Yesterday, I have closed the gate with an L+ gray elven ranger.
I believe some of the things I have written about have already been posted by others, either as random threads or RFEs/bug reports but nevertheless, here they are:
1) Given the fact that many more monsters are now being generated, there is a much higher amount of loot to gather, disproportionately so, I think.
By the end game, I blessed everything, even single scrolls or single potions and all the worn items. I still had 30 potions of holy water left after this.
2) Another consequence of the above - throughout the game I've found lots of potions of gain attributes. All my stats have been increased on average by 30 points, half of this before the tower.
Needless to say, that part of the game was very easy. My ranger started with 12 toughness and 15 potential but I quickly got this to 20 and more with items that provide toughness bonus.
What this means is that despite herbs not being as effective at training (I tried overtraining with morgia and failed) you still don't have problems raising stats to respectable values.
3) Summoners should still be toned down a *little*. I'm not talking about the bug that increases their power as they summon more, I'm talking about lich kings filling 7x7 room with monsters in 4 turns.
Summoners should either summon fewer monsters or take longer periods between each summoning, but that's my thought. I understand if people find their current behavior acceptable (again, not counting the experience increase bug).
4) CoC levels from around ~25 onwards are crazy if you're not prepared. The monsters that spawn there can be deadly but coupled with the increased drops I mentioned earlier, it's not as pronounced as some feared.
The problem is that when you descend, you don't really know what's going to be generated in the room downstairs, it may very well be a berserker emperor or greater moloch and that means trouble or occasionally - instadeath.
5) Elemental temples now contain more random monsters. I don't think this is a good idea, I believe it would be better to disable random monster generation in elemental temples and instead buff the thematically related monsters a little.
Maybe 2 greater elementals per each of the temples? I think currently, some temples (ok, water temple maybe air) don't require too much preparation and can be taken in-stride.
One thing I noticed about mana temple - when I bolted Nurgy with a magic missile, he teleported close to me and I was able to quickly dispatch him by throwing rune-covered trident, I didn't have to deal with all the monsters or the chaos wizard summons.
I did destroy them but I was safe, knowing that the archmage is dead. Perhaps it's too easy to let him just teleport randomly because given the right circumstances, players might just skip the temple entirely and only kill the archmage, collect the orb and leave.
6) Corruption has been significantly decreased, to a point where it becomes irrelevant. This ranger had that vortex accident with Khelly so the 6 scrolls of chaos resistance were gone. Dwarven mystic also preferred to give me PoGA instead of the 4 scrolls.
What I was left with were the 3 guaranteed scrolls from bugwil, one from HMV and 2 randomly found. They lasted me till the very end, where I only had to drink two potions of cure corruption after clearing D:50 in melee, including meleeing all balors.
I also meleed two (!!!) tension rooms of balors - one around UL:3 and one on the same level as mana temple. That's a lot of corrupting hits I took and still, I was fairly safe with the minimal corruption effects.
7) This has been mentioned already by somebody else, but a lot of monsters are generated neutral which not only means they aren't an immediate threat to the PC but they will inevitably fight each other.
One time I had a great karmic wyrm battle a quickling queen, another time berserker emperor fought a titan.
Things like that occur often. Although I don't mind this behavior, as it's a bit unrealistic that all the monsters in the game are in league against the player, it makes for a strange experience.
Also, the inherent danger associated with having to deal with those powerful monsters on your path, is somewhat neutralized if you maneuver cleverly and make the hostile monster step next to a neutral one, which causes them to fight.
8) Monsters are generated in waves, each bearing a different type. Deeper in CoC, you're bound to experience *THUMB* messages on every level.
(Greater) titans mixed with (greater) molochs is a typical setup later on but they don't occur until a certain moment.
Similarly, werewolf kings show up at some stage but cease to be generated later. Same goes for several types of powerful monsters.
This is not necessarily bad, but like the previous point states, it is a strange experience.
9) I have mentioned it already but here it is again - some monsters don't feel right appearing earlier than D:50, namely balors.
In the .flg file generated after closing the gate and exiting Drakalor Chain, I've discovered that 54 balors have been slain.
Fifty four balors! That's equal to 6 games completed in pre20, with 9 balors each. Something is not right here.
Now, I don't mind finding one or two stray balors before D:50, but I had two full tension rooms of them.
I don't think this is a good idea to make it possible, those tension rooms rivaled D:50 in difficulty and that's not a good thing.
I managed to pull this off because at that point I had cat ring and some other items that pushed my Dx to ~60 as well as fire orb and GoGS that also raised my St to 60.
This char was a 181 speed, lvl 40+ ranger with 7LB, built with the intention of dual wielding needle and sting so the damage output and chance to hit were stellar.
I was also equipped with sun's messenger + true aim and rune covered trident, but many other characters would be hard pressed to deal with ~20 balors and their summons at once.
10) Stealth has been significantly nerfed and I don't exactly like that. I used to be able to sneak past the steel golems in DfG if I had 100 stealth and stealthy talent but now, they are much more likely to notice me.
Stealth is still useful but I think the previous behavior was better.
It didn't give you any great advantage since certain monsters had to be killed rather than avoided, but it allowed you to roleplay the stealthy character instead of having to blast everything on your path.
Perhaps the skill could be made less common among races/classes but also brought back to be as effective as in pre20?