Using pocket dimension to "escape" a life and death situation

Umm - I haven't seen this in a thread title yet, so i'll just make a new one

Essentially, if you are in trouble, you pocket dimension, then access a wizardland with weak mobs, then heal yourself up/level up/etc, then return to the dungeons full power. Make sure to tell whoever was about to kill you that you'll be back. Using this trick gives some kind of value to wizardlands with "nothing" in terms of items/xp.
However, because you obviously have no way of knowing what is a "safe" wizardland or not, that naturally means we should also start exchanging codes for "safe" wizardlands.
As far as i can remember


Powmaggorrah

gave access to a wizardland that "should" be safe for anyone who's more than level 6 or so. (Bear in mind, i play hyper tanky builds, so yeah, you might want a few more levels). It actually had low tier diggles inside, but there was occasionally higher tier stuff.

 

Really I'd think most level 1 wizardlands would be safe for someone who's past the second dungeon level, and level 1 wizardland codes are EVERYWHERE.

The only serious risk is if you're at like, two health and there's monsters just inside the entrance.

 

Well, level 1 wizardlands ought to be safe for anyone who's successfully cleared level 1, which, with exp boosters, would put them at level 4-5. Level 6 is pretty much the point where floor 1 wizardlands should become cakewalk for almost anyone.

 

I'm feeling quite wizardly right now so my apologies if I don't make much sense. Why not mark the wizardland codes, whenever they're published, with something like "safe clv 1-3

 

^That was kind of what I was pushing for with this thread. So far, all i've seen is "wizardlands with cool lewts". There's more uses to wizardlands than just cool lewts, imo. Aside from this death dodging trick, rounding off levels comes to mind.
If you are say, 1/4 to the next level, and that next level nets you a capstone, then you probably want that level before going down and opening the first door you find to stumble into a monster zoo. While farming say 5% of the remainder of a level via random spawns is cool, once you get to the 20% mark, it quickly becomes a painstakingly process esp. at later levels. More importantly, it's not a very fun process, because you are "grinding" in the absolute sense, running back and forth in an area that's not going to yield anything more aside from a few monsters to kill.

As such, I motion for a "Tagging" of wizardland codes

3 tags that come to mind so far

"Kewl Lewts"
"Safe"
"Exp Farming levels X to Y"

 

bitizbargsee if I recall correctly.. pretty easy DL1 wizardland. Until you pull the lever on the floor.... Good luck with that!

 

I just did Uomiznusnus.
It's a level 10 wizardland but I started without any enemies in sight, so it should be safe for getting out of a bad situation.

 

I did this once when I was stealing a Time Lord Scarf from Brax. Man, that was TOTALLY worth it considering the next DL was 7.

 

I'm kind of concerned about the balance questions that Wizardlands bring in general.

Being able to farm experience and loot has always been sort of against the spirit of the roguelike genre as a whole. But at the same time, I can't help but think it's awesome and am enjoying farming on some of my characters.


Anyways, my thought here is that it might be a good idea to make the pocket dimension inaccessible if you're within the sight range of a monster. This also makes using a visit more of a choice prior to, say, opening a monster zoo.

 

When you enter the Pocket Dimension during a zoo (even if you don't go to the Wizardlands) due to a bug you lose the reward. Unless it's intentional.

Perhaps, when you enter the Wizardlands during theft or a zoo, it should spawn lots of Dread Collectors and Evil Clones respectively when you enter it. But only when you enter a Wizardland; accessing the pocket dimension causes no harm.

 

It is probably the same bug that causes you to lose the zoo reward if you go up or down a floor before you finish the zoo.

 

To be honest, i think it's only really "farming" when you use more wizardlands in one run than you actually find. Even then, as long as you don't use the code reset you'll only get to use them once it's still ok in my books. Using wizardlands to safely farm on lower level mobs sounds appealing, but typically yields only a trickle of experience because of how the xp System works. Therefore, you can farm, but every extra low level you use to farm is a level you won't be coming back to later. While there are infinite wizardlands (well, almost), the number of documented wizardlands that get put up on the forum isn't, and finding the right one is quite the hassle. So yeah, not that unbalanced, all told.

 

Considering the Pocket Dimension is technically Level 0, you're right.

 

I suspect that healing in Wizardlands will be nerfed, and soon, given that the developers deliberately made it so you can't use your pocket dimension as an escape route from the regular dungeons.

 

Erm... guys, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Alj_-ATA7GiYdGdDempHZEV5eUN0Y2VKRG1sazk5Nnc#gid=17

 

The devs have said before that it's intentional

I guess it depends on how badly you want the Monster Zoo item. But if you are already in a pinch and about to die anyway, there's not much of a choice there.

 

Considering the explicitly mentioned using wizardlands this way in their blog post about the pocket dimension, I wouldn't count on it.

I think it's fairly overrated as an escape route anyway tbh. It can't do much to help you if you're surrounded by enemies from a monster zoo who can kill you quickly, unless you repeatedly do it to the point of being irritatingly boring.

And as far as grinding, it's probably only slightly faster then pacing back and forth waiting for monsters to spawn on a floor you've already cleared.

 

well in my opinion, other then potentially using such a plan once on a going rogue char with permadeath on, the only people who would do such a thing would probably also be modifying the game files to level faster, or adding a bunch of max rank weapons to shops for 1 zorkmid
you know, the people that dont like having fun, enjoying a game, or enjoying a bit of difficulty
i cant actually see people doing this more then once, and like i said, thats probably a worst case scenario that i heavily doubt anyone could be bothered with.

 

Well, the major difference is that you never have to close down the game to do it. If you're in a very dangerous situation on DL15 -- say that you're one turn from being killed by Dredmor himself -- you're just open up the spreadsheet and pick a low level wizardlands and go there and heal. Repeat anytime you're at low health. Even if you're not regularly deleting the w_keys, in theory you have at least 90000 possible escapes to use for this sort of healing even if you're just sticking to the DL1 wizardlands. That does strike me as a balance issue because, again, it requires no modifying the actual game to take advantage of.

I also think it's easy to fix. The pocket dimension should simply not be usable if you're within the sight range of a hostile monster. This not only makes usage of the pocket dimension a more interesting choice besides as a logical inventory expansion, but it plays in well with the new stealth mechanics. (admittedly they need tweaking too)

Sorry for repeating myself.

 

Then again, it's not like there weren't escape mechanics before we got the pocket dimension. People regard having a source of movement ability (a teleporting skill or item) and invisibility essential not because they are "cool", but because they are useful. Something dangerous brought you down to half-dead? Use that mushroom of invisibility/Ninja Vanish and fall back to heal and buff your character before going back.