Sunday, 10th November 2013, 01:50 by and into
Obviously you need to be careful in how you use it, but stair-dancing is a perfectly good tactic pretty much throughout the game, except Vaults:5. Stair-dancing is the most obvious "solution" to the problem, but it is not a very good one. I think that's good. Stair dancing works well in nearly all places (used intelligently), but not in Vaults:5. Letting stair dancing work really well there would actually make the tactics *more* one-dimensional than they currently are.
Stair-dancing was risky in Vaults:5 before wardens, though I suppose it is even more the case now. "Getting to an area of low enemy density, then systematically working through the level" isn't a "gimmick" or a "one-dimensional" tactic or something, it is good strategy for 100% of the game. It is what you do in Slime:6 and Zot and everywhere else. Saying that this is "one dimensional" is like saying that "using god abilities" or "taking advantage of corridors" is "one-dimensional." In fact, each of those things is extremely varied and presents several different layers of strategic and tactical choices. Just because something can be described with a single, sufficiently abstract phrase doesn't mean that it is superficial in practice.
What makes last floor of Vaults a bit different from how one approaches Slime:6, wide-open levels in D, and much else besides, is that Vaults:5 dumps you right in the middle of an area with lots of enemies, which is actually a bit different and cool. I don't think any change is necessary.
Now, OP would have a point if "magic mapping + controlled teleport to outer rim" were the *only* reasonable move for a large number of builds. But that simply isn't true.
Other things you can do to tackle the welcome party include ?blinking (cTele is allowed in Vault:5) or semi-controlled blinking into one of the four hallways going from the middle to the outer rim. If you are fast you can probably lose some of the vault guards, hasting yourself or using scrolls of fog and fear can help here to break up the large group of guards into a few smaller groups that you can melee with appropriate buffs, allies, or help from god abilities. Though swiftness is sufficient, to be honest.
Shadow creatures is a low-investment spell that is extraordinarily powerful on Vault 5, one time on a Makhleb melee-focused dude I brilliance-memorized it, got (only) a few levels in summoning that was needed, and then brought a couple more !brilliance and one or two !magic. Used a scroll of blinking, then clogged up the hallway with powerful summons from shadow creatures and a couple of greater demons from Makhleb. A bit overly elaborate, and not something I'd recommend as a general strategy, but it made sense in the context of that particular game. And it worked extremely well. I mention that as something of a "thinking outside the box" solution.
That was before the new elemental evocables. You could get a similar effect more directly and easily with a few of the elemental evocables + a scroll or two of summoning (or rod of summoning or god abilities or whatever). This prevents you from getting surrounded and takes a lot of the heat off of you in general, making it pretty easy to take down the whole (or nearly the whole) vault:5 entourage plus the three or four enemies who inevitably spawn near the middle or just inside the hallway.
Obviously, getting into the corridor to fight is what you'll want to do for nearly every character, but there are lots of different ways to do that, then lots of different ways to break up the large mass of guards into more manageable chunks, or else prevent yourself from getting surrounded as you fight through them. Really so long as you have two scrolls of blinking and a potion of speed, you've got the essentials. Vaults:5 is still very dangerous, of course, but it isn't like the welcome party is insurmountable outside of the "map + tele" approach.
Personally, I hardly ever use ?magic mapping on Vaults:5. It works well, of course, but I seldom feel it is necessary.