I’m a new player, so my assessment might be inaccurate. I’ve only died with orbs of Zot 10+ times, let alone win the 15-rune.
From my perspective.
Perhaps the removal over the years has left the game feeling somewhat incomplete? This dungeon and its various worlds seem to exist for the sake of existence, as if there was no history before the player’s arrival.
I did see a lot of text displaying extensive world-building, and I also saw many cages and active beings unaffected by the zot clock.
However, in actual gameplay, the dungeon doesn’t feel like a developing or historically significant place. And it’s like not sustainable or alive enough?
Perhaps, before we encounter monsters, they could have their own behaviours, not just sleep and kill the player.
Perhaps, when we encounter monsters, they might not be at full health (symbolising a food chain or internal strife within the dungeon).
Perhaps, we could add back fruit (for minimal healing or other small effects) for monsters to pick fruit from trees themselves, encountering them while they’re eating fruit, and fruit turning into seeds after a hundred turns on the ground.
The workload should only involve reusing a few textures, handling random events, and setting the starting health of random creature dice. We may already have similar logic in our code. Therefore, it shouldn’t be difficult at the coding level, but it will feel much more immersive in actual gameplay.