Door
| A wooden door. |
Doors are Dungeon features which are usually used to separate rooms from each other, though they may be found standing in the middle of a room as well. Found in the Dungeon and almost all branches, they are set into walls and are usually only 1x1 or 2x1 in size (though some vaults may contain far more massive doors). Walking into a door will open it, while pressing C when adjacent to one will close it. If you know that there are monsters behind a door, leaving it closed will keep them at bay unless they are aware of you and are intelligent enough to open the door (or are capable of simply eating the door), in which case it will do you very little good.
Doors may occasionally creak when opened, alerting nearby monsters to your presence. This is less of an issue for heavily armoured bruisers than for stealthy sorts, as they tend to wake up everything no matter what. Fortunately, the chance of this happening is 1 in 8 + 4*Stealth/3, so stealthy characters are unlikely to cause it anyway. Silence also prevents creaky doors.
If there are any items in the doorway, most of the time, they will be pushed into an adjacent tile when the door is closed. If doing so would push the items into deep water or lava, however, the door will refuse to close.
Some doors are transparent, allowing you to see through them. This is the only difference between them and normal doors; much like transparent walls, closed transparent doors still prevent anything on the other side from affecting you.
Runed Door
| A door, covered in runic writing. It looks like there is something special behind it — perhaps danger, perhaps treasure. You may break the runes by opening it like any other door. |
Runed doors are only found in special vaults, are indestructible, and are generally used to contain very powerful monsters and especially valuable treasure. Thankfully, only the player can open runed doors, so any monsters behind them are stuck there until you choose to take them on. Avoid opening them unless you're confident that you can handle something significantly out-of-depth. Clearing the rest of the floor first, just to minimize the risk of you running into more trouble as you flee or teleport away, is advisable, and don't forget that you can close the door again if that'll seal away the threat inside!
Note that random teleports and escape hatches from adjacent floors may still place you inside areas that are closed off by runed doors. In such a situation, you may wish to immediately teleport again.
Several vaults, such as Crazy Yiuf's hut, the entrance to the Hall of Blades, or many of the player ghost vaults are guaranteed to have runed doors. Many of these runed doors will be transparent, allowing you to judge whether the treasure inside is worth fighting for, but also allowing whatever's inside to wake up and notice you.
Sealed Door
| A door sealed tightly by arcane runes. It refuses to open for any creature not recognised by its magic. |
Sealed doors have been shut and locked by a vault warden's Seal Doors spell; this will also push all items, creatures, and players out of the doorway in the process. In order to open the door, you will need to break the seal by waiting for the spell to end, killing the vault warden who cast it, destroying the door outright, or having another monster open it (which is unlikely).
Tips & Tricks
- Closing doors in front of monsters will delay them slightly even if they are able to open the door. If you are trying to buy time for one more MP or for a teleport to kick in, this can be a life saver.
- If you open a door and immediately see out-of-reach enemies capable of smiting you, tormenting you, blasting you with damnation, or otherwise dealing heavy damage at range, don't retreat! Running gives them the opportunity to attack you as long as you're in their line of sight. If you close the door first, this forces them to come to you, robbing them of several turns they could otherwise spend blasting you, and almost guarantees that you'll get to act against them first. This is effective throughout the entire game, from early threats such as orc priests all the way to late-game fiends and liches.
- Alternatively, shouting near a door may awaken the inhabitants of the room beyond, giving you time to back off and wait for them to open the door for you.
History
- In 0.28, doors will sometimes break when monsters open them (a 1/5 chance).
- 0.23 added transparent doors.
- Prior to 0.22, doors could be destroyed by Lee's Rapid Deconstruction.
- Before 0.21, any item in a doorway, big or small, would prevent the door from being closed.
- Prior to 0.20, wands of disintegration and Orb of Destruction could destroy doors.
- Runed doors were added in 0.12, although vault-defined warning-covered doors had existed for several versions before that. 0.12 also added vault wardens and sealed doors.
- Prior to 0.12, there were occasionally secret doors that would only be revealed if you were within line of sight of them and succeeded on a check against your Traps & Doors skill. These were removed, which is why the skill was then renamed to Traps. These hidden doors used to be found everywhere, but were limited only to special vaults in 0.11.
| A wooden door, cunningly hidden. It used to be a secret door, but, at least for you, it's not a secret anymore. |
