The Tavern

I got this:

I have 2 questions:
1) What's the point of the transporter if I don't see any monsters? Do devs really want me to use it in permadeath game when I have no idea what I will see there, maybe it's full of titans or something? And I haven't identified teleportation in Lair yet (maybe it is one of those single-scroll "stacks" I have)
2) Why do we still have a way of checking vaults in des files? It is stupid not to do it for such weird vaults but I feel so lazy to scan all vaults with teleporters...

1) You don't know what's in a zig floor until you enter either
2) why do you keep on bringing up the fact DES files are readable? Nothing can be done about this. The game is open source. You will have to accept it exists.

1) Zig requires a rune and I know what to expect on first floor once I have ever visited a single Zig. Vaults are different, some are nasty, others are weak and boring.

2) Because there are solutions which still allow to have vaults in open source game and not hate yourslef for being "lazy".
a) randomize vaults so checking des does not help, for example generate vault monsters and items from corresponding floor lists (if the vault has just interesting layout).
b) use glass rocks to see everything what's inside, including monsters, not just a bait of cool items for new players (if the monsters are interesting themselves).

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I have 2 questions:
1) What's the point of the transporter if I don't see any monsters? Do devs really want me to use it in permadeath game when I have no idea what I will see there, maybe it's full of titans or something? And I haven't identified teleportation in Lair yet (maybe it is one of those single-scroll "stacks" I have)
2) Why do we still have a way of checking vaults in des files? It is stupid not to do it for such weird vaults but I feel so lazy to scan all vaults with teleporters...

On 1) - I'd go in, and enjoy it, though I'd know it was insane from a win rate perspective.

Odds wrote:On 1) - I'd go in, and enjoy it, though I'd know it was insane from a win rate perspective.

Even if playing 6th game of a streak?

Edit.

Spoiler: show

No! If I was streaking, I'd go into it some time around getting my first rune. Or more likely, I'd intend to do so and forget.

Sometimes I don't understand the trends on forums. On the one hand, there are a whole lot of posts by pretty veteran players who seem bored and want all sorts of changes -- and for some reason, they want them to the whole game starting from D:1 or so it would seem (i.e. wholesale removals and mechanics requests to make the game faster but harder at every step). On the other hand, there are several posts worried about "new player traps" that seem to assume a brand new player, who somehow has managed to get down a few levels (i.e. where transporters are typically found?) with no trouble yet still wouldn't ever seem to imagine that just maybe Crawl is the sort of game where you want to be careful about walking into restricted spaces where you can't see what's next. There could be so many more reasonable scenarios than both, imo.

Well, after playing Crawl for a few games and learning (often by getting whacked by a gnoll around D:2) that you need to be kinda careful, maybe you assume that walking into a closed unknown space calls for some consumables or an exit strategy or expectation of difficulty. Or you start to think, isn't this sort of like one of those runed doors, and just don't go in there until you've progressed a level or few more... It isn't really rocket science.

Yes, it's similar to runed doors. Don't you remember a thread by duvessa where he described problems with those vaults?

I think transporter vaults are good because they reduce the size of the level. They would be better as big vaults that just generate permanent walls though.

By the way this is an example of what I would call a good vault: you see monsters, you see items, no need to check DES file. Transporter vault should be similar to this except you cannot easily retreat if you underestimated something.

Well, one could either bother devs not to make files that anyone can check in the first place (I guess that failed? I dunno)... Or simply decide not to worry about it since it's something that everyone in theory has the opportunity to exploit equally. It sounds kind of like ghost files -- anyone could remove them, but is that really a good reason to remove all ghosts from the game in itself?

Except well, I never heard of des files before (omg no I have not religiously been hovering and reading every post by duvessa for the last few years, I know I'm failing right). This is also another example of a technical whiz referring briefly to under the hood stuff that I either don't know where to find, or can't figure out how to translate into something I can use. And in that sense, I have to wonder how many people would really figure out it's there or go to the trouble. I'm almost tempted to say it's only an issue for a handful of gurus, but I don't really have enough information to be so sure. I would be very surprised though if "everyone is doing it" except me.

Or devs could make more of the walls translucent and it wouldn't particularly bother me much. I kind of like the mystery as it is (for those of us who aren't busy exploring every possible spy panel), but hey.

As far as I can tell, gammafunk made this transporter vault with the sole intention of killing unspoiled players, since no spoiled player in their right mind would ever enter it. Or maybe it was made to encourage people to bring deep troll earth magi from depths to d:7.

I think it's obvious that it's going to be dangerous when you see that kind of carrot, but it also doesn't force you to enter it immediately. You can simply wait until you are stronger to go in and there's no need to be spoiled to know that imo

Fingolfin wrote:I think it's obvious that it's going to be dangerous when you see that kind of carrot, but it also doesn't force you to enter it immediately. You can simply wait until you are stronger to go in and there's no need to be spoiled to know that imo

Right, it is obvious to every experienced player. So what do we have as result? Experienced players ignore the teleporter and enter it later. New players might enter it and die. So why don't we just move the vault to level 11 or so? Because we need new players dying?
That's exactly why I wrote OP, glass walls would help new players and experienced players wouldn't consider reading DES files thinking "maybe it is not that hard and can be entered immediately? it does have 2 artefact items". It is actually worse than vault with runed doors and solid rocks because you cannot even run away.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:
Fingolfin wrote:I think it's obvious that it's going to be dangerous when you see that kind of carrot, but it also doesn't force you to enter it immediately. You can simply wait until you are stronger to go in and there's no need to be spoiled to know that imo

Right, it is obvious to every experienced player. So what do we have as result? Experienced players ignore the teleporter and enter it later. New players might enter it and die. So why don't we just move the vault to level 11 or so? Because we need new players dying?
That's exactly why I wrote OP, glass rocks would help new players.

My point was that even for a new player, it would be fairly obvious that to get the treasure, they would have to fight tough monsters. I mean come on, you're playing a roguelike ffs.

Edit : also I don't have any problem with adding glass walls, I just think the status quo is fine too

It is quite common in Crawl that some parts have such a terrible risk/reward ratio that players simply avoid it. A recent example is the desolation of salt, some older stuff are the hall of blades, or hellion island. There are even some uniques, like Roxanne or Mara or Mennas.

This is the kind of vault that one looks or up doesn't enter. Both are bad for the game.

I enter this vault. I faced a similar vault recently filled with nasty slimes and would have died if not for ?blink. Working as intended IMO.

I also dive pre sbranch depths hunting dragons sometimes (my current troll).

Magipi wrote:It is quite common in Crawl that some parts have such a terrible risk/reward ratio that players simply avoid it. A recent example is the desolation of salt, some older stuff are the hall of blades, or hellion island. There are even some uniques, like Roxanne or Mara or Mennas.

Another way to look at it, is it depends a lot on your character. I've had a pretty easy time of Salt with a couple (stronger ranged characters), and passed it by with a purer/weaker melee one that I determined shouldn't touch it.

A similar if vaguer idea has to apply to unknown areas. If you're feeling uber-geared or uber-skilled (or you really love a challenge/even the horror-show aspect of Crawl generally), then you go in earlier. If you're not, treat it much like a runed door and go in later.

The OP vault was found on D:7 and it has a whole mess of carrots in sight from the outside, compared to most loot areas in Crawl. While I suppose a handful of very fresh players might make it their style to charge straight down that many floors fast and not get killed by other surprising things on the way, and not see many other odd vaults and doors that start to teach them not to think before hopping inside this...? I'm having a hard time seeing it as either something that is really going to catch a lot of people (and then rarely more than once or twice before they wise up), or as something that will do that more often than a range of other features presently in the game (which quite a few people also find amusing in principle).

I looked curiously at the first one I saw for a minute, I'll admit. It wasn't nearly so stocked with visible incentives and I could only see a couple squares of the inside from the direction I found the transporter from. But not knowing how the thing worked, and just knowing the game has vaults which tend to be trickier than the surrounding terrain, I put it off a bit and soon I had at least gotten a better picture what was inside. My first one wasn't all this dramatic, okay. But if this sort of thing is going to sock you and annoy you that often, then arguably so will crazy Yiuf and the like.

I think it's better than the worm trap. That one really is spoilery as hell, because it uses abnormal mechanics. Unless we want to see it as an ultra-specialized variant of "spiders in a bucket", which however I think has been removed (?).

Interesting. I have the opposite view about such vaults - I love them.
It's an unknown challenge, and if I'm feeling brave I'll go in and die happy. It will make for a much more interesting game than if I was just playing in that careful, boring and predictable manner we all have grown accustomed to.
I don't usually play this game just to win - I play it to be entertained, to be challenged. If I get to see the inner layout through glass walls, it loses that element of surprise.
Now, of course i could look up the map files. But why would I willingly take away from the potential fun of a jump into the unknown?

Sure, if you're streaking then just don't go in. You wouldn't go in regardless of whether the walls were transparent or not.

I think transparent walls are a good idea, all in all. But they would not help new players to make a better decision. Chances are that they would not know any of the monsters revealed in this way, because they have never been deep enough to encounter them before. If I see a blue troll for the first time, I might just think, like, hey, a blue troll! I know trolls, so let's jump in there.

Doesn't xv which gives monster description work behind glass?

duvessa wrote:As far as I can tell, gammafunk made this transporter vault with the sole intention of killing unspoiled players, since no spoiled player in their right mind would ever enter it. Or maybe it was made to encourage people to bring deep troll earth magi from depths to d:7.

Spoiled and unspoiled players alike would absolutely enter that vault eventually, and that's some pretty hyperbolic "motive" you're ascribing to me there.

I mistook the OP for showing gammafunk_its_a_trap. the_bubble is indeed something that you enter 10 XLs after finding it, instead of never.

I find it hard to ascribe any motive to its_a_trap other than pure schadenfreude. I cannot imagine a circumstance in which a good player, knowing what's in the vault, would use the transporter into it.

If the monsters in the vault aren't awake, a player can kill all monsters in its_a_trap reliably without ever triggering a single Zot trap in their LOS in most instances where it places. The vault reveals where the player will land and it's possible to tell if monsters are awake in the vault, since their triggering a Zot trap even out of LOS makes a message. Since most branches where it places have at least one type of blinking monster, if you know that you can't paralyze, enslave, or otherwise kill this monster in one turn after seeing it, you'd want to preemptively read teleport upon seeing that one generated if you wanted to be a "good player". It wouldn't be possible for it to both first become visible and blink onto a Zot trap if you're at one of the safe locations in the vault.

Also, in many branches 8 or 9 spawns are not really different from normal level spawns, so it's hardly always "10 XLs after finding it" wrt the_bubble.

From the description of its_a_trap, I think I was in there the other day (unless there's another zot-trap-heavy transporter vault).

It was fun! I knew going in there was me diving out of any pretence of "optimal play". I knew that I might lose my character, who I'd put time and effort into. But that was kind of the point.

Of course, some people care more about winning and less about this sort of adrenaline rush. But I'm just saying that it's completely possible to be an OK player, care about winning most of the time and still happily enter optional and unwise vaults. I guess it's a something of a mini-conduct.

Transporter vaults are the most fun new feature of 0.20 in my opinion, so good job. Maybe there aren't very caster-friendly with their confined space and no way to regen MP, but I don't think it's a problem. The only actual problem I see is that these vaults lose their fun factor if you do come 10 XLs later, when they no longer pose any threat or challenge.

Leszczynek wrote:Transporter vaults are the most fun new feature of 0.20 in my opinion, so good job. Maybe there aren't very caster-friendly with their confined space and no way to regen MP, but I don't think it's a problem. The only actual problem I see is that these vaults lose their fun factor if you do come 10 XLs later, when they no longer pose any threat or challenge.

Myabe make them timed portals? IDK...

All times portals have an exit near entrance

I think that if you come 10XL later, you do not need anymore the stuff that you can find in it

And if you are a caster, maybe you have Blink, Swiftness, or other things that help you get out.

I don't have a problem with the transporter vaults that show you their contents. It's the ones that hide their contents that bother me.

gammafunk wrote:Spoiled and unspoiled players alike would absolutely enter that vault eventually, and that's some pretty hyperbolic "motive" you're ascribing to me there.

Do you mean every player enters every vault?
In the same game I had 2 more vaults which I still remember:
1) one was on U:4 with something like 3x5 room with monster on every tile including Juggernaut and Caustic Shrike. It had a runed door and rock walls so I couldn't see any monsters/items but I still opened it because I knew that 10+ scrolls of blinking and teleportation scrolls will guarantee my survival. If it had a teleporter with unknown landing point and unknown monsters instead, I would NOT use it because I might land adjacent to Juggernaut and Caustic Shrike with no room to blink.
So it was acceptable vault, it was fun to use freezing cloud, death channel and bolt of draining.
2) another vault was in Zot 2 or 3 with glass walls. About a dozen of moths of wraths, orange crystal statue, killer klowns. I was still an OP character but I didn't dig the walls because those moths might make me go berserk and also scrolls of blinking/teleportation are not that great in Zot. So it was a good vault, because I made a decision. For comparison, having the same vault without glass walls might result in an unavoidable death where my only fault would be "got curious and opened a vault" (not even too early, I was XL 27 already with all spells I wanted including Borg!)

Now here's a rather creepy one on D:10.

The visible boots, armor, and ring are all whites. Only the altar of Lugonu hints at probably substantial denizens. (I don't have see invisible, by the way...)

By the way, there's another landing site now hidden under my friendly neighborhood skeleton.

: D10 quiet transporter vault.jpg (83.42 KiB) Viewed 16736 times

Go in, after all you can't see anything bad right now, so what could possibly go wrong?!

That other landing site you're next to is the vault exit. I added landing sites so that it would be possible to unambiguously communicate where a transporter goes and so that we can have a UI through map mode (on the X key) to allow players to check where a visited transporter takes them. The UI is not yet available, but I'll add that after I finish work on letting transporters work with level travel.

Yeah, I figured it was the exit spot but thanks.

Kicking around some other places a while first: D:11-12, Lair, maybe a touch more D hehe. :lol:

So I tried the D:10 purple one after clearing through D:14 and Orc.

I apported all the visible loot before finding any monsters, and brought a scroll of blinking just in case. However, the exit this time turned out to be hidden away from most of the interior in a tight corner. Even had you gone in ready to keep hopping around searching with a Blink spell, it's unlikely to have found it before fighting at least the stronger of the mobs in the vast open center areas.

As expected, it was a selection of abyssal creatures. Fortunately, it was not chock full of them.

2 large abominations (fortunately they advanced separately, took some hits but heroism + finesse and +6 demon whip from early Dungeon shop and 1 or 2 enchants managed fine)
5 ugly things (kept at bay with Mephitic Cloud and diced easily after)
1 raiju (only one and not a problem as happily, I have a rElec buckler on from the early Dungeon floor)

The loot:
1 white ring mail (meh, I'm a draconian)
1 shiny white chain mail (mep, mep, draconian)

+0 pair of boots “Buhurch” {*Contam rN++ Int+4} (I would regret wear-ID'ing these more if I wasn't hoping to find and train up spells. As it is, well okay. It might help and doesn't hurt "much" depending on whether I find something more functional for Lair branches...)

The ring of Xom’s Bemusement {rF+ Sinv} (Now and then Xom picks decent things to be amused by!)

18 gold
26 stones

So all in all, for me this particular one had at least one or two useful items.

It might have been much more of a struggle to deal with the large abominations and possibly the raiju if I hadn't had strong early floor drops and gone in late in the Dungeon run. Which gave me time to adapt training for the demon whip, and to get Fighting, Invocations, and Mephitic Cloud skills all solid. The book with M. Cloud also only came on D:11. I probably could have delayed many of the ugly things with this game's so-far plentiful Confusion wands instead of clouds, but it might have been a touch riskier.

Slightly evil looking transporter vault on D:8 (typically somewhat out of depth perhaps).

Nice garden, though.

: evil transp.jpg (75.05 KiB) Viewed 15650 times

The only transporter vaults I dislike are the ones in the early dungeon that have an altar of the god I wanted to worship.

I had that vault. It's a wand of confusion. At least it was for me. Press V , everyone falls into the deep water and drowns apart from the one on the nearest tile.

I picked up a wand of flame and killed everything with steam.

VeryAngryFelid wrote: Experienced players ignore the teleporter and enter it later. New players might enter it and die.

How exactly do you think new players generally become experienced players in this game?

BroOfZot wrote:
VeryAngryFelid wrote: Experienced players ignore the teleporter and enter it later. New players might enter it and die.

How exactly do you think new players generally become experienced players in this game?

Do you mean it is a good idea to require players input message "i want to live" on turn 999 otherwise their character dies? Because your question stands in this situation too and the situation is rather close to what I meant with my initial post.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:Do you mean it is a good idea to require players input message "i want to live" on turn 999 otherwise their character dies? Because your question stands in this situation too and the situation is rather close to what I meant with my initial post.

I have to disagree. The mystery transporter situation prompts you to weigh the risk of jumping into an unknown situation, taking into account the value of any visible items. If you don't have any direct experience with mystery transporter rooms, you can still apply what experience you have with similar situations such as temporary subbranches and runed doors. OTOH, typing in "I wanna live" is a tedious ritual that cannot be aided by skill, thought or experience.

I don't see how you can weigh risk in completely unknown situation. It is not that different from annoying "i wanna live" situation except you lose either life/consumables (if you enter transporter too early), xp(if you forget to enter it when its xp/items matter) or just time (when you check d floors in cntr+o screen after getting 2 runes).
Also I disagree that experience does not help. As experienced player I recognize some vaults and ignore the rest.

VeryAngryFelid wrote:I don't see how you can weigh risk in completely unknown situation. It is not that different from annoying "i wanna live" situation except you lose either life/consumables (if you enter transporter too early), xp(if you forget to enter it when its xp/items matter) or just time (when you check d floors in cntr+o screen after getting 2 runes).
Also I disagree that experience does not help. As experienced player I recognize some vaults and ignore the rest.

There are quite a few situations just wandering around the dungeon where you may have to use consumables just to plow through... And you can't always see them coming and get ample time to run away from them, either. From that perspective, transporters are often just another item on that list. But once you've seen them once or twice, at least you know what they are and you really do have a choice say oh I'd suppose 95%+ of the time.

Spoiler: show

I don't think I disagree with your evidence per se, but I'm not really sure about where you're going with it. Even sticking to vaults: Should Crazy Yiuf forever be moved down to oh, level 8 just so that no one challenges themselves too early for the sake of (just maybe) a blue cloak? Yes it would be more predictable and safer for new players, but it could also be more boring. When so many other things don't come at you in a neat order and most of the challenge is rearranging the patchwork of stuff you're given to deal and work with anyway... (Thus "soup"? No??) Why should vaults be so much more graduated all the time?

Are transporters deadly, though? It only takes a teleport scroll to get out, unless you are really unlucky or fighting dispellers.

I like the transporter vaults, with the exception of the one that just has a few electric eels and a wand of flame. Part of this is because I died there after getting teleport trapped into the middle, but it would be pointless to ever go through it intentionally for such meager loot.

monkeytor wrote:I like the transporter vaults, with the exception of the one that just has a few electric eels and a wand of flame. Part of this is because I died there after getting teleport trapped into the middle, but it would be pointless to ever go through it intentionally for such meager loot.

I thought those vaults had teleport exclusion flags? Maybe this is a bug in the vault files?

Here's one that took up a huge chunk of Swamp:1 and looked scarier than it was. Well, this is a well-equipped character already too.

: swamp transpo-gearstart.jpg (78.71 KiB) Viewed 14824 times

: swamp transpo.jpg (101.59 KiB) Viewed 14824 times

: swamp transpo-up.jpg (115.6 KiB) Viewed 14824 times

: swamp transpo-interior.jpg (156.13 KiB) Viewed 14824 times

The mobs were regular Swamp fare: a thorn hunter, bog body, some slime creatures, a swamp drake and swamp dragon mostly.

The catch was they might cause all sorts of mayhem walking across all these traps. One of the traps produced a ball lightning, for example.

Loot was mediocre too:

Two white rings which might have been better, for this character: (rN+, Stealth+) and (Fly, MP+9, SInv)
+3 ring of dexterity
Ring mail +2 cold resistance
Scroll of teleportation
Amulet of rage
Vial of floods
45 gold

The Tavern

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