The Tavern

It seems a bit strange that entry vaults like this are allowed to happen. A single action is instant death, with no reasonable way for the player to either respond or prepare for it.

/shrug

The only thing you can do is going back immediately, since you have the first action every time you enter a floor the first time. If you have already been in that level through a shaft or different stairs, however, you are screwed.

Shtopit wrote:The only thing you can do is going back immediately, since you have the first action every time you enter a floor the first time.

You do, but:
-taking the stairs takes more than one turn
-Now almost all the orcs have followed you, so this isn't much better

The number of turns shouldn't matter, if I understood correctly. You get to do an action (whatever action, no matter how many auts it takes) before the monsters get to act.

Maybe someone can confirm or deny this.

No, it doesn't work quite that well. The monster delay isn't even an intentional feature; it just happens to work like that because monsters are generated with zero energy and only act when they accumulate enough. But monsters that want to follow you through a stairwell need to start following you pretty early in that process, and it will be too late for them to follow you by the time they get their first action.

This particular formation of monsters and walls is not a 'vault'. Vaults are intentionally designed, and in this case the level generation just placed an orc band, and because orc bands come with multiple orcs it crammed them into the limited space available.

KoboldLord wrote:No, it doesn't work quite that well. The monster delay isn't even an intentional feature; it just happens to work like that because monsters are generated with zero energy and only act when they accumulate enough. But monsters that want to follow you through a stairwell need to start following you pretty early in that process, and it will be too late for them to follow you by the time they get their first action.

Monsters don't start following you 'when they take an action' - they decide to follow you or not the moment you start taking the stairs. By the time you finish taking the stairs, if the monster is still eligible to follow you, it will. There are some circumstances where a monster will fail to follow, such as if it's more than a turn away from its next move, but in scenarios like in the OP all those orcs have LESS than a turn to their next move so it doesn't apply.*

* This isn't the exact rule, but I haven't figured out exactly what it is. Something to do with mons.speed_increment < 50, whatever that means. (mon-transit.cc _mons_can_follow_player_from)

I hadn't visited the floor earlier. The first thing I did was < to ascend, but still died immediately.

What does "entry vault" mean? Did someone actually design a vault with a bunch of orcs around stairs? I don't think that's how it works.

Probably it's just a random occurrence: there was a band of orcs generated near stairs, part of the initial generation of monsters when a level gets created. Since there was no space, they spread all around the upstairs. Bad luck, but nothing more than that.

Edit: I see KoboldLord above made the same point.

Btw: In Hellcrawl, since you can't go upstairs, IIRC the game just dismisses monsters which are generated very close to the player. I don't know if that mechanism is required for DCSS.

Not a fixed vault, but when generating stairs, does it really make sense to allow monsters to generate right next to them? Situations like this causes a lot of grief for streaking players.

There is something in the game design document which talks about avoiding situations which lead to unavoidable deaths. Of course, monsters being generated right next to you is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for an unavoidable death. But removing such monsters would go some way in mitigating the effect of bad RNG. I don't see anything obviously wrong in implementing such a step.

How exactly did you die, by the way? Were you smited or hacked to death? I see various orc priests there. If it's the former, the placement of the monsters directly adjacent to you doesn't matter much.

bel wrote:How exactly did you die, by the way? Were you smited or hacked to death? I see various orc priests there. If it's the former, the placement of the monsters directly adjacent to you doesn't matter much.

The orc barely misses you. The orc wizard barely misses you.
The orc priest hits you but does no damage.
The orc hits you with a short sword.
The orc hits you with a short sword of holy wrath!
The orc priest mumbles some strange prayers to Beogh against you.
Beogh smites you!
Ouch! That really hurt!
You die...

bel wrote:How exactly did you die, by the way? Were you smited or hacked to death? I see various orc priests there. If it's the former, the placement of the monsters directly adjacent to you doesn't matter much.

What on earth are you talking about, man? If the priests were not adjacent, he can just go back upstairs and they can't follow.

For the OP, being surrounded by six vanilla orcs would not really have been much more survivable than priests. At this point, I'm guessing the best move would have been to read an unidentified scroll (if they had any) and hope for blink. If following Trog, berserking might possibly have worked. But really, sometimes the RNG just screws you and you don't have any escape options yet.

Edit: It actually would have depended on the terrain upstairs — if it was all regular orcs, going up might have led to a clear escape route. Still no guarantee of survival, though.

Magipi wrote:
bel wrote:How exactly did you die, by the way? Were you smited or hacked to death? I see various orc priests there. If it's the former, the placement of the monsters directly adjacent to you doesn't matter much.

What on earth are you talking about, man? If the priests were not adjacent, he can just go back upstairs and they can't follow.

They died before making to the upstairs floor. So if the priests were at 6 range they still could have killed the player. Although to be fair I think that would have been less likely as if they were far away they would have had a chance to move instead of attack, so them being close probably increased the odds of them smiting.

Still would be possible at any range, though.

bel wrote:What does "entry vault" mean? Did someone actually design a vault with a bunch of orcs around stairs? I don't think that's how it works.

Probably it's just a random occurrence

Hmm...

Sadistic vaults designed around stairs are "random"? Tell that to this one...

That one isn't random, but I really doubt the devs would put in a vault on d:3 with upstairs and ten orcs in a confined space. Later in the game, yeah, there are some really ugly landing places — but by that point you have tools to deal with them. In this particular case, "<" works great unless you already can't survive barbs.

Alphaeus wrote:Sadistic vaults designed around stairs are "random"? Tell that to this one...

I don't find that one particularly mean. Since none of the monsters are adjacent to the stairs, the player is completely free to ascend back up. I actually think this vault is a useful tool for beginners to learn the value of simply retreating, rather than trying to tackle a very dangerous situation.

tasonir wrote:They died before making to the upstairs floor. So if the priests were at 6 range they still could have killed the player.

Someone correct me if I am wrong but if you immediately ascend on the stairs, and this was your first stair to the level than the priests do not get any action, so they cannot smite you to death from a distance.

The problem here is that "following upstairs" is not a normal action, they can follow you even if it is your first stair and you ascend immendately. If I understand it right than he died on D2, not D3, after ascending. The orcs followed and then killed him, before he got another action, because following is not taking an action for the orcs, or maybe taking the stairs taking more than one turn for you but only one for the orcs, I do not know.

Just so we're all on the same page:

[10:35 PM] BOTCerebot: stairs[1/10]: Taking the stairs has two parts. The 'leaving' is implemented as a 'delay' - it can be interrupted. It lasts 1.0 turns. The 'entering' lasts 0.75 turns (if you've never been here before) or 1.5 turns (if you have) and is simply waited out on the other side. Haste/slow will change these durations.

Try going into wizmode and going up and down stairs a bunch if you want to confirm your mental model.

In my mental model the big missing part is what the orcs are doing during taking the stairs.

sanka wrote:In my mental model the big missing part is what the orcs are doing during taking the stairs.

Conga line? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMV3icKalzQ

sanka wrote:
tasonir wrote:They died before making to the upstairs floor. So if the priests were at 6 range they still could have killed the player.

Someone correct me if I am wrong but if you immediately ascend on the stairs, and this was your first stair to the level than the priests do not get any action, so they cannot smite you to death from a distance.

I interepted the paste of the orcs killing him as happening on the same level as he tried to take the stairs up, but looking at it again, there's no message about when/if he was taking the stairs, so it could have been on either floor. I was under the impression he didn't make it back up the stairs.

The Tavern

Pleasant D:3 entry vault

Pleasant D:3 entry vault

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