(Nearly) Forgotten Beta Dungeons

[Darvin]

A comment on the Wiki got me reminiscing about old dungeons. Seeing as Lujo and I (and dislekcia, if you count devs) are the only veterans from the early beta, I thought I'd share some stories (some of the horror variety) of the early beta and dungeons that never saw the light of day in the final release.

The Crypt
The original vicious dungeon, and it was a doozie. Filled to the brim with Vampires and with BlahBlah as a boss, this was an undead-palooza. BlahBlah was insanely strong back then, with stats that would make the current incarnation in VHoS green with envy. But what really made him deadly was his special ability: whenever he was struck, every vampire (including him) was reshrouded. Yeah, enjoy getting life-drained between every single hit.

Of course, this dungeon had a number of weak spots. You could use Dracul's Blood Hunger boon to simply drain back the stolen life. Thanks to slightly different mechanics of lifesteal (both the monster and player variety) back then it was possible to get an infinite combo rolling. As this was before the introduction of the Vampire, this was the origin of the blood cow strategy. You could also just use LEMMISI as a Monk to dodge the lifesteal and get effectively unlimited exploration tiles. Because the fundamental gimmick of the dungeon was borked it was eliminated and BlahBlah was demoted to entry-level boss in Eastern Tundra (which originally had Frank as a static boss, iirc), but later his vicious form got reintroduced as second fiddle in VHoS.

Druid Grove
There's a brief mention in the description of the Labyrinth that describes it as a shortcut to avoid a nasty Druid Grove. And trust me, the Labyrinth is by far the less aggravating of the two. The Druid Grove had a fairly standard layout, a bit on the tight side (similar to Den of Danger) but nothing out of the ordinary. What made it nuts was its boss - the original Getandafix. In addition to hitting much harder and having more hit points (this is a recurring theme with early beta bosses), he spawned every single type of plant at random. Yup, he could spawn barbing bushes in long hallways.

This dungeon was quite difficult, but even worse it was incredible prone to crashes. I'd say about half of my games on Druid Grove ended with the game crashing on me. I'm not sure what was going on behind the scenes, but the more attacks you made over the course of a dungeon run the higher your chance of getting a crash. You could imagine how much gardening went on here.

The current Getandafix is a shadow of his former self, and unlike BlahBlah never got a vicious redux of his former might. With only Mysterious Murkshade at his disposal gardening is a breeze, and with the game now much more stable there's no race against the clock to win before the game crashes.

Slime Mine
This dungeon existed before the Magma Mines or Slime Pit. Both dungeons, if you check them, have a reference to an old Goblin Slime Mine. That dungeon really did exist. Goblins would drop the wallbreakers (those weird things you find in Gaan-Telet that bust adjacent walls), which you would need because there was actually no way to reach certain areas of the dungeon which were fully enclosed by walls! Oh, I know what you're thinking so let me burst your bubble: Binlor hadn't been introduced yet.

The dungeon was one of the earlier ones to get axed, but its gimmicky trio of bosses lives on in their new business venture in the west, while the shambles of their old dungeon gave birth to the current Slime Pit. The Slime Pit's layout bears a passing resemblance to the original Slime Mines, but with walls blown out to allow you to move between the various open pockets. Eastern Tundra would only inherit this layout at a later date; Slime Pits had it first.

(also, this dungeon might have been called Sludge Mines, I can't remember for sure)

Deep Swamp
Naga City was the last of the four direction vicious dungeons to be introduced, but back then the progression in the south was slightly different. You had Southern Swamp -> Ick Swamp -> Hexx Ruins -> Deep Swamp -> Naga City. Hexx Ruins and Deep Swamp were introduced in the same update, and both of them had their gimmicks. You're doubtlessly familiar with Hexx Ruins, but if you think that gimmick was unexpected you had no idea of the horrors of the Deep Swamp.

The dungeon had a layout similar to Havensdale and Berserker Camp, with a river running down its middle and a single crossing. Unlike the other two, you had no way of crossing on your own power. Instead, there was a ferryman you could pay to take you across. It was a one-way trip only. Once on the other side you could fight the boss... none other than the Royal suntouched prince Kinissssch himself! However, just as you're about to KO him he pulls a dirty trick to poison, mana burn, and life drain you then switch places with the real boss, Itsssama.

Now, getting smacked with debilitating debuffs and cut off from half of the map is pretty bad, but not nearly the worst thing this dungeon had in store for you: Itsssama had 90% physical resist and 90% magic resist. Yeeaaah... suffice to say this place was not very popular and there was a considerable sigh of relief when it disappeared from the world map. Itsssama lives on as the boss of Ick Swamp (his predecessor, Ssseth, being permanently retired) but with much more reasonable resistances.

Vanishing Oasis
The North was one of the last directions to get fleshed out. While Northern Desert, Rock Garden, and Demonic Library were all introduced relatively early they sat there quite lonely for the longest time. Vanishing Oasis and Shifting Passages were added to pad out the region (Cursed Oasis would only be added much later - the final dungeon to be introduced - to fill a hole in the game's main story progression). They had exact opposite gimmicks; with each monster kill, Shifting Passages closes in. Vanishing Oasis began with the dungeon closed off by water but with each monster killed the water would start to disappear! The boss of Vanishing Oasis was a djinni with fireball retaliation.

Overall, the dungeon was seen as a little too gimmicky. Since fireballs were worthless against the boss (retaliation was 100% damage rather than the current 50%, and Avatar's Codex didn't exist yet) you were really gambling you'd find a decent glyph to use against the boss or be forced to go warmonger. Also, the monster placement was unpredictable and it was easy to get stuck with nothing but a level 9 that's reachable and surrounded by water tiles.

The water disappearance effect lives on in Northern Desert, and djinni bosses do appear in various class challenges, but otherwise this one is consigned to the dry dustbins of Desktop Dungeons history.

Chokebox
This was a central-region dungeon that existed back in the day. The dungeon had a smaller than usual size, but normal dungeon inhabitant level so it was positively crowded. Overall a fun romp that delivered what it promised, and one of the ones I'm sad didn't make the cut. The modern Berserker Camp inherited the "smaller than usual" sizing after this one got the axe, but it's not as small as the Chokebox was.

Spike Hazard
This is a bit of a weird one, and some people might argue it never really got eliminated. Classic Doubledoom had two bosses, but the dungeon layout was the same as Den of Danger. Classic Spike Hazard had one boss, but had the same layout as Dragon Isles. That made both dungeons somewhat unique, as back in the day two bosses was actually quite unusual and usually reserved for vicious dungeons. At some point, the devs made the decision that two bosses would be the norm for hard difficulty, which meant that Spike Hazard (a hard difficulty dungeon!) would be getting a second boss and Doubledoom would cease to have any real relevance.

The two dungeons got merged, and while the resulting combination took the name Doubledoom it draws equal inspiration from Spike Hazard. In many ways, it was classic Doubledoom that got eliminated when two bosses became the norm. Spike Hazard just stole its name and associated quests

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Hope this has been an enlightening peek into the ancient history of Desktop Dungeon for most of you guys, and a trip down memory lane for those few of you who were around back then. Do let me know if I missed anything! Next time, I'll talk about some of the incarnations the various deities have been through. Mystera has gone through so many revisions I probably will get them mixed up

[Lynzkar]

This is very intresting, there should be a wikipage for these removed dungeons.
Slightly on topic, what kind of drops did the former vicious dungeons have? (and what did the current ones use to have, if different)

[berpdreyfuss]

Very interesting post, thank you!

[Darvin]

[Sidestepper]

I was thinking about these the other day. I can just barely remember some of them, and I had forgotten about the Slime Mine entirely.

Some comments of my own

Druid Grove: I'm not sure anymore, but I think that Barbing Bushes used to be magic immune, meaning that their presence was permanent. I remember losing lots of runs b/c the boss would position himself behind a Barbing Bush, and that was gg right there.


Vanishing Oasis: This was created after the devs decided to start curbing resistances but before curse was introduced. Instead of Curse, some monsters would have the ability to permanently reduce your resistances with every hit. Bandits costs you 15%, and the boss of Vanishing Oasis (who was a djinni) knocked you back by 80% ! It was gruesome.

The Crypt: I kind of miss this one. The boss's gimmick was not as punishing as the devs had hoped (it could even be used to the player's benefit with careful planning) , but reshrouding was an interesting mechanic that was never tried again.

I kind of wish we had recorded the stats on the old bosses. Many of them were amazingly hard.

[Astral]

I always love reading these, thank you for sharing it Darvin!

Ouch, those magic immune barbing bushes sound horrible.

[Lynzkar]

Also, how long ago is it scince these dungeons excisted?

[Tinker]

Nice read, thanks for the write-up! So most of the more difficult maps got way easier than they were (I guess that's why VT had to be introduced?).

I do see some similarities between some of the class challenges and what you describe. Maybe some CC quests retain some of the old map's gimmicks?

Slime/Sludge Mine layout seems similar to the Rogue Gold map, which has a segmented layout that is inaccessible without ways to break walls.

The Itsssama of Deep Swamp reminds me of the boss of Paladin Gold (Ssseth), who has 95% of both types of resists (and weakening blow to boot! ).

[Lujo]

Most of these had their difficulty lowered and were repurposed as class challenges.

Sludge mine is pretty much Rogue Gold, for example. And yes, this is big part of why I grumble about perspective differences between old testers and release players, the whole of the game difficulty got very lowered (which is a good thing), and the nastiest stuff got the axe. The Deep Swamp, for example, was criminaly difficult.

Also, I remember Ick being the second southern dungeon, and Hex being the third, and I think Hex lost a lot of it's challenge in this exchange. I remember it being an epic thing when Stheno was nasty, and I don't fear Ick so much as I always sorta think of it as an easier dungeon.

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Another reason these things might've gotten axed was another thing I was very grumbly about during the beta, and which shaped the original outlook of some of the testers. And in many ways the wiki - it's been concieved with a different game in mind, one which was moved away from. Basic thing is that with the difficulty being so high, and various dungeons being so challengey it boxed folks into the mentality that certain things were only doable with certain classess or class/race combos. It was also pretty easy to see that most of the tougher stuff being done was being done with things that were kind of visibly "above the curve" and that a lot of things weren't even being used (looked like a complete waste of potential to me personally, but the dungeons were too tough). A lot of beta gameplay and kingdom development "tips" boiled down to shooting for vicious unlocks, and "which 3 classess is dungeon X even doable with" was a thing for every vicious dungeon (and now anyone can rainbow them fairly easily).

But the game had a positively monumental shift towards everything being doable with everything without gimmicks like the 33% dragonshields and the old trisword and stuff, Even the Vicious Token doesn't really push you as much towards clear best solutions as much as that outlook was baseline before. But if you weren't around for the before, you can't really know that because of this the wiki was due for a huge, amost ground up rework - which never happened (due to reasons).

[fall_ark]

I fail to see how there is a shift in design, considering the original Alpha is more or less an "everything doable with everything without gimmicks" game. It was never going to be a game like ToME4 where only the most overpowered race/class combinations have any chance of beating the game on the highest difficulty.

I mean, if you think things like 33% resist Dragon Shield and 27 damage Trisword were gimmicky (which they definitely were), then those dungeons weren't difficult, they were unfair. If a dungeon is only beatable by very few specific builds and even then requires no small amount of luck, then that dungeon wouldn't be challenging, it would simply be frustrating.

On the topic of forgotte dungeons..I think before Puzzle Packs were introduced, deities have different introduction sub-dungeons. Apart from the Chokebox and the Crypt, I kinda miss those things the most.

Also missing the old damage reduction Dwarf. Ah, nostalgia...