Shadow Traps

[celem]

So been having some 'fun' with the new shadow traps in trunk. For those that havent seen these, it summons a pack of level appropriate monsters with a pretty long summon timer. Seems to pick the monsters much like the shadow creatures spell.

I quite like the idea of the summon trap, but a couple of times now I've been annihilated in the early dungeon by these.

Issue as I see it is that the trap is permanent, it does not expire when triggered. While the mechanics seems great and I can just learn not to step on the things I have no such control of dungeon monsters. Once or twice a foe i'm fighting manages to call in a pack by stumbling onto the trap... fine, retreat and re-evaluate.

Where I draw issue with the design of this trap is when enemies like bats can spam it very rapidly without you being able to do much about it. Most monsters I can position and manipulate to avoid this happening, but several times now i've engaged a bat and 2 turns later the trap has already been hit twice. This is mainly a problem in early dungeon, where characters probably cant deal with a huge flood of summons (the problem is also exaggerated by bats and their 'batty' movement nature,).

Thoughts? I genuinely didnt have any issue with them lategame with a mummy in extended (caveat; Ash, so I saw them all), but they are murdering a lot of my low-D characters now, specifically with bat/trap combos.

Edit: oh good grief, the summons follow up and down stairs too. I dont mind increased difficulty, but these are my new nemesis pre-lair
Edit2: Not amusing when they pop ogres on D2 either.

[Sprucery]

Sounds terrible. It should definitely disappear after triggering, imo.

[jejorda2]

A few times now, I've run into packs before I've seen the trap. So the corpses disappear in a puff of smoke, and I don't know why until I walk past the trap later.

The trap should also be a different color than a teleport trap.

[dynast]

I think the trap is supposed to disappear, like teleport and alarm traps, since you cant disarm them. I also hope they bring back the spotting skill if they are gonna be serious about these traps.

[notcluie]

trap detection is level/3 = effective traps skill now, so it's better than when trap skill existed
as for the actual traps this is a cool idea but they really should not be permanent (and maybe only player triggered, it's more "fun" to be instantly surrounded in depths than for something to summon a couple liches where you can walk away)

[Roderic]

After stepping on four don't know if they're much less detectable than other traps or generated more often or earlier.

They come from a mild nuisance or a challenge to run away to bring the feeling that you're worshipping Xom.

[duvessa]

unknown traps should cause their effect (and be revealed) when they come into LOS instead of when something steps on them
even if you believe that any part of traps is good, this is clearly better than the current situation:
- you are no longer rewarded for keeping track of which squares have been stepped on, and minimizing the number of unique squares you step on (pieces of data that are also completely invisible in-game and must be kept track of manually)
- it changes almost nothing else

[Siegurt]

That situation drastically increases the number of traps you trigger, even in a hallway where you must walk directly towards a trap and so will encounter it eventually, you have 7 chances to spot it, in a non hallway you may addionally walk on by a trap without ever spotting or activating it. At very least your suggestion would require adjusting the tap generation and or detection rates

[celem]

Shadow traps certainly appear thick and early, multiples on D1&2, where most characters are effectively blind.

I like the ideas of making them one-shot and/or limit what triggers them. I dont much mind a monster spotting me, moving forward and hitting one i didnt see yet. (unless it has batty movement and spams the trigger). A few oddball scenarios pop up however with allies, they wont step on a trap you have spotted, but seem blind themselves. My necromancers keep having the following zombie hordes take 'shortcuts' and hit unseen traps, and if i should teleport then they will often hit several as they regroup on me.

RE traps skill vs current trap detect: I never played with the old T&D skill so cant comment on one vs the other. However shadow traps spawn thick and fast from D1 on down, players are pretty much 'blind' under either system at this stage of the game

[damiac]

Well, the player has no option to prioritize XP gain, unlike when the traps and doors skill existed, a player who didn't want to have their game ended by autoexploring into a zot trap on lair 8 and getting abyssed could spend the XP on traps and doors.

So trap detection is completely out of the control of a normal player (a speedrunner runs a much higher risk of getting hit by traps, as his level is lower than usual).

So, I don't understand why crawl punishes the player at random, for daring to walk, and not map out the tiles they already walked on, like Duvessa pointed out. By extremely tedious play, you could greatly lower your risk of being affected by traps.

Known traps create interesting positioning challenges. Unknown traps randomly punish the player for moving.

It seems like shadow traps have additional issues on top of this. Enemies repeatedly summoning hordes of enemies seems highly problematic, why not make them always visible, and 1 shot traps? You keep the interesting positioning element, and lose the random and frustrating elements.

But really, random trap detection based on character level is a silly band aid from the old days of the traps and doors skill.

[notcluie]

unknown traps should cause their effect (and be revealed) when they come into LOS instead of when something steps on them

tomb:2 sounds fun

[duvessa]

yes, vaults placing traps is dumb
this has nothing to do with my design statement

[Count of Hearts]

I haven't tried the trunk out so I haven't seen any, but by the sounds of it, these traps can be pretty much fatal for low-level characters if they're appearing on the early floors. While a level four MiGl could handle a sudden swarm of enemies around them easily, a level four MuNe would probably be torn to pieces before they could finish reading a teleport scroll - especially if the trap decides to summon a bunch of orcs or hobgoblins in a newbie's face.

[XuaXua]

I would like to see an up-stairway surrounded 3 tiles deep by these Shadow traps. Fun.

[crate]

imo just revert the commit that made traps actually appear again

trapless crawl has existed twice now, and god damn i loved it both times

thankfully I have no interesting crawl characters on my to-do list so I can just wait for traps to go away a third time before playing my next game

[eeviac]

Shadow traps are pretty miserable in their current implementation. I wouldn't mind seeing traps of all kinds removed.

[PleasingFungus]

Where I draw issue with the design of this trap is when enemies like bats can spam it very rapidly without you being able to do much about it. Most monsters I can position and manipulate to avoid this happening, but several times now i've engaged a bat and 2 turns later the trap has already been hit twice. This is mainly a problem in early dungeon, where characters probably cant deal with a huge flood of summons (the problem is also exaggerated by bats and their 'batty' movement nature,).

Fair. I've moved them a little deeper to mitigate the bat problem.

Edit: oh good grief, the summons follow up and down stairs too.

Good catch - that's a bug. Should be fixed now.

The trap should also be a different color than a teleport trap.

It is, unless you've done something odd in your rcfile.

[XuaXua]

Where I draw issue with the design of this trap is when enemies like bats can spam it very rapidly without you being able to do much about it. Most monsters I can position and manipulate to avoid this happening, but several times now i've engaged a bat and 2 turns later the trap has already been hit twice. This is mainly a problem in early dungeon, where characters probably cant deal with a huge flood of summons (the problem is also exaggerated by bats and their 'batty' movement nature,).

Fair. I've moved them a little deeper to mitigate the bat problem.

Unseen Horror + Shadow Trap.

[dynast]

My main issue with this trap is that its a major threat at the first floors where it can end games at random but completely irrelevant by the time you hit lair. Its pretty much how the old traps used to be.

[duvessa]

"Used to be"? Mechanical traps still appear in several places.

[dynast]

"Used to be"? Mechanical traps still appear in several places.

Spear traps on d:1, that sort of "Used to be".

[Sphara]

Shadow traps are triggered by kraken tentacles.

Doesn't everyone want bunch of high tier merfolks and water nymphs around you when you're fighting a single kraken with one shadow trap around? And another bunch from the second tentacle. Already made a report on this topic in Mantis but fuck should i know if this is an intended behaviour of these annoying traps already..

[damiac]

I just don't get why monsters trigger this trap, all other traps, aside from zot traps, trigger against monsters normally. It seems like all the complaints about the shadow traps are because of the monsters triggering it.

[XuaXua]

If a monster triggers a mechanic trap, it affects the monster. If they trigger a Zot or shadow trap, it affects the player. Seems inconsistent.

I want monsters to trigger a D1 spear trap and impale my player from across the level.

[duvessa]

I just don't get why monsters trigger this trap, all other traps, aside from zot traps, trigger against monsters normally.

Well it would be pretty bad if a monster stepping on a shadow trap summoned a bunch of allies for the player.

[Count of Hearts]

Okay so, after playing trunk and running into multiple shadow traps... they're really not that bad early on unless you're super squishy and don't have a way to teleport out of the monster group that tends to form a ring around you. In fact, shadow traps often actually served to make me look for another way around something.

I had a starting room which was com posed of square rooms separated by single-tile entrances, and one of these was a shadow trap my character noticed. After deciding I'd rather not be surrounded by a bunch of monsters right then, I just pulled out my wand of digging and busted my way through the wall, which IMO, is good placement of traps. Something that can make you rethink your current route.

Now- there is one annoying thing. Mobs tend to set off the trap and summon a ton of allies - this wouldn't bea problem, except, I ran into an area where there was a room with only one exit, which was shadow-trapped and had an orc band in it. When they saw me they poured out towards me, and in doing so set off the trap... multiple times. It's pretty annoying. I think they should have a limited amount of activations. Enough to be deadly in a bad situation and make the player not really want to backtrack over it, but not enough that monsters can single-file over it and summon an army.

[1010011010]

Limit shadow traps to one set of summons at a time. Similar to a cap but more summons are prevented rather than new summons replace.

[XuaXua]

How long do the shadow trap summons last?

What if they only last for a very short amount of time?

Is there anything wrong with, instead of doing the summon shadows, the trap instead does that Guardian Serpent spell that pulls creatures from the level immediately to the player's location? That would create a semi-finite volume.

[Sar]

Just make them one-shot like most tele traps now are.

[Count of Hearts]

How long do the shadow trap summons last?

What if they only last for a very short amount of time?

Is there anything wrong with, instead of doing the summon shadows, the trap instead does that Guardian Serpent spell that pulls creatures from the level immediately to the player's location? That would create a semi-finite volume.

They last for quite a while. Long enough for them to pose a serious threat to an unprepared player, though if you teleport away and come back they'll usually be gone. Just have to watch out for monsters spamming them. I honestly like your idea, it would be better if it summoned enemies from the area- but then you could just repeatedly step on it and clear the level without actually exploring it.

[Arrhythmia]

Is there anything wrong with, instead of doing the summon shadows, the trap instead does that Guardian Serpent spell that pulls creatures from the level immediately to the player's location? That would create a semi-finite volume.

Then you dig a kill-hole near a shadow trap and slowly, carefully, and methodically, fight the entire level without doing any exploration at all.

[duvessa]

If it's the guardian serpent spell then it would only pull creatures that are in the trap's LOS.

[celem]

Then you dig a kill-hole near a shadow trap and slowly, carefully, and methodically, fight the entire level without doing any exploration at all.

Is this scummy though? I've been letting those ironbound whatsits in Vaults cast word of recall for some time for this reason. Dont care how many mobs he piles into the room from elsewhere on the level if i'm just outside the only door and facing one at a time. Using traps to your tactical advantage seems like fair play.

Going to take another run through this weekend and see how they feel now that PleasingFungus has tweaked them. My main concern was squishy casters on shallow levels, those are the characters I was losing to these. (MuNe's mainly).

As I said in the OP, I like the trap idea, just noticed it was very very scary for certain characters when encountered so early. And the changes pushed through address those points.

[dpeg]

Then you dig a kill-hole near a shadow trap and slowly, carefully, and methodically, fight the entire level without doing any exploration at all.

Is this scummy though?

"Scummy" is an imprecise term, but it's certainly reliable, even foolproof and growing in popularity. I expect some change in the future that makes kill-holing harder or more risky or something.

If you have ideas, fire away!

[dynast]

I expect some change in the future that makes kill-holing harder or more risky or something.

If you have ideas, fire away!

Remove walls from the game and make it a single sprint floor.

[XuaXua]

I expect some change in the future that makes kill-holing harder or more risky or something.

If you have ideas, fire away!

Remove walls from the game and make it a single sprint floor.

Xom wrath effect; also Vault Warden-lock closes-out all stair exits except for one in each direction.

[jejorda2]

Banshees:
-When they move on your level, you and all your allies take damage unless they are in LOS of the Banshee.
-They move very slowly, maybe once every 20 turns.
-They move loudly, broadcasting their location.
-They never sleep.

This way, they can operate out of sight, and having them be out of sight is bad for you. So you have to come away from the trap hole to find them.

[notcluie]

Banshees:
-When they move on your level, you and all your allies take damage unless they are in LOS of the Banshee.
-They move very slowly, maybe once every 20 turns.
-They move loudly, broadcasting their location.
-They never sleep.

This way, they can operate out of sight, and having them be out of sight is bad for you. So you have to come away from the trap hole to find them.

i think i've seen this in another roguelike (Shiren i think) and it was really really awful

[XuaXua]

What if the trap still did the guardian serpent / Vault Guard summoner guy thing, but only worked one time? Granted, I'd consider it to be too close to an alarm trap in that sense.

[dynast]

What if the trap still did the guardian serpent / Vault Guard summoner guy thing, but only worked one time? Granted, I'd consider it to be too close to an alarm trap in that sense.

I dont find it reasonable to step on a trap and get in touch with a ogre, a centaur and sigmund all at once...

[dynast]

Banshees:
-When they move on your level, you and all your allies take damage unless they are in LOS of the Banshee.
-They move very slowly, maybe once every 20 turns.
-They move loudly, broadcasting their location.
-They never sleep.

This way, they can operate out of sight, and having them be out of sight is bad for you. So you have to come away from the trap hole to find them.

Very creative idea but here are my problems with it:
How many of these you gonna have per floor? I assume its gonna be as much as kobolds in order to work.
That brings the idea of getting killed by something you cant even see or reach, it will be the nightmare of new players who cant even understand whats going on.

Now, if you want to stop/punish kill holes you have to start by the source, elf:3.

[XuaXua]

What if the trap still did the guardian serpent / Vault Guard summoner guy thing, but only worked one time? Granted, I'd consider it to be too close to an alarm trap in that sense.

I dont find it reasonable to step on a trap and get in touch with a ogre, a centaur and sigmund all at once...

So then, for balance reasons, the power can scales on a depth basis.

[Magipi]

trapless crawl has existed twice now, and god damn i loved it both times

And what versions were these?

[PleasingFungus]

Most recent versions (starting in 0.13) spawned less than one trap per level (outside Zot and Slime), because of an implementation detail of mechanical trap "removal".

Not sure what the first 'trapless crawl' was; probably that was before my time.

[crate]

There was a period where sufficiently high traps skill guaranteed you would detect traps (which was basically trapless crawl; getting the 8 levels or whatever of traps skill was a small price to pay to remove annoyances), and then also yes I was referencing the recent versions also.

[celem]

Run a couple of trunk MuNe characters yesterday and today.

The trap feels more balanced now. Its still a scary moment, but not a game-ender nearly as often. I got killed as a result of shadow trap's summons a couple of times but in each case it was avoidable and was a result of me failing to handle the spawned mobs correctly. Still quite a scary situation as it surrounds you with hostiles, but does so at a point where you probably have some scrolls ID'd and your character has started to develop, as opposed to when you have only 1 spell memorised and/or very low skills.

Quite happy with the way its working now.

[XuaXua]

I recently got swarmed by shadows; I didn't know where they were coming from. Perhaps I missed it or wasn't looking carefully enough, but it seemed that (1) a monster was tripping the trap, and (2) the trap wasn't revealed on my screen till I found it.

[XuaXua]

Is it me, or do monsters deliberately avoid standing on shadow traps for positioning? Seems counter-intuitive, unless the monster wants the XP for itself, I guess.

[ManMan]

unknown traps should cause their effect (and be revealed) when they come into LOS instead of when something steps on them

tomb:2 sounds fun

It already is: http://imgur.com/a/1HmpB

I also had some fun with shadow traps on Snake:5: http://i.imgur.com/dYe0ODh.png?1 The only source of flight I had at that point was a single potion, and I nearly died when a naga stepped on the trap earlier, so I was stuck there until I either got the rune or fled and abandoned it.

[Bloax]

Just make them one-shot like most tele traps now are.

Just make them one-shot and summon actual monsters instead of actual monsters that don't give actual experience points.