Terrain Reform

[amaril]

Deep water and lava are terribly annoying in their current incarnations. They force the player to play in a convoluted manner so as to avoid item/corpse drops on inaccessible tiles. Even swimming races must avoid killing enemies on deep water if they have any intention of using necromancy. Semi-traversable terrain can lead to players getting trapped indefinitely (I believe this is still possible, even w/ the addition of trapdoors to most vaults) and provides certain characters w/ perfectly defensible locations. A 3x3 lava square in lair allows a player w/ permaflight to kill almost every single lair monster w/o risk.

From a gameplay standpoint, the 'benefit' of deep water/lava is twofold: to create terrain that monsters can cross but most players can't, thereby allowing the player to get surrounded (which rarely happens on standard dungeon terrain) and to transform enemies w/ ranged attacks into turrets. This second 'benefit' doesn't matter because turrets are almost never threatening or interesting. The first benefit is IMO important, but it is already accomplished by other terrain: shallow water & webs.

Realistically, lava/deep water remains in the game because of a combination of flavor/nostalgia/unwillingness to sacrifice vaults. Therefore, I propose a two-step reform process.

1) make all [items/corpses] [retrievable/animatable] in deep water for all players. Even if retrieving items would require flight sometimes, this would still be better than the status quo.
2) replace lava/deep water w/ shallow water. This would require modifying flavor/altering a lot of vaults. Alternately, lava could remain (it is less problematic/commonplace than water, even though it is bad). If lava remains, make sure that there are no vaults/ gehanna terrain configurations where getting trapped is possible.

I believe that these changes would make shoals/swamp significantly less annoying without compromising their feel. It would be a marginal player buff, because it is already so rarely optimal to walk in shallow water when monsters are around. If all terrain is traversable, rings/potions of flight could be removed, which would be a comparable player nerf.

[njvack]

If you don't want to alter lots of vaults, leave deep water as deep water. When non-swimming players are in deep water or lava, apply slow (or extra slow if this is not bad enough). When the player is in lava, also apply fire damage. Non-player creatures treat lava and water as they do now.

Item and corpses are dropped normally in water / lava. Corpses animated in deep water are slowed if unless non-corporeal, flying, or swimming. Corpses animated in lava take fire damage.

Then we don't need special cases for terrain generation, special warnings for expiring flight (probably still shouldn't autoexplore over dangerous terrain), or emergency flight; you just can't get trapped or directly killed by water or lava.

[duvessa]

Then we don't need special cases for terrain generation, special warnings for expiring flight (probably still shouldn't autoexplore over dangerous terrain), or emergency flight

Why stop there? We don't need flight at all with this change. Unless someone thinks it's actually desirable to have a potion/evocable of "turn non-floor terrain into floor".

[chequers]

No flight would make certain hell endings very annoying, but they wouldn't be too hard to change.

[Shard1697]

said hell endings shouldn't exist in the first place, there's no reason there should be hard flight checks anywhere, postgame or not

[Sprucery]

We don't need flight at all with this change. Unless someone thinks it's actually desirable to have a potion/evocable of "turn non-floor terrain into floor".

I think it is desirable, but only when the resource is limited. So potions of flight should stay but evocable flight should go. Flying species can keep flying imho, it's a minor buff for them.

[Leszczynek]

Remove flight, most problems solved. I really can't view having to wait for a monster to not be over a lava tile so you don't lose its items as an issue. No flight makes Shoals harder for many characters and that's about it. Hell endings requiring flight or blink/PoG should just be deleted.