YAVP: TeHu of Gozag, got PDA but dived into Abyss for bolts

[ZoFy]

So, i wanted to try out a ranged build in modern Crawl and and picked crossbows because i like penetration/silver brands as well as the high base damage they deal. As it turned out when i searched for xbow discussions on the Tavern later, even bows have superior dps and throwing is the unarmed combat of ranged and is alledgedly OP. That's a bit saddening because arrows are easily obtainable early on unlike botls.
Gozag was my god of choice because with Oka/Trog the game would've been too easy plus i've seen Demise (a Crawl YouTuber) bribing the majority of Hall of Zot and turning Zot:5 into a cakewalk. There was also a chance of me getting bolts from shops. None of that happened.
So, as expected, early game was all about managing my stack of bolts and taking on easy enemies (and only them) with unskilled melee. Which was quite good because of tengu's auxillary attacks. I even found a dagger of electrocution and i should've just trained Short Blades for it but just before doing that i got myself a quarterstaff of protection which i used instead because staves were included in my long-term plan. That was a big mistake: for the most of the game i got stuck with that quarterstaff and a +0 one of freezing which i was refusing to enchant due to being stubborn and wishing to invest into a better weapon.
Thankfully, i found a +4 arbalest pre-Lair as well as a book of Spatial Translocations so as long as i had bolts i could deal with pretty much anything at that point. Obtaining those bolts was a huge struggle, however. I didn't get any in Gozag's general stores and assorted antiques ones, didn't get Snake Pit with sharpshooters and wasted my acquirement scroll to get a trash weapon instead of ammo (just couldn't make myself acquire ammo). The first three floors of Swamp and Spider were handled in okay-ish way with the help of a +0 quarterstaff of freezing, an artifact ring with +3 slaying and a flippin' pearl dragon armour i purchased for 3000 gold in a shop. But i've had about 10—15 bolts left after that so i descended into Depths to try and find some yaktaurs.
In Depths, however, i was met by deep trolls and Mara who i had to run away from. Filled by desperation, i just dived into Abyss thinking i might steal a rune from there and deserve the right to enter Vaults and meet yaktaurs this way. As you'd expect, i ran into problems on the very first floor since i could only fight popcorn. A few teleport scrolls and haste potions later i wanted just to find a portal out. Lugonu had another opinion on the matter and was throwing only "downstairs" at me. I took them and after a lucky teleport on Abyss:3 i landed in LOS of a sleeping dire elephant. Knowing what that means, i quaffed invisibility and took the rune without having to fight anything.
The game got much easier after i entered Vaults and got myself a whole lot of ammo. Why do Vaults even have to be "rune locked" and not Depths if the latter branch is much more dangerous? It would also make more sense to lock Depths because it's the continuation of main Dungeon just like Zot is. I'd like to bring this issue up in GDD but i can rarely understand how developers and other denizens of that board think. Literally the first thread i see there right now is "remove rings: rFire, rCold, rPois etc". What a scary place.
In Vaults the only enemy i had real issues with was Mennas but that's only because i had no Haste spell and was forgetting to use bolts of penetration/potion of might. This is kind of notable because i can't recall last time i actually struggled with that unique even though back in the day i used to call him the most dangerous enemy in a 3 rune game.
With a bunch of bolts, two Lair runes were obtained quite easily and i purchased those sick gauntlets of War in a shop. My defences (something around 30/25) and my offence looked pretty good but i wanted to get Haste and Deflect Missiles before doing Zot. So i cleared Elf (third floor was reasonably easy but i almost died in the Hall of Blades due to not realising how likely a random teleport was to put me back in that huge area) and Slime (didn't get haste in a potion petition but bolts of penetration w/ might took care of TRJ anyway). Still none of those spells. The treasure trove finally gave me a lajatang of electrocution though which was honestly enough to kill dudes comfortably even without the whole ranged thing. Afterwards i even cleared Vaults:5 unwillingly and got Repel Missiles out of it. Yay? It feels like the book generation was tweaked a bit, my previous character was a designated stabber who won a game without ever finding EH or Confuse. inb4 just a clustering illusion.
Zot was not too hard for this tengu, bolts of penetration wrecked draconians in corridors, Portal Projectile dealt with callers, high EV and rMsl rendered electric golems quite useless even without rElec and silver bolts were a nice anti-OoF tool. What really disappointed me was the Bribe Branch ability. Here you can clearly see that ability turning Zot:5 into a joke, bribing multiple orbs of fire and stuff. While for me it just bribed a couple tentacled monstrosities and made an ancient lich neutral, that's about it. Sigh.
Gozag felt like bad Okawaru in this game: his first ability (get haste and some random buffs for 300+ gold) was basically an expensive Heroism, Call Merchant gave me a subset of Oka's gifts and Bribe Branch didn't really work. Occasional gold distractions were nice though.

Sorry for another large blog post, i know nobody really cares but that's what this board is for after all.

TL;DR: i got carried by finding Blink early on; without a god like Trog or Oka bolts and staves are hard to come by; i risked my character's life by going into Abyss just to get access to Vaults; Depths should have the "rune lock" instead; Haste and DMsl are apparently very hard to find as well but PDA and gauntlets of War aren't, lol; Gozag << Okawaru, no big surprise there.

[Siegurt]

Most people just do a lair branch to unlock the vaults....

[dowan]

The rune-lock doesn't really make much sense anymore. It was introduced to force people to complete a lair branch before just going down to D27 for the easy XP. The depths aren't easy XP, so I don't see what the rune lock accomplishes, besides not allowing someone to dive into vaults to get crossbow bolts, which seems like exactly the sort of interesting decision you'd want to allow!

[archaeo]

No, dowan, the rune lock was introduced to force people to get a rune before going to vaults, a task it accomplishes very well. I still don't like it, but it definitely succeeds in that narrow mission, which is essentially to force people to do a rune vault at XL15-17.

[Hurkyl]

I think the brief history is

• Dungeon used to be 27 floors, no depths
• Vault was deep
• Dungeon got split into dungeon and depths. Vault placed in depths.
• People didn't like Vault in depths. Vault got moved up to dungeon
• That was too early for vaults to be available, rune lock solved problem to everyone's satisfaction

(those last three points were all essentially part of the same change)

[daggaz]

No, dowan, the rune lock was introduced to force people to get a rune before going to vaults, a task it accomplishes very well. I still don't like it, but it definitely succeeds in that narrow mission, which is essentially to force people to do a rune vault at XL15-17.

The vault lock forces people to get a rune before going to vaults, obviously yes. But what pushes them to get a rune at XL15-17 is the fact that depths will likely kill them pretty fast. That said, you can still clear lair side branches to the bottom floor (and Orc for what its worth) and then dip into depths if you are doing well. Nothing actually forces you to get a rune there, and vaults is entirely skippable.

[dowan]

The rune lock was on depths originally, the reasoning given at the time was that it was stupid that nobody actually faced the intended challenge level of the lair rune floors because people would just save them until clearing pretty much everything else in the game (Which I suppose included vaults 1-4, but they were only a tiny portion of the problem.) However, the depths replacing d16-27 already solved that same problem. The rune lock wasn't even on the vaults when it was created, so it was most certainly not originally intended to prevent people from going to vaults before getting a rune. It was there to limit possible XP before clearing a lair branch. However since the abyss isn't rune locked it doesn't actually even accomplish that, although grinding XP in abyss 1 to overlevel for a lair branch ending is probably a bad idea in most cases...

The reason the rune lock got moved to vaults is because dpeg already created the idea of rune locks, the playerbase got mad about it, so obviously it had to stay in the game no matter how much or little sense it made. The reason it's so barely talked about is because it doesn't do anything in 99% of games.

Outside of weird cases like this one, does the rune lock on vaults have any impact on the way anyone plays? Does anyone get one rune, go clear vaults 1-4, then go back and get the other lair rune? Would people do vaults 1-4 before finishing a lair branch if they could?

[Sprucery]

The rune lock has never affected any game of mine. I also practically always* do Lair rune branches in one go.

*I have sometimes switched to the other branch when I've met a unique I didn't want to handle just yet.

[ZoFy]

Outside of weird cases like this one, does the rune lock on vaults have any impact on the way anyone plays? Does anyone get one rune, go clear vaults 1-4, then go back and get the other lair rune? Would people do vaults 1-4 before finishing a lair branch if they could?

Even without need for crossbow bolts, i'd do Vaults:1—4 before Lair branch endings unless i don't have MR gear. Wasn't it "optimal" before Vaults got locked anyway?
That's why, despite how you state the mechanic makes little sense to you, i understand the reasoning behind it now thanks to your post. It actually affects my regular play.

[archaeo]

Man I have clearly completely forgotten my rune lock history or y'all are misleading me.

[Siegurt]

All instances I could find of 'rune lock' in the commit notes:

  Code:

commit 32ee2eccaff52121fda2ea132c358c93c8db5895
Author: elliptic <hyperelliptical@gmail.com>
Date:   Sun Jan 8 13:12:51 2012 -0500

    Milestones for your first time entering Pandemonium and reaching D:14.
   
    Pandemonium uses br.enter, D:14 uses br.mid. The D:14 milestone shouldn't be
    announced by bots; its main purpose is to permit tracking the "rune lock"
    conduct.
commit d5f0ba7bf9e0122c8087bb6a0b8e44e69bc063ce
Author: elliptic <hyperelliptical@gmail.com>
Date:   Thu Oct 31 12:56:00 2013 -0400

    Move the br.mid milestone to D:15.
   
    To match the rune lock depth.
commit 3c177f47aa1bbf47db5dea54bdaa4f770a0220b4
Author: David Ploog <dploog@users.sourceforge.net>
Date:   Sat Nov 2 12:15:15 2013 +0100

    Allow D:14 shafts, make them known; try to always place one.
   
    This is supposed to give players a one-way chance to bypass the rune lock.
    When doing so, they have to procure a rune from Vaults or Hells or so in
    order to be able to go back up to D:14.
commit a976ef1a132d0d8aff6fbaa49fff081706ed95ca
Author: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
Date:   Wed Nov 20 20:28:22 2013 +0100

    Move the rune lock to Vaults rather than Depths.
   
    I can't quite fathom the reason to not moving it to /dev/null instead, but
    here you go.
commit 24727acb544d9f8b176850f370bf227b851b8c75
Author: Jason Van <mwclaws@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed Nov 20 18:56:33 2013 -0500

    Balance Vaults entry vaults
   
    Since V is the new owner of the rune lock, and has a narrow,
    earlier depth, avoid some of the meanest of spawns sometimes,
    but make sure there's always something of interest nearby.
    (Also, do a little code clean-up.)
commit 9a498f0a92fc0b934cf22d08195219e78e78c06b
Author: Raphael Langella <raphael.langella@gmail.com>
Date:   Mon Nov 25 23:54:59 2013 +0100

    Update descriptions of branches to match the rune lock changes.

commit 07949ec7b9c0b9583012be218f9b887257a10cd9
Author: Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl>
Date:   Thu Dec 19 03:55:33 2013 +0100

    Replace Ziggurat fees with a 3-rune lock.
   
    This way you need a good deal less scumming if you want to try multiple
    Ziggurats -- completely or not.  The number of runes required comes from
    historic data of people who left Ziggurats at particular urune count:
     0:   7
     1:   7
     2:  19
     3: 117 (earliest completion)
     4: 175
     5: 224
     6: 164
     7: 134
     8: 112
     9: 162
    10: 177
    11: 164
    12: 106
    13:  56
    14: 100
    15: 329
commit b6199f80036eb6e9e97c1613e6d987af7386961b
Author: Chris Campbell <chriscampbell89@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Jul 28 20:32:47 2015 +0100

    Generate information on rune locks in branch descriptions



FWIW

[archaeo]

huh, my bad dowan.