A theory about dungeons

[SeaGtGruff]

I can't find it, but in one of my posts I mentioned that wilderness dungeons can have up to 4 levels or floors.

It seems I may have been mistaken, because in all of my wilderness explorations I've encountered only 1-level and 2-level dungeons. (I'm not counting keeps and towers as "dungeons," although I think they might fall under that broad category, as I'll explain in a bit.)

And yet, I did encounter a wilderness dungeon once that had 4 levels, which is what led to my confusion.

The interesting thing about it was that on the 4th level there was a chest, and when I opened the chest I got a message saying that I'd discovered the map to some artifact in some province. However, I don't think the message gave the name of the dungeon where the artifact was supposed to be; and I think I checked every world dungeon in that province to see if any of them contained an artifact, but none of them did. (I'm referring to the dungeons on the world map as "world dungeons," to distinguish them from the dungeons found out in the wilderness.)

Much later-- on a different character-- I had just tracked down an artifact but circumstances had pressured me to leave the dungeon after finding the map to the artifact, or the artifact itself (I don't remember which), rather than exploring every nook and cranny as usual. So after I returned to town to sell my loot, get my gear repaired, and replenish my stock of potions, I decided to go back to the dungeon so I could explore it more fully. However, when I went back to the dungeon it no longer had its 3rd and 4th floors!

My theory is that each of the 14 world dungeons in a province normally has only 1 or 2 levels, but if the dungeon is chosen by the game as the location of either the map to an artifact or of the artifact itself then some flag or switch is set which turns the 1-or-2-level dungeon into a 4-level dungeon. Then, after you discover the map or artifact and leave the dungeon, the flag gets cleared such that the extra levels are no longer accessible.

I think this might be what happened when I encountered that 4-level wilderness dungeon-- that somehow a flag got set which changed the 1-or-2-level wilderness dungeon into a 4-level dungeon, complete with a chest on the 4th level. I don't remember whether I'd just gotten information about an artifact from some NPC, but when I do get information about an artifact I normally act on it right away, so it would have been out of character for me to go exploring out in the wilderness if I'd just learned the location of a map to an artifact. Still, that could explain why there was a treasure chest on the 4th floor.

One of these days I'm going to hunt down a rumor about an artifact, then go check out the nearest wilderness dungeon to see if it's magically acquired extra levels. If it has, then I'm going to see if the various world dungeons have also acquired extra levels.

I mentioned that towers and keeps might be classified as dungeons. I'm pretty sure that they aren't considered to be dungeons by the NPCs, because if you ask where the nearest dungeon is they'll direct you to an actual dungeon even if there's a much closer crypt or tower in a different direction.

But I've been playing Daggerfall for several months now, and one thing I've noticed about the world map is that when you filter out everything except one of the four main categories of locations-- dungeons, homes, temples, and towns-- each category contains more than just one color of dot.

For dungeons, there are 4 colors of dots, and each color corresponds to a particular type of dungeon as reflected in the location names. The darkest red dots are crypts, with names that include terms such as "tomb," "graveyard," etc. The somewhat-brighter red dots are referred to as "ruins." The brightest red dots are holds, keeps, towers, castles, etc. And the orange dots are the more notable dungeons, which are usually the locations for quests-- although a quest might instead take you to a ruin or a keep.

Likewise, there are 4 different colors of dots for towns, with the darkest ones being the smallest towns (referred to as inns, even though they contain one or more actual inns and none bear the same name as the town), and the lightest ones being the largest towns (which have walls around them). And I think there are 3 different colors of dots for "homes," ranging from "farmhouses" to larger abodes.

So I think that same practice can be applied retroactively to Arena's wilderness locations, where each location can be a farm (house, barn, and crops), or an inn (often with a house or two close by), or a temple (often with a house or two), or a small town (houses, plus an inn, plus a temple), etc. The locations with red dots for doorways can be broadly grouped together as "dungeons," but some are clearly crypts, some are keeps/holds/towers-- or whatever term(s) you prefer-- and some are proper dungeons (where you need to actually explore to fill in the automap).

[adegron]

Very cool stories. Don't know about colors in Arena's map, but the town map is definitely more confusing in Arena, though you can ask around where buildings are in a more organic way than Daggerfall. From Morrowind on, the series took a different direction with more persistent worlds and leaving behind the procedurally generated stuff, which can be a downside sometimes.

[SeaGtGruff]

Very cool stories. Don't know about colors in Arena's map, but the town map is definitely more confusing in Arena, though you can ask around where buildings are in a more organic way than Daggerfall. From Morrowind on, the series took a different direction with more persistent worlds and leaving behind the procedurally generated stuff, which can be a downside sometimes.

The procedurally-generated stuff is persistent, though, which is something that a lot of people don't seem to realize because of how they've interpreted what they've read.

When I started playing Arena seriously and began exploring the wilderness, I was surprised that everything wasn't changing randomly whenever I went outside a given city, because the phrase "randomly generated" had me thinking that nothing was set in stone. When I realized I could go back into the city, then go back out again and return to the same keeps and dungeons I'd found before, and that each keep and dungeon maintains the same interior on each visit even though it was "randomly generated," I got pretty excited.

As far as the town maps, after a while you'll be able to spot where the taverns, temples, stores, and mages guilds are, by the configuration of the city blocks as well as the shapes of the buildings. As in Daggerfall, there are a specific number of city block arrangements-- including variations where a given block has been rotated 90 or 180 degrees, or (iirc) reflected-- and you'll soon be able to identify which types of buildings are in the various blocks, including which houses are where the wealthy people live.

[MrFlibble]

When I started playing Arena seriously and began exploring the wilderness, I was surprised that everything wasn't changing randomly whenever I went outside a given city, because the phrase "randomly generated" had me thinking that nothing was set in stone. When I realized I could go back into the city, then go back out again and return to the same keeps and dungeons I'd found before, and that each keep and dungeon maintains the same interior on each visit even though it was "randomly generated," I got pretty excited.

It wouldn't really make much sense if the scenery changed every time you entered and exited a town, would it? After all, the designer's original intent was to create a believable living world, and this kind of randomness would immediately ruin this. Also I'm almost certain that back in 1994-1995, the average Arena player would be exploring everything more carefully and savouring the atmosphere, so if everything was re-generated randomly every time, that would be discovered very quickly.

Even in traditional roguelikes, once a dungeon level has been generated during a given playing session, it never changes unless you restart the game anew with a different character.

[SeaGtGruff]

Well, now I'm confused.

In a previous playthrough, I found at least one wilderness dungeon outside of the towns that had 4 levels, which led me to think that wilderness dungeons can have 1, 2, or 4 levels. (I'm not refering to keeps and towers, as I call them, which always have several levels to them.) Most wilderness dungeons have only 1 or 2 levels-- at least, in my experience the ones close to town do. Most seem to have just 1 level, but occasionally one will have 2 levels.

But in subsequent playthroughs, I didn't discover any dungeons with 4 levels, which made me think that maybe it was just some kind of glitch, possibly related in some way to artifact quests.

However, tonight I've discovered my first 4-level wilderness dungeon in my current playthrough, and I haven't heard any rumors about an artifact. That is, I assume it's a 4-level dungeon, although I'm only just starting to explore the 3rd level and don't know for sure yet whether there's a 4th level.

The dungeon is easy to find, because it's right outside the main gate to North Point, High Rock-- a little bit to the northwest of the gate, but in the wilderness block that's right outside the gate. I'm thinking of going there on a brand new character just to verify that it isn't some kind of glitch related to character level. My current character jumped from Level 27 to Level 31 (an increase of 4 levels instead of the normal 1), and then jumped from Level 31 to Level 41 (an increase of 10 levels), which has apparently led to monsters hitting me with much stronger attacks than usual, making my Ring of Force Wall pretty much worthless because the shielding from the Force Wall spell gets shredded in just 1 or 2 hits instead of being able to protect me for half a dozen or more hits as it used to do. So it might be some kind of glitch, but hopefully other players will be able to go to the dungeon and report back on whether it has 4 levels for them.