Slain by ignorance

[Fungus]

So I had a sweeeeet hybrid Naga Wizard rolling. I played with Okawaru in the early game and then switched to Vehumet after Vaults. At about XL23, I had nearly all slots filled with artifacts and a +9, +8 vampiric demon whip. Everything was going fine and dandy until I found the most unusual "vault" on D:27:

A long row of lava tiles, looping around in a U shape, with a quicksilver dragon at the end sitting on a legendary deck of cards (and possibly other items).

I very carefully cast Flight and worked my way around the "hall." I'm paranoid about drowning, so I recast Flight about every 5-6 steps.

Anyway, I made it to the dragon and started whacking away at him. This is easy! I'm at roughly 180 Max HP and due to vampirism it didn't fall down much from there. The dragon's at a teeny tiny red bar of health when suddenly...

"You float slowly to the ground and roast to a crisp in the hot lava." (paraphrase)

WHAT?!?!?! I checked the last messages of combat. NO indication Flight was running out. No "starting to lose your buoyancy."

Then I started searching through the Tavern and apparently quicksilver breath can dispel/"shorten" Flight.

*siiiiiiigh*

This was an extremely Frustrating death as I've only beaten the game once and I had absolutely no idea quicksilver dragons worked that way. Everything else was running smoothly and I was quite careful. What cases of similar deaths have you had? Any other insta-deaths with high-level characters where you were killed simply because you didn't know "such a little thing?"

[Hydralisk]

I feel your pain. It reminds me of...
In one of the YASD threads someone with an ass-kicking character too did cast Statue form while killing Antaeus, levitating over deep water.

[Blade]

I had one memorable death in Pan when I didn't remember that pit fiends were rElec++. I zapped it with chain lightning 5 times in a row, firestormed it, and then dived down a portal with an executioner next to me and no mana. I ended up in a Pan lord vault and died quickly.

Less 'didn't know' and more 'that was dumb:'

- drowned in cocytus:7 as an invincible dragonspamming muwz because I didn't notice that my flight was running out amidst message spam.
- died to hell knights because I didn't remember that I still had rF- because I hadn't needed rF for tomb
- died in abyss after a very long struggle involving not wanting to take faith off for clarity when I saw golden eyes (I was a branchless mummy )
- got an ev char paralyzed by an ogre mage and beaten to a pulp by her pack of ogres because I didn't think that she would be a threat
- died to orb guardians on zot:5 because I got to starving and didn't remember that food took two turns to eat
- died to Antaeus after waiting on the portal up to the vestibule to pull him up -- I didn't realize he was a melee threat
- died as a mube because I didn't realize that the zombie sitting next to me was an ettin.
- died on d:7 with the orb after getting up to d:1 and realizing I had accidentally dropped it on d:21 and then taking like 8 moves within range of a hell sentinel before realizing that I was in danger
- probably some others that I'm forgetting

[Fungus]

It would be nice (hint, hint) if there was a chance for a 1-turn reaction when you start falling into lava or deep water.

[JeffQyzt]

Actually, if you're at the shoreline, there is a chance to "scramble free" (while taking large amounts of fire damage, in the case of lava.)

http://crawl.develz.org/info/inline.php?q=scramble

[Kate]

I added some better messages for when this happens - it was sort of silly that you didn't get any kind of warning at all when hit by quicksilver breath, so now it'll tell you that some effects are expiring, and give a proper warning prompt if those effects (either levitation, flight or a transformation) were keeping you safe above deep water or lava.

[Fungus]

I added some better messages for when this happens - it was sort of silly that you didn't get any kind of warning at all when hit by quicksilver breath, so now it'll tell you that some effects are expiring, and give a proper warning prompt if those effects (either levitation, flight or a transformation) were keeping you safe above deep water or lava.

That's great! Since I'm not sure how it worked exactly, did the quicksilver breath immediately terminate the flight or just shorten it to a duration less than the "normal" warning duration?

Very exciting to see how active the development of this game is.

[Kate]

It reduces the durations of all your active magical effects. Most durations get reduced to 1 aut, so they'll expire as soon as you do anything at all (a normal-speed action takes 10 aut). Levitation was actually recently special-cased to be reduced to 11 aut instead, to give you an extra action's worth of breathing room, but obviously that's not much help if there's no warning that it's happening.

[Fungus]

That's perfect!

I'll just say that during the thralls and excitement of combat, he ignored that he was plummeting to his doom, and was happy to at least drag the dragon with him into the lava via constriction.

[Pteriforever]

You were perfectly warned of their powers; I believe it says in the Crawl Bible:

MUUTATATOTOTS 37:15
And so Quicksilver Dragons gained the power to reduce magical effects to 1 aut.

[zrn]

I had a xl19 DsWz who was very promising. After easily clearing Shoals:5 and returning to the lair with my newly attained loot, I put on an artefact ring while flying over deep water. I removed the ring. And drowned. Apparently if you remove a piece of equipment with +lev, even if you weren't levitating from that source (or levitating at all (I WAS FLYING FOR XOM'S SAKE)), the effect is immediately cancelled. I learned my lesson, at least.

[SchwaWarrior]

The most horrible death I ever had was when I learned what it meant to truly accept Jivya's downsides with her upsides.

Long story short: with a character that had gone all the way to Zot:5, farthest she'd ever gone at that time, I starved to death, because I had spent too much time casting spells and Slimifying things in the Realm of Zot, so now I was out of sustenance, out of piety, and the entire dungeon on every floor in the game was out of items to regain piety and satiety with (because I visited them all and made Slimes sweep them all clean for a couple of nice extra mutations, not thinking that I should save it for later when this thing might happen), and even the couple loaves of bread I had left at D:24 (by SOME MIRACLE I had managed to stagger there Starving the whole way and shrugging off hits from tons of dangerous things as a caster), to my un-surprised horror, had been eaten by Jellies already when I needed them more than ever.

So yes. My XL24 High Elf Conjurer, who could tank two or three Stone Giants at once without problems (which is nuts for casters), loses the hunger game and starves to death, due to four or five elaborate things all happening in unison that I completely 100% brought on myself for not understanding their true nature. Most humiliating death I'll ever have, and taught me more about the game than any run I've played in Crawl.

Jivya's a head trip.