Re: [Crawl-ref-discuss] Entrapped in vaults

[Darshan S. <sci...@gm...>]

On 7/20/07, Haran Pilpel <ha...@ma...> wrote:
[sealed rooms in vaults: good or not]
> > The answer could be qualitative: we allow this from dungeon level
> > [whatever] onwards.

> I think this is the proper answer. In theory, you could be stranded
> in the Swamp (and definitely in the Shoals) already, so making it
> possible in vaults is OK.

I'd be very unhappy with design decisions that leave my XL 16
character trapped in a vault just because all my scrolls of teleport
were trashed by a dragon[*] and I hit a bad teleport trap.

I'd like to see a commitment from vault designers to not create
completely sealed areas, because that forces players into boring
paranoia mode where they don't go anywhere without huge stacks of
teleport scrolls, or (if they don't go paranoid) lets the RNG
completely screw them over in a most un-Crawlish way.

In general, apart from very narrow cases (the Pan demon lord levels),
we don't ever want Quit or Starve to be the character's only choices.
We *always* provide some exit, be it item, or trap (teleport or Zot),
or stair. The exit can be brutal, but there must be an exit.

Incidentally, I think the Shoals dungeon generation needs to be fixed
if the Shoals are still not doable without levitation (they weren't
last time I checked). Mandating levitation is arbitrary, and uncool
for a primary rune branch. Making it dangerous without levitation is
fine, making it impossible without levitation is not. (Slime is the
only comparable branch with a similar requirement, and I think it
should be fixed already; I believe the only reason the Slime Pit rune
was sealed in was to keep the treasure chambers jelly free, and we can
find better ways to accomplish that.)

[*] To cite a recent game on cao: a level 18 character got most of her
scrolls trashed by a dragon, and was then teleported by a monster into
a sealed room in the Vaults. That kind of experience is not fun, and
we want to strain every nerve to make sure it doesn't happen.

Cheers,
Darshan