Question about unlocking chests

[locus]

The problem of not knowing whether you need to spam 'open' a billion times to open a chest or whether it's just outright impossible still remains, though. The number of times a game I do 'r100o' is... well, probably proportional to the number of chests I find.

I also think it's sort of weird that it's seemingly _much_ easier to bash open doors (even at low strength) than it is to wile them open. I get that from a gameplay perspective, bashing creates noise and wrecks the door and is thus strictly inferior to lockpicking, so making it easier is fair. It just seems odd that doors in angband should be so easily smashable but not so easily trickable. It's the fortress to end all fortresses!

What will blow your mind is that with a mattock of belegost, it's easier to dig through the stone around them than to bash them open.

[Derakon]

What will blow your mind is that with a mattock of belegost, it's easier to dig through the stone around them than to bash them open.

I've always thought it odd that you aren't allowed to tunnel through doors in any Angband game. You can tunnel through an undiscovered secret door (when it still looks like a wall), but as soon as you discover the door, you have to bash/lockpick/open it instead.

[locus]

I've always thought it odd that you aren't allowed to tunnel through doors in any Angband game. You can tunnel through an undiscovered secret door (when it still looks like a wall), but as soon as you discover the door, you have to bash/lockpick/open it instead.

Sil changed that in the latest version, so that it's consistently absurd. Trying to tunnel through a secret door will only reveal it, not bash it open.

[locus]

Given that you need Strength 3 to use them, and given that you can can just tunnel around them anyway, it doesn't seem like it would have any serious negative gameplay repercussions to let Mattocks of Belegost tunnel through doors.

[wobbly]

Just got stuck at 100' with a smith with 4(3 Grace +1 pt) perception. I counted & it took 94 turns to find the secret door & it's worse when you don't know exactly where it is. I'm sure that's harder then it needs to be. Yeah I could take more perception but smiths tend to be already tight for points.

[BlueFish]

Just got stuck at 100' with a smith with 4(3 Grace +1 pt) perception. I counted & it took 94 turns to find the secret door & it's worse when you don't know exactly where it is. I'm sure that's harder then it needs to be. Yeah I could take more perception but smiths tend to be already tight for points.

You had a 3% chance to find an adjacent secret door at 100'. The difficulty formula is (level / 2) + 15, accounting for the no_light bug. You get a bonus of +5 perception for "searching", which in Sil means passing your turn. With 2 perception, it would have been impossible. With 3, you'd have had a 1% chance. With Eye for Detail or by using the lesser jewel workaround, you'd have a 32% chance.

Feel free to use the workaround I described above, by starting with a lesser jewel and dropping it before doing these perception actions. I think it makes for a better playing experience, though it probably makes things slightly easier than they will be after the bug gets fixed.

[half]

Thanks for finding what does look like a bug. I've definitely been surprised in the past by some of the functions I've inherited from Vanilla treating the player's square as unlit and I wonder if there are more bugs related to this.

As for a work around, it seems from the description like this is only a problem if you are standing *on* the chest. You can also open and disarm them (and search for traps on them) from an adjacent square. Indeed this is how I always do it and imagine that most people do it. If I'm right that the bug is only when standing on them, then it has never affected my play and I have mainly balanced this area around my play (though other people's complaints will have had some impact).

So it seems to me that the work-around is to stand next to them, and that I will fix the bug and won't add in a compensating penalty.

[BlueFish]

As for a work around, it seems from the description like this is only a problem if you are standing *on* the chest.

Nope it's a bug no matter where you're standing. The only workaround is to have a floor lamp of some kind light your square.

[Patashu]

Nope it's a bug no matter where you're standing. The only workaround is to have a floor lamp of some kind light your square.

!learn add secret_tech

[BlueFish]

!learn add secret_tech

The +5 skill bonus makes a huge difference. I really prefer it, gameplay-wise.

[half]

Nope it's a bug no matter where you're standing. The only workaround is to have a floor lamp of some kind light your square.

Oh, in that case, I had indeed balanced around the current behaviour.

[BlueFish]

When adding back difficulty after the fix, I hope you'll give some consideration to Scatha's point about the "stickiness of choices":

We have, I think, balanced somewhat for the actual behaviour (in the years the game was in beta -- I recall making the numbers a little easier at one point). There is some stickiness to choices, however, so it's quite possible that it's still bit harder than it would have been if we'd started with the other behaviour and balanced to fit that.