Roll out the dead horse

[Hariolor]

Because I feel the need to beat it one more time.

I used to be a bit of a hounds apologist, feeling they were only hated because they are dangerous and common - but what's wrong with that, right? Well after this last event while playing yesterday, I am now convinced that some variation of the fewer hounds patch needs to be implemented officially.

I am 2/3 of the way to stat-gain depth with a half-troll priest (my flavor of the month). I am trolling around, looking for some decent gear so I can dive another five to ten levels and start buffing. I am teleported by a Q and land in a room full of water hounds. Fortunately, I landed next to a pit, so I leap down to the next level...

...and land in the middle of a pack of earth hounds. I m2b, and appear...

...in the middle of a room full of poison hounds, time to m2b again...

...and land in the edge of a room (blessedly next to an exit) filled with more water hounds. I quaff !speed and take off down the hall a few steps, m1f/m1a, and see no stairs at all. Turns out I'm in a dead-end, and while I have a lot of ?phase, and could conceivably rest to regain my mana after all those portals, I say "screw it" and just recall back to town.

IMHO, there's something very wrong when hounds populate four out of four randomly-chosen rooms. I'm all for learning to play conservatively and keeping plenty of escapes (advice I give more often than I follow). But this was just silly.


Ok, put the horse back - nothing to see here.

[Ycombinator]

Hounds rarity was increased in the development version after 3.1.2v2. You can try the nightly build for Windows, or checkout SVN trunk and build it yourself for other OS.

[TJS]

Ugh not more hounds. My main problem with them is that they are just so boring. When you are actually able to deal with them then it becomes such a chore to kill them all one by one. The actual danger aspect of them isn't too bad and I'd rather they were more dangerous, but there were just a lot less of them.

I've counted over 60 hounds from a detect spell before, which is clearly too many.

[Timo Pietilä]

Ugh not more hounds.

Rarity was increased -> hounds are more rare.

It is quite noticeable in latest nightlies.

[nppangband]

One feature we have in NPP is that the player always starts off a new level in an isolated corridor with no monsters in line of sight. That would eliminate most of the unfair instadeath situations like the one you just had.

I have a love/hate relationship with hounds. Some of them give such great xp for their depth I welcome them if I have the right resist.

[ewert]

Play the nightlies, or search for Magnate's monster.txt file post which had the modification in it. I mean the hound rarity mod. It's pretty spot on IMHO.

[fizzix]

Play the nightlies, or search for Magnate's monster.txt file post which had the modification in it. I mean the hound rarity mod. It's pretty spot on IMHO.

Playing the nightlies, I'd much prefer the rarity to go up (3 to 2 or even back to 1) but the average pack size to be reduced. 3-7 seems reasonable not the current 10-30.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

The pack size probably should depend on the hound type. 15 Poison Hounds means you have to use some tactics...but 15 Aether Hounds means, get off the level.

[Zikke]

Playing the nightlies, I'd much prefer the rarity to go up (3 to 2 or even back to 1) but the average pack size to be reduced. 3-7 seems reasonable not the current 10-30.

Pack size is an interesting change. I would support that

[fizzix]

The pack size probably should depend on the hound type. 15 Poison Hounds means you have to use some tactics...but 15 Aether Hounds means, get off the level.

Are the tactics for 15 air hounds different than for 5? (Assuming you don't have poison resistance.) If so, how?

[miyazaki]

Are the tactics for 15 air hounds different than for 5? (Assuming you don't have poison resistance.) If so, how?

None of them are easy, but there are several tactics that I have used successfully. All would be more effective on smaller packs:

- Poke into a room, fire a missile. Retreat. Heal with !CLW. Repeat.

- Stand in hallway. Blindly fire ball-type spells into a small room to soften up hounds. Engage in melee.

- Hounds will follow you down a hall if HP<half. Low HP + a corner can let you pick them off one at a time.

[fizzix]

There are some other tactics that I use:

4: Detect in hallway entering room. Often you can shoot at hounds that are not in line of sight. (ESP let's you do this anyway) Sometimes you need to move back and forwards in the hallway to get the detection.

5: By far the most common tactic I use is to lure the hounds one by one into another room. Hockey stick them right before they enter. If you are strong enough to kill the hound with one melee round (they don't have many HP) then you can kill them individually as they enter.

My 4 is similar to your 1 and 2 and doesn't really change much if there are 3x the amount of hounds. In fact, as the hound amount increases they are more likely to wander into your firing line. 5 doesn't really change with size, except that you have to backtrack less to lure them in.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Another way to deal with only 5 air hounds is simply get them into a relatively small bundle, quaff a potion of speed, and whack away. If you can nail 2 of them, there's only 3 left. The total damage they can do to you, becomes a lot smaller. When there's 10 of em, you can't do that. If they're in an L-shaped corridor, with 2 or 3 past the turn, same thing.

With 15, unless you're just not worried about them (ie, water hounds, but you have Thorin, or light hounds but you're a high elf)...you have to fight tactically and carefully. With 5, there will be more cases where you can just brazen things out.

[Derakon]

Small packs largely mean that you can afford to get the entire pack in LOS if it means you can put the hurt on them. This isn't practical with larger packs. I would say that the current pack sizes are fine, with the exceptions of Gravity Hounds and Nexus Hounds. These two are problematic because their breath weapons can move you into LOS of the rest of their pack, so standard hound tactics, which rely on careful positioning, don't apply. This is far more true of Gravity Hounds, though -- Nexus Hounds only have a 1/7 chance of doing a teleport-to effect on you (though, having done that, they then get to try to instakill you).

Every other hound type would just become less challenging in a smaller pack, without becoming any more interesting to fight, IMO.

[Ycombinator]

What about Ethereal hounds? They don't let you manage LOS. Sometimes you can risk killing them one by one as they pop out of the wall, but I personally prefer *Destruct* or Banish them if I can and flee the level otherwise.