The Tavern

Shafts are WAY too likely now. I just lost a Trunk game where I was shafted TWICE from D2 to D4, then died to shafting from D3 to D6. Thoroughly unpleasant.

Please explain what's "fun" about purely unavoidable RNG doom? This is especially a problem for any brand new character, of course, which very likely won't have the resources to survive getting back to a reasonable depth.

While getting shafted is unavoidable (except by going with Ashenzari), losing characters to it generally isn't; the point is that climbing back up is an interesting challenge; and I find it usually is. (YMMV, of course.) Yes, it's very occasionally "unfair", and I don't like the interaction with timed portals.

I simply do not agree. Shafting from level 3 to level 6, for example is only survivable via a good bit of luck; dropping me in a group of 6 orcs in an open area almost certainly isn't gonna work at XP level 4. A big part of why this bugs me, is the blasé attitude towards user agency on this subject, yet a LOT of rather dubious changes were made for the same reason, over the past while. I've often felt "user agency" was pretty much a BS blanket excuse, and this certainly reinforces that impression!

Now, *occasional* shafting may not be so bad, although it certainly is still pretty arbitrary. But twice on one level, then immediately again on the next (down 3 floors to immediate death) is definitely NOT OK, at least if you want to claim "user agency" with a straight face.

I've also noticed a lot of shafting on early levels. I don't think it's always deadly, but it is a good amount of the time, and it's completely arbitrary. What decision is a person supposed to make to avoid being shafted 3 levels into a big pile of monsters? No exploration? Come to think of it, the early game seems pretty nasty right now in trunk. I don't know if something's changed recently, or I've just had a string of bad luck - but it seems like snakes are always coming in pairs and large packs of orc sorc and priests...and usually as early as d:2...

Some of the time I'm hearing things like, we don't want players stair dancing and luring and using every last bit of cheese possible, but these kinds of mathematical probabilities keep pushing the need. So I guess the 3 level early shaft is the answer for that, since you have no control at all to avoid the event.

Yeah, my experience mirrors yours. This is especially important, since this trunk version is supposed to become a stable release pretty soon, if I read the notes correctly.

PLEASE devs, don't become another Mozilla .

You might also want to look at the following discussions:

• Shafts - Too common now? (Jan 2019)
• Poll: What do you think about shaft effects? (Nov 2019)