Idea: Climb Assess. A way to gauge the difficulty and distance of a climb.

[Ender]

Currently there are two issues I see with climbing.

1.  There is no way to assess how difficult a climb is, especially from above when you may begin your climb from a room away and sometimes your only information is:

l s
To the south is Over the Edge.
[Near]
Nothing.


Proposal - Allow players to use assess <direction> to get information about the climb based on their level of climb skill like craft does.

Code Select Expand

>Assess South

Heading south requires a climb. 
This climb would be effortless for you.




2.  There is no way to know how far a fall can be when you are approaching a descending climb.

Proposal - Allow for the ability to look down in a direction:

Code Select Expand

>Look down south

Looking over the edge to the south you look down.
[Very far]
Nothing.
[Far]
Nothing.
[Near]
Nothing.

[Jihelu]

I'd appreciate having this. It could even be 'flavored' if someone wants to cry about 'Realism!' stuff.

assess south
'You can see many handholds'
This would be a climb that's easy for someone at master, but at novice this would still suck. Effectively the 'difficulty' of the climb would be based on the room and not the climber.

assess south
'You see very few hand holds'
This would be a more difficult climb, for anyone.

I'd be fine with either a 'flat' indication of climbing difficulty, or the individualized indication. Or even both.
'There are many handholds to the south, this would be effortless for you'

[mansa]

Are there different 'difficulties' of climb rooms?   Or is there just "climb/noclimb" ?

[Jihelu]

Unless I am absolutely insane I believe certain rooms may be harder or easier to climb than others.

[Armaddict]

There is definitely a Difficulty Check.

[sucre]

Yes, please.

[FamousAmos]

100% yes. Its always the main reason I'm holding back a climb because I have no way of estimating the distance/danger/etc.

[Brokkr]

There are no climb modifiers on rooms.  You have exactly the same chance, given the modifiers from your climb skills, equipment, etc. are the same, assuming the room is climbable (it is possible to have rooms that are not climbable at all).

[Yelinak]

I wanted to bring a tangentially related topic up for discussion last year:

Unskilled climbing seems unreasonably difficult. Even an agile character with a full suit of all existing climbing gear has a pitiful chance to succeed. Climbing downwards is almost impossible if you don't have the skill. Like yeah, if you're trying to scale the Shield Wall without so much as a rope, that shouldn't be easy... but with a full suit of climbing gear, climbing down a two-room hole shouldn't be borderline impossible just because your class doesn't happen to get the skill. It's a little ridiculous how futile it is.

Rope in particular should do more. Given the importance of climbing in this game, we could really do with a feature that lets you tie a rope to something and get a considerable bonus to climbing in the next few rooms down from it, with the caveat that you can't recover the rope except from the room where it was tied. Right now, climbing without the skill feels unrealistically hard, and the code offers no way to use rope the way you actually would, as opposed to comically climbing around with a coil of rope in hand.

Something like this:

Code Select Expand

> command 'tie rope'
Ties a rope ​to the room and creates a no_take rope object in each room up to three rooms downwards from here. Rope can be
untied only in the room that it was tied in. The rope object is fixed to the room in the same way that tents are.

> command 'climb rope up/down'
When used in a room that has a tied rope in/above it, this gives a significant bonus to climb, like +50% downwards and +25% upwards.
Rope cannot be tied "upwards" for obvious reasons, but upwards climbing is boosted if a rope has previously been tied above.

> tie rope
You tie a coil of braided rope to the nearest secure point and hang it down.

> look
Dusty Rooftop [D]
The end of a coil of braided rope has been tied off here.

> climb rope down
Using a coil of braided rope, you carefully climb down.

Dusty Wall above Tek Street [UD]
A coil of braided rope hangs from above.

> climb rope down
Using a coil of braided rope, you carefully climb down.

Tek Street [NSU]
A coil of braided rope hangs from above.

> get rope
A coil of braided rope is tied securely to something above you. You'll have to untie it to retrieve it.

Point being that with the climb skill being restricted to specific classes, those without the skill are so bad at climbing that it's a bit stupid. Even if you have every possible factor in your court (high agility and climbing gear in every possible slot), your chance of success is so low that even two consecutive successes is extremely unlikely. I took a group into Undertuluk last year, and despite making sure everyone had the proper equipment, those without the climb skill spent half the time unconscious. It's sort of cartoonishly bad.

[MeTekillot]

Just like there are partial fails for riding where your mount slows down or what have you, I think partial fails for climbing could be an elegant solution where you take HP damage or stun damage, instead of hurling down a 5 room fall to your doom, or wallowing at the bottom of a sinkhole with a carru. If you partially fail a climb, you should also auto-fail any attempts to pass by a person guarding that exit, as well as auto failing any flee attempts.

[Armaddict]

There are no climb modifiers on rooms.  You have exactly the same chance, given the modifiers from your climb skills, equipment, etc. are the same, assuming the room is climbable (it is possible to have rooms that are not climbable at all).

If this is actually true, then there is some code worth examining for some truly non-explicable behavior that makes it seem the exact opposite.  Not anomalous rooms, but rather extremely consistent RNG for certain areas/conditions.

[Brytta Léofa]

I feel sure that there are rooms that describe their climbs as easy or hard. (But maybe this is just describing "not (codedly) climbing" vs "actually climbing" and I just never noticed.)

[Ender]

My issue with climb comes from the lack of information given on potential falls/downward climbs.

There is no way to tell if an "over the edge" is climbable or not, and no way to tell how far that drop is.

Honestly being able to look in more directions would really solve a lot of problems.  My wish would be the following commands could work:

look <north|south|east|west> down

And if this were implemented it could be used to look in diagonals, even if those were only limited to one room.

look north west
look north east
look south east
look south west

[Lotion]

diagonal looks would be so nice so that upon entering a room you arent surprised by a carru, mek, met, etc trying to murder you

[Brokkr]

There are no climb modifiers on rooms.  You have exactly the same chance, given the modifiers from your climb skills, equipment, etc. are the same, assuming the room is climbable (it is possible to have rooms that are not climbable at all).

If this is actually true, then there is some code worth examining for some truly non-explicable behavior that makes it seem the exact opposite.  Not anomalous rooms, but rather extremely consistent RNG for certain areas/conditions.

I can literally see the climbing calculation, as Staff, when your mortal attempts to climb.

Unskilled climbing seems unreasonably difficult. Even an agile character with a full suit of all existing climbing gear has a pitiful chance to succeed.

If you don't have the skill you will not get the +skill bonus from any worn items.  Because it needs the skill to add those to.  You will get the climbing bonus from having a tool type "climb", but that bonus is only received once.

[The Gruffalo]

That seems like something that should be fixed. If you've gone through the effort to get a full suit of climbing gear, it should actually help you climb, even if you don't have the coded skill. It doesn't make logical sense otherwise.

[Jihelu]

Lol that's hilariously awful

[Fawcett]

If you don't have the skill you will not get the +skill bonus from any worn items.  Because it needs the skill to add those to.  You will get the climbing bonus from having a tool type "climb", but that bonus is only received once.

Wait what!?!

[Brokkr]

I am not sure why you would assume otherwise.

That is the standard for how DIKU handles + skill items.

If you equip something that is + tanning, you aren't able to tan items.  If you equip something that is + pick, you aren't able to pick locks.  Etc.

I am not sure why you would think climb is any different?

[Riev]

I think partially the thought is this:

Climbing is thought of as a 'general' skill. Anyone can climb.
Equipping yourself with a rope, and climbing vest, and boots, etc... IN REAL LIFE... increases your chances of a successful climb even for a newbie.
We would assume that it works similarly in game, considering the years and years of "treat it like you would real life".

Not all of us are DIKU masters, and would not think "Oh I don't have the skill, so skill modifiers won't help".
If anything, we're DnD players who think "Well I didn't invest in the athletics skill, but this gives me a +3".


That said... maybe Climb should be a ride-adjacent style skill that only goes up to high novice for anyone that doesn't have it as a specific skill? That way, bonus gear will assist, but even fully kitted out, you're at like Jman-levels of success?

[Armaddict]

There are no climb modifiers on rooms.  You have exactly the same chance, given the modifiers from your climb skills, equipment, etc. are the same, assuming the room is climbable (it is possible to have rooms that are not climbable at all).

If this is actually true, then there is some code worth examining for some truly non-explicable behavior that makes it seem the exact opposite.  Not anomalous rooms, but rather extremely consistent RNG for certain areas/conditions.

I can literally see the climbing calculation, as Staff, when your mortal attempts to climb.

I'm not contesting that.  What I'm saying is that there is <this area> where you will start to succeed every climb check, reliably and without fail, while there is <this area> not far away where you still fail every check afterwards, until you do that for awhile.  This has been reliable pretty much since the rooms were added.  So I'm not contesting you, I am saying that when there are behaviors like that, it seems like something may be not working as intended if that's the actual intention, i.e. for all climbs to be equal in the eyes of code.

[Brokkr]

Send in a request with the rooms and I will have a look.

[Yelinak]

I am not sure why you would assume otherwise.

That is the standard for how DIKU handles + skill items.

If you equip something that is + tanning, you aren't able to tan items.  If you equip something that is + pick, you aren't able to pick locks.  Etc.

I am not sure why you would think climb is any different?

You say this as if it makes sense and works as intended. It's completely illogical. It may work that way because of an oddity in the code, but unless it's completely impossible to change that, it's fair to suggest that it should be changed. It makes no sense at all. Why would climbing gear do nothing for unskilled climbers, aside from the fact that the code says it doesn't?

I haven't really climbed anything since I was a little kid. I'm definitely someone without the climb skill. If I did have to climb a wall, I'm pretty sure it would help me a whole lot if I had a harness, climbing boots, etc.

And my point still stands: climbing without the skill is too difficult. It should be made so that if you don't have the skill, but do have a full suit of climbing gear, you can climb okay. The ineptitude of characters without the climb skill is simply unrealistic. I'm a slightly overweight accountant who hasn't done any real exercise in over a decade and I'm pretty sure I'm better at climbing than my Zalanthan soldier char.

[Brokkr]

Like sunslits with direction sense, there is specific code that if you equip a "climbing" type tool, you will get a bonus in the climbing calculations directly.  This only applies to the first tool of this type equipped.  That is different from + skill on the item, and on which the bonuses do stack.  The bonus for a climbing tool is intended to help eventually get someone out of a jam, not be to be climbing around okay, if they don't have the skill.  If you don't have the skill, it is intended to be difficult.

[Jihelu]

That's dumb though.