More hellish hell

Current status: Implemented! All that's left is testing and tweaking.

As Hell, in Light, will be coming at the tail end of an already much harder game, it should probably be a bit more harrowing than it currently already is. If this means that only the very best players, the sort who might do ziggurat runs in Stone Soup, can clear it... well, I'm fine with that.

I'd like to add a new effect to each branch of Hell to accomplish this. Instead of the current 'bad stuff periodically happens to you as though a malevolent Xom watches over you' effects, I'd like these to be omnipresent things. Ideas for these things go here.

Dis

The following is copied directly from something I wrote on the Stone Soup development wiki.

Since Dis is kind of the most 'boring' Hell (as it is the easiest and has no element of its own), I'll propose something comparatively radical here: reflavoring it as the Silent City of Dis.

The entire branch would be covered in silence, outside of some glowing tiles which maintain small 'bubbles' of normal space around them. Stepping on one of those tiles gives the player a bubble of sound of his own, which follows him around… but shrinks over time, forcing spellcasting players to either return to the previous glowing tile or find a new one. The demons would not be affected, as they can just cast through silence anyway.

Mechanically, the 'bubble' following the player around is no different from giving the player a square of sound around him that eventually vanishes, but I think having a gradually-shrinking space would both be more flavorful and provide feedback as to how much time remains before casting and reading scrolls is impossible.

I could see this allowing a few different setups; very few natural bubbles with a relatively long time allowed between 'recharges' of the player-centered bubble, or perhaps very numerous natural sound bubbles with no player-centered bubble at all.

And to be fair to the brawlers, it might be good to make one of the other Hells particularly dangerous for melee specialists…

Tartarus

The following is copied directly from something I wrote on the Stone Soup development wiki.

A branch of Hell in which the player's level is slowly but continually drained as his memories fade, with no protection even from rN+++. In a 'normal' run through the branch, the player should lose around 4 or 5 levels before reaching the rune, but the levels are returned to the player after he leaves the branch. Floors 1-6 are not persistent (flavor: the player forgets them as soon as he can't see them) to prevent degenerate behavior like mapping the route through the first 6 floors to do the 7th at a higher level. Perhaps immediately reduce the player to level 26 upon entering the branch to prevent players from simply building up fantastic stores of experience before attempting it.

Gehennom

The blazing heat interferes with consumables; potions and scrolls will evaporate/burn if taken out of the pack, wands will malfunction and consume twice as many charges. DONE

Cocytus

The biting cold reduces your speed by 20% or so.