Silver items never generate in Gehennom, except for non-weapon-and-armor items which are base silver such as the silver wand.

Restructure Gehennom to be very short, containing the Valley, the three Wizard’s Tower floors, and a “nexus” floor at the bottom, containing the vibrating square and four magic portals, each leading to a randomly selected demon lair.

You can only enter each lair once: you must decide whether to attempt defeating the demon lord or not before leaving. The exit portal won’t work if invocation items are left behind. The demon lords are beefed up from vanilla, and are not bribeable since they’re not guarding access to the stairs to extort passage.

As incentive for defeating the demon lords, they apply debuffs on the ascension run, described in #3396.

Cave-in trap, which appears deep in the dungeon and/or in Gehennom. It causes the ceiling to collapse all around the target, turning the spaces into stone terrain, burying the target (potentially starting suffocating timers) and dumping a few boulders and rocks in the vicinity. It works somewhat like GruntHack cave-ins on the Plane of Earth, but in trap form.

Special (or themed) rooms in Gehennom containing priest and monk corpses, to correspond to the themed room that contains a bunch of dead bodies with no priests and monks because a comment notes “Moloch has a special fate reserved for members of those classes.”

Shorten Gehennom drastically, paring it down to a few mandatory levels (the Valley, the Wizard’s Tower (containing Vlad’s Tower entrance), the vibrating square level containing the fake Wizard’s Tower to portal into the real one) with no demon lord lairs and no filler. In exchange, once you start escaping the Sanctum with the Amulet, any level you reenter for the first time gets partly overwritten with Gehennom elements – rivers of lava, twisted mazes, and in particular, the demon lords. However, enough areas of the map will be left in their original states so that it remains recognizable. In particular this is aimed at making sure any stash you have made may not survive the process.

There are several motivations for this:

• Reduce the common feeling of “the game is over after the Castle” by putting only a few things between the Castle and the ascension run.
• Put the main challenge of Gehennom on the way out of the dungeon, not on the way in.
• Make it uncertain that the player will be able to go back to a big stash of items after grabbing the Amulet and take whatever they need before entering the Planes.
• Reduce the number of situations where the player can simply levelport away from a hairy problem such as a tough demon lord, collect the appropriate gear to fight them, and return (dipping into and out of Gehennom).
• Remove a Gehennom-worth of items the player finds on the ground and in monster inventories (where “the difficulty is flat but the loot keeps coming”).
• Mitigate the tedium of knowing you’re as powerful as you’re ever going to get but still have to retrace 50 explored levels. Relatedly, remove the incentive – the ability, even – to go tunneling through mazes.

In addition to making Gehennom much more open, make the monster generation rate much higher, so that players are encouraged to traverse them quickly and avoid being overwhelmed rather than spending lots of time searching every cranny and becoming bored.

Demon cartographers (not specified if this would be a new monster species or just the occasional random peaceful monster of an existing species) who offer to sell you scrolls of magic mapping for exorbitant prices.

Change the game progression significantly so that the player cannot descend below the castle without all the invocation items; once they do, they must perform the invocation at the Castle and fall directly into Moloch’s Sanctum. Exploring Gehennom after that is therefore done for the first time and from the bottom up.

Monsters that generate in branches associated strongly with an element (e.g. Gehennom, and the Ice Queen’s Realm) should automatically be given resistance to that element, even if they wouldn’t get it normally.

Gehennom should have various ambient level sounds, less frequent than special room level sounds since there is more Gehennom area when the player will hear them. They could include screams, wails, tortured cries, sounds of evisceration, and evil chanting (and more).

Split Gehennom into two different branches - Hell, which contains devils and the lawful “demon” lords like Asmodeus, and the Abyss, which contains demons and the chaotic demon lords. Either only one of these generates in a given game, or the player gets a choice of which one to go to in the Valley of the Dead. Alternatively, they’re sequential parts of Gehennom, with the Abyss being deeper.

Revamp Gehennom by making its main branch substantially shorter, a “hub” branch containing stairs or portals to a bunch of sub-branches containing demon lords’ lairs. Most of the lairs are optional, but at least some of them are required in order to enter the Sanctum. Each demon lord that you don’t kill, however, incurs a unique, harsh effect or debuff on you once you have the Amulet. Suggested ones include:

• The mysterious force, as it exists in vanilla.
• When you try to ascend the stairs, they vanish and several illusory copies of stairs appear across the level, along with one real one which you have to find.
• Walls extrude from existing walls around the hero in random directions, never entirely closing off, via a cellular automaton that looks for walls with a 3x2 area of walkable spaces in front of them, with the space directly in front a regular floor space - the effect of this given enough iterations turns the terrain around you into a maze.
• Generic damage over time, not severe but enough to provide a headwind. Or partial or total disabling of natural regeneration.
• Asmodeus: Some damaging cold effect that happens periodically, or your cold resistance is nullified and replaced with a vulnerability to cold effects.
• Baalzebub: Something to do with insects, either periodic summon insects from nowhere or stronger/more frequent insects
• Juiblex: You may randomly become ill, or have your regeneration dampened or something
• Geryon: Hordes of buffed q generate and rampage periodically.

All food generated in Gehennom (including both food generated with the level and after creation time, and corpses) is rotten.

Proposals to address the situation where all the candles needed for the invocation are guaranteed in Vlad’s Tower. The current situation removes frustration but many players feel that it’s trivialized, whereas the system in 3.4.3 was frustrating because it was a common occurrence to have to backtrack to the Mines for candles after forgetting they needed to be collected, or worse, having to wish for them because the game didn’t generate 7 of them.

• Make the Candelabrum come prefilled with 7 candles; this doesn’t address the trivialization concerns but does make it slightly less blatant.
• Put Izchak’s store on a bones-ineligible level and guarantee at least 7 candles in the shop.
• Rely on gnomes in the Mines being generated with candles, with a certain minimum amount of candles guaranteed.
• Candles generate randomly on the floor of Gehennom levels, zero or one stacks per level.
• Monsters in Gehennom sometimes generate with candles (though this would be difficult to tune and would not be as discoverable via object detection).
• Make bees occasionally drop beeswax, which you can craft into candles; or they just rarely drop wax candles, or wax candles appear in beehives.

Shops occasionally generate in Gehennom. They are staffed by peaceful demons, stocked with dodgy goods, and priced outrageously.

When you enter Gehennom, the Sanctum is right there as one of the first couple of levels. But entering it transforms all the existing dungeon levels irreversibly into Gehennom levels, including demon lord lairs and the like. Everything in the Dungeons of Doom will be lost, and the player now has to work their way through the rest of Gehennom with the Amulet to enter the Planes.

Alternatively, and perhaps more straightforwardly, destroy the Dungeons of Doom when the player goes beneath the Valley of the Dead, and just have them enter the Planes directly from the Sanctum.

Add multiple sub-branches of Gehennom, each containing a single demon lord’s lair. Killing them is optional, but each one that remains unkilled provides passive effects to thwart the player within Gehennom, especially on the ascension run. The mysterious force could be one such effect. The idea is that it’s not feasible to skip them all in a normal game because the combined effects are too difficult to overcome, but not necessary to kill them all either. You are able to choose which effects you want to put up with.

Non-fire-resistant creatures have a very small chance of spontaneously combusting in Gehennom.

The Seven Deadly Sins can generate randomly in Gehennom. They are the only uniques that do this. There is no guarantee that you will encounter all of them, or even any of them.

Possibly make it so that you need to have committed the associated sin in order for them to spawn; if you have avoided being Satiated, Gluttony will never spawn, if you are celibate, Lust will never spawn, and so on.

All demons are automatically aware of all traps in Gehennom, so they won’t walk into them and trigger them.

When you become caught in a pit, bear trap, or other restraining trap in Gehennom, nearby demons become alerted and aware of your exact location, because they’re the ones who set the traps in the first place.

When a silver item would randomly generate within Gehennom, try to reroll its materials (possibly multiple times) so that it’s less likely to be silver. This is because the inhabitants of Gehennom would likely have tried to get rid of all the local silver. Additionally, demons should never receive silver items in their starting inventory.

Assuming an implementation in which Gehennom starts to get destroyed after you remove the Amulet: When you kill the high priest of Moloch, he gives you a multiline death message calling you a fool and saying you don’t know what you have done, and maybe hinting a little bit at why Hell is about to go to hell.

After some point in the game (perhaps when you descend below the Valley of the Dead and first “enter Gehennom”), you can no longer buy protection.

Put some or all of Gehennom behind a one-way gate that you can’t return past, by any means, until you have the Amulet.

After the Valley, have a guaranteed special level “The Gates of Hell”. This level design is very clear: “This is hell. These are the gates, and they are closed. You are not wanted here. Go away or perish.” The level is a large cavern, with a massive arc-like fortification across either the left or right side. The gates are implemented with both iron doors and a drawbridge across lava. There is quite a lot of lava, and a lot of demons inside and outside the fortification.

Gehennom level that is cavernous but with 1-3 defensive fortifications consisting of a slightly twisty undiggable wall with turrets or guardhouses staffed with demons, and lava moats with drawbridges. Stairs on opposite sides of the fortifications.

Remove the Fake Wizard’s Tower special levels. Instead, there is simply a doorway you can walk into on the bottom floor of the normal Wizard’s Tower. (If it’s desirable to keep the fake towers, let them be randomly generated features in Gehennom.)

The more gold you pay to a priest, the stronger his god becomes. Newly generated priests of that god could get better equipment, or altars of that god might be harder to convert. In Moloch’s case, Gehennom gets slightly harder if you pour a lot of gold into his temple. This applies with money donated to your own god as well, but the effects are naturally less visible since you won’t go around fighting your own priests or converting your own altars.

Gehennom special room “ice cavern”, with mixed ice/regular floor, possibly with unnethack-style irregular ice walls, and containing ice devils and cold-themed items like wands of cold and rings of fire resistance.

One Gehennom “special room” should be an active temple with a peaceful priest of Moloch.

Assuming a new Gehennom generation algorithm which generates doors, some of which must be passed in order to get through the level: have a special type of “demon key” to open doors in Gehennom. Lots of them generate in Gehennom (though not as many as there are doors; possibly a certain type of monster there generates with them so you can obtain more if you get stuck), but each key is single-use and breaks when used to open a door.

Aligned altars can generate in Gehennom, and standing on a coaligned altar in Gehennom is the only way to contact your god (via prayer or sacrifice). If the altar is crossaligned, you can try to convert it, but Moloch may seize control during the process and turn it into an altar to Moloch. Molochian altars in Gehennom are very difficult or outright impossible to convert.

Demon gating happens more or in greater quantity when in Gehennom, and less often outside Gehennom.

After you finish the Priest quest, Nalzok may appear once more, randomly in Gehennom, since you didn’t actually kill him the first time, just banish him.

Wandering hostile priests of Moloch occasionally generate in Gehennom.

Fire/flame nymph, n, which normally only spawn in Gehennom (or possibly near lava not in Gehennom) and are noticeably stronger than other nymphs. Have two steal attacks which burn any items stolen, and also a fire attack. Potentially a passive fire attack as well. They also explode into fire when killed.

Bats flee upstairs whenever possible in Gehennom, because they are bats outta hell.

Bringing back different types of keys for different sorts of locks. This is not the old random key shapes and random lock shapes system; the discussion concluded that special keys should be used for a few specific purposes: game progression, a one time use reward, or some non-unique type of door where each key is one-time use or limited use. In particular, this third one could be used in Gehennom to block off areas, with “soul keys” or something similar that open special doors there and are generated with demons. Gehennom doors could also involve a blood ritual requiring some sort of expenditure of resources or damage to the player.

Special candle found generated in Gehennom. While one is lit on a level, it suppresses spawn rates and makes the difficulty about what it is now (without the candle lit monsters will generate at a much higher difficulty). They should be fairly nonrenewable, perhaps wishable but not polymorphable. This limits your duration of time in “easy Gehennom” before it gets harder. The candles work the same outside Gehennom, but are less useful (maybe they specifically suppress demon spawns).

Entering the Valley and entering the second level of Gehennom (as well as possibly entering other branches) give the hero an automatic level up.

Restructure Gehennom as follows: the main trunk consists of the Valley, then 5-7 filler cavern/lava levels interspersed with two bribable demon lairs, then the Vibrating Square level (also cavern/lava), then the Sanctum. The Vibrating Square level contains six revealed portals, one of which leads to the Wizard’s Tower, one of which leads to Vlad’s Tower, and the others all lead to demon lairs in which you can’t leave the level until the demon is defeated.

Challenge rooms that occasionally get embedded into Gehennom levels. They are sealed off somehow, perhaps with solid stone you need to dig through to enter. They are not intended to be required, and contain some sort of reward. Rooms might include:

• Demon den: one or more demons guarding some gold and gems. (In a cavernous Gehennom, we can expect that most of the mineral wealth has already been mined out by millennia of demon activity.)
• Seminary of Moloch: contains an altar to Moloch, one peaceful priest of Moloch, and multiple hostile priests of Moloch.
• Fake wizard towers: the standard 7x7 footprint consisting of moat and tower, with an amulet in the center of the tower (possibly EPI: this could be a fake Amulet of Yendor), and a few monsters inside the tower. The flavor basis for these is that they are the Wizard’s earlier settlements.
• Hostage room: contains a lot of monsters guarding a prisoner or player monster hostage. The reward here might be that the monster auto-tames when freed.

Convert some of the Gehennom filler levels into ADOM-like greater vaults that contain many challenging monsters and an artifact.

Attempt to address the ascension kit problem: make the highest-tier, really good quality, +8 or +9 gear be generated on the toughest monsters or even bosses deep in Gehennom. The high enchantment makes it incredibly hard to get through normal means, even if the base gear is wished for elsewhere. Overall end-game difficulty would need a bump if the average player is expected to pick up and use some of this gear.

Silver weapons should be rarer than they currently are outside Gehennom and fairly common inside it.

Gehennom should be half as long, 10-12 levels, and should be mostly or all unique levels that are randomly chosen from a larger set.