The Hellhole

enter crack          (at the crack of hellfire, on Daleville's North Ride)
hellhole             (your Hellhole: how deep, when it resets)
hellhole reset       (start it again)

A crack of hellfire hangs over Daleville's North Ride, south of the Common, a little way past the Hearthstead's portal. It leads down into the Hellhole: a pit one goes down alone, one room a floor, each floor harder than the one above. Nobody has found its bottom, and nobody is meant to. How deep you get is the measure of you: the deepest floor you clear (every demon on it killed) goes on the leaderboards.

Alone. Only a lone player may step through: no pets, no mount, no followers, no group. Once inside, pets are fine: every pet spell works there, at the Brink and on the floors (monsters summoned, elementals and animals called, familiars, golems and demons made, the dead raised, any monster but a demon charmed). Send them a floor ahead of you if you like. They come out with you.

Your own. Everyone who enters gets their own Hellhole, a copy no one else can enter. Its floors are the same for everyone, though, so what you learn of a floor holds for the next player.

Once you are in, you are in. There is no fleeing, no recall, no magic that takes you out. There is no climbing back up either: the Hellhole only goes down. You can rest on a floor you have cleared, and quit and come back to where you were. The only ways out are death, or giving your Hellhole up with hellhole reset.

The floors. The top, the Brink, is for getting ready: a pool to drink from, and nothing else. The first floors below hold a couple of weak demons; deeper they come in threes and fours, stronger every floor. From floor 10 some of them cast spells; from floor 20 some breathe fire (protection from fire breath turns it, as a dragon's). None is so huge that it can't be bashed: a multiclass with a fighter in it has the best chance. The demons never flee and never leave their floor, so they can't be lured away; nothing can be shot or thrown from one floor into another.

No slipping past. The demons bar the way down: the stairs to the next floor open only when every demon on your floor is dead. Nothing carries you past a floor, no spell or portal. The demons can't be charmed, and a demon's corpse crumbles to ash if you try to raise it.

The bottom. There is none: each floor is made as you reach the one above it, and they go on getting harder for ever.

Dying. You wake up outside, as anywhere. Your corpse stays in your Hellhole, where you fell, and it doesn't rot: get it back yourself if you can. You never lose it: when your Hellhole resets, any corpses in it come up to the crack on the North Ride.

Resets. Your Hellhole resets by itself a day after you last played in it, or when you type hellhole reset. Then it begins again from the top (the leaderboard keeps your deepest), and any corpses in it come up to the portal.

Rewards. Experience and gold, no gear. Each floor's demons are their own kind, so killing the same ones over and over pays less and less (from level 20), as anywhere.