I'm getting rather weary of dealing with lice. The way I see it, there are a few scenarios here:
1) You catch them before they wake up and kill them. No big deal.
2) You catch them one or maybe two turns after they wake up, and have a ball spell to kill them all off, and successfully use that ball spell.
3) By the time you get to them, they've started breeding past the point that you can kill them all.
Part 3 has two sub-groups:
3a) You're able to close off the area infested with lice by closing doors. That area is barred to you now; better hope nothing was behind it.
3b) There are no doors handy to contain the infestation. You must now flee the level as lice will chase you everywhere you go.
Is this fun? Not for me. I suppose it's better for mage-types, who have Detect Monster and Stinking Cloud, but my warriors are getting heartily sick of being unable to contain lice, and my holy characters aren't much better off. Just now I was slowly clearing a greater vault (Hellpit) by kiting out monsters a bit at a time. I crept in to pull some more out, noticed some lice start breeding at the edge of my detection range, and failed to zap my rod of acid balls (the range was too far to hit them with my crossbow, not that single-target kills would have sufficed anyway). So much for that vault! And this is hardly an isolated occurrence.
I'm all for having hard monsters in the game. But I am definitely against having annoying monsters in the game. Annoyance is not fun. Lice are, at least to me, annoying. I'm not certain how I'd suggest improving them to be interesting instead. Other breeders aren't an issue, largely I suspect because they don't move quickly and aren't as observant (thus, less likely to wake up and explode before you get to them).
Any suggestions?
1) You catch them before they wake up and kill them. No big deal.
2) You catch them one or maybe two turns after they wake up, and have a ball spell to kill them all off, and successfully use that ball spell.
3) By the time you get to them, they've started breeding past the point that you can kill them all.
Part 3 has two sub-groups:
3a) You're able to close off the area infested with lice by closing doors. That area is barred to you now; better hope nothing was behind it.
3b) There are no doors handy to contain the infestation. You must now flee the level as lice will chase you everywhere you go.
Is this fun? Not for me. I suppose it's better for mage-types, who have Detect Monster and Stinking Cloud, but my warriors are getting heartily sick of being unable to contain lice, and my holy characters aren't much better off. Just now I was slowly clearing a greater vault (Hellpit) by kiting out monsters a bit at a time. I crept in to pull some more out, noticed some lice start breeding at the edge of my detection range, and failed to zap my rod of acid balls (the range was too far to hit them with my crossbow, not that single-target kills would have sufficed anyway). So much for that vault! And this is hardly an isolated occurrence.
I'm all for having hard monsters in the game. But I am definitely against having annoying monsters in the game. Annoyance is not fun. Lice are, at least to me, annoying. I'm not certain how I'd suggest improving them to be interesting instead. Other breeders aren't an issue, largely I suspect because they don't move quickly and aren't as observant (thus, less likely to wake up and explode before you get to them).
Any suggestions?
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