More limited anti-teleport / digging in vaults.

[Aquillion]

The current teleport / digging restrictions in vaults seem a bit draconian -- it feels like they were designed for an earlier kind of vault. Many vaults lack easily-raidable treasure rooms now, and even ones with big piles of treasure often put them in rooms completely packed full of monsters, so teleporting or digging wouldn't really help you. Additionally, many builds and classes are very teleport-dependent, and while it can sometimes be fun to be challenged by situations where you can't use your core capabilities, the no-teleport limits on vaults feel both too common and too arbitrary.

I suggest refining it a bit, though of course someone would have to be willing to go over existing vaults to tweak them for this. In particular:

1. Limit the undiggable / teleport areas to specific parts of vaults that would cause problems if dug through.

2. Make it so the anti-teleport effect ends under certain circumstances (generally, circumstances after which it's no longer necessary) depending on the vault -- on some vaults, it might open as soon as the vault is opened, if a specific internal door is opened, if the player steps on a certain spot, or if a certain monster is killed. This would in particular allow vaults to have broad no-dig/teleport areas to keep players from accidentally breaching them, while dropping the limitations once the player has opened them deliberately.

[lukep]

What if instead of the tiles in a vault being no teleport, vaults were surrounded by one way teleportation barriers? That way, you could teleport out of, or within a vault with no restriction, but could not teleport into one. No clue how/if it could be coded though.

[Grey]

Vaults definitely shouldn't be possible to teleport into - could mean instant death from a random teleport.

Overall I take the view that vaults are extra side challenges, and should be approached as such. If your char is too reliant on teleports then consider skipping dangerous vaults till later.

[Hedrachi]

Meh, vaults are supposed to be challenging to the point of being deadly for some. A lot of the vaults (zig-zag being a prime example) are already examples of vaults where digging can lead to troublesome encounters. I wouldn't necessarily say change the vaults, just change the things in the vaults - umber hulks for example, shouldn't be able to dig when they're in vaults (make diggable vault walls be VAULTWALL as opposed to WALL or HARDWALL, don't let the things dig through VAULTWALL).. Xorns and xarens could still go after you, but in vaults like zigzag and 32 chambers they'd be rare I think. Maybe because of the crypt vault, ghosts couldn't pass through walls, unless the crypt vault is intended to be one of the tougher ones. I remember the one time I opened one of them up, the ghosts were making it a lot harder than it needed to be. As stated in another thread, tp/pd works wonkily in vaults because of the (typically) tight quarters making a lot of possible destinations be walls, and if the destination happens to still be in the vault, afaik it aint gonna work at all.

Tl;dr: I don't think vaults are THAT bad, but some minor improvements would help (like, digging mobs shouldn't be able to dig).

[Aquillion]

Vaults definitely shouldn't be possible to teleport into - could mean instant death from a random teleport.

That's easy to fix, though. Just have the no-teleport field disappear when you open the vault's door or when you first step into the field's area.

Overall I take the view that vaults are extra side challenges, and should be approached as such. If your char is too reliant on teleports then consider skipping dangerous vaults till later.

My problems with this are:

1. This is a universal annoyance for all characters who use teleportation a lot, on all vaults. I have no problem with a fire-using character sometimes coming across fire-immune opponents, but the blanket nature of this ban makes it feel less like an interesting challenge and more like vaults are set up in a quick-and-dirty way that prevents you from trying fun tactical options against them. It'd be like giving vaults an anti-persist effect that negated all your persists the moment you stepped in -- that could be a challenge, yes, but in the long run it feels like you're losing out on playing the game certain ways, because there is never a chance to use teleportation as an approach to deal with a vault. And part of the fun of playing a character who focuses on that a lot should sometimes be using it to interact with interestingly-planned environments like a vault's. It's shutting down strategies that don't particularly need to be shut down -- most vaults don't break, balance-wise, if you can teleport or dig in them.

2. Many vaults have an anti-teleport area that extends beyond the 'obviously vault' section of the vault itself. This can result in extremely odd behavior for people who don't know how it works -- apparently normal parts of the dungeon can suddenly prevent your teleportation from working because they're classified as vaults. The distinction between 'vault' and 'the rest of the dungeon' is not the rigidly clear thing it was back in Angband -- many vaults are designed to organically fit into the dungeon they're a part of, as if they were just particularly interesting things resulting from random generation. This makes it extremely strange to be walking through what seems to be ordinary dungeon and to suddenly have your teleportation shut down.

[Hedrachi]

Vaults are completely, totally optional - at least, they're intended to be. If you don't like how quickly you die in them, don't explore them. If you want an escape option available to you at all times, play an archmage with enough points in teleport to have it be controlled, and make the destination well into a part of the map that isn't part of the vault. Not all classes can clear all vaults, sorry to say. If you want every advantage available to you, there is a way outside of the game to help you guess what you'll find in the vault, so you can make the judgement call to enter the thing or not.

[Grey]

1. This is a universal annoyance for all characters who use teleportation a lot, on all vaults.

Which is... who? Archmages? Oh the poor overpowered mages are having a hard time..? :P Teleport will generally work fine, since it'll take you a long way away. Phase Door will still work if aimed outside the vault. Phasing within the vault is restricted, but there are few vaults where this is a serious issue, and where it is an issue it's part of the challenge of the vault. It also has the important role of stopping you just grabbing the important loot and teleporting away without any challenge.

2. Many vaults have an anti-teleport area that extends beyond the 'obviously vault' section of the vault itself.

I agree that this is a problem which should be fixed. Only within the walls should be vaulty.

[Hedrachi]

Maybe redesign teleport spells to work so that teleporting to another spot in the same vault would work? Not sure how you'd stop teleports from one vault to another though.

[Aquillion]

1. This is a universal annoyance for all characters who use teleportation a lot, on all vaults.

Which is... who? Archmages? Oh the poor overpowered mages are having a hard time..?

Also Temporal Wardens, in particular.

[Hedrachi]

TW's entire spacetime folding tree gets ganked in vaults, yeah. (cept for weapon folding). Swap makes for good single-target crowd control and acts like a weird pd. Temporal Wake has similar issues.

[edge2054]

No teleport can seriously hamper an undead character as well. Other races have access to movement infusions and have an option to run away if they get in trouble. Undead may have CPD at later levels but that doesn't do any good in a vault.

[bricks]

I imagine that it would take some legwork, but it seems like LoS-based teleport shouldn't be forbidden in vaults. That'd really help out Temporal Wardens (and potentially Doomed; their teleport is incredibly mediocre, though).