Crazy Yuif Hut

[Un67]

A small suggestion here. Could we put a warning on Crazy Yuif's door? As has been posted here, Crazy Yuif's hut is a trap for autoexplore. It also rewards spoilers because people who read them would know what the hut looks like and be able to avoid it, while those who don't would be caught completely by surprise. The warning could be something like "This door is covered in nonsensical but threatening scribblings. Open it?"

[snow]

There are already mushrooms blocking the path.

[Un67]

That's not really a warning as much as it is an obstacle.

[TwilightPhoenix]

And they're not always there.

[hxy]

I don't find Yuif significantly more dangerous than, say Terence or Sigmund, by the time you find him...

[nicolae]

I don't find Yuif significantly more dangerous than, say Terence or Sigmund, by the time you find him...

Usually. The problem is that his quarterstaff is chaos-branded, which has a small but nonzero chance of sending you to the Abyss, which is pretty much Bad Times for a player who's still low-level enough to be likely to run into him.

[mageykun]

I'd have to say I dislike this idea. If you put one here, why not put auto-exploration safeties on all the dangerous vaults you might stumble upon? Crazy Yiuf's room isn't the nastiest or deadliest without a runed door by far.

I almost feel that giving up the ability to use your known spoilers to recognize and avoid vaults in exchange for the convenience of autoexplore constitutes an interesting choice.

(Aside- guaranteed hallway shrooms or a door won't protect you all the time anyways. Sometimes when Crazy Yiuf's vault spawns, all the walls are replaced with hammers, leaving him free to come after you. )

[ximxim]

Having auto-explore automatically stop when it finds any vault might be an interesting idea, after all vaults often require careful exploration. I can think of a couple obvious examples, the xom vault with the teleport traps and the trapped entrance to the orcish mines, where auto-explore is very annoying.

[XuaXua]

Put a guaranteed +0/+0 or less hammer in front and to the right of his door and create several false early vaults that do this.

[roctavian]

How about just a door on his vault? You'd be able to shut it and leave if opening the door doesn't wake him.

I think it would make a lot of sense to have other early hut vaults that mimic Yiuf's too. Maybe generate a neutral monster in one that says, "Where'd my hammer go?"

[KoboldLord]

Crazy Yiuf might have an extremely dangerous melee weapon, but he's normal speed and doesn't typically spawn with a ranged attack. Autoexplore will never carry you into melee unless you've already woken him up and started him wandering, so there is virtually never a case where you can't simply walk back to the stairwell you came in from. If you autoexplore after hitting a shaft or teleportation trap, and therefore haven't cleared your escape route, well then that's your own fault.

[XuaXua]

Crazy Yiuf might have an extremely dangerous melee weapon, but he's normal speed and doesn't typically spawn with a ranged attack. Autoexplore will never carry you into melee unless you've already woken him up and started him wandering, so there is virtually never a case where you can't simply walk back to the stairwell you came in from. If you autoexplore after hitting a shaft or teleportation trap, and therefore haven't cleared your escape route, well then that's your own fault.

He's faster than slower opponents (nagas) who occasionally (not always) autoexplore right up to his room. As I said, put a useless hammer outside and create 2 false and similar vaults.

[hxy]

There are many potentially dangerous vaults depending on your level and build. Do we have to put a warning sticker on all of them?

This reminds me of the "this is not a toy" label on plastic bags and such, to remind ppl that they can't go sue the manufacturer if they did something stupid with it...

[greepish]

Well, considering autoexplore is something you normally do, I think this is more like lining said plastic bag with cyanide and expecting them never to touch it.

[mikee]

Whether or not to use autoexplore for gameplay reasons should never be a decision, regardless of how "interesting" that decision would be. This is part of the design behind autoexplore.

Autoexplore traps are bad. This vault is an autoexplore trap. This vault is bad.

[pratamawirya]

Changing something only because it makes some automatic stuff annoying feels weird.

I prefer calling it "laziness trap" or "inattention trap" than "autoexplore trap". Just because you move around automatically doesn't mean you should pay no attention.

[Un67]

^ Yes, but in this case, to be attentive, you have to use spoilers. If you weren't spoiled, what you you be attentive to? If you were a new player, you would simply think "Oh, how quaint" before Yuif shows up and you go "OH SNAP" when he does nasty stuff to you unexpectedly.

[KoboldLord]

He's faster than slower opponents (nagas) who occasionally (not always) autoexplore right up to his room. As I said, put a useless hammer outside and create 2 false and similar vaults.

Slow movement is the only meaningful disadvantage for which nagas need to compensate. They can just make do with their +5 stealth aptitude, slithering quietly away if they don't feel they can take on Crazy Yiuf.

Crazy Yiuf's Hut is markedly less of a threat to the vast majority of characters than a lone centaur in an empty room. Or a bog-standard ogre that happens to spawn behind a door. "Autoexplore trap" makes an excellent sound bite, but I'm not convinced it actually exists in the actual game. I certainly don't think it's sufficiently problematic that we need to clutter the game with a bunch of dull palette swaps of interesting vaults that are different only in that the interesting parts are stripped out.

[greepish]

The issue is more that if you aren't using autoexplore, you can easily avoid it, but if you are using autoexplore, you can't. A lone centaur is equally dangerous both ways with or without autoexplore, since you never know where it'll be. Honestly, the situation may be solved simply by giving no warning at all for crazy yiuf, no telltale plants that a person not using autoexlpore would recognize. But that seems a little harsh.

[pratamawirya]

^ Yes, but in this case, to be attentive, you have to use spoilers. If you weren't spoiled, what you you be attentive to? If you were a new player, you would simply think "Oh, how quaint" before Yuif shows up and you go "OH SNAP" when he does nasty stuff to you unexpectedly.

Yiuf's hut would put an unspoiled player in trouble regardless of whether he travels manually or automatically. So the problem isn't related to autotraveling.

[Galefury]

Actually, the problem is related to autotravel. What it is not related to is spoilers. Uniques reward spoilers. Hell, any monster is easier to fight or escape when you know what it does, and thus rewards spoilers. Yuif's hut rewarding spoilers is simply not an issue. When you find the ancient champions vault, you know there will be ancient champions inside. When you find Crazy Yuif's hut you know Crazy Yuif is inside. And that's okay. Not every single thing has to be random.

The vault being trivial to avoid when not using autoexplore and possibly unavoidable when using it is a problem. The obvious solution is just making it stop autoexplore. No need to introduce dull duplicates.

[evilmike]

I agree that this vault is an autoexplore trap, and that this is problematic. The cleanest solution would just be to stop autoexplore. The cleanest way of doing this would be to use the stop_explore Lua marker property... unfortunately that currently only works when placed on statues, though.

Using stop_explore would be better than a door with a prompt, in my opinion.

[varsovie]

Am I the only one that actually watch the screen when I autoexplore?

Seriously, the Yuif hut with his double z tree alley is recognizable miles away. (except first time seen... but not the point)

I always had more than enough time to manually stop auto explore. And more, you can slow down autoexplore in the options.

I fell that if you put a warning, it will be just an unnecessary casualisation, like the new FPS that point outlined enemies, have auto aim and print "shoot". -_-

If you really wants to block the patch, I suggest a mutagenic cloud generator someway behind the mushrooms. At least it's thematic.

[evilmike]

Am I the only one that actually watch the screen when I autoexplore?

Plenty of people watch their screen. But many others also use "explore_delay = -1", which makes autoexplore instantaneous. I like this feature because even though it can lead me into "autoexplore traps", it also makes my games go much faster. I estimate that I save about 1-2 hours per game by using this (once I enabled it, my game durations dropped substantially). I went from taking 7 or 8 hours to win to taking 5 or 6.

[ximxim]

Having autoexplore stop at any vaults would also have the benefit of making people appreciate them more, instead of zooming through them.

[Galefury]

Well, it's not quite that simple. Apart from other problems it would be a huge information leak. Many vaults cant be distinguished from regular dungeon architecture, and for some vaults this is actually necessary for the vault to serve its purpose. Some traps are placed as single square vaults for example. One lair vault is simply a rather well hidden good item. It's just as bad for vaults with dangerous monsters. Extremely few vaults can be recognized by seeing only a single square of them, so stopping autoexplore once a vault comes into sight would alert autoexploring players much earlier than manually exploring ones.

Alerting autoexploring players to vaults, but not manually exploring players, would be really bad. If autoexplore stopped on vault discovery, the vault would also need to be announced to manually exploring players. I think this would be a bad idea, though, because it would increase the importance of spoilers. If you know there is a vault, you can carefully explore just as much as you need to recognize it, then decide if you want to go further or not. This hugely rewards knowing most vaults. Newbies (and even many good players) would have very little advantage from knowing there is a vault, they would probably just go check it out, because hey, interesting content. And crawl doesn't need to get easier for the extremely experienced players.

[XuaXua]

Here is the thing; even unspoiled players know something might be odd when they recognize they are barding down a larger corridor to a door, whether or not mushrooms are in the way. This is an issue with auto explore in that it doesn't recognize potentially interesting features.

[njvack]

I do rather like the idea of some vaults stopping exploration. It's probably appropriate for most vaults that aren't supposed to look just like the rest of the level.

It should, however, probably only fire once, and trigger a message ("Something looks funny..." or the like).

[ximxim]

I do rather like the idea of some vaults stopping exploration. It's probably appropriate for most vaults that aren't supposed to look just like the rest of the level.

It should, however, probably only fire once, and trigger a message ("Something looks funny..." or the like).

Could be done by adding a flag (which could be on by default) in the vault file, so you could have the best of both worlds, interesting/dangerous vaults not being ignored/autoexplored into and "hidden" vaults which give no warning message.

[varsovie]

In fact these kind of vault (announced but autoexplore not going in) already exist.
But they aren't "integrated" in the level and use a portal. :/

[evilmike]

I do rather like the idea of some vaults stopping exploration. It's probably appropriate for most vaults that aren't supposed to look just like the rest of the level.

Lots do this already. A few use a special marker property that can be placed on a (normal, non-monster) statue, and will give "a statue comes into view" (or some other message like this... I forget) when you autoexplore into them. Otherwise it's just a normal statue. This feature isn't used much though, and it's possibly worth using more. The whole purpose of it is to prevent autoexplore traps.

Another thing some vaults do is obstruct you with a plant or a mushroom, an obvious secret door, or some other feature like this. This method is a bit more overt but it can work well. Players have to "manually" enter the vault. Doors with warning prompts also serve this purpose, although I think prompts should be a last resort, since they're annoying if overused.

The other thing a lot of vaults do (which is really the most common method, and the best one to use when available) is to simply place weaker monsters somewhere close to the entrance part. Weak doesn't need to be trivial, just something that isn't OOD. This method can't really be used for crazy yiuf's hut, though.

I've gone a bit offtopic here, but I just wanted to point out that what you're suggesting is already in place for a lot of vaults, and crawl actually has several mechanisms for making it work.