Secret tech? (Or, "Did you know?")

[xorzac]

Depends on floor and number of orcs in sight, afaik, but 4 light = 5 light on square = 2 penalty to orcs + 4 penalty by bane. Really happy more people get to play with light + morale.

That a slaying weapon has any effect on sight (without hitting) is news to me. It isn't in the manual for sure.

Oh trust me, this one is 100% true. Bane ability works the same way.

I use rauko-bane, it's fun watching them eventually flee on sight of you.

[xorzac]

Grotesque - move away from them and get them in the dark. Then they won't block your path.


Drop to 200 to 250 ASAP then to 400. Makes game much easier if you survive!

[bron]

A trick regarding flanking: the flanking attack is applied to where you started, not where you end up. Normally, this doesn't matter, but if you are enraged and fighting a number of enemies, you can often flank one of them, hitting everything around you, but wind up on a square where most of them can not hit back. e.g. in this situation:

    .TTT.
    ..@T.
    ..ST.

by moving SW (down and to the left) you flank the Serpent, but if enraged you also hit all of the Trolls. In the resulting configuration,

    .TTT.
    ...T.
    .@ST.

the Trolls are unable to hit back.

I assume this works with Whirlwind attack as well, but I never take that ability so I've never tested it.

[bron]

Grotesque - move away from them and get them in the dark. Then they won't block your path.

I'm not understanding this. Grotesques certainly follow *me* through darkness. What exactly do you do that makes them stop pursuing you? Certainly, if you get far enough away from them they can lose contact, or if you break their pathing A.I. by jumping a chasm or something, but that's pretty clearly not what you mean.

[wobbly]

Yeah this was one I didn't quite understand. I'm not sure whether he (she?) was talking about where there blocking the doorway & you move so they leave free passage or something else.

[seraph]

i've gotten grotesques to stop following me on accident on more than one occasion. i think wobbly is right; xorzac is probably referring to a method of getting grotesques out of a specific hallways, but they still pursue you.

[wobbly]

What I haven't tried but may be worth looking at is taking your lantern in & out of it's slot & seeing if they move. Not familiar enough to know how their ai works to be sure.

[Psi]

Yes, make it dark to get them to move from where they are blocking - beware though they do attack in the dark! You can watch their movement to a degree using listen.

[bron]

probably referring to a method of getting grotesques out of a specific hallways

OK, that makes some sense: xorzac plays so fast he probably just never noticed that the Grotesques were constantly pursuing him, and thought of them just as inconvenient stationary obstacles when they are in a hallway. And the "secret" tech is that they will move out of the way if you can't see them. I think part of my confusion was the use of "dark" in the description. "Dark" has nothing to do with it. A Grotesque will happily cross a lighted room, as long as you're not looking at it.

Since a Grotesque is immune to critical hits, I can imagine they present an annoying problem to xorzac's characters, which are largely based on getting lots of criticals.

[Patashu]

Been using Charge + Flanking a lot this run. To do it, you need to charge in the right direction and then step diagonally past an orthogonally adjacent enemy, or orthogonally past a diagonally adjacent enemy. You get both the flanking and the charging at the same time (so the +3 evasion from dodging and you continue to sprint and so on). Probably already known but posting it cuz I think it's cool.

[wobbly]

Bit of a strange one, not sure how useful it is but you can locate stairs with listen & a staff of summoning

[Guest]

More on light & fear. 4 light radius with +4 orc-bane & orc archers are fleeing on sight.

how do you get Orc bane?

[Patashu]

how do you get Orc bane?

I suspect he means he took the 'Bane' ability and selected 'Orc'.

[Patashu]

TIL that you don't have to equip or drop a slay weapon to see if it's glowing or not, the colour will change in your inventory. (This was already listed in http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=6986 but I didn't notice it.)

In mpa-sil a weapon glowing in this way auto-IDs, but in sil you have throw or hit with it to get the ID.

[seraph]

i often avoid wielding a weapon (especially with an extra damage side) until i've seen it glow or i have _sanctity.