Really step into ledge? (Case sensitive) (Y)es (N)o

Game Talk The Garage
1

so maybe I forgot maybe rope glitched how are you meant to get down from ledges? or get past pits?
rope does have an activation it just doesn’t seem to have a use

2

You have to [e]xamine the ledge.

1 Like
3

ok but then it just asks if you want to jump down and hurts you just the same as walking off

4

Well, not if you [c]limb down (you might still slip and fall - and get hurt, probably a question of dexterity or just random):

See-uhm-c

1 Like
5

image
image1920×1080 237 KB

6

think I figured it out it might be about walls or furniture to brace against
if you can climb up you can climb down if you can’t climb up you’re gonna take around a hundred damage getting down

7

Well, since my answers above don’t seem to fruit, let me answer this one more time… Step by step…:

So…

  • If you use furniture/walls to climb up, you can climb down again, but you may slip while climbing and take damage from the fall. To being able to climb, have at least 5 of the surrounding 8 tiles around your character filled with walls or (impassable) furniture. Press the key you use to ascend stairs (default [<]) to get a choise on where to climb. Once you’re higher up, [e]xamine the ledge tile that’s above the tile you climbed from to attempt to [c]limb down. If you chose the right tile, you’ll be prompted with a You may have problems climbing back up. Climb down? [Y]/[N] choice.
  • You can also use downspouts to climb up and down. You may slip while climbing and take damage from the fall. You don’t have to stand on it, you can climb next to it just fine. Press the key you use to ascend stairs (default [<]) to get a choise on where to climb. To try to climb down, [e]xamine the ledge directly above or above and next to the downspout and attempt to [c]limb down. If you chose the right tile and depending on which you tile you chose, you’ll be prompted with a You may have problems climbing back up. Climb down? [Y]/[N] or You should be able to climb back up easily if you climb down there. Climb down? [Y]/[N] choice.
  • You can use stepladders ([a]ctivate them and put them next to the structure you want to climb) to climb up. After placing them (by [a]ctivating them, [d]ropping them on the floor does not work), stand on the tile you’ve placed them at and press the key you use to ascend stairs (default [<]) to get a choise on where to climb. To climb down, [e]xamine the ledge tile above the stepladder and attempt to [c]limb down. If you chose the right tile, you’ll be prompted with a You should be able to climb back up easily if you climb down there. Climb down? [Y]/[N] choice. As far as I know, you can’t slip while climbing a stepladder, but I will edit this post once I’ve checked the source.
  • If there’s a chain link fence next to the wall you want (and can) climb, position your character that at least one of the surrounding 8 tiles has a chain link fence on it and at least one of the surrounding 8 tiles (but not above the one your character stands on at this moment) has a terrain above that you can stand on, then press the key you use to ascend stairs (default [<]) to get a choise on where to climb. You may slip while climbing and take damage from the fall. You can also [e]xamine the chain link fence and climb it first (when you examine it, you get a prompt asking you if you want to Climb obstacle? Y/N) and then climb from there by pressing the key you use to ascend stairs (default [<]) to get a choise on where to climb. To attempt to climb down, [e]xamine the ledge tile directly above or above and next to the chain link fence and then [c]limb down. If you chose the right tile and depending on which tile you chose, you either get prompted with a You may have problems climbing back up. Climb down? [Y]/[N] or You should be able to climb back up easily if you climb down there. Climb down? [Y]/[N] choice.

But your starting question was about ropes. So let’s talk about that one… again:

  • To get down from a higher floor with no of the options mentioned above, you can use a rope grappling hook or jump down. For that, your character can have one in his inventory, wear one or wield one. Using a grappling hook, there is no chance that your character will get hurt from falling, as long as you don’t just run into the ledge.
    Now, [e]xamine the ledge and choose to [c]limb down. You will get a prompt that will ask you if you want to Use your grappling hook to climb down? [Y]/[N].
    If you don’t have a grappling hook, you will get a prompt that will ask and state that You probably won't be able to get up and jumping down may hurt. Jump? [Y]/[N] or You may have problems climbing back up. Climb down? [Y]/[N] (you may slip when attempting to climb down).
    If you chose to jump, there’s - depending on some skills and stats, check post below - a chance that you get down unharmed.

That’s it.

…but you still may slip and take damage.

No, not if you do it right (using a rope grappling hook), your character’s skilled and unencumbered enough or at least a little bit and get lucky. From my tests, with a (unencumbered) sick character (reduced stats), I got down a z-level unharmed 8 out of 10 times (80% success rate).
If you walk into the ledge (and ignore the warning you get), you will get harmed 10 out of 10 times, or 100 % of the time (0% success rate), even with a rope or grappling hook in your inventory.
The damage you take also depends on your skills and encumbrance (and some additional factors).

I will check the code and report back with the actual calculations that are going on. I suspect dexterity checks and weight/encumbrance punishments. [Done, see post below]

2 Likes
8

Welp, turns out things have changed.
Based on what I can find in the code after a not so quick look, you don’t need a long rope to climb down, but a grappling hook.
Turns out all the time I just jumped with my rope - be it in my normal play or in my testing - I just got lucky. Although, “lucky” is probably the wrong term: Dodge skill and dexterity do improve your chance of landing unharmed, encumbrance reduces it. And then there’s a bit of randomness thrown into the mix (resembling the 20% failure rate in my testings). The parkour trait apparently grants you to jump down one story unharmed and reduces fall damage taken on other occasions.

But I also was right in that point that you can get down unharmed by chance, if you examine the ledge.
I also was right that you can slip and fall down (unless you use a grappling hook) if you chose one of the other climbing methods.
As I assumed, slipping (or the lack of) depends on dexterity (positive) and carried weight (negative), but also on strength (positive), traits (parkour (positive) / bad knee (negative)) and wetness (negative).

A rope apparently can save you from falling into a sinkhole (not from a pit, and not from a ledge).

9

Grappling hooks tethered to a rope has never done anything even near a pit. I have yet to be able to use them for anything that would be logically usefull. Either they lack clarity in every regard or there is something missing in the game to use them more often.

Suck they are not more usefull. Throw to get up/down/fence a wall. Up/down a pit. Would be great to throw them to climb up just about anything.

10

I’m not sure that I fully understand what you are talking about.

As stated in my post above, you can use grappling hooks to descend a z-level safely.

They can also prevent you from falling into a sinkhole.

Why would you ever want to descend into a pit?
And throwing them upwards may still come with the continous improvment of z-levels, and I’m not sure that you should be able to “climb up just about anything” with a grappling hook. First, it takes incredible strength to scale a vertical wall on a rope. Second, the hook needs a position that it can reach and jam itself into. As anonanon stated a post under mine, it’s also already possible to ascend a z-level (verified in experimental version 0.E-10907).

11

find a place with a roof you can stand on stand a tile away and activate it on the tile next to the roofed tile
note that it only works with roofs not walls
final answer of the day keep two grapples on you activate to deploy an easy way up and use the other to get back down you can examine the rope up to get the grapple back

2 Likes
12

… or just examine the ledge above the tile you’ve placed the grappling hook at and climb down the same way as explained in an earlier post, the same way as with step ladders…

13

Would really be great if pressing > when not on a set of stairs would check adjacent tiles for down-climbing opportunities. It could say something like,
“There are no stairs here. Choose direction to try to climb down.”
And then you press a direction and it gives you the same prompt as if you had pressed E for that direction.