Wow that sucked...

[Milamber]

I was doing pretty good. Lvl 34 High elf Ranger, most resists, 7 attacks, +4 speed and telepathy and somehow an Ancient Multi-hued managed to wake up, move 5-6 squares, and breathe on me twice before I got to take a turn. Not sure how that happened (kinda feel like I got screwed) but whatever I guess. Back to the drawing board.

[Moving Pictures]

I had a solid critter die in a vault after four failed attempts to TO a unique. I was a bit cranky about the whole thing until I realized I had zapped the rod of curing four times. Char was neither stunned, blind, confused, nor cut, when it died wretchedly.

[Milamber]

Yeah RNJesus wasn't too fond of me that run anyway. I spawned a greater vault on DL45. Hand a wand of TO w7 charges and there were only 4 things I needed to get rid of. Just before I cracked the vault open, a colbran came out of nowhere and lighning bolted me. Byebye wand. I think I only got like 3 vaults and that was the only greater one. Anyway, hopefully this next @ does better.

[Milamber]

Ok seriously. I had a crap day at work, so I got home and decided to play some angband. Just bought a wand of TO, came upon a vault on DL 22 that had 2 vampire lords. I TO them away and walk into a teleport trap that I, of course, can't detect or do anything about anymore. Where does it teleport me to? Right BETWEEN the two vampire lords. So my previous @ gets killed by an ancient multi-hued that 'magically' get's to take like 7 turns before I can do anything, and my current @ gets it after being 'conveniently' teleported between the vampire lords I just TO'd!? I'm sorry but that's just BS. What a wonderful ending to my crap day.

[Moving Pictures]

Ok seriously. I had a crap day at work, so I got home and decided to play some angband. Just bought a wand of TO, came upon a vault on DL 22 that had 2 vampire lords. I TO them away and walk into a teleport trap that I, of course, can't detect or do anything about anymore. Where does it teleport me to? Right BETWEEN the two vampire lords. So my previous @ gets killed by an ancient multi-hued that 'magically' get's to take like 7 turns before I can do anything, and my current @ gets it after being 'conveniently' teleported between the vampire lords I just TO'd!? I'm sorry but that's just BS. What a wonderful ending to my crap day.

Uh, you do realize that
a) powerful creatures take multiple attacks - that includes @ if dex/str is high enough - at a time?
b) Yep. Teleport creates a holding area, often. Which is why you want to either TO, or TS, but not both....


But I want to know why you were cracking open a vault with V's in it without some means of detecting traps ...

[Milamber]

Multiple attacks is fine. But as I said in my OP, I had +4 speed and telepathy, yet the dragon moved 6 squares, then breathed on me twice before I could do anything. And what detect traps IS there, other than searching skill? I'm playing a High elf ranger. Additionally, the trap was outside the vault. I cast stone to mud to open it from 10 squares away and lured the V's out so I could TO them. I had searching of 71-72% iirc.

[Grotug]

Angband is a dangerous place to find comfort from the hardships of rl! But I feel your pain; I've had some pretty lousy strings of bad luck, but I'm learning to recognize strings of good luck I've also had (it's much easier to notice the bad lucks, and not the the good ones). How about that time I TO'd successfully like 25 times in a row at around 18-20% fail rate? When @ is TO'ing OOD monsters that move two to three times faster than him, that string of luck was all the difference between winning and dying.

But, anyway, another reason I like HT Warrior: not much time/energy has been invested in a character that dies on DL22. When I discovered how significant the experience penalty was on High-Elves I stopped playing that class.

[Milamber]

Actually I kinda like the slower leveling. I tend to explore a bit, sometimes more than I should but whatever, and the extra time on each DL tends to get me a bit more xp than just diving as fast as I can so it kinda balances out. Oh and after being a blackjack/roulette dealer for 10 years I know ALL about the fickleness of lady luck/RNJesus. I just get aggravated when things happen that certainly SEEM to break the rules, aka my experience with that ancient multi-hued. I also think there really should be SOME way of actually detecting traps. Is there a spell for that in Tenser's or Kelek's? 'Cause it's not in Resistances, Mordenkainen's, or Raal's.

[Pete Mack]

The spell is only for mages. Rogues get 100% perception relatively early, however.

[Moving Pictures]

Multiple attacks is fine. But as I said in my OP, I had +4 speed and telepathy, yet the dragon moved 6 squares, then breathed on me twice before I could do anything.

Still inclined to suggest operator error. Like hitting the (5) key instead of something else, or you have your mouse set to move, or (like me) you zapped a rod of curing rather than the rod of (x).

And what detect traps IS there, other than searching skill? .

Which you can increase with rings/amulets of searching if you don't have scrolls/rods of trap finding, etc.

[Milamber]

I always disable movement with the mouse, I didn't even have my hand on the number pad or near the 5 key, all I did was hit enter to clear the 'more' prompts, I didn't get an opportunity to take an action. Also there ARE no items that detect traps. I specifically created a @ with all flavors known just to check and went through all the scrolls, wands, rods, and staves. They aren't there anymore, even rods of detection don't detect traps.

[Nick]

Also there ARE no items that detect traps. I specifically created a @ with all flavors known just to check and went through all the scrolls, wands, rods, and staves. They aren't there anymore, even rods of detection don't detect traps.

Correct, the only way to detect traps now is the mage spell, or natural passive searching (which can only be affected by race/class properties or items with + to searching).

This was the result of a long discussion about how to make traps more interesting again in the lead-up to releasing version 4.1. The issue with the previous state of traps was that after the early game all traps were detected all the time by all classes, so that they lost all surprise value.

[Derakon]

Correct, the only way to detect traps now is the mage spell, or natural passive searching (which can only be affected by race/class properties or items with + to searching).

This was the result of a long discussion about how to make traps more interesting again in the lead-up to releasing version 4.1. The issue with the previous state of traps was that after the early game all traps were detected all the time by all classes, so that they lost all surprise value.

I'm still of the opinion that traps were never a good idea, and the correct solution is to remove them entirely. Apparently that was too drastic for Nick to contemplate though.

Also: note that you only get one chance to detect traps, to discourage the player from slooooowly searching every single tile before stepping on it.

[Milamber]

After losing 5 lvl 30+ characters in as many days I'm just sick of this, been playing since '98 and it's just no fun having to start from scratch over and over and over again when I'm playing a game to try and enjoy myself. I'm deleting my account. Going back to The Long Dark. Goodbye.