Teleport Other, too powerful?

[buzzkill]

We haven't all won you know! If you think it's too powerful mod your game.

I've never won. Never even come close to winning.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

NOT EVERYONE GETS TO KILL MORGOTH!!!

But that's irrelevant.

But this isn't. I don't object to TO in and of itself, but it's far to common, cheap, and effective as a vault clearing tool.

It's an item that can be bought cheaply or found in the DL30's and it can effectively banish any monster in the game. Oh, and not just one, but you can effectively nullify MANY uniques in only a single turn. And if they should return, you can just hit them with it again. The ONLY downside is that you can't collect any XP (but you can pick up all the juicy artifacts just lying around unprotected), but if you could kill them effectively you probably wouldn't be TO'ing them in the first place. Morgoth himself is powerless to resist it.

If it's going to stay the way it is, it should rank up there with 'deep artifacts' it terms of price and rarity. After all, it does things that other artifacts could only dreams of... like produce more and better artifacts.

[Pete Mack]

@buzzkill

Your statement about banishing every monster in a vault is probably false. Trying to clear a vault, even with teleport other, is a risky proposition. When you decide to do it, you are making a bet that you won't get killed in order to get loot. It's just like any other part of the game -- tradeoff vs risk. All it takes is a single AMHD or Greater Balrog or Azriel to wake up and get the first move, and you are dead instantly.

Most notorious--to me--is the "Reward is Worth It" vault. Lots of good stuff, but incredibly dangerous to try to fetch it.

[PowerDiver]

I think the current teleport other is required to make up for the equally unbalanced summoning mechanic. If you want to make teleport other only affect one monster, then summoning should only be able to summon one monster for starters.

If your objection is just to the vault clearing aspects, there are other alternatives. E.g. , NPP solves the problem by giving the objects to the monsters. I don't like it because I cannot get over the fact that monsters that cannot carry objects do carry objects.

[Donald Jonker]

I think the current teleport other is required to make up for the equally unbalanced summoning mechanic. If you want to make teleport other only affect one monster, then summoning should only be able to summon one monster for starters.

FWIW, fixing (mass) sleep would solve this little dilemma as well.

[buzzkill]

Your statement about banishing every monster in a vault is probably false. Trying to clear a vault, even with teleport other, is a risky proposition. When you decide to do it, you are making a bet that you won't get killed in order to get loot. It's just like any other part of the game -- tradeoff vs risk. All it takes is a single AMHD or Greater Balrog or Azriel to wake up and get the first move, and you are dead instantly.

Most notorious--to me--is the "Reward is Worth It" vault. Lots of good stuff, but incredibly dangerous to try to fetch it.

Point taken.

I'm probably not the most qualified to speak on this, as my portfolio lacks any really deep dungeon experience. However, when I get into a tough spot or see something that I just have to have, it's the first thing I reach for because it's almost fail-safe, even against an enemy or enemies that I have no hope of beating in a fight. I just kinda assumed that the deeper you get, the nastier the monsters, the better the treasures, and the same relative risk, meaning that as long as you get the first move, or can survive one attack, pending successful activation, you're golden. Sure there's a risk, but if the 'big risk' you're taking is betting that your sleeping enemy doesn't wake and moves first, then, it seems to me, not that great of a risk considering the likely reward. Furthermore, should one even be contemplating a taking on a monster that can kill you in a single turn. Of course not, unless of course, you have nearly infallible way of dealing him. More often than not, I think TO is the preferred way to 'minimize the risk' because it works so well. Too well IMO.

My apologies if my remarks are a little off the factual base. That's simply my lack of experience showing.

[etaomyx]

If we fix (2) so that each works reliably on monsters, but each has a unique drawback, then instead of relying on one single godly and boring solution, we suddenly have a full set of resources for dealing with vaults, diving and escapes. The game's overall difficulty need not change at all.

Well spoken. Sleep should be a legitimate strategy for escape, confusion and slow should help stop monsters getting too close, and teleport other should remain useful for dispersing monster packs that are simply too dense. Strengthen the other spells, and you have good substitutes for TO in most situations, and more varied gameplay.

Edit: I suppose another solution to the Vault Problem would be simply to exploit the anti-teleport ("CAVE_ICKY") flag to prevent monsters being teleported out of their vault. Hackish to be sure, but it would certainly make you earn your artifacts.

[Pete Mack]

@buzzkill-

I've lost several promising divers by trying to get greedy and going into a vault. (Greater Balrogs breathe for how much chaos damage???) By the time you can tunnel or STM to the entrance of most GVs, monsters have started waking up. And if there are time hounds (for example) in a big entry chamber, you just can't even get into the vault safely. Just try diving past 2500' and try a vault. The difference is dramatic when the monsters are more dangerous than ancient dragons.

[PowerDiver]

I'm probably not the most qualified to speak on this, as my portfolio lacks any really deep dungeon experience.

You shouldn't be complaining about things being too easy if you don't win often. My guess is that you have yet to learn an important lesson, perhaps the most important lesson. A 1% risk is not a small risk -- it is a huge risk. The game is so long that if you habitually knowingly choose to take 1% risks, you are unlikely to win.

Those 1% risks are so tempting, and often you don't even realize you took the risk until it already happened, and sometimes you were mistaken and they were 3% risks At some point, I realized I couldn't resist temptation. As a result, I chose to embrace a playstyle where I dive quickly to shorten the game so I won't take too many such risks. If you dive at what most people consider a normal pace, you cannot afford to think of 1% as a small number.

[Pete Mack]

Powerdiver says it better. It may seem like a "small" risk. But any perceptible risk is enormous in a long game. Small risks add up to death surprisingly quickly. Sure, sleeping monsters are really small risk, so long as you have a feel for who's likely to wake up. But again, if you have to tunnel to get to a really worthwhile vault, and most monsters will wake up.

Again: if you feel that Teleport other makes the game too easy, you are not diving fast enough. A side effect of this is dying from some "unlikely" event like a double failure of ... Teleport Other.

EDIT: If you remember your intro statistics course, you might remember how fast (1-ε)^n shrinks. If you never had intro statistics or probability, you are really missing out.

[etaomyx]

I do not think anyone is saying that Teleport Other makes the game too easy. Only that it is unusually cheap and universally effective as compared with similar spells, and using it to completely empty vaults to obtain free artifacts is a dumb strategy that should not work. Yet clearly, if you are willing to take the risk of opening the vault in the first place, it's presently better to Teleport Other like crazy rather than actually do any fighting, which is wrong.

[Pete Mack]

Using it to empty vaults for loot is not a dumb strategy, it is the only strategy. (Compare it to *Destruction* and the Banishment spell: these have no risk, and leave the artifacts untouched. Thus they aren't strategy; they are tactics.)

If you do it too often, or for the wrong monster, or for the wrong kind of vault, you will die. This is the very definition of not too easy.

Teleport Other is a way to loot the occasional vault, a way to decline some fights, especially with sleeping monsters, and a way to combat unwanted summons. I always assumed this was WAD. It certainly doesn't qualify as a real escape, unless you haven't found a decent stack of ?Teleport Level in the Black Market.

If you are looking for something that might be undervalued and overly common, the Staff of *Destruction* is a better candidate.

[Atarlost]

I thought *Destruction* now deleted artifacts and Banishment left uniques behind.

[Pete Mack]

No and yes. *destruction* serves as both a way to get rid of unwanted monsters and easy pseudo-ID for artifacts. As you say, banishment doesn't work on uniques. But this isn't too big of a problem: if you can abolish all the Time Hounds non-uniques U's and D's, what's left in a vault isn't nearly such an existential threat.

[Atarlost]

Ah. I haven't messed with the new V so the change to *destruction* may have only been discussed.

[Whelk]

I like Teleport Other how it is. It's one of my "oh crap" buttons along with Teleport Level. I'm a casual(ish) player, so I enjoy having an ace up the sleeve to prolong the time till my inevitable death.

Maybe make it a birth/difficulty option or something.

If it ever gets booted or 'nerfed,' us fans can always write it back in the old way ourselves, though, so that's nice.

All that aside, I think I've found more artifacts outside vaults than in. For some reason I don't seem to come across vaults too often.