Disallow Labyrinth Minotaur from teleporting

[le_nerd]

  Code:

The minotaur zaps a wand. The minotaur looks slightly unstable.
_It is a wand of teleportation. The minotaur struggles against the net.
...
_The minotaur disappears! You lose your grip on the minotaur.


By all that has been written about how tedious labyrinths are - this seems like the epitome of what the game philosophy wants to avoid?

EDIT: Well turns out that pressing 5 works as well - the minotaur just walked back.

[ololoev]

What do you want from a stupid cow?

[le_nerd]

Its wand of teleport? Plus whatever else invisible loot it took.

[savageorange]

This seems rare enough a case that it doesn't really warrant making the game more spoily to fix it, IMO.

[dowan]

Would it really be spoilery if the minotaur couldn't self teleport? How would you use that information to gain an advantage within the game?

[PowerOfKaishin]

Would it really be spoilery if the minotaur couldn't self teleport? How would you use that information to gain an advantage within the game?

Self-teleport is the desired result here, but the proposal does imply a disabling of all teleporting. If you have a wand of tele and find it suddenly doesn't work on the minotaur, you could be in for a world of hurt.

Thankfully, (I think) the minotaur can find its way back if you wait a long enough time.

[Laraso]

Couldn't you fix this by simply making it so that labyrinth minotaurs can't pick up scrolls/wands of teleportation? This would be completely invisible to the player so it wouldn't be spoilery.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

replace the minotaur with a formicid

[Shtopit]

replace the minotaur with a formicid

Replace labyrinth with anthill.

[dynast]

replace the minotaur with a formicid

Replace labyrinth with anthill.

In anthill russia, the formicid finds you.

[Haelyn]

Didn't somebody suggest an ant branch anyway? Could we like, take all the things that ARE NOT SPIDERS out of the spider nest and just make one big insect hive branch instead?

aaaanyway

As long as the minotaur is coded to find its way back then everything is fine.

[and into]

One option would be not allowing minotaur to pick up wands, scrolls, rings of teleportation, nor artefacts with the */+ teleport property.

Another would be to make labyrinths no teleportation zones. This would make labs slightly more dangerous, without really making them more interesting. This might be warranted however, simply because teleporting in a labyrinth can frankly be more frustrating than death.

Another would be to remove labyrinths. (If you want to keep the flavor, add a small vault that resembles a maze but does not take time to solve and does not break autoexplore; put a single-tile room at the center closed off by a runed door. Inside, minotaur + some loot.)

[dowan]

Honestly, that last idea seems fine. Labyrinths are sort of interesting the first couple of times, but there's only so many random mazes you can see before they get boring. The fact that there's almost no danger at all aside from the minotaur is also a compelling reason I think.

[infinitevox]

God no, please don't remove labyrinth. It never gets old for me, no matter how many times I play.
I also will use teleport in the labyrinth if I feel like I'm not getting anywhere, to shake things up and try it from a different angle.

If anything needs to be done, Labyrinth should have traps in it, and the minotaur should just have -Tele.

[Haelyn]

Yes absolutely traps.

Hell I've got rough ideas for several. Like, step on a pressure plate, and the wall to one side falls away, and a thing shoots fire at you over water so you get steam blasted. It'll give you a turn or two to react.

Or maybe the old spider basket one.

[Shard1697]

Spider baskets still exist, in spider at least. No generic spider monster anymore though, so they drop redbacks.

[dowan]

I say remove labyrinths and replace them with sokoban puzzles. I don't know why, but I found those fun to solve in nethack, even when I had already solved them.
Of course, you'd have to come up with a way to randomly generate them, otherwise they are the epitome of spoilery.

The problem with labs is they are pretty much the definition of optimal tedium. They generally contain great loot, and the minotaur isn't usually too hard, so with most characters it's a mistake not to do them. However, at least for some players, walking through a maze that is definitely not going to kill you is boring. Especially when you start out walking the wrong way and end up having to backtrack. Usually I clear labs in a minute or two, but once in a while I'll get stuck in one for what feels like hours...

Now, if autoexplore would just work in labs, I probably wouldn't complain as much...

[and into]

I should have known better than to suggest removing labyrinths. Inevitably it leads to people chiming in with suggestions to make them worse!

[Haelyn]

Sokoban puzzles would be great to have another timed thing. But labs, I feel like they should just be trap-heavy so that it does try to kill you. And creative traps, too.

@and into: Well, we already basically solved the topic title problem. Now we're just getting exciting.

[dowan]

So when you say traps, it sounds like you mean something more than just floor traps, more like pressure plate triggered trap vaults, right? Maybe that could be interesting, although it could just as easily be annoying. At least it'd be different from what we have now though!

[Haelyn]

That's exactly what I mean. I was charmed by the concept when a completely normal and boring passageway showed me a pressure plate. Curious, I stomped it, and my exit was gated off and down came the boulder beetle. In a completely. Boring. Passage.

That is AWESOME. I'm normally unengaged with the initial dungeon just because I've done it so many times. But things like that stand out in mind. Also, Robin with a wand of digging. That was terrifying and exciting for a while given I was weak.