Subdungeoneering

[Darvin]

Sir Bradonnnn: A new pre-explored (ugh!) subdungeon where you can trade piety for benefits. There are three price points at 100, 50, and 20.
100: 3 compression scrolls, 1 health potion, 1 mana potion. Hilariously overcosted.
50: Dwarven gauntlets
20: Gold (not sure how much)

The middle reward might be worth the piety or the loss of exploration, but not both. The others are pretty bad trades.

The dwarven gauntlets would only be worth piety if you can pick them up very early. Finding your subdungeon early and having 50 piety free to spend is just not going to be a common occurrence. However, I think that's more a problem with dwarven gauntlets being an item you want to buy ASAP. At its price, the HP gain really needs to be retroactive.

The gold benefit depends entirely on how much, but unless Tikki Tooki is on the field that's a niche we have all too little of.

As for the 100 piety trade, it's very niche, but I wouldn't write it off. Three compression scrolls is going to result in a massive increase in inventory flexibility, essentially duplicating the tinker's core class feature. While it's going to be a rare day that you have 100 piety sitting around plus enough gold to make good use of three compression scrolls, if it does come up this is a pretty market boost to your character's power. Probably lower the cost and knock down the trade a little.

Mass09 Banking: A shrouded (yay!) dungeon that gives you a small, reusable item that consumes one gold and randomly repositions all monsters on the map. Neat. You can locker it, and with a prep cost of 2, it might even be worth taking on almost-purist runs to smooth out bad luck.

This could be extraordinarily powerful, allowing you to conserve exploration space by gambling on bringing a suitable monster into sight rather than fishing around for one. Not something I'd use until roughly half the map is revealed, but for conserving exploration space after that point this could be invaluable.

The Paan Labyrinth: A very large, preshrouded dungeon with 3 lifestealing imps hiding in it. Potentially very powerful if you know how to manipulate lifesteal or you just need mana. The imps are placed randomly.

Very cool one. If you use it for LEMMISI or BLUDTUPOWA fodder this one will be beautiful.

What is sir thawn's dungeon. I don't remember it.

5x5 subdungeon containing a grave. After you step on it, Sir Thrawn (a vampire) spawns to fight you and the room is reshrouded.

[Sidestepper]

Actually, I think Thwran's dungeon is bigger now, now that I think about it. This is one is pretty good now.

[The Avatar]

I feel like the devs posted 7x7 in the bug thread. Wow. That's pretty good.

[Sidestepper]

Found a new one. A giant pre-explored dungeon with a djinn named Cha'Dylan at the end. Talking to him floods the room with 999 hp blinking, no-xp, bloodless snakes. Killing the djinn (who is a level 10 monster) doesn't actually do anything, leaving you stranded in the dungeon behind dozens of powerful snakes. By far the worst subdungeon to find, ever.

Devs, please stop doing this to us. No-explore subdungeons are already one of the most aggravating balance issues left outstanding and the problem has been getting steadily worse over time.

EDIT: Although I did find two subdungeons in that run (the contemplate the waters one :/ ), so maybe the EPIC TROLL subdungeons are sort of like extra bonus dungeons.

[Kuranes]

I just found a (to my knowledge) new subdungeon. Its 5x5 and contains a sign, 2 gold piles and a Wand of Binding. The wand works somewhat similar to the slayer wand, except it turns the enemy into a magical armour of equal level, but it still gives you the base experience like the slayer wand.

[TigerKnee]

Funny, so they made the old bugged version of the Slayer Wand into an item.

[q 3]

I'm pretty sure the Wand of Binding subdungeon has been in for a while. Part of the problem here is that with so many subdungeons and no reliable way of getting any particular one of them, they're easy to miss and therefore hard to test.

(The sheer number of them also means that niche dungeons - death gaze protection, I'm looking at you - have very poor odds of showing up in the handful of dungeons where you can actually make good use of them.)

(Also, some of the subdungeons are hilariously broken for an Assassin. The Binding Wand is worth double XP, the PISORF troll is a free kill at level 10, the goat altar is free piety, etc.)

[Darvin]

(Also, some of the subdungeons are hilariously broken for an Assassin. The Binding Wand is worth double XP, the PISORF troll is a free kill at level 10, the goat altar is free piety, etc.)

Agreed; those three in particular need looking into for the assassin. The goat altar subdungeon wouldn't be so bad if they weren't first-striking mana-burn no-XP enemies, but the combination of the three means non-assassins need to expend resources for almost no gain, whereas assassins just get to harvest freebees.

I think the binding wand is probably okay; a little strong for assassins, but within reason. The PISORF troll can also be killed by Monks with Martyr Wraps, by the way, since corrosion damage bypasses resistances.

[Sidestepper]

I really hate the PISORF troll. Pushing him back costs about as many resources as some bosses, and there's no option to just explore.

[Nandrew]

I really hate the PISORF troll. Pushing him back costs about as many resources as some bosses, and there's no option to just explore.

I hope you're not commenting on a recent event, that subdungeon was supposed to be replaced by Marwood's Paan Labyrinth this week. Will doublecheck either way.

Funny, so they made the old bugged version of the Slayer Wand into an item.

Heh, yeah. Pretty much exactly that! This item has been accessible for a reasonable while (I think via one of the lore subdungeons?)

Found a new one. A giant pre-explored dungeon with a djinn named Cha'Dylan at the end. Talking to him floods the room with 999 hp blinking, no-xp, bloodless snakes. Killing the djinn (who is a level 10 monster) doesn't actually do anything, leaving you stranded in the dungeon behind dozens of powerful snakes. By far the worst subdungeon to find, ever.

Devs, please stop doing this to us. No-explore subdungeons are already one of the most aggravating balance issues left outstanding and the problem has been getting steadily worse over time.

No, it hasn't. We've been steadily adding compensation buffs to no-explore dungeons and also take care to provide an average of more explore-focused dungeons in new packs. In particular, Thrawn's unique dungeon has *always* been 7x7 with a reconceal (we're aware that players may struggle to see this properly, which is why we altered descriptions and moved the grave back) making it about as valuable regen-wise as three average subdungeons (closer to four, actually, but that's not accounting for the regen leaks mentioned by you guys).

(Brandonnn stuff)

The Venus Patrol outpost and Cha'Dylan's lake are going to stay full-revealed, though I agree that the rewards need to be made juicier on both (in particular for the latter, as I tested Cha'Dylan more thoroughly this weekend and realised he's way too situational to leverage properly). In many cases, we've been throwing more health/mana potions at players where regen is lacking, and I think all of Brandonnn's reward tiers could do with a few more of those.

There's also a replacement subdungeon in the North for the "mysterious potion" set piece, which I already imagine will need a buff and more interesting things (Jadetooth, specifically, was added at the last minute due to an EE buyer's response arriving).

(Lekon goat stuff)

Gawd, I'm getting lazy at pulling quotes today, I blame Mondays.

So some of you are suggesting that this be moved into the secret subdungeon area? I wouldn't object, though obviously the reason why the balance on those is reasonably good is the fact that there's only four to consider. I don't mind replacing Mana Burn with Curse, though if it's to be eligible for Secret status I think it would probably need a buff of some other kind just to help even that out.