Two Vaults

[Monkey Face]

I just saw something that I don't think I've seen before, 2 medium size vaults on the same level. I'm guessing it happens more frequently as you go down further, but this is on DL40. My kingdom for a couple of wands of TO (since I hate giving up on vaults, but I don't think I can take on Atlas)!

[Monkey Face]

I was right, I died. While I was working on the vault I could handle, I wasn't paying attention to the fact that each time I teleported away, Atlas was getting closer to the entrance to his vault. Finally, he broke free from the vault tracked me down and took me out in one shot.

[mushroom patch]

If you had somehow gotten rid of Atlas, you almost certainly would have been disappointed by the contents of the vault anyway. When you get to the stage where you can consistently produce endgame characters, you should try just scumming for vaults and clearing them for a while to get a more objective feel for their contents. Especially at shallower depths, almost everything in a typical vault is useless crap, but this remains true into the endgame. The stuff that isn't useless is mostly the same stuff you'd find lying around in the dungeon, e.g. nice consumables, speed rings, etc.

Vaults are neither particularly rare nor particularly worth clearing. If you don't have teleport other and banishment, they are essentially never worth screwing around with. If you are having a hard time getting past dungeon level 40 or 50, it's quite possible that your compulsion to clear vaults has a lot to do with that. Angband is a game of letting go.

[Derakon]

To be fair, at 2000' what most characters need most is simply a lot of items to get generated. The more that do, the more likely one of them is to be a stat potion or other important in-depth-but-rare item. Hell, even Armor of Elvenkind or a Holy Avenger weapon could be an upgrade. And vaults tend to have lots of items. The problem is the ones that also have those '8' tiles that pull monsters from up to 40 levels OOD. The odds that the tile also has a useful item are poor enough that it doesn't make up for having to deal with the monster, especially if you don't have Teleport Other.

[mushroom patch]

Sure, it's true that if you cleared the vault ("if"), you'd stand a good chance of picking up two or three equipment upgrades, but you don't need the equipment as bad as you need to not die. The real game changing equipment -- speed items, especially rings, trickery amulets, and boots -- are not that likely to show up in vaults anyway. (Maybe spellbooks are an exception here, idk.) The way to get these items (except boots -- I don't know any reliable way to find speed boots) is to get to endgame depths, where they're just lying around on the floor all over the place. You don't have to kill any monsters or clear any vaults to get there.

It might be nice if the contents of vaults were more aligned with the player's intuition for their value. If you're at dungeon level 40 and you see Atlas in a vault you naturally think, "Wow, there must be something really good in there!" But actually, there probably isn't. It would make a lot of sense for the value of loot and the danger of monsters to be more strongly spatially coordinated, you know? In particular, the monster rolls and item generation rolls should not be independent.

[Jax]

How to clear a vault:
1.Mass banish. (Something mumbles)
2.TO about 3 times on the uniques. (The Great Wyrm of Chaos breathes Chaos)
3.??? (???)
4.Collect all the things. (You die.)

this is about as deep as my analysis of vault clearing gets

but yeah 2 vaults is a little unusual. Dont think it happens much more as you go down, they just get bigger and scarier from my experience :O
I normally dont even think about clearing them unless im loaded with TO or i can do the routine above. If you do the routine above and you get another mass banish scroll from the vault you will be LOADED with good gear so fast.

[Therem Harth]

There are some vaults that are very good. Cell and bubble vaults, mainly. Mostly they're pretty poor though.

What's weird about this is that the good vaults are the ones with the least risk, since they let you fight powerful opponents one on one (or just TO them). So I think vaults are due for a bit of a recalibration.

[Monkey Face]

As I said, I was going for the "easier" vault and the only OOD monster left was a lesser balrog. Given that I'd already managed to finish off Kavlax (with some teleporting away), I figured I had a decent chance. The problem was that Atlas was in a spiral vault and every time I teleported nearer, he got a little closer to the outside.