ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

If a sandworm is following another sandworm then it doesn't reset the countdown on the tunnel collapsing. This can mean a player is happily following a sandworm along to find the tunnels suddenly collapsing around him as the path had been dug earlier. Makes non-magical means of traversing the place much harder.

I think it's fine - I look at them as 'eating' the sand rather than digging it. If there isn't any there [and thus you are moving through it], then how are they supposed to remove it?

I can't imagine why they would be eating sand though, and if they did then where does the send come from when it comes back? I presume they are displacing the sand with their monstrous bulk. By that logic, the next one coming by should press the sand back into the walls of the tunnel preserving the tunnel for a while longer.

Also, I'd say that it's very newbie-unfriendly if the second sandworm doesn't count, because how on earth would one guess that except the hard way?

I believe that this is intentional - and this game is designed to have you either spoil yourself or learn a bunch of things the hard way.

yeah, i don't like that feature either.
navigating that dungeon is already profoundly unpleasant (so unpleasant that i'd almost suggest changing it altogether). the fact that can still get screwed over even when you are patient enough to correctly follow a sandworm is extremely frustrating.

It simply requires a degree of patience - and, preferably, a way to run magic mapping.

If you never enter the sandworm lair without at least one form of teleport/PD/blinking, the only problem I see is getting blinded and having a tunnel collapse on you... As you now get the rod of recall dropped by Bill, you only need to traverse the lair once. I don't think that is too difficult.

And speaking about realism: if the worms actually displace the sand, any tunnels that cross would be CLOSED by the displacement:

The sandworms displace sand in the mythical 3rd dimension ;)

I understand that with phase door / teleport it's not really a problem, but it kinda defeats the whole purpose of the unique dungeon if that's all anyone ever does. I know from experience it's not that hard to get through with a good deal of patience, but the way sandworms don't re-dig existing tunnels makes it much more of a nuisance.

controlled phase door and/or repeated teleports can get you where you're going without bothering with tunnels by just spending inordinate amounts of time getting there, but he's actually talking about teleport/phase door as a way out of collapsing tunnels.

Not very useful when you teleport into a collapsing tunnel though, as I've recently found out... Well, not unless you have multiple teleportation sources.

Recently did it on my berserker with no magic mapping or use of blink.

It actually wasn't that hard with some patiance and being picking about which tunnels you go into or not.
I agree with the OP that tunnelers should reset timer - Even with being really careful going around there, I was hit once or twice because of criss-crossing tunneling (and one near death experience when the worm itself got crushed for ~5000 damage. Run the hell out of there while the tunnel collapsed behind me.)

Anyone that wants to test "redigging" I think the addition of this dig function to the sand object (lines 38-58 of data/general/grids/sand.lua in SVN 2060) will do it.
Not sure if DG wants this in or not, but having a working implementation will makes it easier for him to do so. Post back here if it does/does not work. Cheers.

Done, thanks yufra

The notes for Beta 16 indicate "Sand tunnels will be strengthened by a second tunneler passing by". I don't think this is working.

I am using Beta 16 and am in the Sandworm Lair. Following two behind (one space between us) a "sandworm burrower" I just had the tunnel collapse. The sandworm was heading directly back up an older tunnel.

Not a big deal, it just means being careful to wait for "fresh" tunnels, but I figured it should be mentioned.

Cheers...

Thanks Bladyn, on closer inspection my fix was buggy. The unstable sandwall's dig function should be:
That should do the trick, but I haven't tested it.