The Tavern

An idea slipped through my mind while playing and seeing a staircase mimic in Lair.
The idea: There is a vault in Lair:3-6 (where the Swamp/Snake/Spider/Shoals entrances normally appear). All of the four staircases are present in the vault. Two of them are actual staircases to the respective branches. The other two are staircase mimics.
Brainstorming questions:
- Would such a vault be fun in the first place?
- Would the staircases be adjacent to each other, with the possibility of being in reach of two mimics simultaneously?
- What would be a good graphical display of such a vault?

Mods, if you feel like I missed the board, feel free to move this thread to CYC. But I would still like to read anyone's opinions on this idea.

Zicher: I say it's alright. Back when I handled vault review duties, I would have accepted it. Since it's a bit gimmicky, just give it WEIGHT: 1.

Ignoring the question of whether mimics generally are good, this would not be a good vault, because it would be immediately obvious that two of the staircases are mimics. Branch staircase mimics already fail at this quite a lot compared to other types of mimic, but this would be a particularly bad example of it.

dpeg wrote:Zicher: I say it's alright. Back when I handled vault review duties, I would have accepted it. Since it's a bit gimmicky, just give it WEIGHT: 1.

Good to hear that the idea is not totally out of place - thanks, Dpeg.
Could you please point me to some vault-coding guidelines? Especially whether I can add some already coded branch-entry vaults (smoke and a hydra for Swamp, for example)? I may as well try to get myself back into coding again

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And of course, the idea is that one would meet such a four-stairs Vault once upon a time only, and the staircases/mimics would be generated randomly each time.

MarvinPA wrote:Ignoring the question of whether mimics generally are good, this would not be a good vault, because it would be immediately obvious that two of the staircases are mimics. Branch staircase mimics already fail at this quite a lot compared to other types of mimic, but this would be a particularly bad example of it.

Of course it would be obvious. As I understand Zicher's idea, the appeal would be something else: you enter a room and see all possible four branch entries, perhaps in a nice, symmetric pattern. Sure, you will step next to them and figure out which ones are real, but I like it as a rare event.

Vaults that use obvious mimics have been removed over the past couple of versions. I guess see what other currently-active vault devs think, but this sounds like a vault that I would remove if it existed currently at least.

I can see the danger of experienced players thinking: "Oh, a four-staircase vault. I'll cast [whatever damages mimics] and see which of the stairs are mimics and which are true."
Still, I believe it might be interesting for newer players and/or if this be a very rare encounter.
Then again - it's just an idea. If the devs say "bad idea", then it most likely is a bad idea, and I can live with that

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MarvinPA wrote:Vaults that use obvious mimics have been removed over the past couple of versions. I guess see what other currently-active vault devs think, but this sounds like a vault that I would remove if it existed currently at least.

There seems to be a tendency to squeeze all little fun bits out of the game. I don't like that development and it's never been discussed, as far as I know. That vault wouldn't be very naughty, it'd just play on the fact that Crawl features two out of four potential Lair subbranches.

Zicher wrote:I can see the danger of experienced players thinking: "Oh, a four-staircase vault. I'll cast [whatever damages mimics] and see which of the stairs are mimics and which are true."

Mimics are the real things until they are next to you, so that part isn't a concern (for example, you can apport a rune mimic and it will move next to you and attack).

rchandra wrote:
Zicher wrote:I can see the danger of experienced players thinking: "Oh, a four-staircase vault. I'll cast [whatever damages mimics] and see which of the stairs are mimics and which are true."

Mimics are the real things until they are next to you, so that part isn't a concern (for example, you can apport a rune mimic and it will move next to you and attack).

That's good to know, thanks. It opens quite a number of amusing (well, Xom-amusing) possible vaults. Mimics can be annoying, true, but I personally think their "spice the game up" effect outweighs their annoyingness, at least IMHO.

By the way: I noticed that some mimics can be identified from a distance. Is there a way to prevent such an identification? The proposed vault would lose a lot of its surprise factor if the two staircase mimics would be seen from a distance.

Zicher wrote:I noticed that some mimics can be identified from a distance.

AFAIK this is a benefit from having antennae or worshiping Ashenzari.

dpeg wrote:
MarvinPA wrote:Vaults that use obvious mimics have been removed over the past couple of versions. I guess see what other currently-active vault devs think, but this sounds like a vault that I would remove if it existed currently at least.
There seems to be a tendency to squeeze all little fun bits out of the game. I don't like that development and it's never been discussed, as far as I know. That vault wouldn't be very naughty, it'd just play on the fact that Crawl features two out of four potential Lair subbranches.

I also think it would be cool to immediately answer the question of what two branches you have definitively, and for people like me who do both lair branches before vaults, it'd be quick to travel between the two! Some people even do levels 1-4 of one branch, then the other branch, and then go back the first branch for the rune, although I don't.

Double bluff: they're all mimics.

Code:: You open the door. You see the demonic rune of zot, the demonic rune of zot, the demonic rune of zot, the demonic rune of zot, the demonic rune of zot...

The Tavern

Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics

Re: Proposal: Lair vault with branch stairs and mimics