[3.4-dev] Drakes in pits

[PowerWyrm]

Red dragon pits can have dracolisks and white dragon pits can have dracoliches. Bug or feature?

[Magnate]

Red dragon pits can have dracolisks and white dragon pits can have dracoliches. Bug or feature?

Feature. The pits look for a particular breath weapon: dracoliches can breathe cold, and dracolisks can breathe fire.

It's arguably a misfeature, but it's not a bug.

[PowerWyrm]

Yeah but now with the excluded flags, this shouldn't happen no? MHDs have been excluded, so why not drakes?

[Magnate]

Yeah but now with the excluded flags, this shouldn't happen no? MHDs have been excluded, so why not drakes?

Don't know - surely it would depend on what flag was used to exclude? Hard to tell without studying pit.txt and monster.txt

[Derakon]

I've argued this is a bug before. The simplest way to fix it is to hack up the pit definitions so red dragon pits don't allow e.g. nexus breathers and white dragon pits don't allow undead. Of course those are chosen specifically to exclude those two monsters, but oh well.

[fizzix]

I think it's ok, and frankly, I'd rather have dangerous monsters appear in poison, lightning and acid dragon pits as well. Dragon pits have way to high of a reward/risk ratio, since dragons really are one of the most sought after monsters for loot (for good reason).

[PowerWyrm]

Don't know - surely it would depend on what flag was used to exclude? Hard to tell without studying pit.txt and monster.txt

Fire dragons: BR_FIRE, not BR_COLD (exclude BR_NEXU to remove dracolisks)
Ice dragons: BR_COLD, not BR_FIRE (exclude BR_NETH to remove dracoliches)

[PowerWyrm]

I think it's ok, and frankly, I'd rather have dangerous monsters appear in poison, lightning and acid dragon pits as well. Dragon pits have way to high of a reward/risk ratio, since dragons really are one of the most sought after monsters for loot (for good reason).

Hmm the only problem is that there are nothing except MHDs that breathe acid, poison or lightning for those pits. Concerning the drakes, they just don't seem right for those colored D pits.

[Magnate]

Hmm the only problem is that there are nothing except MHDs that breathe acid, poison or lightning for those pits. Concerning the drakes, they just don't seem right for those colored D pits.

I'm with fizzix on this - I think they fit just fine into those pits - dracoliches are ice dragons with a nasty undead tinge, and dracolisks are wacko fire dragons with ... er ... nexus breath (no idea where that came from anyway). IMO some more dual-breath dragons would be an interesting idea, over and above the potential for spicing up blue/green/black dragon pits.

[PowerWyrm]

dracolisks are wacko fire dragons with ... er ... nexus breath (no idea where that came from anyway).

Dracolisk = dragon + basilisk (which has nexus breath IIRC).

[Derakon]

Normal basilisks only breathe poison, but greater basilisks can breathe poison, nexus, and darkness. That still doesn't explain why the nexus breath is in there, but nexus is pretty hard to explain in general. As with most of the exotic elements.