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[Confidence Interval]

Here's a situation I encounter from time to time and haven't identified a reliable way of addressing. It occurs when I go down a stair and find myself on an open level with all three down staircases entering the level very close to each other. Close by, and awoken by my arrival, are one or more monsters with ranged attacks - such as orc wizards or priests, centaurs, or - in my current situation - Joseph with a poisonous sling attack.

The problem, obviously, is that if you have relatively mushy character s/he is going to get mushed pretty quickly without being able to take out the attackers. The problem is more acute when there are a few of them. The clustering of staircases means there's no other way round (except possibly taking the risk of going down a one-way staircase).

There are some specific tools that might help in this position - invisibility, mephitic cloud, etc. - but does anyone have any more general suggestions about how to handle such a situation?

[hayenne]

I would get rid of monsters by any means - confusion, fear, or simply blinking/teleporting and rush for the next level.

[slowcar]

go up the stairs again, wait some time, come back down. sometimes the monsters have moved near to the stairs, allowing you to pull them up (not sure if the new ranged AI prevents this).

[dpeg]

Some other options:

Use a brown staircase.

Read teleport, then descend the white staircase.

Use invisibility.

Go down hasted and read fog.

Get some allies and go down.

[Confidence Interval]

I took the brown staircase option: straight into a mass of zombies, with an orc priest standing at the edge of LOS waiting to smite me. Which s/he did. YASD...

I think I'll consider a different approach next time I'm in this situation.

[hayenne]

Brown staircases are a bit unpredictable, yes, but they still give a chance of escape in certain situations. Try my approach some time and note that three staircases-at-once levels tend to have staircases down also packed together near the level walls.

[flamingo]

It's these sorts of YAADs that make me think it's tempting fate to start as anything but a Wizard.