The Tavern

I've been on A:3 and A:4 so long that I've risen to level 27... raised my UC skill to 27... found a learned new sets of spells... it's a whole second life.

I've killed uncounted hordes of monsters and it has generated dozens of gates deeper, but never gates out (see the attached pic -- it didn't send me to a new region of the abyss for a while and I was running out of places to stand that didn't already have gates deeper... hoping to generate a gate out and not sure it'd replace a gate deeper to do so.)

I mean, I know random = variable, but.... wow.

I really, really hate the Abyss... only dived in because V:5 for a Qaz follower is ... scary.

It is a long awaited Abyss rework: after you find all 15 runes there then the dungeon exit will spawn.

Heh. Yeah actually, doing a code dive it looks like abyss_maybe_spawn_xp_exit() will generate only ONE portal out, and all subsequent XP-generated-portals will be DOWN until you actually take a portal down (or you are on A:5).

Ugh, it's even documented this way in the knowledge bot entry, albeit not in a way that especially jumps off the page:

"A merry-go-round of doom, featuring many, many, many different kinds of monsters who will find your flesh, bones, mind, and life tasty. When you get enough xp (roughly half the requirement for an elemental evocable), an exit from the abyss will open. Further kills will tick down timers to spawn stairs leading deeper into the abyss. 5 levels. Rune spawns in vaults on floor 3 and deeper."

I presumably let the first portal out go by because I was still hunting for the rune, and since then... I've been killing and killing waiting for another portal that will never come.

I guess I will descend to A:5 and probably splat spectacularly, because otherwise I'll be in the Abyss forever.

-- Glenn

Not sure if it is a bug, maybe. Never seen so many portals at one place, and your situation seems odd.
I did Abyss today, finished it with no problems (exit portal spawned just before I got abyssal rune).

Not a bug. Intentional (if somewhat counterintuitive and not well-known) behavior; see the ref t o the knowledge bot entry I pasted above. I mean, I've ascended dozens of games, nearly every species & background, and I didn't know it. Well, live and learn.

Yeah, after the first exit-generated-by-combat you have to explore to find an exit.

If you go to level 3, and stay until you find the rune, I believe it is easier to find stairs out after you have collected the rune. This is just going by memory of code from a long time ago and experience, so it probably needs verifying. I don't know if this applies to the current trunk either, and I can't tell if you've gotten the rune in your game or not.

Yeah, combat-generated portals become down-only. But that doesn't affect randomly generated portals you find. Of course on qaz it's a bit hard to explore abyss.

(I'm also very very skeptical that abyss is easier than V:5 on qaz. V:5 is no joke, but neither is the abyss.)

V:5 is no joke, but I found it relatively easy with Qazlal; you are well equipped both to clear the welcoming committee and to nuke any vault warden who turns up, so you can stairdance it with relative impunity.

Qaz is build for vaults 5. You have smite targeted big damage for wardens and can absolutely blow up crowds with disaster area. Latter is weaker than Ru's apoc but still more than enough to flatten Vaults:5 entrance scenario.

Slime is easier than abyss too, and you can similarly erase shining eyes on sight to avoid the malmutes. Abyss would only be worth entering with Qaz if doing a 15 rune attempt.