The problem with earthquakes.

[Magnate]

Stunning OTOH works pretty well, even against many uniques. Too bad there are no "sound wave" or similar staff. Or wand that when hit stuns the target.

IMO Sangband has a much better balance between devices and inventory space. With the exception of warriors, most V chars don't bother with most devices, and even warriors are better off with archery than with offensive devices. In Sang the offensive power of devices is far greater, making them viable for inv space a lot longer. (Plus archery is much less overpowered, of course.)

Cranking up the power of sleep/slow/confuse would be a good thing IMO.

[Ycombinator]

Well, I've just used earthquake spell as a poor man's destruction. Great vault at dlvl 71 (spiral corridor with 1x1 cells) with a dozen of OoD uniques including Tarrasque, Kronos and Maeglin, and I haven't yet found a single destruction scroll or staff in the game. Repeatedly pressing 'p3f' is boring, but works well: eventually everyone except wall-eaters and pass-wall monsters (Maeglin, black reaver, archlich) was embedded in the rock. Spiral pattern is totally impenetrable by the path-finding algorithm, so they could be safely teleported away.
That kind of vault-cracking feels a bit like cheating... but whatever, 5d8 lance with *slay undead* justifies it all

[Atarlost]

What I would do is reduce the chance of producing a floor tile where there was previously rock so it won't usually open new paths. This would make it a pretty good group breaker. Turn a potentially deadly group of hounds into just a couple that can get to you and a bunch of other little pockets. This would introduce a bias that repeated castings would tend to create solid stone. Making it treat stone with only two adjacent stone ignoring diagonals as corridor would reduce the bias. So would leaving the chance of producing an open floor where previously was magma.

[fizzix]

What I would do is reduce the chance of producing a floor tile where there was previously rock so it won't usually open new paths. This would make it a pretty good group breaker. Turn a potentially deadly group of hounds into just a couple that can get to you and a bunch of other little pockets. This would introduce a bias that repeated castings would tend to create solid stone. Making it treat stone with only two adjacent stone ignoring diagonals as corridor would reduce the bias. So would leaving the chance of producing an open floor where previously was magma.

How about it randomly places a bunch of rubble piles instead of doing any of the above suggestions. (along with removing its current activity)

[Hariolor]

apparently I'm crazy, but I often consider _earthquakes a critical inventory item until I have reliable escapes and/or _destruction start showing up.

They are not my first choice, but early in the game I can usually spare an inventory slot, and if I have the STR for it, it's always good to have one more last-ditch escape option. I often will use three or four charges in a row against hounds, orcs, etc to break up LOS and/or buy time until a panic ?recall kicks in.

Like I said, not optimal, but for aggressive (read: unlikely to win) gameplay, I find them useful.

[buzzkill]

apparently I'm crazy, but I often consider _earthquakes a critical inventory item until I have reliable escapes and/or _destruction start showing up.

Maybe I'm crazy, but it's my perception that _earthquakes is a medium-deep item. Certainly you would have (and use) some form of teleportation before finding earthquakes.

Like I said, not optimal, but for aggressive (read: unlikely to win) game play, I find them useful.

I'm all about aggressive, non-winning play. I like to use whatever I find, even items of even limited usefulness. I want earthquakes to have some valuable redeeming quality. They just don't. Wands of wonder are of limited usefulness. Staffs of earthquakes, IMO, are likely to do more harm than good (if used in active combat).

[Hariolor]

Maybe I'm crazy, but it's my perception that _earthquakes is a medium-deep item. Certainly you would have (and use) some form of teleportation before finding earthquakes.

I tend to buy mine from the 5 store long before they turn up reliably in the dungeon...they're fairly cheap.

I'm all about aggressive, non-winning play. I like to use whatever I find, even items of even limited usefulness. I want earthquakes to have some valuable redeeming quality. They just don't. Wands of wonder are of limited usefulness. Staffs of earthquakes, IMO, are likely to do more harm than good (if used in active combat).

what, really, is the harm? I see everyone here complaining about them, but I am not seeing a serious downside?

As an aside, I learned to use _earthquakes early and often after having several good runs with priests in which the earthquake spell got me out of some tight spots in the early/mid game.

[Moving Pictures]

Whts's the prize for reviving a ten-year-old post?

Earthquakes have only two uses that I can think of: disrupting LOS and gambling that they'll remove an obstructive wall that you're trying to get around*..

Ran across this while doing some delving. Playing a priest (finally got one past DL 15 after a dozen attempts) now playing at DL 37, CL 30 or thereabouts (need ESP and rPoison in the world's worst way, but that's another matter.)

What I have determined is that the ol' earthquake is an effective way of dealing with that room full of hounds who gang up, and make life miserable with combined acid/fire/darkness/whatever. I just mopped up a room of water hounds that first time through knocked the tar outta the priest - remember, no ESP here, so into a room with a 3-square light and *WHOMP* ... *WHOMP* ... *WHOMP* ... *WHOMP* ... *WHOMP* ... *WHOMP* ... *WHOMP* ... *WHOMP* ... *WHOMP* ... ... what the *WHOMP* ... and the priest goes from from 177hp to 34 in one turn before she can grab the teleport staff and pray it doesn't fail ... (And this is WITH rAcid, thank gracious)

Next time in, just to test things out, we blasted the room with an earthquake, and then mopped up the hounds in clusters of one or two, which was muuuch easier.

I probably would not have thought of it, save that for all last week, I was working a rogue deep (Morgoth offed the poor wretch: 15 mass banishment scrolls weren't enough) and using lots of identify (MCF) spells. Well, today, I stood the priest over a ring and hit MCF to identify and pretty much made a mess of a room... which gave me the idea.

[Grotug]

As things currently stand, I wouldn't use them at all. If they appeared much earlier they might serve some purpose (as STM, pre-STM), but I can't think of a situation in which an earthquake is the solution to any of Angband's problem.

I know I got lucky, but for me the staff of earthquakes worked wonders as a last ditch recourse and saved my down and out @, which was mighty entertaining:

DL40 LF-6

I ~map and there is a small, wide vault to my right. I think I'm going to explore the rest of the level and then come back to the vault. Without TO, without speed, without _TS. It's pretty much guaranteed death.

Now I'm faced with a Crystal Drake and an ARD directly behind him and a MBD to my right.


I ?phase and have time to light the hallway and equip my bow to shoot poison arrows.


Melee is going much slower than I expect. Then I remember the dragon has 1848hp not 616. The ARD breathes fire and I'm down to 99 health so I ?phase but I shoulda just taken the stairs. Now what am I going to do. I did pick up a staff of earthquakes recently. Let's put on =escaping and try it. Let's reverse that order: quake, then ring.



Oh my word, did it work???



I =Escape to the northeast corner of the room, spotting some boots to the right. The Star is still charging. The GCrystal Drake only had 4 health bars left. What to do about Lorgan, though. He is a problem.


Not sure what to do about Lorgan. I wonder if maybe I can find a way around back to the dragons without having Lorgan be able to get to me. I need my star to recharge.

Funny, I saw the naga and I'm like "I should kill it" then I'm like.. wait, why? Not likely he'll drop anything useful. Well, I'm stuck in this room so I went over to it and killed it and he drops ?Teleportation. I kill another mumak and the star recharges.

Not only am I isolated from everyone in this room, if I go right down this long corridor and come back down the other long corridor below it I will come to the ancient black dragon, but the rest of the monsters will still be trapped. And.... I'm a little slow, but... would you look at that, by the Great Grace of God Lorgan is completely shut in!

[Moving Pictures]

I know I got lucky, but for me the staff of earthquakes worked wonders as a last ditch recourse and saved my down and out @, which was mighty entertaining:.... And.... I'm a little slow, but... would you look at that, by the Great Grace of God Lorgan is completely shut in!

(A) I used earthquake strategically last night, in a losing battle with a greater Maia. It was trapped, saving me a load of trouble later on.

(B) would I be excommunicated if I noted I use the graphic interface, not the old text one?

[luneya]

(B) would I be excommunicated if I noted I use the graphic interface, not the old text one?

No, but tiles are a poor choice for posting screenshots. An ASCII monster can be easily identified at any scale (unless the image is shrunk so far that nothing is legible). Tiles, on the other hand, respond poorly to shrinking. Even at full scale, tiles do well at differentiating broad classes of monsters, but specific monster identification is harder than with ASCII, where the color-coding makes it obvious at a glance. That's kind of important--a screen shot of a player surrounded by light hounds means something very different than a screenshot of the player surrounded by plasma hounds.

[Huqhox]

Another option might be to make the earthquake create rubble (passable and impassable) instead of solid blocks, burying objects instead of just destroying them (ok maybe shatter potions - caveat actor). That would still make it useful for disrupting line of sight, fit in with the minor monster damage that occurs and avoid the reason it's not generally useful - the object destruction