Door

Doors are represented by + when closed, and - or | when open, depending on whether the door is in a vertical or horizontal wall, respectively.

Opening doors

Doors can be generated locked or unlocked. Unlocked doors are opened using the open command (o). Locked doors can be opened in a variety of ways:

• Unlocking by applying a skeleton key, lock pick, or credit card to the door.
• Zapping a wand of opening at it.
• Kicking at it until it is smashed to pieces. This should not be done when watchmen or their captains are present.
• Zapping a wand of striking at it, destroying it.

Locking doors

Doors can be locked by applying a skeleton key to a closed door, or by using a wand of locking. Some monsters can open closed doors, and amoeboids can ooze beneath locked doors. However no known monster is capable of using keys to unlock doors.

Creating doors

A destroyed door, or any square leading to a corridor, can be turned into a fully functional door by casting the Wizard Lock spell at it. A destroyed door is not shown on the map, but can be detected with the look command (:).

Finding secret doors

Some walls are in fact secret doors, which can be discovered by searching, brute force, or magic.

Searching is done with the search command (s), and is aided by wearing a ring of searching or wielding Excalibur. Luck affects the chance of a searching successfully, so players who mistreat their luck can find themselves stuck on a dungeon level with no obvious exit.

The brute force method involves kicking at walls, applying a pick axe, or zapping force bolt at a likely position where a secret door might be. This is very time consuming and often dangerous.

The magical method involves using a wand of secret door detection and will immediately reveal any secret doors within a 13 square radius.

Using doors in combat

Doors do not allow either monsters or you to pass through diagonally. This can be a great advantage when fighting multiples foes. A door like the entrance to the treasure zoo at the top of sokoban can become a killing ground for monsters who will stream through one by one, allowing you to avoid their ranged attacks.

Using doors to exercise strength

Opening and closing doors exercises the character's strength every time the door resists. This feature can be abused to enhance the strength attribute. However doors only resist when the player character has very weak strength and low luck.

This technique is only useful for luckless Healers with strength as weak as 7 or 8. With decent physical attributes and luck, the odds of the door resisting become very low. For example, if the characters physical attributes average say 16 with a luck of 4, the chance of the door resisting becomes 1/184 (0.54%). This means that the player has to open/close the door 100 to 200 times to exercise the strength attribute once.

Related objects

Drawbridge, trap doors