Missing Rune Of Zot?

[lerugray]

I had thought there was a rune at the bottom of the shoals, but i couldnt find one, searched the whole place. went to the slime pits and quickly died on account of not being able to get my deflect missile up fast enough (luckily im a felid summoner) what should i do? im about level 19 right now. i would post up my stats from my CAO game but i have no idea how.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

The Shoals are famous for its rising tide. Maybe the rune was there, but simply covered with enough water for you to miss it?

[lerugray]

The Shoals are famous for its rising tide. Maybe the rune was there, but simply covered with enough water for you to miss it?

You are probably right

Gonna go explore the dungeon some more, anyone have any ideas as to where to get my next rune? i got 2 from the vaults and from the snake pits.

[lerugray]

I ened up getting a third rune from the Abyss! yes! now to go for my first ever win!

[mageykun]

Shoals:5 is littered with small, circular vaults. One of these vaults holds the rune (and its guardians, of course)- the rest are fake outs, usually containing a smaller number of enemies and some loot. These vaults often have secret doors- it's possible you missed the door and never actually opened the room with the rune it it. Go look at your map- have you actually been inside all the circles?

Even if the rune is underwater (I'm really not sure that can happen without human intervention though), you can generally recognize the rune room from the decoys since there's a much bigger welcoming committee. If you cleared all the rooms but remember where you found the biggest pile of merfolk waiting for you, you know where to wait for the tide to come down.

Edit: Well, the abyssal rune works too. Good luck in Zot!

[cerebovssquire]

I appear to have the same problem; while I'm not 100% a rune that was pretty obviously the rune room (large number of javelineers and aquamancers) did not have it.

Off to the Abyss I go then. If this bug is real it's one of the worst because it makes me go there.

[mageykun]

I took a look at the shoals.DES, shoals:5 only draws on two vaults to produce all the rooms in the level- shoalhut and shoalhut_rune (at least in 0.9.1). Funny thing is the comments specifically state the rune chamber can be duplicated- the duplicates will just replace the rune with a good item. So it's possible you just found the "fake" rune chamber, and there's another room full of javelineers and aquamancers and the rune waiting for you?

Dunno. If you've fully explored the level and the rune's nowhere to be found, I'd report it as a bug. Might be worth backing up the game, opening wizmode and &r-ing to merfolk to see if the rune is actually underwater or if it failed to generate.

[cerebovssquire]

That sounds plausible, thanks. Sadly the character would have gotten killed off if he had explored the whole level and has ascended now anyway, and it was online so I couldn't wizmode it up, but I'll be sure to do it on my HOPr or HEGl when they get down to Shoals:5.
EDIT: HEGl ascended with a normally obtained barnacled rune.

[Alkazar]

I had the same problem after reading this post I went back to explore. I found only one block of walls big enough to hold the chamber. I searched repeatedly around it without success. I then used a wand of digging. On my second attempt I hit the chamber. The Bottom entrance on the screen shot is a result of a dig. The first dig was on the upper half and hit a solid stone wall. Basically the only door in was in a dead end. I searched repeatedly from inside with a Traps & Doors Skill of 14.2. The only way in was to guess and dig.

Hidden_Barnacled_Rune_Chamber.png (222.88 KiB) Viewed 4334 times

[Konebred]

Rune vault levels are usually pretty decent places to use scrolls of magic mapping. If it is one thing I learned, orc 4 (not a rune vault)is so much easier if you have it mapped and just explore around the main keep. If you clear out enough before you assault the main area then you have plenty of open space to land in if you have to teleport or run away.

[Alkazar]

I forgot to mention that. I also read a magic mapping scroll on any bottom branch levels. This chamber didn't show. Which now that I think about it is very interesting.

[mageykun]

Magic mapping got slightly nerfed at some point so it doesn't show rooms behind secret doors (or more generally, secret areas. I'm not exactly sure how it determines what's secret). Which is completely counter intuitive and annoying, since looking for secret areas is quite often precisely why you want the level mapped (when you're not mapping to find a timed portal, or for tactical reasons).

[rebthor]

Magic mapping got slightly nerfed at some point so it doesn't show rooms behind secret doors (or more generally, secret areas. I'm not exactly sure how it determines what's secret). Which is completely counter intuitive and annoying, since looking for secret areas is quite often precisely why you want the level mapped (when you're not mapping to find a timed portal, or for tactical reasons).

Boo! I don't understand the rationale behind this. Spoiled players are going to know that XYZ area is likely a vault and unspoiled ones are never going to learn.

[njvack]

It was done to make Traps & Doors skill more valuable. Seriously.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh

[Kate]

Magic mapping has in fact revealed secret doors for a good while now, so you can use it to find secret areas. The rune chamber placement here looks like a bug and should probably be reported, though.

[smock]

One one recent game the gossamer rune was under a web or other object, so I almost missed it. That same game the orb of zot was obscured as well. I don't remember if the orb was obscured by an item or by a trap. It might have been an issue had I tried to ninja rather than bash thru zot:5. It might be worth drawing orb and rune tiles/glyphs on top of other objects.

[mageykun]

Magic mapping has in fact revealed secret doors for a good while now, so you can use it to find secret areas. The rune chamber placement here looks like a bug and should probably be reported, though.

That... really doesn't reflect my experience. At least not in stable.

Easy example: Roll a wizmode char and head to pretty much any of the predefined crypt:5 ends. Read a scroll of magic mapping, and large swaths of the level are conspicuously not mapped. Arguably this kind of behavior is justified in these predetermined exploration themed levels (even though I personally don't care for it, and it's trivial to spoil yourself). But it's really frustrating when you're trying to find a vault or hidden area you missed on a randomly generated level and it's hidden from view even when you burn a reasonably rare scroll looking for it. It's also weird that this behavior is inconsistent with DD or Ash passive mapping, which will see into secret areas.

...it's really weird magic mapping didn't find the rune vault in shoals though. I just tried rerolling a bunch of shoals fives in wizmode and ?mm found the chamber each time. I guess the vault has to be completely buried in rock, or cut off from normal pathing for the "secret" exception to kick in?

[Kate]

Let magic mapping detect (but not map through) undetected secret doors

That's exactly what it's doing as far as I can tell, it was correctly revealing secret doors when I tried it just now. It didn't find that Shoals hut because it was completely isolated from the rest of the level, yes - magic mapping flood-fills from each staircase.