» Contents
» (0) Quickstart
» (1) Introduction
» (2) Installation & setup
» (3) Creating a character & starting to play
» (4) The world
» (4.6) Pits and vaults
» (5) Item and flag details, elements
» (6) Monster details
» (7) Character details
» (8) Tactics & strategy
» (9) Miscellanous

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(4.7) Traps & trap kits
(4.6) Pits and vaults                                                           
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Usually monsters are found on their corresponding depth. You can press ~7 to
find out which monster occurs where. However there are some exceptions, where
you can find monsters "out-of-depth" (ood), meaning that you will encounter way
more powerful enemies than would usually occur on a particular depth.
That can be very dangerous but also very rewarding. Out-of-depth monsters
sometimes occur inside of so-called "pits" and very likely inside "vaults".

Pits are large rooms, surrounded by a rectangle-shaped passage, containing
monsters picked by a pit-specific criterium (troll pit, zoo pit...).

Usually pits are very welcome means for gaining experience or items, like orc
pits at low character levels, troll pits at low-medium character levels,
dragon pits at high character levels and to an extent greater demon pits.

Some pits have a rather bad threat/reward ratio though, such as treasure pits
(containing jellies, molds and mimics that look like treasure, not actually
real treasure), humanoid pits, undead pits (called 'graveyards' - the problem
is that they contain a lot of wall-eaters, which is hard to handle sometimes),
zoos (animal pits, that often contain multiple nasty quylthulgs) and chapels
(lesser angels, but also knight templars which may summon more dangerous angels
if unlucky).
Kennels (canines and hounds) are usually safe, but at higher level you should
watch out for aether hounds and gravity hounds which may breathe gravity for
tele-to effect.
Many rather mid-level demon pits may contain wall-eating lesser balrogs, but
with some effort can be cleared without much hassle, especially if you have
wraithform at your disposal.

Vaults are (sometimes extremely large) fixed structures of rooms and passages,
often surrounded by permanent walls that cannot be damaged except for a few
entrance spots made of normal granite wall. However, some vaults are open or
just barred by (hidden) doors and do not require special tunneling effort to
get into, or are not even surrounded by stone walls at all.

Depending on your font if you have trouble discerning permanent walls from
granite walls, consider enabling the option  = 1 permawalls_shade  which will
display permanent walls in a different colour.

Vaults are usually filled to the brim with traps and nasty monsters. Using
means of trap detection and monster sensing allows you to spot vaults easily,
if its wall structure or permanent walls (not all vaults have those) doesn't
already give it away.
Another very early indication for a vault on your dungeon level are the floor
feelings displayed in yellow colour, see (4.8).

Among the most dangerous vaults are "no-teleport" (or for short "no-tele")
vaults. These prohibit all teleportation effects including 'word of recall'.
That means when you get into a bad situation you cannot easily escape!
No-tele areas will give you certain warning indicators when you enter them,
see "Vault feelings" in (4.8), the first one listed ("still air").
Note that on a floor where Morgoth currently resides, all vaults will turn into
no-tele vaults, even if they normally aren't!
Creatures who teleport you towards them are unable to teleport you onto a grid
that is 'no-tele', so you needn't worry about that when facing a no-tele vault.
(This is actually true for any kind of teleportation in the game.)

A vault can be a real adventure of its own! If your character isn't very
powerful compared to the dungeon level or you aren't sure what you're facing,
you better stay out of vaults. It heavily depends on the vault structure itself
too of course, some are hard to control while others allow you to take out foes
one by one without much effort to prevent them from ganging up on you.

Note that some monsters can destroy walls and thereby dig their way out of a
vault, if they are awake. So in case of dangerous vaults you better stay at a
distance or even leave the level. This is especially true if you get the level
feeling "What a terrifying place.." (also see (4.8)).

Besides pits and vaults, there are also special rooms with features inside that
look interesting but are just normal rooms nevertheless.
Also see 'Pit', 'Vault' or 'Room' in (0.4).
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(4.5d) Dungeon bosses
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(4.7) Traps & trap kits