ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

So I am busy fighting off a rare in Vor Armory, and I use my teleport rune as an escape.
I land in the central room with all the mobs and am instantly killed, from almost full health. I didn't even have a chance to react. I lost two lives because I couldn't teleport out on my first try after resurrection.

I consider this a bug.

This happened to me in 1.0.0 as well. If you can teleport into specific vaults, I think you should be able to teleport out.

What's the supposed bug?

Not a bug. Vor armory second floor is not considered a vault (and is not flagged as such), the doors are not sealed. Now, there IS a vault on the level, and teleportation into it would be even worse then into the main room, if that is what happened, you DO have a bug...

Teleport is meant to be deadly in the Vor Armory, unless you can control it. Those aren't vaults, and you are meant to have to adapt your tactics to something different. It's at this point in the game you typically begin NEEDING a movement infuse, both for vor armory, as well as to dodge orc patrols, and then in eruan/charred scar after that.

The boss room not being a vault is pretty cruel. Vor's Armory is probably the only place in the game with teleport traps. I've lost a ghoul cursed on nightmare/roguelike because of it.

Ironically, that's the one time where teleport runes can be useful in vor armory, if you have already teleported into the main room, it can't really get any worse, and probably gets better

ahh, it's not technically a vault. Then yeah, it's not a bug. Traps are traps for a reason.

tiger_eye wrote:What's the supposed bug?

Well, you can debate whether it's a bug or just unfair. But as it is now, using any kind of teleport in the Armory essentially means risking an instant death to the combined firepower of everything in the central Armory room.
Look, I have nothing against teleporting being dangerous in the Armory. My problem is that my char was brought from full health + about 200 points of shielding (yes, I had the same screw-up twice) to zero before I even had a chance to act. Now you can chalk that up to me being underleveled for the zone (which might have been the case), or me not having that specific build that can survive that. But to me, it just sounds like instakill potential for a darn lot of characters, and I was of the opinion that tome was trying to move away from that. It's not 'tactical' if you don't even get a chance to react.

Anyway, no need to look down on me, folks. I tend to count non-intended behavior as bugs, and this one just doesn't feel... tomey. I can't imagine that the same people who put warning signs in front of vaults would intentionally design Armory 2 as a trap for those who dare to teleport. It just seems less tome-style "know the risk" and more Nethack-style "read the spoiler or die".

For what it's worth, I died that way the first time I did Vor Armory too. That said, I haven't died on any successive runs to the teleport problem... But maybe we should have a warning of some kind, about the potential danger of teleporting there? Can't think of a way to do that that doesn't eliminate the challenge, or break the immersion into the plot though. And teleports could ALWAYS drop you somewhere dangerous, the Vor armory is just a particularly egregious example.

XLambda wrote:Look, I have nothing against teleporting being dangerous in the Armory. My problem is that my char was brought from full health + about 200 points of shielding (yes, I had the same screw-up twice) to zero before I even had a chance to act.

You had to resort to a teleport rune when you were at full health + shields?

Anyway, as Crim said, teleportation can always put you somewhere horrible. The only problem I have with the Vor armory is those teleport traps. They just seem sadistic.

He does however have a point. Vor armory is static, and crammed to the gills with absolutely LETHAL opponents. It's VERY rare to encounter so many enemies, much less so many capable of nuking you so swiftly. Eve Pre-nerf solipsists wouldn't be able to take on the main room if they dropped in the middle of it. It seems very odd to expect players to magically KNOW that they shouldn't teleport there, and does seem a bit of a 'screw you' to players who have only just seen it the first time. (To use an earlier posters phrase, 'nethack style read the spoiler or die') Not sure that anything can fairly be done about this however. A 'mysterious warning' might tell the player, but breaks immersion. Just setting it as a vault penalizes players that DO rely on teleports (the controlled variety, such as dimension step, Controlled phase door, high level teleport spells, etc.) in an area that is already quite challenging enough.

It deserves thought, I suppose, even if I'm in favor of leaving it as is.

One problem with setting the main room as a vault is that players might then skip it and release the Wyrms while looking for the Blood-Runed Athame.

I agree that the status quo is too cruel, though. "Read the spoiler or die" is Not Tome.

A lore might work. "We began interrogating the Sunwall scout today. He was captured while scouting our Armory: The damn fool tried to activate a teleport rune when we noticed him, and wound up trapped inside the vault with Kra'Tor. Warmaster Gnarg has ordered an increase in the number of guards inside the vault itself in case the next scout is a little more foolhardy. [various interesting tidbits on what the orcs learned from the interrogation and what they think of the Sunwall]."

Or you could have main room be build with no-teleport tiles w/o setting it as vault. It would be silly for orcs to build super-safe rigged by traps and OP wyrms that all can be bypassed by random wizard with teleport.

done