The 'suggest a Greater Vault layout/monster combination' thread

[Grey]

Bandit vault - lots of assassins, bandits, thieves, master thieves, invisible stalkers and... I'm not sure what for the boss types :/

Bug vault - lots of minor bugs, and then in the centre a bunch of greater claw bugs and killers.

[grobblewobble]

Greater "beast" vault. Hydras, swamp hydras, gorgons, dorn beasts, ki-rins (basically any monster that looks like an 'F').

Cool idea! There is also giant boar in that category. And Bulette and owlbears, griffons, hippogriffs, in case one wanted to add minor stuff.

[grobblewobble]

Ok, evil suggestion: how about a greater vault full of vortices, elementals and greater elementals?

[_Ln_]

Ok, evil suggestion: how about a greater vault full of vortices, elementals and greater elementals?

And RoI is always generated in it?

[rho]

Of the ones people have suggested so far, my favourites are:

Chaos vault
Minotaur vault
Golem vault
Fantastic creature vault
Demon vault

I'd also suggest:

Berserker vault: All shades of berserkers up to emperors, plus troll berserkers and frost giant berserkers.
Ratling vault: Warriors, fencers, duelists, warlords. Maybe archers. Maybe gargantuan rat too.
Shadow vault: Shadows, shadow lords, slow shadows, shadow trolls, shadow wyrms.

[Laukku]

Let's have some layout suggestions:

   #################################
   #.......1.......#.......#.......#
   #.......#.......#.......1.......#      
   #.......#.......#.......#.......#
   #1############1###1##############
   #.......#bosses&#.......#.......#   
   #.......#treasur#.......1.......#
   #.......#e......#.......#.......# 
   #######1####################1#########
   #.......1.......#.......#.............   rest of level
   #.......#.......#.......#.......########
   #.......#.......#.......1.......#
   #1########1##################1###       
   #.......#.......1.......#.......#        
   #.......#.......#.......#.......#        
   #.......#.......#.......1.......#        
   #################################

The 1's are secret doors. Would be nice if they could be placed randomly. All rooms are filled with monsters and connected through secret doors, and the player has to navigate through them to find the room that has all the bosses and money&artifacts.

[_Ln_]

I want to point out that for now there is only 1 overlap between minor vaults and greater vaults and I think this was done with a reason. Correct me if I'm wrong:
Minor vaults:
1) Mixed
2) Orcs
3) Goblins
4) Gnolls/hyenas
5) Jellies
6) Ratlings
7) Dark elves
8) Spiders (independent of dark elven one)
9) Undead
10) Golems
11-15) Dragons
16) Demons
17) Berserkers

For greater vaults we have:
1) Giants
2) Undead
3) Fire
4) Karmic

The reason is the following - you have to have enough monsters to put there and these guys should represent sufficient danger (admit it, giant one is only easy courtesy of invis/darkness).
The only monsters with sufficient variety and danger level are summed up beautifully here:

Of the ones people have suggested so far, my favourites are:

Chaos vault
Minotaur vault
Golem vault
Fantastic creature vault <-- are Ki-Rins beasts actually?
Demon vault

Add here mixed one and that's pretty much it, so we don't have a lot to choose from.

Honestly, I'd cut out Chaos vault because you have all endgame dedicated to it. Minotaur is also somewhat sneaky, as there is a special location specifically for those guys.

I see great potential in Demon vault: heavy melee guys + magic immunity + summoners. Not sure about upgraded golem minor vault and fantastic stuff.
I'd also vote for mixed one, because, as Jelly said, "evil"

[JellySlayer]

I think you missed Ogres in lesser vaults, _Ln_. I think there can also be giants in lesser vaults. Maybe hill/stone/fire or something?

I kind of agree with the general point though... part of the problem is that a lot of monster types just don't have powerful enough monsters for a really interesting endgame vault. I mean, I suppose you could make all of the monsters in a greater ratling vault massively overleveled to get around it, but other than that, that sort of vault is going to be super easy. I think Chaos vault is unnecessary as well... it's basically just a repeat of D:50 or MT. Unless TB plans to add in a lot more high-level monsters of various types, options are pretty limited. Even golems and minotaurs are pretty borderline--regular golem vaults go up to eternium and you can find them on D:25; the minotaur maze can (in theory) be finished at level 22, though I do actually think a vault of overlevelled minotaurs could still be pretty challenging.

Can greater vaults of blue/white/black dragons not be generated? I have to admit, I don't remember seeing any, but that would be an easy way to add more variety. To avoid making greater vaults all dragons all the time, I'd suggest having it that it picks a random vault by category (giants, undead, dragons), then, if it happens to pick dragon, it chooses a colour (red/blue/black/white/karmic).

[Laukku]

Can greater vaults of blue/white/black dragons not be generated? I have to admit, I don't remember seeing any, but that would be an easy way to add more variety. To avoid making greater vaults all dragons all the time, I'd suggest having it that it picks a random vault by category (giants, undead, dragons), then, if it happens to pick dragon, it chooses a colour (red/blue/black/white/karmic).

I believe the reason is that there's a minimum number of monster types for greater vault layouts - normal dragons are not enough for fires and karmics, so fire drakes and karmic lizards are added. For the other elemental types, no such suitable extra monster exist.

[SirTheta]

A minotaur vault would be far from easy, though. The maze can be completed relatively early if you have a lot of PV, sure, but if you are lucky, you won't run into too many minotaurs. Ancient minos & mino kings can hit ridiculously hard, so they'd be pretty challenging in a GUV--not to mention freaking minotaur mages, which have pretty powerful confusion & stat draining.