The Tavern

What's the point of this game mechanic where you can randomly fall through 3 floors?

It mostly happens in the early game, where there's a huge spike in difficulty level between several floors. Also, that's the time when you still don't have the tools you would otherwise have to get out of an unexpected situation (skills, spells, consumables). Therefore, there's very little in terms of player skill present.
Also, since it happens mostly in the early game, you're not attached to your character yet, which means the dangerous situation you're randomly put in is not exciting but rather annoying and dying this way just feels like you've wasted the past 10 minutes and you're forced to go through the boring first few levels all over again to fight quokkas and bats.

Either way, falling through 3 floors leaves me feeling shitty without adding anything good to my gaming experience.

I'm all about shafts.

Ah shit, things just got real, lets do this! OH SHIT A 2H OGRE RUN!

Generally yes. Not with Naga though.

I'm ok with them, but i'd like them better if they were more common and always visible to the player.

No one would ever fall through them if they were always visible.

Yah visible shafts are assets, not liabilities. Being able to drop Sigmund to a lower floor is powerful.

Shard1697 wrote:No one would ever fall through them if they were always visible.

It's like an escape hatch that doesn't bring adjacent monsters when you use it. I'd certainly make sure that dangerous battles were fought on top of one. I could either shaft myself or the monster.

If you dont like them play more Ashenzari! No more traps/shafts for you.

I like them a lot. If I survive I'm a lot more attached to my character, if I don't I make a new one because it's crawl.

I enjoy the challege of falling through shafts and having to survive, its makes crawl more enjoyable knowing that any false move means death.

I enjoy the feeling that it brings, instant strategy change. I can't remember the last time ive died that way. I usually always survive.

Shafts are like early banishment in the adrenaline department, except there's a good chance you'll actually survive.

Why don't you like the fastest way to reach the Ecumenical temple?

FR: You start game at Ecumenical Temple entrance on D:7 but cannot enter previous floors without orb of zot.

Yes because it breaks up the endless stairdancing and retreating.

i tend to like shafting unless its obnoxiously early like on D2. Its a nice break from o tabbing.

Falling 3 floors with a naga, from a floor with two portals, having one of them in LOS. Gf Hucsfv ggb

I've shafted Formicids down multiple floors to rush to temple before, its kind of fun in that its pretty tense, but otherwise I really don't care about it and its actually somewhat rare and seems fairly pointless in that a lot of times you can find stairs back up anyway. Its mostly just a luck thing, some people like randomness some people don't.

It's annoying, I don't actively dislike it though.
Shafts have saved me from douches like Sigmund and that D:2 Orc priest, not gonna complain if I can accidentally fall down them every once in a while.

So this happened last night:

"You fall through two floors!"
Entrance to Temple in LOS.

MainiacJoe wrote:So this happened last night:

"You fall through two floors!"
Entrance to Temple in LOS.

Taking "Temple Diving" to extreme sport status

I enjoy this kind of trap generally, but a timer going off for a Pyramid or Sewers upon landing in the new level is a bit of a bummer.

The design of traps in general is terrible but shafts are 1. easily the least badly designed one, 2. really not that dangerous. Unavoidable deaths to shaft traps are vanishingly rare.

Scuka wrote:What's the point of this game mechanic where you can randomly fall through 3 floors?

It mostly happens in the early game, where there's a huge spike in difficulty level between several floors. Also, that's the time when you still don't have the tools you would otherwise have to get out of an unexpected situation (skills, spells, consumables). Therefore, there's very little in terms of player skill present.
Also, since it happens mostly in the early game, you're not attached to your character yet, which means the dangerous situation you're randomly put in is not exciting but rather annoying and dying this way just feels like you've wasted the past 10 minutes and you're forced to go through the boring first few levels all over again to fight quokkas and bats.

Either way, falling through 3 floors leaves me feeling shitty without adding anything good to my gaming experience.

It's difficult, yes. But I strongly disagree that it's pointless or stupid. There's 101 ways to die early from bad luck: it's just the way this game works. We can either remove them all and then it becomes a trivial game, or accept that sometimes fate gives you a shit hand and it's up to you to find a way out of the hole you are in.

And as it was pointed out, it's not like it's a instant death. Scroll of mapping help a lot (after you found the first staircase at least you can start staircase dancing, so it makes higher levels easier). You can also use potion of haste or invisibility, and the ring of stealth to help you survive.

Personally I'm a lot more annoyed by Enrola (or whatever the name of the Ogre Mage is): a couple of times I met him somewhere like D:10 and got teleported in Abyss with a lvl 10-11 character. It wasn't an instant kill but it could as well have been. Or my pet peeve: weapon of distortion that imho should never send anyone in Abyss. You can encounter a stupid orc on lvl 4 with a dagger of distortion, and end up in Abyss. F%*king frustrating!

I usually 'like' being shafted, because it is exciting.

I once had an 'unavoidable' death from a shaft, when I fell into LOS of a few nasty monsters, and was surrounded. That was disappointing. The situation mentioned by HANGFEIST is also really annoying.

Antares wrote:Personally I'm a lot more annoyed by Enrola (or whatever the name of the Ogre Mage is): a couple of times I met him somewhere like D:10 and got teleported in Abyss with a lvl 10-11 character. It wasn't an instant kill but it could as well have been. Or my pet peeve: weapon of distortion that imho should never send anyone in Abyss. You can encounter a stupid orc on lvl 4 with a dagger of distortion, and end up in Abyss. F%*king frustrating!

I assume that spending a turn in LOF of Erolcha can instantly kill me and act accordingly (if I can't leave lof I'll probably use a scroll of blinking or something). Kind of the same for orcs with weapons of distortion.

I think the idea of shafting is cool, but I wish there were other ways for it to happen that don't involve stepping on a square.

Say, there was a kind of earth themed enemy that can do it to you, he could open up a temporal line of shafts, you can dodge them like you can dodge spider orbs, but if caught in a hallway there might be no way of avoiding it other than disabling the caster.

HANFGEIST wrote:I enjoy this kind of trap generally, but a timer going off for a Pyramid or Sewers upon landing in the new level is a bit of a bummer.

Even worse is getting shafted as you are trying to make your wake to one of these portals

This just happened to me (TeAr of Nemelex): On Lair:2, I got the message for an Ice Cave. I read magic mapping and headed for it. Fell through a shaft. Landed on Lair:3 and got the message for a Volcano. Read magic mapping. Both portals were half a level accross from stairs. Still, I managed to do first Ice Cave, then Volcano. Luckily the Ice Cave was a short one.

I also had neither rF+ or rC+ from any source. I am also on a streak :)

and I have a super hot girlfriend, no you wouldn't know her she goes to another school

duvessa wrote:and I have a super hot girlfriend, no you wouldn't know her she goes to another school

So how's her shaft?

Thinking back on my games (I have over 360 last I saw) there was maybe one unavoidable shaft trap death (got dumped between monsters before I could reasonably ID the few consumables I had...blind quaffs/reading didn't save me in time).

There were a few others I died after falling through a shaft but it would be pretty disingenuous to call them unavoidable deaths.

Zot traps have the most potential for unavoidable death by my estimation due to the threat of paralysis, but I'm not sure I've died to one yet. I got abyss 5'd by one in a game but wound up winning that run.

TP traps are worse than shafts and have killed me the most of any trap. Getting flung into monsters as a frail species where you're going to die in 1-2 actions is something you just don't always have the resources to survive. These are not good design but in 300+ deaths they're still < 5, including the shaft trap mentioned earlier.

The Tavern

Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?

Re: Does anyone enjoy the "you fall through 3 floors" thing?