A Few Questions/Observations From an Old Player

[quarague]

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The summon power is the product of the monster level and the current dungeon level. A summoned monster is given a power rating of its level squared. Monsters that normally come in groups get a discount and their power rating is divided by 16, which is roughly an average group size. If the sum of all summoned monster powers is more than the power of the summon spell no more monsters are summoned. So the first monster can be arbitrarily powerful, but you only get one of them.
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I like that, looks much better then the potentially exponential summoning in v3.3.2. Two questions, does each summoner keep track of their own summoned monsters or is this for total of summoned monsters on a level? Second, if I kill of the summons can he summon new monsters?

Just a note how others have resolved this issue.
ADOM uses a summoning hirarchy to address some of these problems. For example there are wolfs, werewolfs, werewolf lords, werewolf kings and werewolf emperors and each of these can only summon creatures of a lower level then themselves. So a lord can summon wolfs and werewolfs but nothing higher then that. That fixes most excesses of exponential growth in summoning but you still get a lot of creatures if you run into an emperor.

[Oramin]

Derakon:

Thanks. I guess I'll stick with Dal-i-Thalion. I thought I had read that Annihilation doesn't work on Demons but apparently Morgoth isn't a Demon (they just work for him).



Fizzix:

As an example, I was just fighting a Pit Fiend when it summoned another Pit Fiend *and* about a dozen other Demons including, IIRC, a couple of Gelugons. With that number of additional monsters, I'm sure one of them is going to summon more and then we'll have a "doubling rice on each square of the chessboard" issue. In other words, I had to end the combat immediately.

Major Summoning should be reserved to Uniques or 'Q' creatures (since that is their primary threat).

As an example, a Pit Fiend should be able to summon either:

1. Another Pit Fiend or Greater Balrog.
2. A couple of Lesser Balrogs or Gelugons.
3. A bunch of wimpy Greater Demons up to 16 Vrocks.

Similarly, I was just fighting a Great Wyrm of Balance (on level 97) and it summoned a bunch of Great Wyrms. It should be able to summon either:

1. Another Great Wyrm which isn't one of the five basics.
2. A couple of (Fire, Cold, Acid, Lightning, Poison) Great Wyrms.
3. Perhaps up to a dozen of the ordinary Ancient Dragons.

I don't have a problem with Tselakus Summoning Ringwraiths (in part because I killed them all before I ran across him), but ordinary monsters shouldn't be able to do more than double up on themselves. No suggestions on how to implement it, though.

[fizzix]

Summons are toned down a bit in v4 compared to previous versions. They're still pretty powerful though. Right now summoning power is based on the summoning monster and the level that the summon is from.

details
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The summon power is the product of the monster level and the current dungeon level. A summoned monster is given a power rating of its level squared. Monsters that normally come in groups get a discount and their power rating is divided by 16, which is roughly an average group size. If the sum of all summoned monster powers is more than the power of the summon spell no more monsters are summoned. So the first monster can be arbitrarily powerful, but you only get one of them.
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There's no reason that the summoning algorithm can't be tweaked further, and I would love suggestions about how to do this better.

Also for the record. I hate spawned monsters. I feel that the player should be able to actually clear a level. spawned monsters are too frequent and limit what a player can tactically do to keep the level terrain in their favor. At the very least, I don't see any reason that spawned monsters should be automatically awake.

There was once a patch that had an unlimited house. I played games with it. I agree that inventory slot management is fun, but house slot management is boring. Furthermore it's not friendly to the people who haven't memorized the ego and artifact list (nevermind new players).

[Derakon]

Dunno about Narya and Nenya.

Immunity to lightning is a situational ability. Sauron and Morgoth both have high-damaging nether attacks, so the resist would be helpful there, while I'm pretty sure they have no lightning-based attacks. So at least for those fights you won't want it (the activation is mildly helpful but not really significant). I'd say carry Stormwalker as a swap since it could be useful for a few fights, e.g. against blue dragon pits, but leave it at home for the endgame.

Annihilation works on everything that's alive, which IIRC is something like "all non-undead that are not vortices, elementals, or golems". Might be forgetting a category, but it's pretty intuitive. Sauron and Morgoth are both vulnerable; wands of Annihilation are a mage's best offense against them, assuming that mage avoids melee range (due to charge drain).

[Oramin]

A few follow up questions:

1. Is it my imagination or have Narya and Nenya been nerfed? I thought Narya was supposed to have Nether resistance. Also the (+x, +x) seems to be lower than the spoilers indicate.

2. I found Stormwalker and I'm wearing Dal-i-Thalion. Is it worth giving up my sole source of Nether resistance for Lightning Immunity and activate to Berserk? I'm on level 95, base Speed is about 28-30 and I've killed all Uniques other than Sauron and Morgoth. Still using a Dwarf Priest.

3. Morgoth isn't a Demon so does Annihilation work on him (or, for that matter, Sauron)?