Intended Limit on Number of Summons?

[fentesk]

Is it intended for a Staff of Summoning to stop summoning enemies after some number of uses on a level, or would that be a bug/memory issue?

There comes a point after a few staff recharges in an area where a Staff of Summoning will appear as though it is summoning something, but nothing appears. This will continue multiple times, using charges but no enemy appearing.

Sometimes moving to a different location in the level will let me summon a few more times again, which makes me think it's not intentionally limited.

I can explore this more methodically and report back, but wanted to check if there my be intentional limits on summoning to avoid my type of summoning abuse first.

(Vanilla 4.2.4, but I also saw this on 4.2.1)

(Side note, I would have posted this on the bug forum, but it looks like it is requiring a Github login again, or I'm missing the spot to report without account)

[PowerWyrm]

If you activated the new summoning code, it will not summon from thin air but pick up a monster that is present on the level. If nothing comes out of your staff, then you've killed everything on the level and nothing can be summoned until something respawns on the level.

[fentesk]

Interesting, thanks for the response.

Is there a specific place to find the new summoning code and if it's active? I didn't see it in the text file dump.

[backwardsEric]

Interesting, thanks for the response.

Is there a specific place to find the new summoning code and if it's active? I didn't see it in the text file dump.

With 4.2.4, pulling a monster that is already on the level will happen randomly 1/4th of the time when staff of summoning is used. Other reasons the summoning could fail:

1. there's no grid within four grids of your character that could hold the summoned monster
2. the population cap for living monsters on the level has been reached (that'll generate a message: 'Too many monsters!')