Remove either orb run or digging

[tabstorm]

I vote for spawning a dungeon exit on Zot:5 when you pick up the Orb.

[Psieye]

That's a pretty ugly fix in my opinion.

duvessa has already covered that - it's only one possible fix. Generating new levels is another possibility.

You're incorrectly assuming that I'm "triggering immediate-responses"? which is slightly insulting.

Yes that was an assumption. My apologies, we now know your stance.

[Tiktacy]

This thread feels like its gone on too long for a problem that isnt really that big of a deal. I actually think its kind of fun to plan out my escape, and doing so only saves you a few turns in the long run and a lot of the time the player ends up having to re-route anyway.

Maybe to some people its a chore, but I mean come on, is it really worth screwing with a mechanic like digging just because of duvessa's explanation of a hyper optimal strategy? It seems like a much more productive question would be improving the orb run as a whole rather than screwing around with digging.

[duvessa]

This isn't a tiny or theoretical issue. I have seen players other than myself do it, and should the orb run ever become more dangerous, the problem will become bigger.
It was basically a non-issue back in 0.5 when orb run was weaker and Chei didn't exist. Now it really isn't, imo.
Digging has been "screwed with" many times, I don't see why changing/removing it should be taboo.

[Tiktacy]

This isn't a tiny or theoretical issue. I have seen players other than myself do it, and should the orb run ever become more dangerous, the problem will become bigger.
It was basically a non-issue back in 0.5 when orb run was weaker and Chei didn't exist. Now it really isn't, imo.
Digging has been "screwed with" many times, I don't see why changing/removing it should be taboo.

It hasn't been screwed with, its been changed. Just because something has been modified doesn't mean its been 'screwed with'.

ie, changing digging based on some hyper optimal strategy that just barely improves player survivability in what is already an extremely easy portion of the game is completely asinine. I like digging as it currently exists, imo there isn't anything broken about, so changing it now based on the OP's outlined problems would absolutely be screwing with it.

I agree with removing tedious hyper-optimal strategies usually, but its important to gauge the importance of an issue over the potential it has the enjoyment, quality, clarity, or over all feel of the game. This 'issue' effects an abysmal number of games considering the overall winrate of crawl in general, and an even more abysmal number of players who actually do the strategy because its optimal and ALSO don't like doing it. On top of effecting an abysmal number of games, the effects on the games it does effect are almost non-existent.

I'd be willing to bet more people die due to cats stepping on their keyboards than refusing to dig a path prior to the orb run.

[andreas]

already an extremely easy portion of the game

This has come up several times in this thread as a reason why no one would bother to do the described digging, to my surprise. Yes, the orb run is usually very easy. Occasionally it's really not. (Certainly I have sometimes found it tricky, and while I'm far from the best at this game, neither are most of its players.) Roguelikes, including crawl, encourage you to win by carefully preparing for worst case scenarios, and duvessa is describing just such a preparation.

[crate]

ie, changing digging based on some hyper optimal strategy that just barely improves player survivability in what is already an extremely easy portion of the game is completely asinine.

So, an easy parallel to this has happened pretty recently: creating zombies/skeletons from animate dead/skeleton spell now gives you temporary allies instead of permanent ones.

The reasoning is that this change prevents degenerate behaviour like creating a nice army of zombies on a particular floor and then luring enemies from floors below to that floor so your zombie army can do all the work for you. This behaviour (and similar things), despite being behaviour that few players used (I have done this a few times, though they may have been offline games), was something to avoid. From the commit message: (http://s-z.org/neil/git/?p=crawl.git;a= ... 9558d67c0f)

2) permanent allies set up problematic incentives in Crawl.

If you use the spells the way everyone* actually uses animate dead then the zombie timeouts are effectively meaningless. You kill some things, make zombies, and the zombies help you clean up that fight or maybe the next fight or two and then they die and you move on.

Digging creating a path for the orbrun is basically identical: no one* does it, but it is beneficial and almost entirely risk-free (it is certainly lower-risk than needing to dig your path during the orbrun). It's also super annoying, which of course is the actual reason no one does it.

The fact that orbrun is typically easy is meaningless here, and in fact you can argue just as well that the orbrun being easy makes digging-a-path existing an even bigger problem (since it encourages players to waste time doing something useless) than it would be if the orbrun were more difficult (since then at least they're not wasting time--there's real utility).

Even if you think digging is worth keeping then methods of making digging temporary (there are some problems with how you implement this, perhaps, but if nothing else as someone else said you can revert all digging when the player leaves the floor) would still solve this problem while having basically zero effect on tactical digging or the like, similar to how temporary zombies are really very similar to permanent ones except in the abusive, intentionally-removed cases.

*yes, you three people who are reading this and do actually do these things, I know you probably exist somewhere.

---

There is still an argument that changing digging like this is not worth the devteam's time, but no one here (except possibly me, I guess) is actually using that as the argument for not changing digging. It's also fine to argue that the particular solutions suggested are not good solutions. This doesn't mean there is not a problem, though it might mean that it's one you can't really solve.

[casserol]

The cure here looks way worst than the ailment . Digging works fine as it is, why complicate it to solve a non-existent problem ? Why do you care if someone wants to dig an outbound path ? It's tedious and useless and unsignificant for the game at large.

I'm weary of that tendancy to streamline and aseptise every single aspect of the game, destroying all the lovely little niches and bizarreries that give Crawl its personality. Please leave a little freedom and weirdness in the game.

[andreas]

One of the most well-known and popular games in this genre gave us pet credit cloning, pudding farming, and the price identification minigame. Crawl players do things like abyss- and pan-scum. We're all familiar with non-roguelike games that encourage, require, or arguably even center around tons of grinding for xp or loot. Tedious grinding in order to accomplish a win has its pleasures; they are just not pleasures that crawl is aiming to provide. I understand the response to duvessa that says ''the punishment for pudding farming is pudding farming;'' I do not understand why people here (on all sides of the issue) are so confident, apparently a priori, that there is no one (or only three people) who does what duvessa describes.

[crate]

Tedious grinding in order to accomplish a win has its pleasures; they are just not pleasures that crawl is aiming to provide.

Actually crawl is not merely not aiming to provide these "pleasures"; it is actively aiming to prevent activities like these from being possibilities.

  Code:

Another basic design principle is avoidance of grinding (also known as
scumming). These are activities that have low risk, take a lot of time, and
bring some reward. This is bad for a game's design because it encourages
players to bore themselves. Even worse, it may be optimal to do so. We try
to avoid this!


(from section N of the manual)

Digging to clear an orbrun path fits this definition pretty well, so it is clearly (by crawl's own philosophy) a problem. Again, you can argue that it is a problem without a solution (there are definitely such problems in crawl elsewhere), but you have to acknowledge that it is a problem.

---

The number of players who actually perform grindy things is irrelevant to the existence of a problem (you know very well what I meant above even if you disagree with me taking a bit of artistic license with my post). If grindy behaviour is rare then perhaps it is not a priority to address it (spend development time elsewhere instead), but I've already brought this up above. If that is the argument you are making, you should understand that that is the argument you are making, and many people here apparently do not.

[Hurkyl]

If digging is removed or changed to be temporary, then some dungeon layouts should probably be removed, such as that lair entrance at the end of a really long cave that eats up a huge amount of time everytime you autotravel back to lair then back to dungeon, but can be shortcut by digging a short path from the lair entrance back to the rest of the dungeon.

[andreas]

Actually crawl is not merely not aiming to provide these "pleasures"; it is actively aiming to prevent activities like these from being possibilities.

Yes, that is what I was referring to....

Digging to clear an orbrun path fits this definition pretty well, so it is clearly (by crawl's own philosophy) a problem ... . The number of players who actually perform grindy things is irrelevant to the existence of a problem.

I did not take issue with the claim about irrelevancy; I took issue with the empirical claim, which you were not at all the only one to express in this thread. As it so happens I am inclined to agree with the claim about irrelevancy; but several other posters seem ready to dismiss the issue if the behavior is merely hypothetical. (I am not convinced of either premise of the argument: that no one does it, or that it would not be a problem if no one does it.) For it would be good for an argument for a change to be able to sway people who dismiss merely theoretical problems, as well. (For myself, though I am inclined to agree about the irrelevancy to the existence of a problem, I do think the problem would be worse, i.e., more urgent to fix, if people were actually doing it.)

(you know very well what I meant above even if you disagree with me taking a bit of artistic license with my post)

You meant that the number is relatively small? Fair enough; yes, I imagine it is. Others in this thread, in arguing that there is no problem, have claimed that the numbers are not positive, and still others have expressed doubt that they are positive. Perhaps they did not literally mean that no one does it, but I don't believe my point relied on an excessively literal reading of your post or theirs. The point would be the same if I had written ''a negligibly small number of people from a design perspective'' instead of "no one (or only three people).''

Admittedly I was a bit cheeky in my phrasing. I apologize for having offended you, if I did (it is hard for me to tell what the tone of strangers' written posts is).

...perhaps it is not a priority to address it (spend development time elsewhere instead), but I've already brought this up above. If that is the argument you are making, you should understand that that is the argument you are making ....

It's not the argument I am making. I already gave my preferred suggestion above: remove digging. I'm not familiar with crawl's code, but I guess that this is a relatively easy solution along the dimension of developer time.

[crate]

I had interpreted your previous post as trying to say that grindy things are not a problem, which was apparently my mistake.

[Siegurt]

For me it comes down to this:

I have fun using digging as it exists presently, all of the proposals so far would make it's use less fun for me (or sound excessively spoilery and weird), the possibility that I could dig out a shorter path for the orb run doesn't make the game any less fun, so any of the current proposals are a net loss for me.

I don't use the case that the OP proposes is optimal and tedious, because it doesn't appear optimal to me. There's a cost paid for turns spent doing things, if the reduction in risk is lower than the cost, it's not optimal. In my opinion that's the case. If I can use a god ability one less time on the orb run, or spend extra turns on levels I'm going to have to pass through later, potentially generating extra critters that might block my way when passing by on the orb run, then I think that actually costs me more risk than it saves.

So for *me* this is obvious, digging provides something to the game, and the possibility of digging out a shortcut for the orb run doesn't detract anything at all, so my opinion is that there's no action that should be taken here.

If someone contributes a suggestion that increases the the fun I have with the game, and makes tedious non-optimal things harder, then that sounds fine to me, but making the game less fun for no net benefit doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Now I can totally see if someone came to a different conclusion about the optimal-ness of digging an orb route, they'd be more in favor of changing something about it, but FWIW I disagree

[crate]

Now I can totally see if someone came to a different conclusion about the optimal-ness of digging an orb route, they'd be more in favor of changing something about it, but FWIW I disagree

Okay so now the comparison is to orb-apportation; I still personally doubt that orb-apporting all the way to the stairs was actually good practice and thus a change to prevent it wasn't "needed" in the same way that the permanent-zombies change was, but that also got changed so in and of itself saying that "digging isn't actually useful here" appears to also not be a useful argument.

[Siegurt]

Now I can totally see if someone came to a different conclusion about the optimal-ness of digging an orb route, they'd be more in favor of changing something about it, but FWIW I disagree

Okay so now the comparison is to orb-apportation; I still personally doubt that orb-apporting all the way to the stairs was actually good practice and thus a change to prevent it wasn't "needed" in the same way that the permanent-zombies change was, but that also got changed so in and of itself saying that "digging isn't actually useful here" appears to also not be a useful argument.

Well, if that's not a useful argument, then what is? We can't remove any possibility of anyone doing anything tedious entirely, I mean we'd have to take away things like movement.

It was always my assumption that there was a perception by *some* people that orb-apporting was useful, and enough of those people were devs that a change was made. I'm simply voicing my opinion on the matter. My take is that a better solution would be to actually make it clearer when things are actually suboptimal, although this obviously not a decided matter one way or the other.

[andreas]

The quote crate gave on design philosophy doesn't have optimality being a necessary condition on finding a practice bad because it is grindy. The writer seems to have found that to be a worst (the worst?) case, not the only case that justifies discouraging a grindy strategy.

[casserol]

Remove necessary grinding and scumming : good

Remove niche/weird/marginal grinding and scumming : will eventually turn Crawl in Sprint Crawl.

0.17 feels a lot more limited and a lot less mysterious than 0.12 did. The older versions felt like I was carving my own path in a maze of lethal dangers, most of which I barely understood, using a range of weird and wonderful weapons and tactics, most of which I barely understood. Now it feels more like a roller coaster.

[Psieye]

There are two conversations happening at once in this thread:
1) "How big a problem is this? Does it even exist?"
2) "I don't like the solutions being proposed for this problem"

People aren't agreeing on the scope of the problem, so a solution that looks good to people seeing a big problem aren't so good to people seeing a small problem. I doubt we'll come to agreement on exactly how serious this problem is, which just means we need a more fun solution so even those who see a tiny problem will accept it.

Sar came up with reverting all digging when leaving a level. That was half accepted, there is demand for a better solution. If generating completely new levels for orb run is unacceptable, how about an orb run equivalent to Spatial Maelstroms spawning which alter the terrain of each D floor? Effectively, it'd be turning orb run D into Abyss-style shifting terrain. Alternatively, an orb run-only monster that casts "Shaft You" to hinder your progress.

[Sprucery]

Alternatively, an orb run-only monster that casts "Shaft You" to hinder your progress.

No thanks, the mysterious force during the ascension in Nethack is awful, let's not copy that.

[WildSam]

On my first win I spent ~5000 turns exploring all stairs, excluding non-optimal and digging route (with Dig spell or even LRDin' crystal walls). People on chat laughed and said I did overprepare for orbrun. I never did such thing again: reconsideration came naturally after I experienced orbrun and lost irrational fear. Sometimes I use wand of digging on run itself.
Can we finally admit player effort and time costs exist and affect every decision made? Design goal Crate quotes makes much more sense as "we should try to avoid low-effort time consuming but profitable stuff when designing game", not as "ALL SCUMMING MUST BE REMOVED AT ALL COSTS", which I believe hurts design stronger than helps it. Every time someone mentions hypotetical optimal play no one ever executes (not even speedrunners and competetive players) or just marginal optimal gameplay (with awful metagame cost attached) catgirl dies. Think about catgirls.

I don't mind proposal tho, especially minimally impactful digging-reversal-on-orb-pickup version. I just don't feel it's much of issue or worth discussing.

[roctavian]

I like the idea of a separate set of levels for the orb run, but I'm curious what people think that should look like. "Zot/pan, set against a backdrop of only levels we've already been in" is pretty boring imo. At least a few times, people on this forum have suggested things along the lines of "go through levels based on the runes you've picked up." That sounds okay but, of course, it's one of those ways of approaching the problem from the wrong direction. What interesting gameplay situations can we evenly present to characters who've completed anywhere from 3 to 15 runes?

[archaeo]

Two ideas that occurred to me in the meeting I was spending reading this thread instead of paying attention:

1) You could always make a system where the runes act as portals after picking up the orb. "The Whatever Rune of Zot dissolves into smoke, which curves into a portal," and the game builds a new Whatever:$ level. On entering, "The Other Rune of Zot flies away from you, falling apart in midair," and you need to find the next portal. I assume you could tell the level builder to make smaller levels as well? Populate it with high-depth monsters, etc.

2) Alternately, you could deploy the Corruption code and reflavor the Orb as the thing that the Lords of Pan use to allow the Dungeon to teter on the edge of the Abyss. Without the Orb, the whole thing begins to fall into the Abyss, so in addition to orb spawns, you also get increasing amounts of corrupted territory on the way out.

Of course, these are both really big fixes to the small problem duvessa pointed out. I like the idea of a more fun orb run, but if the only real design concern is digging out paths up the dungeon, one could imagine making digging into something like a Wand of Parting Stones, which only keeps the dug passage open for ~100 turns or so before forcefully ejecting anything inside and doing some damage.

[Sprucery]

Personally, I definitely wouldn't want more game added to after picking up the Orb.

[casserol]

2) Alternately, you could deploy the Corruption code and reflavor the Orb as the thing that the Lords of Pan use to allow the Dungeon to teter on the edge of the Abyss. Without the Orb, the whole thing begins to fall into the Abyss, so in addition to orb spawns, you also get increasing amounts of corrupted territory on the way out.

I like this idea very much.

Spoiler: show

and flavor wise, as end credit, the whole world could start to fall in the abyss too !

[Psieye]

Of course, these are both really big fixes to the small problem duvessa pointed out. I like the idea of a more fun orb run

duvessa only pointed out one part of a bigger problem: the orb run is a tedious spoiler test - a really long backtrack where only a fraction of the floors will actually be a challenge (less if you've already done extended). Let's define the requirements of a 'better orb run':
1) Minimise spoilers
2) Solvable for all kinds of builds including ninjas who don't want to fight much
3) Relevant for both 3 rune and 15 rune characters
4) Is actually fun and interesting


Constraint 1 can be mitigated by giving hints as you progress through Zot floors and/or pick up your first 3 runes. Better if we find a solution which minimises orb run specific mechanics.

Constraint 2 means we can't have 'boss fights' which must be won to progress. More generally, it means the orb run shouldn't be gimmicky and use the same kind of balance as the rest of crawl:a mixture of monsters where different builds have different problematic encounters (to which the solution is walking away or burning consumables).

Constraint 3 suggests we need to scale the threats somehow depending on if the character is a 3-runer or a 15-runer. I think it's better to use Total XP (possibly with caps at the lower and upper ends) to measure how strong a character has gotten from extended content.

Constraint 4 is the hardest to satisfy. I think by this point in the game, we want all the fun to be from tactics - bad strategy should have killed you off in the mid-or-lategame, not the endgame.


I like the idea of using an adapted subset of Abyss mechanics for orb run. Something like this:
- At 'initialisation' of each floor once orb run starts, run Corruption code evenly across the entire floor. While doing this, shuffle the positions of stairs (they won't move again afterwards).
- Wipe map memory so all tiles are unexplored again. Ideally the corruption will leave lots of recognisable chunks of the floor - achieves (re)discovery fun.
- Pre-populate each floor with NEUTRAL monsters (possibly make them a subset friendly for good gods so you can walk through them). Pan lords or other suitable 'boss monsters' spawning from the orb run can 'recruit' these neutrals into regular hostiles.
- Optionally, throw in neutral Spatial Maelstroms which distort the terrain (but always leaves paths to the stairs).
- Spawn altered worldbinders: very slow, harder to kill and generates durable summons.

[dowan]

Could someone explain to me why picking up the orb reverting all dug tiles into walls, with a message saying "Picking up the orb has caused all dug tiles to revert to walls" is spoilery? Whether or not you know it's going to happen ahead of time doesn't make much difference, as you'll be notified when it does happen, which is when it matters.

To me that's better than reverting the dug out terrain whenever you leave the floor, as that solution is much wider than the scope of the problem.

Also, I didn't read Duvessa's OP, nor did I read the post where he complained that I didn't read the OP, and I'm taking credit for this idea.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

The orb is actually a stopper that is plugging a hole in the fabric of spacetime continuum, that's why removing it (even with apportation) starts spawning nasties from an alternate dimension, including the misnamed orb guardians who are actually the ones that made it in before the hole was patched up. Those dracs know what they're doing.

[archaeo]

I don't think it's any more "spoilery" than what's already happening, dowan. Though I guess you could make an argument that if the game doesn't tell you ahead of time that all dug walls will stop being dug, it'd be even more spoilery, especially for players who come to Crawl from, say, NetHack, where pre-digging your escape route is fairly common casual play.

My issue is that it's just inelegant. Either digging should be permanent, or it should be temporary; making it permanent-until-the-endgame seems kludgy and unappealing, at least to me.

[MainiacJoe]

I've pre-dug nearly every orb run I've been on. I started doing it out of habit from Nethack days, and I kept doing it when I saw how it helped the orb run go faster, not just in my own games but watching online others who didn't dig. Getting to the orb is so rare for me that I'm willing to pay tedium to get the best chance possible to avoid dying at the bitter end. Since I never do extended the orb run is the only time I even encounter pan lords, and so I treat them with extreme caution and will do anything to minimize the chance of encountering one. Paying turns before the orb run to have fewer during is a no-brainer for me at least.

I do try to bundle some digging into trips to stashes etc. so at least I'm not traipsing the entire dungeon just to dig passages. Also, since the time I just recently become aware of how significant piety decay can be, I've not made it back to Zot; I think I'd settle in the future for just knocking down walls that cause long detours.

[duvessa]

Constraint 3 suggests we need to scale the threats somehow depending on if the character is a 3-runer or a 15-runer. I think it's better to use Total XP (possibly with caps at the lower and upper ends) to measure how strong a character has gotten from extended content.

Having a higher level character probably shouldn't be an active disadvantage, nor should it be survival-optimal to deliberately avoid picking up runes past the 3rd (e.g. there are a lot of 4 rune wins because of people who get banished and happen to run across the abyss rune before an exit).

[ion_frigate]

I would just like to point to NetHack as a cautionary tale about what happens when you try to make the Orb/Amulet Run too "interesting:" instead of a simple run out of the dungeon, you've got: the universally-hated mysterious force, repeated wand-of-death-ings of Rodney, four boring elemental planes, and a decent final level that would have been better if you didn't have to go through 20-45 minutes of boring crap to get there.

I like the idea of Abyss corruption, but I think a very definite constraint on the Orb Run should be its length, both turn-wise and real-time. If it's so "interesting" that it forces you to play really slowly and adds 30 minutes to the end of the game, that's a bad thing.

[dowan]

I don't think it's any more "spoilery" than what's already happening, dowan. Though I guess you could make an argument that if the game doesn't tell you ahead of time that all dug walls will stop being dug, it'd be even more spoilery, especially for players who come to Crawl from, say, NetHack, where pre-digging your escape route is fairly common casual play.

My issue is that it's just inelegant. Either digging should be permanent, or it should be temporary; making it permanent-until-the-endgame seems kludgy and unappealing, at least to me.

So the theoretical naive player pre-digs his escape routes, picks up the orb, and is informed his pre-dug escape routes all collapsed. OK, well now he knows, so I guess all he lost for being unspoiled was some wand of digging charges, and maybe he doesn't have a wand of digging ready for the orb run now. I suppose making digging just not work during the orb run would completely solve that, but I don't really like that idea.

Is that too much? I suppose an unspoiled player might also not realize pan lords are going to spawn during his orb run, so he doesn't go back to his stash and pick up his wand of teleportation before starting it. Had he known about the spawning during the orb run, he would have prepared. Is that any different?

Pre-digging is problematic, and I think this is the best solution possible that doesn't greatly change the rest of the game to fix a problem in one tiny part of it. Reverting dug out tiles upon leaving the level is a much bigger change, although it does avoid the problem with a special case for the orb run. However I think the orb run is significant enough and has enough special cases already that adding one more really doesn't make much difference.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I like the suggestion of abyss-ifying everything on orb pick-up. (I like the abyss.) But I suspect many people wouldn't enjoy that, because the abyss seems unpopular.

dowan: not carrying teleportation if available always seems like a mistake, orb-run or not.

[dowan]

I know, it was tough to come up with a similar example that would highlight the current accepted spoileriness of the orb run to compare against my suggested remedy's inherent spoileriness. It's probably also a mistake not to carry a wand of digging during the orb run too.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

I think it's a mistake not to carry digging (if available) anywhere with diggable walls, so pretty much everywhere (maybe not zigs?).

[ontoclasm]

Can anyone name a use of digging that isn't degenerate? This thread is full of people saying they find digging "fun," but people find all sorts of awful things "fun." What do you actually use digging for? Here's what I can think of:

- killholes. This is an awful tactic and should be removed, period.* Like 80% of the content -- not to mention the challenge -- of Crawl is handling groups of monsters in various configurations of terrain. Building a killhole deletes this entirely; you fight exactly one monster at a time in terrain that is 100% beneficial to you. No risk. Minimal cost. Tedious and repetitive. The fact that anyone likes it is entirely due to the fact that people like winning and will vehemently defend bad design if it makes them win more. Other tactics (e.g. stair use) can be worse, but that does not make this one good.

- breaking into vaults. This is less bad but still dumb. Vaults are designed the way they are for a reason,** and digging sometimes lets you avoid the risk and swipe the reward with 0 skill investment and a negligible cost. If the vault is shaped a certain way. And doesn't have stone walls, which is completely arbitrary. I'm sure this makes some people feel smugly clever, but again, that's because it's beneficial to your character, not because it's an interesting challenge.

- the orbrun thing described in this thread. Clearly hovers somewhere in the unpleasant area between "useless," "boring," and "technically optimal."

- summons. I guess this is mildly okay but, again, why do we generate dungeon terrain if the player is allowed to just ignore it?

- that's literally it. Feel free to enlighten me as to your clever, interesting uses of digging, but I'm all out of ideas.

None of these uses are particularly good, and they're often very very bad and dull. Remove digging.

*I know that at this moment like 50 of you are angrily typing something like "BUT WHAT ABOUT FORMICIDS." If Formicids need digging to work -- which they don't -- that says more about Formicids than about digging.

**You erase the line about Formicids and begin again: "HOW DARE YOU CURTAIL MY FREEDOM." That's what design is. There is literally nothing to design except deciding what players can and can't do, and the way you make that decision, at least for Crawl, is: they can do things that lead them into interesting challenges, and they can't do things that are beneficial but dull and tedious. Period.

[crate]

Digging is okay for exploring pan and hell but if you find "killholes" degenerate then yes there's not really any reason for digging to exist.

[Floodkiller]

- killholes. This is an awful tactic and should be removed, period.* Like 80% of the content -- not to mention the challenge -- of Crawl is handling groups of monsters in various configurations of terrain. Building a killhole deletes this entirely; you fight exactly one monster at a time in terrain that is 100% beneficial to you. No risk. Minimal cost. Tedious and repetitive. The fact that anyone likes it is entirely due to the fact that people like winning and will vehemently defend bad design if it makes them win more. Other tactics (e.g. stair use) can be worse, but that does not make this one good.

A killhole is voluntarily surrendering most of your escape options (other than teleport) for improved terrain against group based monsters. Failing to assess the ability of being able to take on all monsters of the group one at a time with no breaks means needing to survive up to three turns in melee range of a potentially deadly monster. Degeneracy may stem from later game areas requiring more force multiplier enemies over actual threats, but that means that wall tiles should probably be rethought around these areas, not to mention kiting/dragging enemies to optimal terrain in the first place.

[ontoclasm]

That's not true at all. You just dig your killhole in such a way that you can walk out the other end. If /dig only dug one tile per use then maybe that would cost too much, but as it is making a "killtunnel" is usually no more expensive than a dead end.

[Sprucery]

I never dig levels in preparation for the Orb run. However, when a Pan lord pops up and blocks my way to the nearest staircase, it is very fun to dig through a wall to get around it. Of course, I can use disintegration instead if the wall is not very thick.

I very rarely dig killholes anyway (they are boring).

How about if wand of digging always dug a two squares wide tunnel? That would prevent killholing. (And wand of disint could just be removed or made a pure attack wand with no wall destruction.)

[Malevolent]

Once again... just make wands of digging rarer, have fewer charges and get fewer charges from recharging (like hasting and the like). Means you've got to be picky about your killholes and digging out a path for the orb run is no longer a feasible option as it is better to hold on to whatever few charges you have to flexibly cut through terrain whenever your current path is blocked. Problem solved.

[Shard1697]

By the time someone's finishing a game they'll probably have enough charges to do it anyways, and even if they don't, that won't prevent them from doing it, it just means they'll dig shortcuts until they run out, and then do the orb run.

If it's a tool that leads to degenerate play, making it more rare doesn't help anything... it just means degenerate play is still there, just less often.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

In my current game I used digging in lair to run away, after stupidly getting backed into a corner. The tunnel then came in handy to make yaks and hydras walk through conjured flames. Yay!

[adozu]

well, digging helps in labirinths?* either way it's ok for escaping when you got in a bad spot too, faster than teleporting and less random but enemies can still follow you so it's distinct enough to be worth of being there probably.

*there's probably supposed to be an "y" somewhere there i think?

[Floodkiller]

That's not true at all. You just dig your killhole in such a way that you can walk out the other end. If /dig only dug one tile per use then maybe that would cost too much, but as it is making a "killtunnel" is usually no more expensive than a dead end.

Making a killtunnel over a killhole (the difference being that a killhole only has the player and one open tile) is that a killtunnel leaves you more vulnerable to blinking enemies (say, deep elf annihilators) and summoners creating a worse situation with the extra open space. If the tunnel has an open escape route on the other side, noise may draw another group to surround you and cut you off/make the situation worse. However, they are indeed a better strategy over killholes against groups of melee enemies with no piercing/summoning support.

I agree with you that killholing/killtunneling becomes degenerate (again, aside from kiting/luring or the commonness of rock walls in late game areas) mainly because there are two different types of digging (single tile, to edge of LOS), which makes it extremely easy and cheap to make either structure depending on the situation. Cutting one would vastly improve the situation: if single tile digging was cut, only kill tunnels would exist, making it so that it is less effective of a strategy against the late game threats you would mainly use it for; if dig to LoS was cut, it would take much more time to killhole on demand (aside from Formicids), limiting their use (especially if kiting/luring was nerfed as well to prevent digging them in preparation).

Sorry if this is getting a little off topic from digging in relation to the Orb run.

[zxc23]

Here is a very recent win by bsdbeard without using any potions, scrolls or wands:

http://crawl.xtahua.com/crawl/morgue/im ... 122751.txt

On the topic of pre-digging tunnels for the orb run - I've never heard of or seen anyone do that. I play very carefully/'tediously' yet I've never done this. The orb run is not very dangerous and spending the odd turn to zap a wand of digging isn't a critical waste of time.

[Sprucery]

Here is a very recent win by bsdbeard without using any potions, scrolls or wands:

Impressive, but without the 4 uses of potion petition it would have been even more so :)

[njvack]

I like digging in hell, pan, and abyss. The idea of 'use a consumable to make exploration faster and terrain more favorable' is not, I think, fundamentally bad. But I do think killholes are kind of terrible, so maybe it is. Partly, though, this may be that digging is common enough that it's only kind of a consumable.

I also like deep troll digging, but monsters should probably lose it if players do to prevent players from doing horrible things like kiting earth mages around.

[Shard1697]

Monsters should keep it so that the hilariously stupid situation of luring a deep troll earth mage(or Jogrun) down to Slime 5 to break open the vault because you're following Ru and sacrificed earth magic+evo can still happen.

Of course, on the other hand, I kind of think the whole "you need to dig open Slime 5 after killing TRJ" is weird and stupid in the first place and the walls should just go away(maybe in a random order, like they're 'dissolving'). If that was removed(as well as vaults that require disint/digging to get loot behind glass), I'm not sure there would be much reason to ever kite around earth mages, and they could keep their scary dig spells which let allies get around you more easily.