Morgoth Eats Banishment Like Happy Meals

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Having fought Morgie many, many times now, in every class and race, I never found any consistent rule as to how much the Big P will summon. Sometimes it seemed like nearly every other move was a summons, sometimes he summoned only a couple times. When going to face him, it's best to be prepared to deal with summons, whether that be with banishment/mass banishment, TO and destruct, phase or teleport self, etc. To borrow from the Boy Scouts, "Be Prepared".

[PowerWyrm]

Also a staff of banishment can be very helpful for priests because of greater recharging giving you a decent chance to use it for a while.

Staves of banishment are useless for a priest because a) the recharging spell sucks (it's worse than scroll -- only Mages get the Greater version) and b) you have Banish evil in Wrath of God and it's a mass TO spell vs evil (which is 99% of what Morgoth summons).

[PowerWyrm]

My go-to strategy is to fight in an area that has had Word of Destruction used in it. When Morgoth summons, instead of immediately banishing, you can use Phase Door and be almost guaranteed to not be in line-of-sight of anything. And since Morgoth moves faster than everything he summons, you can just move away from both him and his summons and he'll catch up first. You should only need to use banishment when you can't be confident that Phase Door is a safe move.

Exactly that. If you're low on banish, just phase, TO Morgoth and *des* the summons.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Staves of banishment are useless for a priest because a) the recharging spell sucks (it's worse than scroll -- only Mages get the Greater version) and b) you have Banish evil in Wrath of God and it's a mass TO spell vs evil (which is 99% of what Morgoth summons).

I've actually found the Priest recharging spell to be quite reliable (and, as I recall, it is "greater"), and it's SP cost is less than that of the Mage's greater recharging. However, I do not go into combat with the Big Bosses with anything they can drain so as not to give them healing from it (the exception being a Mage if that @ has decided to go the wand of draining/annihilation route, in which case those wands will be carried).

[Werbaer]

I think the big M fight is hardest for priests. They tend to deal less damage than other chars, so the fight lasts longer. That being said, I think 30 banishment scrolls should be enough to kill him.

Priests don't need to melee Morgoth. They can kill him from the distance with Orb of Draining. It takes longer, but you can keep the distance, don't get hit, the summons don't surround you, and you kill them with splash damage.

I took notes with my last priest winner. It took 138 Orbs to kill Morgoth. He used summoning spells 32 times. I used 4 scrolls of Mass Banishment when things got crowded, 6 charges from my 3 staffs of Banishment, and 1 Banishment scroll when thought i couldn't risk the staff to fail. Casted Banish Evil 9 times to teleport both Morgoth and the summons away.

[fph]

In open space battle I found Morgoth is much, much more likely to come closer rather than do distance attack or summon. I would teleport P before he reaches me.

Is it true, or it's only confirmation bias? I thought that monsters had a fixed chance of casting as spell (as opposed to of moving/meleeing), and a fixed chance to choose each spell from the list. So this should imply that the probability of breathing and summoning is the same, whether a monster is within melee distance or not, and whether there is a clear path to the player or not. If any, there should be a lower probability of casting when fighting in a destructed area, since the player may not always be within LOS of the monster.

[Derakon]

Is it true, or it's only confirmation bias? I thought that monsters had a fixed chance of casting as spell (as opposed to of moving/meleeing), and a fixed chance to choose each spell from the list. So this should imply that the probability of breathing and summoning is the same, whether a monster is within melee distance or not, and whether there is a clear path to the player or not. If any, there should be a lower probability of casting when fighting in a destructed area, since the player may not always be within LOS of the monster.

You're correct: AI does not take distance to the player into consideration. That said, strictly speaking they said "Morgoth is more likely to walk towards me than he is to cast a spell", which is also true as his cast chance is only 1 in 3.

[quarague]

Is it true, or it's only confirmation bias? I thought that monsters had a fixed chance of casting as spell (as opposed to of moving/meleeing), and a fixed chance to choose each spell from the list. So this should imply that the probability of breathing and summoning is the same, whether a monster is within melee distance or not, and whether there is a clear path to the player or not. If any, there should be a lower probability of casting when fighting in a destructed area, since the player may not always be within LOS of the monster.

To my knowledge the code works as follows. If a monster has any spells, breaths or ranged attacks, it always has a tag in the form 'monster will cast a spell around 1 turn in n' for some integer n, this is also displayed in the monster memory the moment you see the monster use any such attack. This means every time the monster takes a turn, with chance 1 in n it will use a range attack. If it does not use a ranged attack it will check whether it is in melee range, then melee if possible and move towards the player if not.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think the big M fight is hardest for priests.

Not if you have WoG. Banish evil gets rid of all evil monsters in LoS and you get 0% failure for that. Then you only need to carry lots of restore mana potions and hit M in the head until it is dead.

[brbrbr]

Not if you have WoG. Banish evil gets rid of all evil monsters in LoS and you get 0% failure for that. Then you only need to carry lots of restore mana potions and hit M in the head until it is dead.

+1 on that.
Glyph of Warding was also very good for me, holding up for 5 Morgoth turns on average.

On open space strategy: so, you have twice more chances that Morgoth will come closer, rather than do something nasty. That is very good chance if you want to kill him from distance. Compare it to melee, where Morgoth will do something nasty in every turn - in exchange of safety of Phase Door out of LoS

[krazyhades]

+1 on that.
On open space strategy: so, you have twice more chances that Morgoth will come closer, rather than do something nasty. That is very good chance if you want to kill him from distance. Compare it to melee, where Morgoth will do something nasty in every turn - in exchange of safety of Phase Door out of LoS

I still think it's preferable to mix up the terrain with Staff of Destruction and then, if you plan to use ranged abilities, clear some of a path with Stone to Mud, while letting him walk into the pathway instead of completing it on your turn (so that you get first move). This lets you minimize the open space for him to summon into while still allowing a corridor. Really I don't even bother with the Stone to Mud though. In practice even with shooting/casting I'd rather take a turn of melee from morgoth than a manastorm, so I don't mind shooting arrows at him point-blank.

[Derakon]

I still think it's preferable to mix up the terrain with Staff of Destruction and then, if you plan to use ranged abilities, clear some of a path with Stone to Mud, while letting him walk into the pathway instead of completing it on your turn (so that you get first move). This lets you minimize the open space for him to summon into while still allowing a corridor. Really I don't even bother with the Stone to Mud though. In practice even with shooting/casting I'd rather take a turn of melee from morgoth than a manastorm, so I don't mind shooting arrows at him point-blank.

The turn of melee only ever replaces him moving closer to you. He decides to cast before he checks how close he is to you. A character in melee range always takes strictly more damage than a character at range, because they take all the melee hits in addition to all of the spell hits.

[fph]

Let's spell it out clearly: the AI algorithm, currently, is the following (assuming that the player is in LOS and simplifying a bit)

Let N the number appearing in "1 time in N" in the monster recall.

roll a N-sided dice; 
if (the result of this roll is 1)
    choose a random spell from the monster list and cast it;
else if (in melee range)
    hit player with a melee attack;
else
    move towards the player;
end

In particular, a monster has the same probability to cast a spell at you whether it is next to you or far away, and whether it is in an open space or in a destructed area.

[Rowan]

Priests don't need to melee Morgoth. They can kill him from the distance with Orb of Draining. It takes longer, but you can keep the distance, don't get hit, the summons don't surround you, and you kill them with splash damage.

Hmm. What terrain did you prefer? Did you try making corridors, flit around in a destruct-ed area, or open room? I didn't have much luck my first couple of times trying to OoD him, and my melee seems to do more damage.

Reading the forums, I definitely got the feeling people believe using OoD for any unique is "doing it wrong." I'm more inclined to agree with you, though. I destroyed every known unique with it, except Maeglin, for whom it was just plain easier to stand on a rune and swat him.

Maeglin and Morgoth make OoD so extremely difficult to use, since they like to destroy my carefully-planned corridors and approach through walls avoiding line of sight. How do you do it?

[Rowan]

(and for all the others who opened my eyes to Banish Evil)

THANK YOU. So obvious now... but... I'm out of potions *sigh* back to level 99...