Make alternative Sandworm Lair less frustrating

[supermini]

It's quite easy to lose the big sandworm. You might get blinded, you may want to open a chest, get stuck fighting mobs, whatever. What you're left then is either waiting for a million turns for the worm to show up again or digging in random directions with the tooth until you can find the exit.

This is boring, frustrating, and really bad design. Fighting mobs and being in danger is fun. 'Waiting for Godot' simulation is not.

[StarKeep]

It seems fine enough from my view.
If you want to aim for chests, hurry up, or face the consequences.
In fact, if he were to make it so the side-tunnels collapse as well after it moves on, and turns it's alternate version into a time-trial like map, you won't have to wait for it to come back, and thus it's stuck in danger-mode.
One-shot and what not.

Though I guess for those who plan their runs and the like would hate that, it just seems like an interesting idea he tried, and it would be nice to expand it further.

[AlexanderR]

Non-lethal action-type minigame is too frustrating? I am voting for insta-killing anyone, who can't follow the sandworm then. Or better let them be eaten by those invulnerable burrowers.

[SageAcrin]

I think he just needs to appear from an arbitrary non-wall space, to the left of you, within a few hundred squares, rather than starting all the way over.

It's an easy fix. I think. I'm not sure, because I'm a little fuzzy on how it works start with, but it sounds fixable...

[StarKeep]

But if he was to do that, than the whole 'hurry or die' element would be gone, as you could simply duck into any preset cave, and wait for him to come back.

[SageAcrin]

There is no hurry or die aspect. Where are you even getting this?

If you're in an open room, there's no hurry. There's just spamming a high cooldown move and resting until that charges up, until the Burrower comes back.

It's just long.

Heck, if he never came back, there still wouldn't be. Just Recall out and come back in. That is actually faster than the current wait, come to think of it...

[StarKeep]

That resting in a cave/open room thing, is what I'm talking about. That ruins this level.

The 'hurry or die' is referring to following him, or dieing aspect that I believe was intended, but simply hiding in a cave sadly nullifies this.

You shouldn't be able to do that, and if you do that, you should have to wait, for simply playing the map in such a way.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it just seems... wrong to turn this map back into the same 'wait in cave for burrower to come' strategy that normal sandworm has. This alternate layout offered an interesting hurry situation instead.

[SageAcrin]

Oh, so you want to turn it into a Sokoban style puzzle level. With combat. And randomization.

Please no.

Sandworm has a neat dynamic with combat-Pudgy, hard to kill fast enemies and a time requirement to kill them-and the time pressure is when you're moving from room to room, not overall.

The alternate has a bigger passage, which makes the dynamic interestingly different(Allowing you to get swarmed from multiple directions, but making it harder for you to be fully blocked in the passage).

I really don't want a gimmickfest "Move or die" version. I wouldn't have a problem beating it-I'd just not go in without a teleport, is all. Required object dungeons are the worst.

[Zizzo]

It's quite easy to lose the big sandworm. You might get blinded, you may want to open a chest, get stuck fighting mobs, whatever. What you're left then is either waiting for a million turns for the worm to show up again or digging in random directions with the tooth until you can find the exit.

This is boring, frustrating, and really bad design. Fighting mobs and being in danger is fun. 'Waiting for Godot' simulation is not.

Well, that sounds spectacularly annoying --- sufficiently so, in fact, that I think I'm going to push this out preemptively to avoid it.

[supermini]

But if he was to do that, than the whole 'hurry or die' element would be gone, as you could simply duck into any preset cave, and wait for him to come back.

You can pretty much ignore the worm and dig your way through by using tooth of the mouth (digs in 12 turns, walls collapse in 15). It's actually less annoying than trying to follow it or waiting for it to come back. You can also dig in normal sandworm lair but it's not an issue usually since worms tend to show up frequently.

[Sirioh]

I wonder, is it possible to make the sandworm hoover up everything it comes across, then dump it all once you kill the boss? Or at least other notable point; I haven't tried the alternate lair yet to know if you'd have to maintain the "lair loot" across multiple levels, for example. This could include chests, perhaps even obelisks - being more difficult to do these things, I presume - but could still result in lost loot from rares that you skip or killed at an inopportune moment.