Banish, Destruction, and Clearing Vaults

[Wraitheist]

Hey guys, since a lot has changed in the last few versions of the game, I just wanted to clarify a few things:

How do you you guys use Banishment, *Banishment*, Destruction, and *Destruction*? I've been collecting them in my house for my current character, but what situations do you save them for? Also, does Destruction destroy artifacts?

Can you use Banishment or *Banishment* to clear a monster pit? My guess is that you stand a good chance of dying.

More generally, how do you go about clearing vaults/pits? Now that TO only zaps one monster, I find myself skipping all but the tamest vaults.

[Derakon]

Let's just clear up some terms first:

There's Earthquake and Destruction. There's no *Destruction*. There's Banishment and Mass Banishment. There's no *Banishment*. I don't think any items in Vanilla have stars in their names any more.

All of these work on vaults. However, Destruction will remove all items it "hits", including artifacts. Banishment of course never affects uniques. Destruction can still be handy for removing monsters, especially in the more open designs where you can lure the monsters away from the items, or if there's just a few monsters that you can't handle -- nuke them and deal with the rest normally.

[Wraitheist]

Thanks for the info, Derakon. I'm playing 3.4.1 and I have both a staff and scroll of *Destruction* in my home right now. I also have a potion of *Healing*. Are you referring to 3.5?

[Kosonen]

Don't forget ?*Acquirement*.

[Raajaton]

There's also !*Enlightenment*

[Raajaton]

I typically keep 1 or 2 destruction srolls or staves on me in case of emergency. They can be useful to have if there's a greater undead pit on a level you really want to explore, but can't deal with, or you start getting some out of control summons you can't deal with. Beyond that I tend to save the rest of my destruction and sources of banishment for the final battles against sauron and morgoth.

[MattB]

And ?*Enchant Armour*

[MattB]

And ?*Enchant Weapon*

[Derakon]

Okay, okay, I spoke hastily. There's still plenty of * items in the game.

But are you sure that your items are *Destruction* and not just Destruction? I thought the stars had been removed from that item since there's no need to differentiate it from a lower-tier item.

[Raajaton]

I believe it is still marked as *Destruction*, which I've always found to be strange, since i've never seen a regular Destruction.

[Timo Pietilä]

I believe it is still marked as *Destruction*, which I've always found to be strange, since i've never seen a regular Destruction.

Destruction is breaking the rule that starred item is more powerful version of the normal item. It's just destruction.

Maybe *dest* should have larger radius than plain dest.? Earthquake-radius for one and LoS for other?

[quarague]

Some response to the initial posters questions: IIRC banishment deals 1d4 damage per banished monster, mass banishment deals 1d3, if you have access to the spells, it will say so in the description, if you have only staffs or scrolls the description is more vague.
This means it is rather unlikely that you will die from using them and especially if you have the spells (for unlimited use) they make clearing out vaults almost trivial. You don't get any xp because you just banished all the monsters but you get all the goodies with very little risk to your char (you can TO the uniques in the vault if you don't want to deal with them).
Destruction on the other hand destroys all the items as well so it is much harder to use for vault clearing.

[MattB]

Destruction is breaking the rule that starred item is more powerful version of the normal item. It's just destruction.

Isn't a staff of earthquakes effectively the unstarred version of a staff of *destruction*?
If so, shouldn't the 'staff of earthquakes' simply be renamed a 'staff of destruction' and then we can all sleep more easily in our beds?

[Derakon]

Earthquake and Destruction abide by significantly different rules, though; earthquakes only destroy monsters if the monster can't be displaced to an adjacent tile (as I understand it anyway) and only destroy items if the tile the item is on is replaced with a wall. They also don't blind the user.

I'd rather have Earthquake and Destruction, than Destruction and *Destruction*. I think stars in names are generally silly. I mean, imagine if we had potions of Cure Wounds, *Cure Wounds*, **Cure Wounds**, etc.

[DaviddesJ]

I mean, imagine if we had potions of Cure Wounds, *Cure Wounds*, **Cure Wounds**, etc.

I like it!