visual variety. To put it simple: more enemies (I would love to see a (skeleton) fly, an armored snail, a "walking" stain, a bunny clown, manbearpig, a mirror me, an überdigglemother and other crazy stuff like this. And special visuals for the bosses / uniques would also be a nice addition.)

Same goes for the levels, I would love to see more stuff in them (stuff to interact with I should add^^) and having more event rooms in general.

Another thing really miss: enemies don´t drop stuff (at least they haven´t in my games, except quest items) why not give them a small chance of dropping something (connected to the stage), that would add much to the fun of killing them, not only for xp, money grind. I bet there would be a way to balance it out.

And I would also like to have some "hidden" levels, just small ones and with only a "chance" to appear. Maybe found through a special teleporter, that would also add to the wish to explore.

 

I think it'd be neat if the entire last level were just various types of diggle, and Dredmor of course. Convert the Djinn Fizz into a Diggle Bombardier, have a King Diggle with a little crown (who gets into parliamentary debates with the Archdiggles), etc. There's a certain...purity to having the first mook in the game match the last mook.

Of course, we already have a lot of diggles. But imagine opening a monster zoo on level 10 and seeing a swarm of nothing but penguins with drillbeaks!

 

I would have to disagree with many of the points you made.

It's funny I have nothing against 8-10, it's usually 7 that I skip even after the patch, and if I want to skip another, it's usually 6.

Rocket boot/archmage armor/SA helm aren't that common, I could never get the whole set without actually going through 8 and 9. Sometimes I can go through 7 - 10 and still miss a piece. Make them rare decreases the expected payoff even more and encourages more skipping.

As for "make end level harder but more exp", that seem to give even more incentive to skip them. More exp hardly matters because a max out character is hardly any better than one with the "important" skills. If you can't skip 7/8/9 with all your important skills, you probably won't do any better after you max out other fillers like vampirism 3, assassinate 3, burglary 5, fungal 4 and 5, wand lore, etc.

What I will suggest instead is for floor 8 - 10 to start commonly drop really good artifact stuff that gets progressively better but floor 10 much harder. You can't skip 10 so you are forced to stop by 8 and 9 for good equips. Artifact items are good since stats are random so you never know/plan for what you can get, making it a bit more exciting. The idea is that you will be ensured a whole set of artifact equip by floor 10, but the actual bonus will be different each time.