Apporting the Orb

[Bart]

If you appreciate the fact that apporting the ORB now begins the orb run instead of giving some players a reason to tediously apport it to the stairs, you can thank amalloy for that.

Can I also express my dissatisfaction with this change here? I want my super-tedious secret tech back!

[gammafunk]

Amalloy's favorite commit so far disliked by none other than Bart?! I foresee great things for this orange name. I am kind of curious why you'd want that old behavior back if your argument isn't about consistency or spoilers.

[Bart]

There is only one Orb of Zot, so we cannot really talk about any consistency in this case. There's also nothing spoilery in the fact that touching (magically) orb of zot makes bad things start to happen.

I used to apport the orb with weaker characters to avoid problems on zot:5, where teleport is a very bad option if character is weak and second lung uncleared (because character is weak). Zot:5 vault is undiggable, which means that all escape paths can be cut off easily by a bunch of extremely dangerous mosnters. The change makes zot:5 potentially more exciting... and deadly. At this point of game I preferred to leave excitement past me even if it meant casting (tediously) apportation a dozen of times to get the orb safely to a stairway.

In other words - this change is reasonable, but it also creates a small risk of unfair and unescapable combat. For most of players this risk is probably acceptable, yet I believe that situations which lead to "unavoidable deaths" are acceptable in early game and in optional areas, but shall be minimized in late game.

That said, I don't want to sound completely ungrateful, so... thanks for the changes that I like. Thanks for making the game overall better!

[Rast]

Since this is now an apport FR thread:

The current behavior is too kuldgy.

Apport should always attempt to move the item/rune/Orb directly to inventory. The chance that this succeeds should be based on spell power and distance (with perhaps an additional penalty for runes and orbs), to encourage/reward the player for improving spell power.

If it fails, the item/rune/orb should not move at all.

PS to Bart: step on every square in Zot:5 lungs until you find all the permanent teleport traps. Use those to make your escape.

[Bart]

Except I was talking about cases

where teleport is a very bad option if character is weak and second lung uncleared (because character is weak)

I admit that most of characters can clear both lungs by luring enemies one by one, but on the other hand it is almost mandatory if I want to teleport around, which might be the case.