User:Librarian/Ciar Advanced Structure

Ciar Advanced contains 9 zones. The method used to set out the data for the 4 zone Alby Basic gets pretty confusing if attempted for 9 zones. Let's see if it's clearer if I deal with all the spawn patterns first before looking at structures.

Spawn Patterns

In Ciar Advanced, it's surprising how little overlap there is between spawn patterns for different zones.

Spawn Pattern	Zone
Trapped Chest Room - 1 wave (3rd wave from corresponding 3 wave patterns)	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
6 Red Sickle Laghodessa	Y	Y
6 Red Spike Laghodessa				Y	Y	Y	Y
4 Red Spike Laghodessa					Y
4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa					Y	Y	Y
1 Bug Bear + 3 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Spike Laghodessa									Y
Trapped Chest Room - 3 wave	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
6 Red Town Rat → 6 Dark Rat Man → 6 Red Sickle Laghodessa	Y
6 Red Town Rat → 3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Green Snake → 6 Red Sickle Laghodessa	Y
6 Green Snake → 3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Red Town Rat → 6 Red Sickle Laghodessa		Y
6 Green Snake → 6 Dark Rat Man → 6 Red Sickle Laghodessa		Y
6 Green Snake → 6 Dark Rat Man → 6 Red Spike Laghodessa				Y
3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Green Snake → 6 Dark Rat Man → 4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa					Y
6 Red Sickle Laghodessa → 5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Sickle Laghodessa → 4 Red Spike Laghodessa					Y
5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Sickle Laghodessa → 6 Red Sickle Laghodessa → 4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa						Y	Y
5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Sickle Laghodessa → 4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa → 6 Red Spike Laghodessa						Y	Y
6 Dark Rat Man → 4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa → 1 Bug Bear + 3 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Spike Laghodessa									Y
Pre-deployed Room (exit closed)	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
6 Red Town Rat	Y
6 Dark Rat Man		Y
6 Red Spike Laghodessa			Y					Y
5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Sickle Laghodessa					Y
4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa						Y	Y
Mimic Corridor Cluster	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
TC + 4 Great Mimics + 6 Green Snakes	Y
TC + 4 Great Mimics + 6 Red Town Rats		Y
TC + 4 Great Mimic + 6 Red Sickle Laghodessa			Y
TC + 4 Great Mimic + 6 Red Spike Laghodessa					Y
TC + 4 Great Mimic + 3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Green Snake								Y
Mimic Room (Exit open)	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
TC + 4 Great Mimics + 6 Green Snakes	Y
TC + 4 Great Mimics + 6 Red Town Rats		Y
TC + 4 Great Mimic + 6 Red Sickle Laghodessa			Y
TC + 4 Great Mimic + 6 Red Spike Laghodessa					Y
TC + 4 Great Mimic + 4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa						Y	Y
TC + 4 Great Mimic + 3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Green Snake								Y
Mimic Room (Exit closed)	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
TC + 4 Great Mimics + 6 Green Snakes	Y
TC + 4 Great Mimics + 6 Red Town Rats		Y
TC + 4 Great Mimic + 6 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 6 Red Spike Laghodessa			Y
4-switch Room	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
{5 Dark Rat Man}, { 5 Red Town Rat}, {3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Red Town Rat}, {Open door}	Y
{3 Dark Rat Man}, {3 Green Snake}, {3 Red Sickle Laghodessa}, {Open door}		Y
{3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Green Snake}, {3 Dark Rat Men + 5 Red Town Rat}, {5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Sickle Laghodessa}, {Open Door}		Y
{6 Dark Rat Man}, {6 Red Sickle Laghodessa}, {6 Red Spike Laghodessa}, {Open Door}			Y
{5 Dark Rat Man}, {5 Red Sickle Laghodessa}, {5 Red Spike Laghodessa}, {Open Door}				Y
{5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Sickle Laghodessa}, {4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa}, {6 Red Spike Laghodessa}, {Open door}					Y
3 x {5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Sickle Laghodessa}, {Open Door}					Y
{3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Green Snake}, {5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Sickle Laghodessa}, {4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa}, {Open Door}						Y
3 x {4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa, {Open door}						Y	Y
{3 Dark Rat Man + 5 Green Snake}, {5 Dark Rat Man + 3 Red Sickle Laghodessa}, {4 Red Sickle Laghodessa + 4 Red Spike Laghodessa}, {Open Door}							Y
Miscellaneous	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Herb Room - Exit closed	Y	Y			Y
Herb Room - Exit open	Y				Y
Fountain Room - Exit closed	Y							Y
Fountain Room - Exit open		Y						Y
Fountain Corridor								Y
Tiro (All 3 forms)									Y

4-switch rooms do occur in zone 8, but they are rare and I haven't yet had much luck with seeing all 3 possible spawns on a single run. I'm not yet game to guess how many different 4-switch spawn patterns exist for this zone.

Fountains are common zone 8, and I have seen all 3 forms. (Room with exit closed, room with exit open and corridor.) In other dungeons where fountains are common in a zone, all three forms again occur. In zones 1 and 2 of Ciar Advanced fountains are rare and I have not seen them in all three forms. At the moment, I'm guessing they do exist in all 3 forms, but their rareness means I haven't encountered them yet. Tiro is common in zone 9 and I have sighted him in all 3 forms.)

I have also sighted a combined herb + pre-deployed room in zone 5 and a combined fountain + pre-deployed room in zone 8. These are so rare that I am unsure if they arose due to a bug rather than being intentional. In both cases, the monster spawns are consistent with normal pre-deployed rooms for the relevant zone.

Structures

Room block codes are listed at User:Librarian/How_Dungeons_Are_Generated#Room Blocks

Zone 1

Total Rooms: 2 to 4

Melds encountered in zone 1:

• 222
• 301
• 101, 101
• 101, 221
• 101, 222
• 101, 231
• 101, 241
• 111, 221
• 111, 224
• 111, 241
• 221, 221
• 221, 241
• 101, 101, 221
• 101, 101, 231
• 101, 111, 221
• 101, 116, 221

OK. This is disappointing. When I decided to investigate which room structures can appear in a zone, I was expecting to end up with a relatively short list of melds. But here I've got 16 different melds. 9 of these 16 only occured once each in 32 runs of the dungeon, so it's quite likely there are other equally rare melds that I have not yet encountered, so the above list is probably still incomplete.

It seems unlikely to me that the level designers would manually build in 16 (probably more) different melds for a zone, so there's possibly some more general pattern hidden that I'm not spotting yet, due to the list being incomplete. For example, maybe the 10 melds of 2 room blocks actually arise from picking 1 room from each of 2 lists. For example, maybe they are formed as:

• one block from {101, 221, 224, 231, 241} and
• one block from {101, 111, 221, 222}

That would give the 10 patterns I've seen so far, but also means there are another 8 patterns I haven't seen yet. But there are other ways to structure the two lists which would explain the 10 patterns I've seen but give different patterns that I haven't seen. If the two-block melds really are being made by selecting from two lists, it's going to take a lot more runs to identify the two lists with certainty, and I don't think I have the patience to do that.

Many zones in Ciar Advanced are like zone 1, in that they seem to exhibit a large number of melds and are probably based on some deeper pattern I'm not spotting yet. I'm going to ignore those for a while and instead study the simpler zones that exhibit far less variety. I'm hoping that they will more clearly display any hidden patterns, perhaps giving some insights as to how to better summarise the mess that is zone 1.

Zone 7 Structure

Rooms: 1 or 2.

Zone 7 is unusual in that it only ever contains 1 block. The blocks encountered are:

• 101
• 221
• 231 (Rare)
• 241 (Rare)

Zone 9 Structure

Rooms: 2 or 3

Melds encountered

• 221 (Rare)
• 223
• 112, 221
• 113, 221

Note that Tiro is encountered in all melds except the first.

I've wondered whether it is possible to explain 1- and 2-block structures as arising from a random selection of one block from each of two separate lists, where one of the lists contains a "nil" pattern that results in the structure containing only one block. Zone 9 is one example suggesting this is not the case. If we try to explain the zone 9 melds by that approach, it would have to look like this.

Choose one block from {Nil, 112, 133} and one block from {221, 223}.

The problem with this is that to explain why the first meld listed above is very rare, the selections from the 2nd list would have to be not equally likely. The 2nd list would need to be: {221 very rarely, 223 most of the time}. But then that can't explain why the 3rd and 4th melds listed above are common and I've never seen 112, 223 or 113, 223. Both those patterns would mean encountering Tiro twice in a dungeon, which never happens. So I believe the 1- and 2-block structures were separately generated to ensure at most one Tiro occurs, rather than arising from some ore general pattern that generates both 1- and 2-block structures.

The inclusion of 221, with a low probability of occurrence, is odd. It means very rarely Tiro will not appear in a dungeon run. I wondered whether a "Tiro block" actually has a small probability of Tiro not appearing, so the 221 blocks I have seen were really 223 blocks with Tiro failing to appear, or 113, 221 melds with Tiro failing to appear. But if that happened for the 113 and 223 Tiro blocks, it would probably also happen for the 112 Tiro blocks. That means the 112, 221 meld should sometimes result in an empty room with an open exit (as happens for zones containing Fountain Rooms with open exits), and I don't see that.

Based on this example, and some similar examples in other dungeons, I don't think I'll ever find a more general structure that explains both 1- and 2-meld structures, or for that matter, 2- and 3-meld structures. However, for zones which have a large number of 2-block melds, there might be a more general selection pattern that explains those 2-block melds.

I also wonder whether blocks 112 and 113 are in fact a single block which makes a random selection as to whether the slot into which Tiro is placed is made a corridor or a room with an open exit. Based on the data I've got so far, that is plasible, and it is plausible that the two options are equally likely. However, the data set is small so the statistical tests don't supply a lot of confidence. I'll need to look at appereances of Tiro in other dungeons before I'd be willing to make a guess on this one.