Gauntlet Mode

[Nurator]

What happened to the gauntlet mode of the alpha?

It would be awesome to have a dungeon (or all if you like) to have a stat increase for the monsters each time you defeat it, so you can brag about which level you got into

[Nandrew]

I suppose "Gaan-Telet" was supposed to be the replacement challenge for that mode. Dunno if we'd bring the old Gauntlet incarnation back right now, but it can always be a thing at some later stage.

[Darvin]

I'm not really sure if that's necessary in the full game. With the alpha, we had some runaway character builds that basically just weren't being stopped and could reach obscene gauntlet levels. In the beta, the vicious levels will strain and test even the most powerful of character builds. I'm not sure if there's even much point to something that can scale much further than that.

[gjaustin]

I still like my idea of having a mode where all the dungeons are connected together. You complete one, only to be dumped in the next with your level and inventory.

[harfatum]

I like the ideas in this thread... some sort of endless mode could be cool, if only as a bonus.

Maybe instead of having the normal enemy and boss selection, endless mode on a dungeon would start out with 10 level 1s and when you killed/petrified one, a new enemy of one level higher would spawn and immediately shroud surrounding tiles. The first level 10 to spawn would be the boss, who would drop some gold, and then beyond that it'd just be seeing how many level 10 kills you could get before being forced to retreat/dying.

[Darvin]

Problem with "one level into another" is that anything that gives accumulating bonuses - such as Trisword or Alchemist's Scroll - would really start to break down in any scenario with such a long haul.

Most of the stuff in Desktop Dungeons has been balanced against the fact that it's a short-game. As a result, long-term and permanent bonuses tend to be much more powerful than in a typical RPG setting (because "long-term" isn't really all that long) while short-term stuff that provides instant bonuses tends to be that much weaker. The current Gaan-Telet already strains the limit of this system and we can see that in how it strongly favours Dracul, a deity that allows you to extract extra resources from fallen enemies.

[harfatum]

Yeah, I think for a "world tour", character level would have to be reset or at least decay, along with bonuses like that of the Trisword/Alch Scroll.

[q 3]

An endless Tower would be fun. Make it a true roguelike "iron man" mode, with no stairs going up.

[The Avatar]

Yeah! An endless mode would be great. You get as much as you can out of floor one and then see how far you get.

[Sidestepper]

I would enjoy a world tour version. Forget about trying to balance it, it's a just a guilty pleasure for people who have already beaten the game. One idea would be to only let the touring character visit dungeons that have been 100% completed. That would be kind of fun.