ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

My latest Insane Slinger was two-shotted by... an acidic something in the tower.

He was level 12 too, and died on level 3 while getting out after beating the Shade of Angmar.


Thing is, in know that the tower is a pita (IMO, harder than old forest), so I did it third. After sucessfully putting a boot up Angmar's backside, I began my journey up.

On level 3, after climbing from level 4, I ended up in a small room (5 x 4) with lots of rats, worms and skeletons. Looked around, none were elite, and all pretty small level.

I started flinging some shots, killing one or two mobs, before two consecutive turns in which, EVERYONE (skeletons, worms, everyone including me) in the room died to some acid damage from god knows where. Thing is, the acid damage done was 100+ (120 on me) which gave me literally no chance. I would have used a phase door, but I was happily pelting the skeletons with stones and didn't notice until the end-game screen was on me.

Was it a trap? I had 5 in trap detection, and I hadn't moved a single step. No traps were shown in my adjecent squares.

IMO, I think that some of the crawlies triggered a trap farther away from me... but I can't remember any kind of acid traps affecting in a ball shape, and certainly not on level 3 of a supposedly starter dungeon.

Was it an invisible dragon? Haven't seen any dragons in the tower before. (Which would probably explain it if they were invisible).

Was it a special scripted acid-floor room, or what? If this is the case, the graphics should indicate it, it looked ordinary to me.


I don't have the dump since I ragequit. That was quite a successful slinger. /cry

there are blast traps, and yeah they are quite powerful and hard to disarm at least.

Well, that's what I feared.

I don't like it for two reasons.

Not only disarming traps require a LOT of skill and stat points, which normally aren't available to you, there's other problems with this.

First off, detection radius is 1, even at level 5. How on earth am I supposed to know that a mob 3 squares away is going to walk over an ball trap in the first place? Secondly, how can I prevent it? Sounds like shoddy design to me.

From all the roguelikes I played, deaths come from bad RNG or carelessness of the player, not from situations that are both unforseen AND unpreventable. (Often, it's either one. Either it's unforseen, but can be prevented by preparation, or it's unpreventable, but you know it's coming, and can high-tail it before it happens.) But both? Just a bit unfair.

At the very least, trap detection should go from radius 1 to radius 5 at 5 points in. That would help somewhat, and allow some planning or workaround.

While I absolutely love the fact that monsters trigger traps, This kind of willy-nilly triggering of undetected AoE traps is not ok. I have mostly no control on how mobs walk, so how can I prevent such a trap going off when I don't even know it's there?


Oh yeah, also standard rant about a 100+ damage trap on depth 3. I mean, come on, I was level 12 and still pretty much insta-died. I shudder to think what would happen at higher depths.

So, 3 proposals: Mobs don't trigger AoE traps, or make radius detection 5, or reduce their power by a considerabe margin (Logically, a trap's energy should be more powerful if it affects 1 point, as opposed to it dispersing its energy in the whole room in all directions.)

hmm, that is actually an interesting idea, but I would have trap detection drop off exponentially after radius 1.

I know DG fixed traps earlier, but I am not sure if he touched blast traps though.

I don't believe that dropping detection power exponentially after radius 1 is the way to go.

That blast trap is very powerful, and it's very necessary at the very least to see it as quickly as possible. If it was of lower power, I'd agree. (I wouldn't even mind letting trap detection be radius 1 so long as it wouldn't affect me before seeing it in any case.)

Or well, another idea would be for detection power to decrease exponentially as long as the damaging power of the trap drops exponentially too, the farther you are from it.

i'll look intot that.

But at level 12 shouldnt you have had more that 100hp anyway so you would not have been oneshot ?

Wasn't a oneshot, was a twoshot in 2 consecutive turns.

I had about 210 hp.

Ah I see, well maybe the solution is to make ball traps one shot only ? not auto rearming

I really don't know what your plans are for the future though.

If you want to have vaults like in tome 2 with lots of loot, mobs and traps, it won't work for obvious reasons.

I'm also concerned about higher depths. It's no biggie is their maximum damage is 100-120, or so, but if they become ever more powerful with depth...

I dunno.

I'd rather, when they explode, they knock everyone back away from it several tiles (non-resistible by mobs, only by the player) so they don't trigger it several times in a row.

Another idea, adding a trap cooldown before it rearms itself. Maybe identify the traps when mobs walk over them when it's in your LoS and Light radius?

Or make them one charge only, like you said, though that doesn't prevent two of them going off at the same time if they're close together. Perhaps when it goes off, it also disarms all other traps in its affected radius?

I really don't know what you intend to do (or can do), so I'm just throwing ideas in here. Hopefully one would help.

If the traps were one-shot only that would certainly make the maze less annoying. After all, the second time you hit a trap, it's not very dangerous unless you're being rather careless. Dangerous is much more appropriate than annoying.