The Tavern

I've recently cleared Tomb. The first time since a long time, because I wanted a 15 rune victory.

It just seems rather extreme. Lots of net traps which can't be destroyed. I played a Formicid^Zin. The net traps aren't destroyed when triggered, couldn't be destroyed with Sanctuary, and weren't destroyed when I deliberately walked onto them either. That's in addition to the Zot traps in LOS of both upstairs. The dispersal traps luckily didn't effect me.
With all the torment and death curses I went down to <20 hp on several occasions. I survived, so I'm not salty.

The one aspect I do appreciate is that Tomb was testing me for the number of consumables I'd been able to save up. Though I wasn't able to use my evocables at all, there simply wasn't time, so not all consumables were measured.

Anyway, is anyone actually enjoying Tomb?

How can you possibly enjoy it? I feel best prepared going in there with a Gargoyle, because of the inherent torment protection. The other day I made it with a DS, who was lucky with the otherwise useless Black-Hand Tier-3 mutation. In the Tomb that came in very handy.

You are right, the most annoying part are the traps, and particularly the dispersion traps that usually kick in just when you think it is time to take the upstairs...

Roguelikes need to rethink traps. What they're meant to accomplish, how they should be dealt with. They end up as a random event that harms you out of the blue. As if someone once read a story with dungeons and traps, and thought "wouldn't it be cool if the game had traps!" but not going beyond that. An idea that may sound cool on paper but often ends up frustrating.

Well, thanks to Petercordia I now have an excellent opportunity to brag - for the first time I took on (and succeeded!) the third tier of the tournament's Nature's Ally challenge, that is going into the Tomb and picking up the rune after picking up the Orb of Zot. But again I did that with my trusty GrEE, Zero, Death's Door, Borgnjor's Revivication (which I didn't need), and lots of Shatter and Firestorm. Obviously, you only get to that point after a very long game.

I've always assumed the ideas are (a) to add terrain complexity (in the case of actual traps) and (b) to randomly put the player in interesting tactical situations (in the case of exploration "traps"). I'm not sure how much (a) adds; but (b) is certainly interesting.

Which was the version with shadow traps that retriggered whenever a monster walked on them? During that tournament I spent over an hour real time trapped on Tomb 3 killing things because every space was filled due to those so I couldn't get out. I think it was a GrMo of Makhleb so it lasted a while before eventually being overwhelmed.

I think 0.16 was the only version with shadow traps? I am not 100% sure.

Tomb is not enjoyable from my limited experience. The curse backlash, especially the direct damage is both irritating and severely narrows counterplay. Like above, I'm not happy about traps when they can get triggered multiple times by a swarm of bugs over and over and oh shit paralysis time for a new game.