The Tavern

I just have a tiny quibble. My run yesterday was ended by a shaft. Normally, I would accept this fate, but I was flying at the time. Is this just an oversight, or is it intentional?

It is intentional.

The term "shaft" is probably not great, considering how they actually work now. "Level teleporter?"

Flying hasn't protected you from shafts for a long time, but the way they work now they aren't even associated with the space they catch you on. Total nonsense both from the perspective of its roots in simulation and abstract game design. There's no sensible way to describe what's going on with these things in terms of the game setting or everyday experience.

Shafts still evoke the other meaning of 'being shafted'

Shafts affect flying players because there are cheap non-permanent ways to fly and it would be optimal to keep re-activating flight with these tools if they didn't.

The only remaining tool here is the ring of flight -- maybe it would be easier if the ring made you fly permanently while worn.

=flight should give persistent flight while you wear it, if just for the sake of smoother UI.

But I don't think that should mean or allow a change in how it interacts with shaft traps. (At least not without further mechanical changes.) If persistent flying with =flight prevents shaft traps from activating, then it will be optimal to use it as a swap to squelch shaft traps. "Keep re-activating flight" gets traded for "keep putting on =flight before uncovering new squares and taking it off to put on something combat-relevant before fighting," which is not much better.

(Even if you got teleported or marked instead of nothing happening in cases where flying interferes with getting shafted, a lot of the time those are preferable effects to getting shafted. So you'd still often want to use =flight this way.)

Probably worth renaming the shaft traps.

Also, these are one of those weird ones where the monster stepping on it still impacts only the monster rather than the player. IIRC the XV for these are accurate these days, but it's still a little odd to have some traps impact player when monsters step on them (to extremely vexing degrees with something like blink trap, but also nets/alarm traps do this) but not for others (TP, shaft). Shafts are also a bit special in how they interact with players directly walking into them (I.E. usually nothing), which is itself a contrast to other trap types.