Sil: compilation of annoying deaths

[taptap]

And there for some unfathomable reason the sword of the King himself. Aranruth, put on display by some evil genius as if by mockery to him. His eyes fixed on Aranruth, the heirloom of his people, he steps forward and notices the warning sign "Due to excavation work, please use the bypass. GoblinDig Inc."

Cruel randomness makes stories, streamlined bullshit destroys it. It doesn't even matter that there is no player skill involved, here you have a branching point / story depth, whether you notice the trap or not. If you notice all traps, it is just a sad joke, the challenge is stopping long enough between moves to notice, seriously? I had similar situations more than once (although I play with higher perception than others and sometimes do notice the traps), but of course a half blind and deaf dwarf should trigger each trap, if you are roleplaying that way enjoy the hilarity.

[locus]

Dungeons of Dredmor had traps become visible when you moved next to them, with a perception-like skill that could extend how far you could see traps. Traps still offered a tactical challenge, since you had to decide whether to try to disarm them or just avoid them, but it wasn't a "randomly you take damage/fall through the floor" mechanic, which was nice.

please never do anything at all to make Sil like Dungeons of Dredmore even a tiny bit

[EpicMan]

Dungeons of Dredmor had traps become visible when you moved next to them, with a perception-like skill that could extend how far you could see traps. Traps still offered a tactical challenge, since you had to decide whether to try to disarm them or just avoid them, but it wasn't a "randomly you take damage/fall through the floor" mechanic, which was nice.

[taptap]

In no case does it add interest to the game.

I once had a singer in a vault, everything is sleeping but the way to the artefact is blocked by false floor. Imagine the joy when I could disarm the false floor. (It needs high perception.)

[Infinitum]

Smiths are already on a rather strict turn limit though, which limits the use of searching. Not to mention tedious play being tedious. I for one wouldn't mind replacing false floors with supersized alarm traps which draws monsters to the level from all staircases simultaneously. Should provide about the same level of danger (since most escape routes will be blocked) whilst not tickling ye olde OCD bone due to forges/artifacts.

[half]

We know that you hate perception, but Song of Freedom was invented just for you!

Even just passing between moves when in a vault and not in combat would help a lot.

[Patashu]

BlueFish: Have you tried the secret tech of 'throw something at a floor, if it doesn't stay on the tile you threw it to, that tile is trapped'?

[BlueFish]

We know that you hate perception, but Song of Freedom was invented just for you!

I love song of freedom. My loremaster crown, when I played smiths who had the room to make such an item, had freedom on it. It costs 14. But I don't have enough forge uses these days to make that artifact.

I'm not a huge fan of the tedium of walking around all the time with a certain song on, either - especially if it requires a swap.

It's not that the false floor thing happens all the time. In fact, that it doesn't, allows a player to just hope that it won't. And then it does. And it sucks.

In no case does it add interest to the game. Only risk, and frustration. You don't notice when you get a succession of thousands of good rolls. You only notice when you get a single bad roll. From a game design perspective, I don't believe in it. And I know the perspectives of smiths is significantly different than the perspective of other characters.

[taptap]

forge ... false floor ...

We know that you hate perception, but Song of Freedom was invented just for you!

[BlueFish]

To celebrate 50 years of the BASIC language, I've written a BlueFish bot

10 Play Sil
20 Find least liked feature
30 Remove
40 GOTO 10

Just had another super-fun experience with a false floor. Found a forge I needed, but recognized it was in a "courtyard rooms" mini-vault. (A large percentage of forges are found in such rooms in the early-mid game.) I know that mini-vault often contains breeders so I wanted to venture out into it to nip any of those guys in the bud. Two steps from the forge, I fell through a false floor. My first one, after maybe 10k turns that game. Awesome. Love how vaults tend to contain both forges and lots of traps. Way to emphasize that super fun mechanic.

That was a fun game, other than that. I think that was at about at 600'. I'd found few forges for the turncount, and I needed that one. The most remarkable thing about that game was that I'd found lots of mithril items. I was really excited about forging some stuff.

I didn't give up after the false floor. I "forged" on, but never found another forge. Ended up dying to a room with 9 cats in it. They somehow managed to vortex me, even though they only get two attacks per turn and get a 25% chance of vortexing, surrounding, and overwhelming you with each one. Hard to imagine.

I think from now on I will be save scumming whenever I find a forge but need to explore a bit around it. Save, copy that save, reload original, and if I fall through a false floor, reload copy. I wish I could compile the code, but false floors remain in my game because I can't. The current windows version of cygwin is not compatible with the makefile. And even after it compiles with some customization, the exe doesn't run. At least that was my experience.

[BlueFish]

To celebrate 50 years of the BASIC language, I've written a BlueFish bot

10 Play Sil
20 Find least liked feature
30 Remove
40 GOTO 10

Thus NPP 'band was born.

There was much to remove.

[Nick]

I'm becoming less shy about changing the game to make it more fun for me personally. I recently removed maprot from Mewlips and I thank myself for it every time I encounter them now. I would remove false floors from the game if I could.

To celebrate 50 years of the BASIC language, I've written a BlueFish bot

10 Play Sil
20 Find least liked feature
30 Remove
40 GOTO 10

[locus]

Part of balancing for multiple different sorts of characters is including things which are more threatening to one sort of character than to another. If there is nothing like that, you effectively only have one sort of character.

[BlueFish]

Just had a decent game to 600. No great finds and very few forges - I'd found two till I found my third at 600. Just playing pretty well and carefully and surviving. After I found my third I thought I might explore just a little around the forge, but after I got one room away I realized I might fall through a false floor so backtracked. But not apparently exactly on the same path I used to get there. For, I fell through a false floor three steps into my backtrack.

Then I died about 50 moves later. I was already weak for the dungeon level I had fallen from. I needed that forge.

I'm becoming less shy about changing the game to make it more fun for me personally. I recently removed maprot from Mewlips and I thank myself for it every time I encounter them now. I would remove false floors from the game if I could. But I don't think it's possible in the edit files.

They are unfairly more destructive for smiths than for any other character. Even if the smith hasn't yet found the forge on the level. False floors were not balanced for smiths, they were balanced for every other sort of character, for whom changing levels isn't really that big a deal.

The analog for a smith would be a trap which gave you temporary "encounter more dangerous creatures" for the rest of the level. Which would be fine.

[locus]

Is there something about a lucky start that means certain death? My latest smith 1st found a free round shield of deflection in the starting room, then had double forges generate at 100'. Course he never got to use them. Opened the wrong door at the wrong time & is now a white wolf's breakfast. Why didn't I just wait to heal??

Luck leads to hubris, hubris leads to death. This has been the underlying dynamic of roguelikes since they were actually Rogue.