Is there any way to avoid shafts?

[Rokirem]

It's so annoying. My past three deaths have been associated with falling through fucking shafts. The first time I fell down a single floor, and was placed right beside Robin and his gang, the second time I fell down two floors, and landed myself next to an ogre, and the third time, I fell down THREE ****** floors and was greeted by a centaur after going through a door. Each time it happened on D:2. I'm not even kidding, this is the angriest I have been at this game in my entire life. Is there any way to avoid shafts? Will magic-mapping stop it?

[amalloy]

Robin's probly just mad you can't even tell she's a fancy lady.

[njvack]

Regardless of whether ?mapping will reveal shafts, it would be a waste of a scroll. It's way better to spend the scroll after being shafted if your situation is dangerous, so you can find the upstairs after teleporting or whatever.

IIRC Ash helps a lot with trap detection.

The Dowsing Card can also detect traps, but not, I think, over the whole level.

[ydeve]

Robin's probly just mad you can't even tell she's a fancy lady.

Robin's a lady? I always thought it was a guy.

[4Hooves2Appendages]

There are ways to minimise the chance of getting shafted, but they aren't really fun or good. For example you could step on as few tiles as possible by exploring manually and keeping track of where you've been.

Though really you're better off just trying to deal with the result.

[Sprucery]

Higher XL makes detecting shafts more probable but it's really not a good idea to linger on cleared levels for this purpose...

But I do feel that there is a noticeable difference when you play a species with a bad XL apt vs. a good one. So my demigods tend to fall through shafts more often than humans, for example. I haven't recorded any data though.

[le_nerd]

Can confirm, Ashenzari makes traps and shafts a nonissue. She's great.

[amalloy]

Robin's probly just mad you can't even tell she's a fancy lady.

Robin's a lady? I always thought it was a guy.

Fight her sometime and pay attention to the pronouns used, or to her xv description.