Undead starting area... too easy now, horrors, et al.

[Delmuir]

The introduction of the "lesser" horrors is, in my opinion, a bad idea, and here's why:

1. Anything called a "horror" ought to be just that... something that makes you stop and go "woah." Even the existence of lesser horrors, regardless of whatever logic was used to introduce them, diminishes horrors in general.

2. The undead starting area... it used to be a nice challenge, perhaps a bit to difficult at times (try getting out of there as a ghoul cursed), but now it's simply too easy.

The lesser horrors are too easy to one-shot and generally offer no threat.

3. More so, the half-finished bone giant at the end is now pathetically easy.

The entire dungeon now feels effortless, which is disappointing as I rather enjoyed the challenge of that starting place.

My solution is this:

1. Do away with the lesser horrors. I want to dread coming across a horror.

2. Split the difference between the current difficulty of the undead starting area and the old one. In particular, I'd make the bone giant slower but stronger.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

[Parcae2]

If it's to be made harder again, I think that it should be made skippable, e.g. by negotiating with the Necromancer instead of killing him.

[Delmuir]

If it's to be made harder again, I think that it should be made skippable, e.g. by negotiating with the Necromancer instead of killing him.

That's not a bad idea at all. I rather wish I'd thought of it.

That's an even better idea than mine.

I endorse this, 100%!!!

[Sheila]

This is a pretty bad idea because you're not supposed to be stumped by difficulty in a starter area They're supposed to be accessible so you can reliably get out of them on any difficulty.
The undead starting area was tuned down because it was harder than it had to be, which can't be very high because it's unskippable and you will have little to no options to overcome challenges being a level 1 with starting gear.
Not to mention the whole thing seems to be thoughtlessly aimed at normal/adventure ignoring higher difficulties. Having a difficult starting area means you'll have to reroll endlessly to GET STARTED on insane, so I'm against it.
And as a rule of thumb, if you want more difficulty, you should play higher difficulties.

[HousePet]

But I went to a lot of effort to make it more interesting than just rats and OP skeletons.

As a starting area, it should be easy since if you can't do it, you are stuffed.

As for the horrors, they could be changed to a different race.

[Frumple]

I'unno... personally, the only actual threat in the zone has always been the boss (which can be flat unkillable for some race/class combinations -- there's a handful that just can't out damage it and can't sufficiently avoid or mitigate its damage unless they get lucky with item drops), and it hasn't changed at all so far as I've noticed. The skeletons and whatnot were only rarely an issue if you played even a little carefully (and avoided any vaults that happened to generate, heh).

I've actually found the new version even more annoying than the old, if not particularly more dangerous. There weren't many ranged attacks before, and now they're around every corner and sniping at you from outside your light (or often even infravision, if you happen to have it) range.

Option to skip it would indeed be nice, though. Way to get back would be, too.

[bpat]

The Undead starting area was awful because you could get killed in one or two hits from outside LoS at level one. There is no good reason for a starting area to be as hard as it was, it's a starting area after all.

[HousePet]

Which reminds me, I think we can lower the sight range on the necro experiments to reduce the random hits from who knows where.

[astralInferno]

Personally I'd like to remove the bleed from throw bones. It doesn't matter for most undead and it's crippling for those it does hit.

[Ace0fSwords]

Tried rolling a ghoulish cursed. After trying to survive the starting area and having no heals, lets just say it wasn't happening. Like, at all.

(Even without the starting area it would've been a bad combo anyways).

I think the starting area is decent. A little more variety other than turret hallways *might* be called for but otherwise I found it kind of interesting.