Large vaults

[Estie]

I am not suggesting to remove TO. Just to see how far you can get without.

[fizzix]

You can get very far. But it's extremely scummy and not very fun. Basically you wind up ditching tons of levels.

[Estie]

Right. Therfore I suggest to also use the birth option "Force player descent".

[Nick]

Some variants make banishment, mass banishment and destruction have no effect in vaults. Others have monsters which teleport to the player. These are possibilities.

Another option is to simply remove any vaults which teleport other makes too easy.

[fizzix]

Another option is to simply remove any vaults which teleport other makes too easy.

Nick wants to remove all vaults. You heard it here first.

[Derakon]

Yeah, frankly any fight can be trivialized if you can set up the terrain beforehand; just dig (or find; they aren't uncommon) a corridor such that monsters must move into your firing line before they get a turn in LOS. Wake up the monsters, they come out, you plink them away as they do. Fixing that would require monsters to refuse to step into the player's firing line, which in turn means the player has to always come to the monster, getting into LOS of a bunch of monsters at the same time etc. etc. etc.

[Estie]

Yeah, frankly any fight can be trivialized if you can set up the terrain beforehand; just dig (or find; they aren't uncommon) a corridor such that monsters must move into your firing line before they get a turn in LOS. Wake up the monsters, they come out, you plink them away as they do. Fixing that would require monsters to refuse to step into the player's firing line, which in turn means the player has to always come to the monster, getting into LOS of a bunch of monsters at the same time etc. etc. etc.

Trivialized ? Imo what you describe is less trivial than a fight (press move key towards monster if health is ok, retreat otherwise). The difficulty and appeal of Angband has never been in the actual fight.

[Timo Pietilä]

Another option is to simply remove any vaults which teleport other makes too easy.

Needs definition of "too easy". To me GV is not place of challenge, it is a place to get good stuff. They do not need to be extra super dangerous. If you increase danger so much that you can't handle them (which you do if you nerf TO in them) then no-one will be bothered to even try and the point of having GV in first place goes away.

There are only two GV:s that risk/reward ratio is hugely in favor of reward, and those are the CGV-variants, and both of those are actually very difficult to clear even with TO if your level and monster level are different enough. I rarely can clear those until I'm so high level that items in them are not really huge improvement anyway unless I have access to mass-banishment and banishment. Other vault types usually are just huge disappointments (and some of the enormous ones take forever to clear, so I would vote for their removal or shrinking).

Just remove earthquake, banishment, mass banishment and destruction effects inside vaults.

[Bogatyr]

Oh please don't mess with TO any more. You've already taken away my beloved LOS trick and hockey-stick corridors . I have a suggestion: if you don't like TO'ing in vaults, then DON'T DO IT and just fight everything.

[Bogatyr]

Needs definition of "too easy". To me GV is not place of challenge, it is a place to get good stuff. They do not need to be extra super dangerous. If you increase danger so much that you can't handle them (which you do if you nerf TO in them) then no-one will be bothered to even try and the point of having GV in first place goes away.

There are only two GV:s that risk/reward ratio is hugely in favor of reward, and those are the CGV-variants, and both of those are actually very difficult to clear even with TO if your level and monster level are different enough. I rarely can clear those until I'm so high level that items in them are not really huge improvement anyway unless I have access to mass-banishment and banishment. Other vault types usually are just huge disappointments (and some of the enormous ones take forever to clear, so I would vote for their removal or shrinking).

Just remove earthquake, banishment, mass banishment and destruction effects inside vaults.

I really don't understand this whole "it's too easy so it must be removed from the game" mentality. Discovering and using these spells is what makes the game fun. Don't like magic? Play a warrior and drop all magic items. Don't like earthquake, banishment, mass banishment, and destruction? Then DON'T USE THEM. Simple. Leave them for those of us who like them.

[Timo Pietilä]

Oh please don't mess with TO any more. You've already taken away my beloved LOS trick

Asymmetric LoS still exists. Which LoS trick are you talking about?

[Bogatyr]

Asymmetric LoS still exists. Which LoS trick are you talking about?

This one:
###p#
##D
@

@ can hit D but D can't hit @. In fact @ can (could) hit everything diagonally up and to the right of D like p.

What in particular LoS asymmetries exist? Or is that a spoiler....

[Timo Pietilä]

This one:
###p#
##D
@

@ can hit D but D can't hit @. In fact @ can (could) hit everything diagonally up and to the right of D like p.

What in particular LoS asymmetries exist? Or is that a spoiler....

Hitting p would be hockey stick, which is good that you can't do anymore (didn't even know that's fixed). Hitting D without it being able to hit you still exists.

[Bogatyr]

Yeah, frankly any fight can be trivialized if you can set up the terrain beforehand; just dig (or find; they aren't uncommon) a corridor such that monsters must move into your firing line before they get a turn in LOS. Wake up the monsters, they come out, you plink them away as they do. Fixing that would require monsters to refuse to step into the player's firing line, which in turn means the player has to always come to the monster, getting into LOS of a bunch of monsters at the same time etc. etc. etc.

Figuring out such a strategy and setting it up is the fun of the game. If one must always walk into LoS of a large group of dangerous monsters then the game is impossible, or you spend all your time just avoiding them, which is also not fun. If you don't like setting up fights, feel free to jump right into the middle of them and see how it goes...

[Bogatyr]

Hitting p would be hockey stick, which is good that you can't do anymore (didn't even know that's fixed). Hitting D without it being able to hit you still exists.

Kind of miss hockey stick against hounds . Hmm I could have sworn I got hit in the @ vs. D position above in 3.5.0, but I'll experiment to be sure.