Idea for making Morgoth more dangerous

[Nick]

One crazy idea, which possibly involves much more coding than one wants to do for such an arguable change, but what about giving Morgoth an area wall destruction spell?

In FA his tunnelling also takes out all the grids adjacent to him - he tells me this has been quite effective

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, we probably don't want to take it to extremes, but that's the spirit.
Attack without direct LoS I didn't think of, but it's very interesting too.

Probably requires 4GAI, which for example NPP has. Also IIRC NPP has that disintegration attack (or manastorm acts like it).

4GAI is so big change in monster behavior that it requires a lot of work, so probably not going to happen anytime soon with all the other stuff going on right now.

[Ycombinator]

Well, we probably don't want to take it to extremes, but that's the spirit.
Attack without direct LoS I didn't think of, but it's very interesting too.

[chris]

In other words, give Morgoth a disintegration attack? Takes out walls, rubble, doors, and items, radius 3 ball, base 200 damage, and this damage DOES carry through. Morgoth's allowed to target this attack WITHOUT LOS being present; its point of origin becomes the first solid thing it encounters (not counting items or traps.)

Hengband has this ... many high level uniques breathe disintegration, and they do so very intelligently. Its virtually impossible to not fight The Serpent (the Morgoth equivalent) out in the open ... Disintegration should also destroy all glyphs of warding.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

In other words, give Morgoth a disintegration attack? Takes out walls, rubble, doors, and items, radius 3 ball, base 200 damage, and this damage DOES carry through. Morgoth's allowed to target this attack WITHOUT LOS being present; its point of origin becomes the first solid thing it encounters (not counting items or traps.)

[Ycombinator]

One crazy idea, which possibly involves much more coding than one wants to do for such an arguable change, but what about giving Morgoth an area wall destruction spell? Well, what about making all mana storms wall-disintegrating? No additional damage, but a challenge for LoS control?

[Adley]

What if his HP optionally scaled with the number of uniques, or number of some subset of uniques (e.g. those native to DL>60), that were killed, say 2% increase per unique?

Meh. That just makes him longer to kill. So More healing/ammo needded. So more grinding. Meh

[bulian]

What if his HP optionally scaled with the number of uniques, or number of some subset of uniques (e.g. those native to DL>60), that were killed, say 2% increase per unique?

[fizzix]

I don't like it. There's be absolutely no reason to kill the uniques.

I would propose removing S_MONSTER and limiting S_UNIQUE to uniques deeper than summoner level/2

The next obvious thing to remove is Nether Balls

I also wanted breath attacks but everyone else thought that was a terrible idea.

[Derakon]

On the one hand, this would completely invalidate the "kill certain uniques so Morgoth can't summon them" strategy. On the other hand, it certainly would make the final fight more difficult. Hm.

I think it'd have to be its own spell distinct from S_UNIQUE, to make it clear why he's able to call uniques that are dead.

[stabbo]

Just an idea, but...

Add a Resurrection spell which allows him to summon uniques that have previously been killed.

Does he need to be more difficult? I havn't even gotten to him yet.

[NotMorgoth]

Just an idea, but...

Add a Resurrection spell which allows him to summon uniques that have previously been killed.