This sort of thing makes the game unbalanced...

[Sradac]

bahhhh too much complaining.

DG dont dumb down the difficulty.

People seem to forget the days of "You enter yeek cave level 8. Bullroarer the hobbit hits you. You die"

or "Robin Hood points at you and cackles. You step on a trap. You die."

Roguelikes are normally MUCH more deadly, if that vault was in a *band you would have had a pack of level 25 hounds breathing on you. ToME is lax when it comes to dishing out vicious OoD enemies.

[Frumple]

That's what insane mode and the infinite dungeon's for, though! The main maj'eyal campaign is supposed to be the kinder, gentler roguelike*. DG took away the voratun greatswords from the kor'pul 1 skeletons and everything!

*Kinder and gentler doesn't necessarily entail kind or gentle, though ?

[bricks]

Standard wyrms are pretty lame enemies anyway. Oh, they can hit me with a ton of damage from a mile away. How exciting.

I avoid the "circle" vault like the plague unless I'm OK with re-rolling a few times. It's very prone to generating preposterous challenges, and the loot is rarely worth it.

[NEHZ]

As long as you have a means of escape (which you can have at that level) and cleared out the rest of the dungeonlevel, there isn't really a no-survivable vault encounter (with the standart small vaults). There are no-beatable vault encounters, but because opening the door takes no time, you can use your means of escape before the monster does anything. If you're prepared, even a lvl 50 multi-hued wyrm can be escaped from. Seeing a monster I can't beat and have to run from gives me a bigger thrill than anything else in the game. Provided it doesn't happen to the point that I will expect it every time.
For the big vaults that don't allow you to see what dangers there are before you go more deeply into it, you need to adjust your risk assesment. And possibly look for items/skills that increase your vision before you try the vault.

Each time you try to open a vault, you get a warning message. That means you shouldn't expect to be able to survive any and every vault without preperation.

[jenx]

It's not about risk vs. reward, though. It's about risk vs. risk mitigation. No amount of reward can balance out an unsurvivable risk, after all.

The question I have to ask myself every time I'm about to open a vault is, "What's the worst I can expect to find in here, and am I strong enough to deal with it?" In my experience to date, the answer to the first part at any point before Daikara or so has always been roughly "A handful of Skeleton mages", which makes the answer to the second part "As long as you can duck around a corner and take them on one at a time, probably". If you're telling me that the answer to the first part is actually "A ridiculously out-of-depth monster that can instakill you", then the answer to the second part becomes an un-nuanced "No", and my strategy has to change to "Never open any vault, ever". Which I can live with (and so, more to the point, can my characters), but it means the game has been misleading me on the first point.

The problem with having things like this as a ten-sigma event is that they create a false perception of the level of risk involved in opening a vault, screwing up the "can I deal with this?" calculation. That, as I understand it, is jenx's objection.

I couldn't have said it better myself !

[Azirphaeli]

My argument, however, is that having a "can I deal with this" calculation that is reliable and predictable is not a good thing. The whole point of a RL is to deal with those situations where you realize "oh &*@^ I cannot deal with this... or can I?!" <frantic search through talents and inventory>

If you know when and when to not open vaults, and know that every enemy in a scaling dungeon fits into that scale then you end up with a different game. A boring game that involves you smashing into enemies and charging through random corridors for hours watching numbers.

It's the moments of panic and worry and genuine fear of turning the corner or opening a door that make games like this work.

[peaceoutside]

>If you're telling me that the answer to the first part is actually "A ridiculously out-of-depth monster that can instakill you", then the answer to the second part becomes an un-nuanced "No", and my strategy has to change to "Never open any vault, ever".

I guess the counter balance to that would be there are some race / class / build options that'd have a fair shot at killing a lvl 25 elite fire wyrm at level 11.

Also, there's nothing stopping you from coming back opening vaults when you're a higher level. I'm pretty sure the vault monsters are generated the first time you visit that entire floor. If you came back to that spot when you're level 20, you'd likely have no problem with it.

[omni]

This really highlights a false expectation that we as video game players have.

We expect to be able to kill everything, all the time with perfect play.

We shouldn't expect that of the game or our characters. This could be an awesome example of tactics involving luring out the ridiculous dragon, teleporting away leaving it wondering in a cleared room while you loot the reward of your harrowing adventure.

which if you think about it sounds awesome. Sure, you didn't kill the dragon but you still won. Tome doesn't punish you from preventing to continue. You wont no longer make maxed level, you can skip whole dungeons and get max level.

And you could potentially do this with as little as a phase door rune and smart play.

Go in with a digger and a teleport rune and it'd be easier.

This game rewards you on occasion for choosing not to fight. Adventurer parties, orchestra corruptors, eternal bone giants, blood lichens, dreaming horrors.

Detection is considered such a valuable thing for utility because it allows preparation. Sometimes that preparation is avoidance (don't open the vault) or

running.

[SageAcrin]

You know, I kinda feel like expanding on my earlier comment by expanding on the risks and how to counter them.

If you pop a Shielding before opening a vault door, it's nearly impossible at every stage of the game to be one-shotted by...well, anything. Usually that requires wacky status shenanigans. I mean, there's some exceptions(I think Naga can do it, and Shattering Charge on rares can occasionally crit you, which hurts like hell), but in general? Ninety nine times out of a hundred you'll open that door and not die to whatever they do first. The remaining 1% becomes very easy to identify.

A measly L25 Fire Wyrm certainly won't do it. That's around 200 damage from Fire Breath and it's not even frontended, I believe. (That is, you have to burn a bit before you eat all of it.)

Generally speaking, if you don't have a barrier, you should have some form of actually decent HP instead. Which means that you should still live through that if your first reaction is Regeneration infusion. You may not slugfest him down, but you should never get oneshotted in that case.

(This, incidentally, is why I think some combinations of class and Antimagic are suicidal.)

If you don't have both...then, yes, you should be seriously considering if you mind restarting a few hours for what's in that vault. If you don't have either of those late, something has gone terribly wrong, or you have a massive amount of passive/active defense tricks tied to your class, one. If something has gone terribly wrong, Rak'shor Pride will probably eat you anyways, so no big loss. The game is *not* doing you a favor by never having you come up against overwhelming force early. There are consistent overwhelming force scenarios late.

And this Wyrm is a pretty extreme outlier. In fact, I've killed many a fairly extreme outlier(one of my favorites was taking down Rotting Titan in Halfling Ruins. With Arcane Blade, generally considered an underpowered class, IIRC). It's a matter of knowing what you can do-and ToME is a game where you can do a really insane amount, so that's quite hard.

That isn't to say that all outliers are fair(like said Titan was not, since it wasn't in a vault...), but you're not instantly dead the moment you see one. It depends on the situation. There are not many "round a corner, die" situations in ToME, thank god, and usually they're class and build dependant.

(And the best I can say to that class dependency is, there's a reason people consider frail builds in, say, Dungeon Crawl to be iffy. A game where you only have one PC and a limited or non-existant amounts of shots does not lend its self to frail builds. ToME does a really good job of making them work in spite of that tendency, but you have to be aware that you do so with options and you have to really know your options to make it work.)

Obviously, that's not to say that ToME isn't unbalanced once in a while, or that you can't get one-shotted(Get your low odds out of depth, say, Lich in Dreadfell! Then have it happen to be a Rare! This can one-shot you.), but it's pretty uncommon and usually not tied to just normal every day enemies like Wyrms.

(There's also that stupid lava vault with the Skeleton Archers that can show in Dreadfell, which I loathe and had literally one-shot[technically, four shot or so, but one step in] a Ghoul once because the damage potential is so insane[and the loot is bad!], but in general...)

And remember, you can come back to vaults. Vault loot doesn't deteriorate, and if it won't keep for three or four levels, it probably wasn't worth caring about anyways. This is certainly something I've done with weaker classes like Rogue more than once, and a common way of dealing with Dreadfell for me is to ignore all the vaults all the way down, then do them on the way up.

If that's not enough advice on how to avoid getting creamed, I can offer still more.

Build Con. Yes, you want other stats more, possibly, but build Con anyways if you're going to try to open every single vault, especially if you're a frailer class.

Consider sacrificing fatigue for armor(some classes, this is a much better trade than others. Heavy armor Archmage is for people who know what they're doing. Heavy armor Corruptor is a valid decision for anyone though, as Fatigue has no impact on Vim).

Invest in mobility skills if you don't have a Teleport rune, and in general I suggest always having at least a Movement infusion if you don't have a full on Teleport or some move that can simulate either-there's a reason I've grown fond of getting L10 extra rune slots.

Keep an eye out for +life items, which can often substantially raise your durability in the earlygame(and, occasionally, in the lategame. The Kroltar set is great.), don't just mass Stun/Confusion resistance and then complain when the hit to your durability overall kills you.

You get the idea. Wall of text aside, there are tons of options in this game, and if you're going to be cracking open vaults, learn them. And learn when you lack them. And when you do, just come back later... if at all. You'll survive without every single piece of loot in the game.

Risk/reward assessment is about figuring out when the risk matches the reward-and not just the probable risk, in Roguelikes. The possible risk. And when the odds of that risk are low enough to be worth going, well, anywhere you don't have to.

Even if these outliers get avoided, one day, you'll walk into a room and there'll be three well spaced Skeleton Master Archers. You need to learn these things to not die, and it's the hardest part of the genre, but as many people have said, it's also pretty rewarding when you thread that needle.

[bricks]

One thing I think all players tend to forget (especially myself) is that the game is, by default, NOT perma-death. There's actually some leeway built into the system.

[wobbly]

There was a lucky aftermath - the wyrm was sleeping and didn't notice me, so I just walked away!!!!! ((

Please forgive me for laughing a little, it seems to me you're saying a wyrm that failed to kill you was completely unfair & unbalanced. Yes, I know your saying it could of turned out different, but still? & next time you'd be better prepared for the unexpected.

[Zizzo]

People seem to forget the days of "You enter yeek cave level 8. Bullroarer the hobbit hits you. You die"

"'Welcome to level 20.' Oh good, now I can go do yeek cave level 8."

or "Robin Hood points at you and cackles. You step on a trap. You die."

"Use ZAngband monsters: Off"

Roguelikes are normally MUCH more deadly,

Not in my experience.

if that vault was in a *band you would have had a pack of level 25 hounds breathing on you.

If that vault were in a *band, I'd have a non-trivial chance of actually being level 25 by the time I got to it. Even absent that, I would with near certainty by that point have been able to obtain a reliable means of detecting monsters inside the vault (radius 25 minimum, BTW), to know what I was getting into. I'd also have a very good chance of having 50-90% resistance against the hounds' breath type and at least a handful of Potions of Speed (that's +100% global speed, BTW, that doesn't get immediately negated the minute you attack something, and that has no cooldown to prevent immediate reuse). Plus, with a little care and planning, I could simply lure the hounds into a bottleneck so that at most one of them could breathe on me at once (most, of course, wouldn't even get the chance, since I'd get the first attack). Not to mention I'd have more reliable means of escape, and more reliable means of detecting and removing traps in the vault, and more reliable means of preventing or removing confusion/stun/blindness/poison effects...

In fact, explain to me again how T4 is actually less deadly than this hypothetical *band.

ToME is lax when it comes to dishing out vicious OoD enemies.

My Summoner who ran into a pack of Luminous frickin' horrors on level 1 of Old Forest would be delighted to hear that. As would my Wyrmic who ran into a Skeleton warrior on level 1 of Trollmire. If they were still alive, that is.

Seeing a monster I can't beat and have to run from gives me a bigger thrill than anything else in the game.

See, to me that's a frickin' heart attack. (Well, if it drops right on top of me without warning. If I can detect it from range and have time to prepare for it or get away from it, that can be a nice rush.)

Each time you try to open a vault, you get a warning message. That means you shouldn't expect to be able to survive any and every vault without preperation.

And yet I have been able to survive any and every vault in the areas we're talking about, without significantly more preparation than I already needed to survive the rest of the level in the first place. Why wouldn't I expect to see what I've repeatedly and consistently seen?

I avoid the "circle" vault like the plague unless I'm OK with re-rolling a few times.

Wait, hang on, so this "ridiculously out-of-depth monster" thing only happens in a particular type of vault, and one that's recognizable from outside? Okay, objection withdrawn, then.

Also, there's nothing stopping you from coming back opening vaults when you're a higher level.

Well, apart from, say, actually opening it when you encounter it to see what's inside. But if, as I take bricks to mean, this particular high-risk type of vault can be identified without having to open it, then yes, that's exactly how I plan on dealing with them when I eventually encounter them.

If you pop a Shielding before opening a vault door, [...]

[raises hand] Yeah, point of order: I need all my current inscriptions, and I need all the category points I've gotten so far to actually, y'know, unlock talent categories. Where again am I supposed to fit a shielding rune? [And yes, my Alchemist character does fire his shielding rune before opening a vault. That's obvious.]

[Frumple]

Obvious but silly. Alchie should be opening vault doors via golem, preferably while the alchie itself is either around a corner (in the direction of the stairs) or a whole room away. But I digress...

E: Though yeah, that vault's... I'd call it notorious, really, for spawning OoD stuff. It's the "Open vault on Blighted Ruins 1, Receive Ghoulking" one. Or master archer. If you're in the rhaloren camp... 25th level elven cultist. Stuff like that. It's one that you seriously, seriously don't facecheck unless you absolutely know you can get yourself out, preferably before even being hit. Those side rooms in particular are bad, because unlike the middle and end ones, there's usually no way to check what's in it without aggroing whatever's inside. Front door's like that, too, really.

[grayswandir]

Each time you try to open a vault, you get a warning message. That means you shouldn't expect to be able to survive any and every vault without preperation.

And yet I have been able to survive any and every vault in the areas we're talking about, without significantly more preparation than I already needed to survive the rest of the level in the first place. Why wouldn't I expect to see what I've repeatedly and consistently seen?

Well, the obvious solution here then is to make vaults a lot harder, so you don't have this expectation in the first place.

[omni]

Zizzo man, with all due respect especially because I'm familiar with killerrabbits...

Tome is definitely lax compared to *bands on OoD monsters. I suspect you may have been on the far end of the bell curve for number of games played to pop luminous horrors not in a vault in Old Forest, and I'd also wonder if they were leveled appropriate for an encounter, instead an abnormal monster type spawn.

I remember in bands that once I knew the exact depth I didn't go down below because you had decent chances of ood'ing poison breathing green dragons that would one shot you. You didn't go past that level without *resistance*, and I'm happy that little bit of knowledge has slipped my brain now. To illustrate check out section five here http://www.phial.com/angband/angfaq2.html#5b

And they expect non spoilered players to learn that by experience...

You go on for a bit that you approach vaults with non trivial amounts of detection, +speed equipment, reliable means of escape, reliable detection, and reliable trap removal. That's a non trivial amount of scumming levels to get those things to be prepared for a vault. Tome offers you very much the same options for preparation. How many times with artifacts not preserved did you hit a vault a little less prepared than you wanted when you got that *special* feeling? How about with preservation, did you skip a vault?

You can't tell me that you hit every vault, every time, with absolute preparation in *bands, unless you were preserving artifacts, and maintaining dungeon layout in levels, and then returning to a given vault when prepared. Which incidentally, is the exact thing Tome allows you to do. It's also the overwhelming response this guy's gotten, and in bands this is comparable to someone finding an OoD monster in a vault that's somewhere before level 10. Sometimes you weigh the odds and open the door, sometimes what's behind that door sucks and you've got to run. This is true in Tome and *bands.

Now I DO miss detection working in vaults. I'm still pretty firmly on the side that this was an unusual but acceptable case; you don't approach vaults without preparation unless you accept the risk of death. I find it acceptable that sometimes the answer when you open a vault is run.

In regards to the fairness of Tome to *bands regarding OoD monsters and such, I'm pretty firmly on Tome's side that the balance is more on the players side.