Abusing LOS vs Sauron -- how to kill him without a sweat

[PowerWyrm]

Everyone knows about the chess knight LOS trick right?

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What not many people know is that you can abuse this to your advantage to kill something as long as the something in question doesn't dig through walls. Just expand your little corridor diagonally and you have a long line of clear shot!

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You can dig up to 20 squares and shoot, use wands or spells without any bad consequence...

Would be nice to see this fixed for the next version
Note: this is definitely a bug -- there's no way you can "see" something past the first square (aka the "knight" area), still the game allows you to target these squares.

[fizzix]

If anything the "knight's move" exploit should be the other way. You should be able to peek around the corner and shoot while using the wall as cover.

It probably makes sense to just remove asymmetric LOS altogether. The game doesn't gain too much with it.

I'd be ok with asymmetric LOS, allowing you to see around a corner, but not allowing the player to target any of those squares. That takes more effort though.

[Sky]

What not many people know is that you can abuse this to your advantage to kill something as long as the something in question doesn't dig through walls.

How??

Do you manually target it?

[Sideways]

I'd imagine most regulars in this forum do know that (though, yes, new players who're not forum regulars probably don't); it's the infamous hockey-stick. And I've always viewed it as something that has no place in the game; it not only makes things too easy, but it also promotes a very dull way to play, especially for classes who can fill all those squares with glyphs of warding.

But some people like it and other LOS asymmetries.

[Derakon]

For what it's worth, there's a variant that works on Morgoth (and other wall-eaters that don't move erratically) as well:

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Morgoth will move west on his turns, which keeps him unable to see you. You can't target him directly, but you can use ball spells, spells that hit everything in LOS, or you can manually target past him such that the projectile passes through his tile en route to its supposed destination.

If you're playing a variant that has targeted teleport, you can easily win the game without the final boss ever getting a single non-movement turn, by just getting them to eat a row of walls, walk 1 step north, then head back to the east, rinse and repeat as many times as necessary.

[Pete Mack]

And one last thing: you are not required to abuse exploits.

[Sideways]

If you're playing a variant that has targeted teleport, you can easily win the game without the final boss ever getting a single non-movement turn, by just getting them to eat a row of walls, walk 1 step north, then head back to the east, rinse and repeat as many times as necessary.

Unless that variant's final boss can breathe disintegration, or the variant allows monsters to use spells like summoning or healing in response to being hurt by the player, even if the player's outside LOS

[kaypy]

If all of this sounds like too much digging, its also worth noting that most monsters will, given a large room, make a beeline for the "autohockeystick" angle, so standing in any doorway gets you the same result as the diagonal passage...

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