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[Werehuman]

(Going to attempt to avoid saying spoilers by using the other terms affectionately given by the other members, but if it is required to by what I'm trying to say, I'll use spoiler tags. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you might want to not open them)This is just my ideas on a topic I think will eventually make it into the game after Toady gets all of the higher priority things. I know its not priority though.
  Right now, HFS is just purely a bleak cavern with tons of clowns. A source of death for any fortress, no matter how strong. Its not much to look at though. Just a large cavern, made of slade
 Completely unminable except through bugs, so not really that fun if you are suicidal dwarfy enough to put a dwarf down there, and it survives, or you get an adventurer, not too much to do except kill clowns. It definitely doesn't need a special ore down there, or any real resources. Just more specially made and high quality fun. My ideas were, large magma rivers, lengthy streams of clown poison, blood from suitably dramatic sources (FB, clown, dwarf, etc), clouds of clown dust and boiling vapor, drifting clouds of fire, rotting limbs and corpses (possibly animated), skeletons, and corpses (possibly zombies) of the dwarves who have died in your fortress. All of this would definitely make it a more active place. These would mainly be aesthetic in dwarf fortress mode, but provide for a more interesting environment to explore in adventure mode or if you send a creature down there.
  I'll expand this thing as I get more ideas, and take out some if someone gives a reasonable reason for it not to work/be too stupid to really fit in.

[Vlad]

I believe there have been threads on this before, but I agree that the HFS should be a lot more interesting. I personally think that the clowns themselves are too boring. A simple hallway with retractable spikes is enough to stop them and a military can stop them if they are made of stuff like snow. Maybe there should be different types of clowns like the current ones could be lesser clowns and there could be more badass ones with special powers like turning dwarfs insane or wield adamantine and slade weapons or maybe spread a sort of ''corruption'' among your dwarfs and the land. I just feel there should be more consequences to opening the HFS. Also you shouldn't be able to reseal it with anything but candy.

And I agree with all your suggestions. It would makes the HFS more ''Hellish'' like its supposed to be. I also wouldn't mind some ancient structures down there made of slade. Like maybe a temple or a fortress or something.

[Werehuman]

 I think I found one or two things, but nothing really related to making it more fun. I agree it needs some balance issues, making demons stronger but that has been suggested more than just basically my thing, adding 'fluff' to it. I figure these floating clouds of substances could drift up into your fortress. I think that after the initial rush, they could perform 'sieges' instead of one or two coming up at a time. There could be slave pits, (intelligent creatures shackled to a rock inside a caveish thing) you could destroy their chains (thinking interact with weapon or teeth if it is a rope) and recruit these creatures (elves, dwarves, goblins, kobolds, a few animal men) to your cause, letting them journey with you as meat shields. Or if you get a dwarf down there, you could free them and they will gladly run away. Again, most of these things would have effects (swimming into river of clown blood or poison wouldn't be harmless, same thing with clouds of boiling vapour) but mostly add aesthetic if you survive it, and even a bit of a reward for survive it (though momentary) to go exploring. My main belief is it shouldn't be possible to conquer the circus. For a few ingame days, you might be able to get a dwarf or cat down there, if you somehow manage the first rush. Afterwards, it should be eerily quiet, and then suddenly a large number of them siege and come from all edges of the map in the circus, and make a beeline for any creature in the underworld not shackled to the wall, undead, or a clown, and kill them. Next, the congregate near the entrance to the underworld, and suddenly they enter, charging through your fortress.

[kontako]

My ideas were, large magma rivers, lengthy streams of clown poison, blood from suitably dramatic sources (FB, clown, dwarf, etc), clouds of clown dust and boiling vapor, drifting clouds of fire, rotting limbs and corpses (possibly animated), skeletons, and corpses (possibly zombies) of the dwarves who have died in your fortress.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

IIRC I remember seeing a video somewhere, When a person broke into the underworld there were all sorts junk everywhere, caged dwarfs, humans, elfs, skeletons littering the entrance, elf meat on the floor and whatnot. It must'ave been an older version or something (maybe even a mod). I'm not totally sure.
Although it would be nice to see some of that stuff, Unnamed forgotten sentients being tortured and impaled on spikes, blood smeared across the floor... The demons should show sines of being tortured too, after all they're in hell.

Here's the video... not sure if I'm allowed to post links but anyway...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuyZv4jsV4&list=PL5A3D7682BDD48FC2&index=31   Skip to about 2:10 ish

[Owlbread]

I especially like the things like rivers of clown poison (can we start using the proper word? Why not just put spoiler tags in the thread title) because it would give you some horrible and bizarre resources to gain control of in the underworld.

I often think that there needs to be a reason to colonise hell. Right now it only really provides bottomless pits for waste disposal and an endless supply of monsters to fight. If there were rivers of gorilla blood that turned you inside out then you could maybe use screw pumps to get it out of hell and weaponise it.

[Werehuman]

Yeah, its fine. It was just a precaution, but everybody nows really. Demons then. I'll just add a tag thing.

[Witty]

~Witty gestures!~

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Anyway, I really do think Hell should go back and borrow some elements from the old 40d chambers. The small details like engravings, insane caged prisoners and other things really helped paint a far more gruesome picture than the current model. Maybe bring back the chambers themselves to litter the hell floor. Since demons are now randomly generated, their more diverse sphere(those are still used right?) coverage could allow for some pretty horrifying combinations in pit scenery.

As for an incentive to breech hell once you know it's there, maybe for treasure? 40d had masterful engravings in the chambers, why not slade statues that could be sold? How much would you pay for a giant slade war-hammer once wielded by some salamander demon? 

[Gargomaxthalus]

Well this seems like as good a place to let my own Circus ideas pour forth.

    The thing about the Circus as it stands, is that it's just something that Toady threw into the game for "for shits and grins" so to speak, when some people started talking about the possibility of such a feature. The way that I see it is that it should have an environmental impact like opening each layer of the, currently way to boring and under utilized, caverns does. Currently as a matter of world gen, a humanoid Clown can seize control of a civilization and use it for there own ends(Think Mephistophlise(sp?) or another well known demon using an avatar to spread chaos and corruption). My idea is to have breaching the Circus cause a much more dramatic "Send Out the Clowns" event where a full fledged Circus biome starts to encroach on the region where the breach occurred, eventually spreading beyond that point. There would even be a small chance that someone would breach the Circus during world gen leading to a very !!FUN!! world indeed. This would end up being a mega-event that could, through great efforts and the proper procedures, be contained or even stopped completely, even before the player starts to have an impact on the world. Whether this Circus, the current Circus, another Circus, or no Circus would be generated would be up to the player. Hell a game mode where you play as The Clowns and use various methods to entice the Audience to open the way in an espionage meta-game would be awesome.

What really makes this !!FUN!!, is that we would have these sealed and long forgotten Clowns, on top of the planned Multi-verse mechanic, making it so that it would be a race to see if you, or the universe can kill your Dwarfs first. As far as the Circus biome goes think of hideous creatures of the Drider and Yochloi(sp?) variety, plants that require fresh blood and flesh to grow(as in "Little Shop of Horrors"), and the unsettling weather and fluids mentioned in the the OP's suggestion. This would create something really special that would set DF apart from wannabes like Gnomoria in ways that few would even want to duplicate. This could all even tie into Kohaku's ideas for how fortress/civ development could work in the future(http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61620.msg1403850#msg1403850) by having it be that those Dwarfs that you decided to give a measure of free will too, will actually be led by their personal greed to end up opening the surface. You should go so far as to have Adamantine have nothing to do with with the circus and instead  it would be capped by Slade witch would require some special method to get through.

The last thing that I want to talk about is the Clowns themselves. All that the Clowns really need is to be fleshed out by the planned spheres system and to have their generation logic fine tuned with some more rules. What would really make Clowns more interesting would be Ringmasters and Trained Animals. Ringmasters would be the humanoid Clowns. They would be extremely dangerous due to the psychological and physiological effects that they would have on the Audience. Encountering an army led by a powerful Ringmaster would make a Necromancer look like an excellent dinner guest. Trained Animals refers to creatures cataloged in between Clowns and the animals of the Circus serving a support role for the Clowns and would not be procedurally generated. They would be your common infernal creatures that would also be part of fleshing out Night Creatures. Trained Animals+Clowns=!!FUN!!, Trained Animals+Ringmasters=!!FUN!!, and a Complete Performance=!!FUN!!.

No one would EVER    dare call DF boring again.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Hell as it is now is basically made to be a way to end your game, not an Extra Special Easter Egg Bonus Level. Mind you, I'm not trying to insult your ideas, but it's just not what the intent of the current HFS is made for. Until that fundamental element of design choice is altered--as I hope it is--Hell isn't changing much. Once it is, though, I'm sure Hell will be filled with as many kinds of terrifying, gruesome, and unnerving items, characteristics, and features as he can code before remembering the original goal of the update.

[Owlbread]

Hell as it is now is basically made to be a way to end your game, not an Extra Special Easter Egg Bonus Level. Mind you, I'm not trying to insult your ideas, but it's just not what the intent of the current HFS is made for. Until that fundamental element of design choice is altered--as I hope it is--Hell isn't changing much. Once it is, though, I'm sure Hell will be filled with as many kinds of terrifying, gruesome, and unnerving items, characteristics, and features as he can code before remembering the original goal of the update.

Are you sure it's designed as a way to end your game? Do you have evidence from Toady for that?

[GreatWyrmGold]

Hell as it is now is basically made to be a way to end your game, not an Extra Special Easter Egg Bonus Level. Mind you, I'm not trying to insult your ideas, but it's just not what the intent of the current HFS is made for. Until that fundamental element of design choice is altered--as I hope it is--Hell isn't changing much. Once it is, though, I'm sure Hell will be filled with as many kinds of terrifying, gruesome, and unnerving items, characteristics, and features as he can code before remembering the original goal of the update.

Are you sure it's designed as a way to end your game? Do you have evidence from Toady for that?

No specific quotes, but consider...

1. Hell is almost impossible to get into without trying, meaning it wouldn't ruin the game for people who accidentally blundered into it. Well, not much, and given how we all know about it not on accident.
2. Hell is full of demons in absurd numbers and with absurd power, albeit varying somewhat. Each individual demon is somewhere between a semimegabeast and a megabeast in power, if not moreso, and they outnumber many sieges.
3. Hell is barren of almost everything save demons, slade, and some bottomless pits.
4. It's in a file or folder or something called "endgame."

I'm also pretty sure Toady said something to that effect, yes.

[Owlbread]

I'd like to hear it from the horse's moth, good sir. And its mouth.

But yes, without a doubt it's meant to be "endgame" in the sense that you would build up in your game, progressing to the point that you can actually invade and colonise hell.  HFS' original function back in the 2D version involved some kind of doomsday clock and stuff. I don't think that's really important though, I don't think it's "set in stone" in Toady's head if you know what I mean.

[GreatWyrmGold]

What in Hell makes you think it's supposed to be colonized? Its barrenness? There is only one thing that makes players want to colonize Hell, and that is how nigh-impossible it seems. Well, and the "Tonight we dine in Hell" jokes, of course.

[Manveru Taurënér]

Toady actually did drop some hints that he may have changed or added something new relating to HFS coming in the next realease. What it is we'll have to wait for though obviously. As for the rest, I'm fairly certain Toady plans to reimplement much of what once was in there and more, it'd of course be a late end of development goal (or possibly for working on when Toady feels particularly bored and sadistic ;P) if anything :>

[Owlbread]

What in Hell makes you think it's supposed to be colonized? Its barrenness? There is only one thing that makes players want to colonize Hell, and that is how nigh-impossible it seems. Well, and the "Tonight we dine in Hell" jokes, of course.

I just gave it as an example of something to do with hell.