Magic Mapping

Currently scrolls of magic mapping are completely useless for learning more about vaults that contain secret doors, since they don't map areas behind secret doors unless they contain stairs. This is problematic for two reasons. First, it is completely unintuitive. I've seen quite a few players be misled by this into believing that they had fully explored a vault, since they tried magic mapping and it didn't show anything. Everyone is surprised when they first learn that mapping works in this way; it feels like “magic” mapping shouldn't care about secret doors so much.

Second, it increases the importance of having spoily information about vault layouts (and looking at .des files). This is especially visible with the lair:8 vaults (though it is also highly relevant elsewhere): one of the most common questions players ask on ##crawl is whether there is any loot to be found in their lair:8 vault, or where it is if they know to expect some loot. Some of these players have the “smart” idea of using a scroll of magic mapping, since they expect that should give them some information… but it doesn't. It would help a lot if players had some means other than spoilers of getting information about vaults they had never seen before… there are many vaults out there where people are very unlikely to ever find certain secret doors without knowledge of the vault, and it would help if they had the option of using up a consumable to help with this.

I understand that the intention of changing scrolls of magic mapping to act in this way was to make T&D skill more important, but it really hasn't worked this way. If you know the vault, T&D skill is still unimportant for finding the secret doors; if you don't know the vault and are searching for doors systematically, T&D skill just means it will take a few less turns. And if you don't know to search for a secret door at all, T&D skill is very unlikely to help at all. Besides, scrolls of magic mapping are a limited consumable… it isn't nearly possible to use them for every single vault you find. When magic mapping was a spell it might have been an issue that people could just use it on every level, but this is no longer the case. — elliptic 2011-01-26 23:34

I think simply reverting to the old behavior of magic mapping working beyond secret doors would be fine. Alternatively, evktalo made the suggestion of having magic mapping still not show areas beyond secret doors, but reveal the secret doors blocking it. This would give people more immediately useful information (where is the next secret door) without spoiling the mystery of what might lie behind it. — elliptic 2011-01-26 23:34

It might be less obvious though. Autoexplore will find it, yes, but I know that I, personally, as an unspoiled player who assumes magic mapping doesn't care about secret doors, would be just as likely to use the scroll, see that the map appears to be no different, and leave the floor without noticing the single tile that's been changed, and if I happened to try autoexplore instead it would only be by luck. Just make it work on everything; that's what's most intuitive and that's what ANY player without spoilers will expect it to do. — Brickman 2011-01-27 02:06