Resist blindness question

[Raajaton]

I seem to recall reading at some point that if you have both light and darkness resists covered you no longer need pBlind. After a quick search today I happened across a particularly old post that seemed to confirm that, however I wanted to make sure that is still the case.

I currently am wearing a shield solely for the fact that it is presently my only source of blindness resist, but with light and dark covered elsewhere I would like to swap in Thorin.

[Derakon]

That old post isn't strictly accurate. Ways you can be blinded:

* Light or dark attacks (primarily breaths, but also darkness storms). Relevant resistances help here.
* Spells that cause blindness. Saving throws or protection from blindness help here.
* Melee attacks that cause blindness. Only protection from blindness helps here.

Light/dark attacks are by far the most common source of blindness, though, so you're mostly protected as long as you have those. If you know what few monsters can melee-blind you (see below) and have a 100% saving throw, then you're basically safe so long as you have light/dark resistance.

% grep -E "^N:|^B:.*BLIND" monster.txt | grep -B1 B: | grep N: | cut -d: -f3
Bloodshot eye
King cobra
Giant firefly
Giant brown tick
Catoblepas
Chest mimic
Shimmering vortex
7-headed hydra
Harowen the Black Hand
Radagast the Brown
The Cat Lord

[Timo Pietilä]

I seem to recall reading at some point that if you have both light and darkness resists covered you no longer need pBlind. After a quick search today I happened across a particularly old post that seemed to confirm that, however I wanted to make sure that is still the case.

Not quite, melee-blinding still blinds you, but that's rather rare. Just don't melee things that hit to blind. It's a bit like "if you have ESP you don't need see_inv" because things that are empty-minded and invisible are rare and don't appear in groups (basically just Q:s I think).

[Raajaton]

Thanks a lot for the responses. I'm playing a ranger currently, so staying out of melee-range of those guys shouldn't be much of an issue. However if inventory allows I may keep my blindness resist shield in my inventory as a swap in case I get into a situation where I run out of ammo on the Cat Lord and need to smack him or something.

[Mondkalb]

You can get along if you happen to have telepathy.

But keep in mind, if you get blinded, you can't use safe escape scrolls.