Infravision vs Telepathy?

[Grotug]

Are they the same thing? Are there things detected by Infra that aren't detected by Telepathy and vice versa?

Google tells me Infravision lets you see in the dark. So in other words, if you are in a dark hallway and there are things beyond your light that are in your line of sight you'll see them? How many squares is 100 feet?

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Are they the same thing? Are there things detected by Infra that aren't detected by Telepathy and vice versa?

Google tells me Infravision lets you see in the dark. So in other words, if you are in a dark hallway and there are things beyond your light that are in your line of sight you'll see them? How many squares is 100 feet?

They are not the same thing. Think of infravision as having an infrared scope. You can see heat signatures, so if a monster is cold-blooded (or undead, or nonliving) they aren't going to be seen with infravision. Telepathy detects thought. Some monsters that don't show up on infravision, do have thought and will show up with telepathy (think skull-druj, for example). Whereas some warm-blooded monsters don't have thought, or much thought, so some monsters will not show up with telepathy, or will only be detected sporadically.

Each "square" of floor tile is 10 feet.

[Grotug]

Thanks! Makes perfect sense. Much appreciated.

[Mondkalb]

Thanks! Makes perfect sense. Much appreciated.

Telepathy is far superior in most cases.

[Estie]

Telepathy is far superior in most cases.

Mostly because it doesnt require LOS.

[Derakon]

Mostly because it doesnt require LOS.

And its range is max viewing range, whereas infravision rarely gets even as far as the 100 feet quoted by Grotug.

Infravision is still useful early on, when detection is rare and most monsters don't have ranged attacks. It's also handy for the "descend to new level, in a dark room full of hounds just outside my light radius" situation, rare though that might be. But yeah, as soon as you get telepathy, infravision is effectively completely outclassed. There just aren't many warm-blooded mindless enemies out there, and I think all of them are inconsequential things like giant white mice.

[Sky]

Mushroom of Secon Sight man ... far out, far out.

[Pete Mack]

@Derakon--the big one for Infravision is 'Q'.

[fizzix]

@Derakon--the big one for Infravision is 'Q'.

You need detection for Q anyway. They all act at a distance, so by the time they're in infravision range, they'll already have summoned enough monsters that you know they're there.

[Grotug]

The reason I asked is because my latest charachter's infravision is 100 feet and I have the option to don Tharandul (sp!) with telepathy and PBlind or serenity crown with pstun and pconf.

[bio_hazard]

Have there been any discussions about toning down infravision at all? Might be exciting if sleeping monsters weren't detected.

[Derakon]

The reason I asked is because my latest charachter's infravision is 100 feet and I have the option to don Tharandul (sp!) with telepathy and PBlind or serenity crown with pstun and pconf.

Thranduil, all day any day. Knowing that monsters are coming is much more useful than being protected from certain of their attacks.

Do keep the Serenity crown, though; you may eventually find an alternate source of ESP and want its abilities.

Have there been any discussions about toning down infravision at all? Might be exciting if sleeping monsters weren't detected.

Assume you meant ESP here. There's been a number of discussions of ways we could nerf it, including making it not detect specific monster type, reducing its range, making various ESPs that are specific to single monster types (e.g. getting "orc ESP"), etc. I know ToME 2 has that latter, though it's sparsely used and spells that give "full ESP" for long durations are somewhat common so it's not clear to me how much difference it makes.

I don't recall anyone suggesting that sleeping monsters not be detected, though. Congrats on finding a new idea.

[Pete Mack]

Thranduil with Serenity as a swap later in the game possibly. In V3.0, the presence of bronze dragons made the Serenity swap a lot more valuable. In 4.0, the earlier monsters to watch for without rConf are Titans and Ethereal Dragons.

[AnonymousHero]

I know ToME 2 has that latter, though it's sparsely used and spells that give "full ESP" for long durations are somewhat common so it's not clear to me how much difference it makes.

If you have one of the classes/races which gets ESP-Orc (or similar) it can be very handy in the early game, but beyond level 25-30 or so you'll almost always have at least ESP-Evil or even full ESP. IIRC some of the ESP flags are actually impossible to find in the game (e.g. I don't think ESP-Spider actually exists on any in-game items.). In the end it basically just ends up being a "flag sink" in T2. It might be worth having separate Evil, Demon, Dragon, Undead ESP flags for a more "gradual" experience than going from absolutely nothing to full ESP. It might actually even be interesting to remove the full ESP flags and having the aforementioned flags plus a single other flag for "everything else".

EDIT: Typos/accuracy

[bio_hazard]

I don't mind the way T2 does specific ESP, but I've come to think that the Sil method is more elegant (+1 light radius from a "glowing" item). That would be particularly cool, e.g. knowing that an invisible undead is around even if you don't have SI.