This vault...

[Blomdor]

I didn't see a vault thread on the front page. My apologies if this should have been posted elsewhere. Feel free to share the ridiculous vaults you've encountered as well.

This is D:10. I have not even found Lair. In case you're wondering, I autoexplored into this, because for some reason this vault does not have a runed door. The really bad ones almost never do in my experience.

There is almost no possible way I could have been prepared for this. I do not know if I will survive, as a formicid that can't use blinking or quaff haste, but that's besides the point. Why do vaults like these not have runed doors? I only ever seem to find them on essentially petting zoos, with polar bears and such. The "lol fire giant in your face" vaults are often just...there.

I'm aware that this was fairly obviously a vault, so I could assume the danger, but again...autoexplore got me here.

I'm not mad about the situation or anything, though. Just wanted to share! Thought it was pretty funny.

EDIT: for those interested for some reason, I did survive! Eli's a good friend of mine and figured out how to live through this. Shaft is nice to have.

[tabstorm]

There is almost no possible way I could have been prepared for this. I do not know if I will survive, as a formicid that can't use blinking or quaff haste, but that's besides the point. Why do vaults like these not have runed doors? I only ever seem to find them on essentially petting zoos, with polar bears and such. The "lol fire giant in your face" vaults are often just...there.

Dangerous vaults that don't have runes won't kill anyone if the player identifies them in .des files or remembers them from past games while exploring manually. These kinds of vaults need to be open so that players can autoexplore into them. If it had a runed door, no one would go into the vault until they were overleveled.

[VeryAngryFelid]

These kinds of vaults need to be open so that players can autodie in them.

FTFY

[Reptisaurus]

Probably not going to get any worse if you shaft yourself.

[Blomdor]

I can understand that reasoning, and will also say that I highly appreciate these high risk, high reward situations. Crawl does not have enough of them IMO. I did survive this via shafting and came back later, killed all the guardians, and got a very, very nice ring for the trouble.

However, I feel that this is just a tad too powerful for D:10. Many characters would have to blow a couple of blink scrolls, which RNG is not above shorting you of this early on, and a Fo like this one could have been really screwed. I happened to have rF, and I survived with 4 HP. No doubt a slight difference in RNG or equipment could have changed that.

It was funny and an interesting situation either way, and I get a little annoyed when I compare it to that stupid runed door vault full of polar bears and other mostly harmless animals.

I should add something in defense of the vault: there was a group of monsters including a basilisk and an orc knight outside of the door with the fire giants and dragon. I autoexplored into it after dealing with those. You could certainly say I was asking for it. If I weren't brainlessly tabbing and pressing o constantly at the time, I'd have excluded the room manually or at least carefully opened that door in a more advantageous position and more prepared for the danger. The thread came from my assumption that runed doors existed to mark such rooms, and that they...often don't seem to be used that way.

[Shtopit]

Runed doors would be good if they were used for places where there is death & treasure, so a reason to risk death. In general, I always felt they signalled death and that's it, so they don't really incentive you to open the door.

But if the door had written on the runes "In this runed chamber lies "Artifact X"" or "the treasure of the Ka-Chingas", then I would be more interested in taking some risks. Which is why I think this vault would have used a runed door (in addition to the "level appropriate encounter" problem).

So I'd go with a Russian Roulette approach, but you are supposed to have something to expect winning if you survive the experience.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I should add something in defense of the vault: there was a group of monsters including a basilisk and an orc knight outside of the door with the fire giants and dragon. I autoexplored into it after dealing with those. You could certainly say I was asking for it.

IMHO you have just proved it should be a runed door. If player have problems dealing with "rune door guards I.e. warning", then she does not open the runed door. The problem is how to guarantee that those guards don't wander away. Though it is better to have the runed door made of glass as duvessa suggested not too long ago.

[jwoodward48ss]

You shouldn't be punished for using autoexplore, seriously tabstorm.

[Blomdor]

A little update: a different character found another D:10 vault with a storm dragon, orc warlord, and flayed ghost amongst other things. Again, there was no runed door, and this caused a little problem that I think might justify their use: they came out of the vault on their own. Imagine just running into these monsters seemingly naturally on D:10! The character is alive and well; if anything, it was much easier to deal with them one by one this way. But it sort of hurt the entire purpose of the vault, I would think. The vault was in the center of the level, and I suppose they heard me outside and came to investigate.