A couple of (not so) insta deaths

[Moose]

Had a couple of pretty frustrating deaths today ...

First was my Troll with 6 int finding a shield and equipping it to find out it was a cursed -6 INT shield. Despite the fact that I had 7 scrolls of remove curse on me, I was too "stupid" to read any, and died. I suppose the lesson learned should be, "Dont ever wield or wear anything that you haven't id'ed unless you have at least 7 int..." I'd always thought 6 was the magic number ... Inflation!

Another was taking a hatch in the orcish mines and getting trapped in a bubble with no means of teleport. Is this still a desired death-trap? I thought devs at some point vowed to fix this, but maybe I'm wrong. Just wanted to report it's still happening.

[mageykun]

Pretty sure the rule is that you should never ever take an escape hatch in orc, unless you have a way of teleporting or digging out if you get trapped. I believe the philosophy behind orc isn't that you can't get trapped- just that there's a way to get to Orc:4 with just normal stairs (and possibly that you'll always be able to find the Elf entrance through normal stairs).

Edit: or I suppose you could have kept a means of banishment handy? If you survived the abyss, you'd come out on an up stairs.

[Moose]

Yah there are a million things I should have done, but I'm wondering if this is really desired behavior though. Seems like this is something that could be easily remedied by a few choice escape hatches.

[Bim]

Hmm I'm really against those kinda insta deaths (trapped in a bubble or int death) as it always seems a bit too cruel. Obviously crawl is supposed to be crazy difficult, but never impossible and a bit of a buzz kill if you have to check that you have a teleport/dig before you go down every hatch/stairwell. I've never have it happen to me, as I had a teleport scroll on hand, but stilll...

It just gets all to close to 'you fall down the stairs and break your neck' kinda situation, which is eeeevvvilll

[ais523]

First was my Troll with 6 int finding a shield and equipping it to find out it was a cursed -6 INT shield. Despite the fact that I had 7 scrolls of remove curse on me, I was too "stupid" to read any, and died. I suppose the lesson learned should be, "Dont ever wield or wear anything that you haven't id'ed unless you have at least 7 int..." I'd always thought 6 was the magic number ... Inflation!

Is that situation actually recoverable at all? Or are all uncursing sources scroll-based, and thus unusable with 0 Int?

[Kate]

It's recoverable if you have a potion of brilliance on hand, but otherwise yeah, you need to be able to read a scroll. There's a Mantis report on the issue here, with the suggestion of lessening the penalties somehow.

[coyo7e]

Pretty sure the rule is that you should never ever take an escape hatch in orc, unless you have a way of teleporting or digging out if you get trapped. I believe the philosophy behind orc isn't that you can't get trapped- just that there's a way to get to Orc:4 with just normal stairs (and possibly that you'll always be able to find the Elf entrance through normal stairs).

Edit: or I suppose you could have kept a means of banishment handy? If you survived the abyss, you'd come out on an up stairs.

Yeah you can get trapped in orc with an unlucky tele or escape hatch I'm sure - I often recite Magic Mapping scrolls in orc to dig out the little pockets of enemies and loot which will spawn without any stairs out or with only escape hatches out of them. Often the strongest enemies in the level will be in a mini vault like this on Orc 1 or 2 in my experience. I rarely use tele in Orc unless I've got Dig, for this reason.

I agree that the no-read thing is BS if you've already got spellcasting skill. Maybe make it something really low but that a player could do with enough repetitions however, add the risk of glow every failure, maybe? Something like (Spellcasting/2)/27, etc? Give it a message similar to blurry eyes, but with the suggestion in the emssage that "you almost got it that time!" so newbies would know it is possible, at least..