uncopy2002
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 431
Registered: 07-28-2014
IP: Logged

You find yourself in a room.

The room is uncleared, and you can see some monsters and a seeding beacon around. Now, depending on the beacon's initial condition:

If it's off, leaving and reentering the room without turning it on keeps it off. Otherwise, it will unclear the room at the next visit, and It becomes off again.

If it's on, though, even though it keeps unclearing the room unless you hit it, now it always becomes off when you clear the room.

In two cases they're not consistent with each other in the behaviour. This made me confused at the first time in Seeding Grounds in TSS, where I thought activated seeding beacons keeps being so even when I leave and reenter a room.

EDIT: And I haven't even tested what happens when you re-enter and re-seed a cleared room that has an initially on seeding beacon. I have no idea which state the beacon'll be in.

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[Last edited by uncopy2002 at 09-27-2014 08:56 AM]

kieranmillar
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2670
Registered: 07-11-2014
IP: Logged

The way it works is that leaving a room with a seeding beacon turned on restores the room to its initial state. If the beacon's initial state is off, then it will be off when you reenter.

It tripped me up slightly the first time too I must admit. The beacon preserving its state as it was when you left seems like the most intuitive behaviiour, but behaving in this way would allow the slightly exploiative behaviour of having a room start with it turned on, turning it off, leaving the room before clearing it, and then being able to start the room again with the beacon off instead of on.

TripleM
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 1373
Registered: 02-05-2003
IP: Logged

Perhaps you're thinking about the beacons in the wrong way; it seems completely consistent to me. To 'conquer' a room properly, you must disable the seeding beacon, as if it were a monster.

Beacon-less rooms:

Leave unconquered - room resets.
Leave conquered - room stays conquered.

Rooms with beacon:

Leave unconquered - room resets.
Leave conquered - room stays conquered.

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[Last edited by TripleM at 09-27-2014 10:22 AM]

Kallor
Level: Master Delver
Rank Points: 277
Registered: 04-02-2007
IP: Logged

If the beacon would work as (I think) most people would intuitively assume, that is to always be in the initial state when the player enters the room, and to cancel conquering when lit and the player exits a room, we would face a frustrating problem. When passing through a conquered room which originally included a lit seeding beacon, we would always have to remember to switch it off or the monsters would re-appear. This is probably why this "exceptional" behavior was implemented. Another solution would have been only allowing off state as the initial state (but that would have reduced some puzzle potential).

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Kallor