Reduce the depth of the Sandworm Lair

[Mithril]

Auto-explore has made many dungeons much quicker and more enjoyable to explore. However, this has also made the Sandworm Lair stand out as particularly annoying to get through. A suggestion would be to reduce number of levels to three.

[Grey]

3 would be too little I feel. Maybe 4? (I'm actually fine with how it is - it's one of my favourite dungeons for its unique mechanics)

[Mithril]

Yes, it is unique, but I think many get tired of the same waiting for worm, follow worm, around and around, again and again, game after game. I want to fight monsters, not follow them.

An alternative suggestion would be to move the enormous reward for killing the boss to some other dungeon and instead give the usual random artifact. Then those not liking the Sandworm Lair could bypass it.

[Frumple]

Telepooort ruuuunneeee.

Or a conveyance staff. Or amulet of teleportation. Or the varying talents that allow for teleportation. Et cetera. Getting through the lair quick is really, really easy. Take two sources with you (or a movement infusion, too) and even landing in a collapsing tunnel becomes a non-issue.

Both the lair and the maze can be basically skipped through by just teleporting around. Just bounce until you land near the stairs down.

Anyway. Lair's already been reduced in size once, and it's currently in-line with the other second tier dungeons. While the heart is pretty sexy, it's not exactly necessary. You can skip it if the speedbump of waiting for the worms is too much for you

[Mithril]

Teleport is nice but not always available. Randomly teleporting around, clicking away the teleport cooldown, and waiting for the right room is not particularly interesting either.

Feels like mechanical grinding you do in order to get to some more interesting part.

[martinuzz]

I think I suggested the following a while ago already, and I believe it would offer an agreeable solution, without the need to reduce the number of levels:

As it is currently, tunnelers seem to randomly decide to which room they go next.
I suggest changing this to:
Randomly choose to which room to go to next, except that they can't choose a room they've already visited in the past 4-5 trips.

Most of the drag of the waiting-for-the-worm-to-go-the-right-way comes from, in my opinion, the fact that Murphy seems to direct the worms to any random room, except those last 1-2 that you haven't been to yet.

[tiger_eye]

I agree that completely exploring the SWL can be a little tedious, but I don't think it should be changed on account of auto-explore. So, here are a couple suggestions that may slightly improve the SWL:

(1) Have fewer (say 6-8 instead of 10) but larger rooms,
or
(2) create a few permanent passageways connecting some of the rooms. Heh, I'm not sure whether these should be distinguishable from collapsible tunnels or not

(3) Have the sandworm tunnelers occasionally poop (or leave behind an ambiguous mess) that, I don't know, slows, damages, or gives a boost to the the player

martinuzz's suggestion would at least make following a single tunneler a more viable strategy to search for unvisited rooms.

[bricks]

The obvious solution is to let us ride the worms.

Seriously, though, what's with these guys? Are there tasty treats hidden in the walls, so delicious that they completely ignore stray fireballs from transient adventurers?

[Tom]

Im absolutely fine with that lair as it is.
It is quite fun to do.
The Maze on the other hand is boring and much more tedious.

That a fake skill (auto explore?) should decide how the dungeons look, is just weird.

Tom

[Mithril]

Im absolutely fine with that lair as it is.
It is quite fun to do.
The Maze on the other hand is boring and much more tedious.

That a fake skill (auto explore?) should decide how the dungeons look, is just weird.

Tom

Try auto-explore in the Maze and it will never be boring again...

I should likely have asked this question after the release beta 35 and when everyone has had some time to check out auto-explore and the enormous improvements it enables.

[magelike]

It would be nice if you could also tunnel the sand yourself with a pickaxe or something, but maybe have the pathways last for half the amount of time. Unless you bring some sort of teleportation, it can sometimes take an inordinate amount of time to get to the room you're aiming for.

[bricks]

What about a more drastic change? Change the lair into a large, winding tunnel with few or no branches, leading from one entrance to the next. The tunnelers still tunnel, making shortcuts and giving access to otherwise inaccessible pockets that may contain loot and foes. A bit of new code could give these isolated pockets special monsters and loot, so they act something like vaults. (The vault code could probably be repurposed for this, actually. I don't understand level generation very well.)

[Charlatan73]

ooh ride the worm and get an achievement called Shai-Hulud!

[Postman]

The problem is not that it deep, but that it's tedious. I think it need more wall-walking monsters lake banshee and xorgs. Dreads would be too much I think. Also mini boss guarding exit on each level. And reduced experience - there are too much xp in the game already IMHO.