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.