UnAngband - feeling dirty and like I have cheated

[Ashkir]

Errrm. I just killed Scatha the Worm and have a feeling I really shouldn't have been able to as a 32nd level Necro. We had our battle in a thin corridor nearby a corner that I ended up running round having been nearly killed by the single breath attack he opened with. Same attack almost killed my familiar too. I backed up a little and seeing my trusty bat was still biting and draining health from the dragon I summoned some insects and cast phantasmal force more in hope of slowing him down while I escaped. The insects perished quickly helping my familiar but the phantasmal force summoned Chills, immune to cold and therefore immune to his breath weapon. They proceeded to surround him and moreless fear him every round.

Scatha did attack the Chills to no effect so they kept him a little busy but he did breath on my 'almost dead', 'one red star of health left' familiar repeatedly but apparently the little bat just shrugged off the attacks and kept going. I know he is one tough hombre and can evade most physical and missile/bolt attacks, but AoE attacks like dragon breath I thought would have toasted him. He is immune to acid and poison, not cold.

When I saw that between him and my summons, they had Scatha under control I got a little braver and ventured round the corner to add my pathetic damage output to the mix, the only outcome of this was the dragon barely noticing my presence and me nearly dying everytime I peeked round to see what was going on!!!

So I simply hid round the corner and watched as the massive beast was bitten to death by a tiny health draining bat!!!!!

I have a feeling this is not working as intended and the kill has been cheapened. Kind of makes Necros invincible under the right conditions. Or was I just simply incredibly lucky with the Chills keeping Scatha feared and distracted and the familiar ducking and diving like a god??? I suspect the former is the case

[buzzkill]

I don't play UN, but if anything it sounds like an imbalance or a bug. You got lucky, don't be so hard on yourself. If it turns out to be a repeatable exploit, just don't exploit it again.

[d_m]

I agree with buzzkill... if you didn't know that this would work and were worried about you or your familiar dying then it's fair.

If you determine that this is some kind of bug or glitch and keep doing it then that's different. If it's not a bug or a glitch, but just an abusive strategy, then you'll have to decide whether you think it's legitimate or not.

[NotMorgoth]

Hmm, I don't know Un either but it does seem like a possible bug that Scatha's first breath attack put your familiar down to 1 star, but all the others did not do enough damage to finish it off.

[ekolis]

It wasn't one of those silly "drain 90% of target HP, rounding damage down" attacks, was it? :P Not that I've seen anything like that outside of Final Fantasy...

[andrewdoull]

It is a bug.

Uniques can only be killed by the player - not other enemy monsters. Up until the latest release there were no friendly uniques; the familiar, and perhaps 2 others are friendly uniques.

This didn't come up in testing because I would always accidentally kill the familiar early on myself.

The fix will be included in the next release.

Edit: Don't feel dirty until there's a 1 in front of the version number. At the moment, you're an incredibly helpful playtester...

Andrew

[Ashkir]

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

In that case I will put Scrotus the Necro into temporary retirement until the fix is in place and then come back to him.

Hmmmmm. What class to play next?

[Matthias]

Why don't you just kill the familiar yourself and move on? If it is so fragile that Andrew kills it by accident it would die as soon as the bug is fixed anyways.

[Ashkir]

It's not that fragile. I'm guessing Andrew probably catches it in a Stinking Cloud or two very early on in the game.

My familiar is a very important part of the game. It evades melee attacks, missiles, targetted spells and bolt fire and is very hard to even hit anyway. It doesn't have many hit points but is damaged so rarely that this doesn't matter so much. It's weakness is area of effect attacks and beams which it is unable to avoid. I made it immune to poison early on as a low level Necro's main methods of attack are poison based so I wouldn't kill him accidently.

I can send him to scout areas, he sees invisible creatures and I am aware of what he sees. He also communicates monsters statistics to me so I get to find out about a creature as he attacks them and is attacked in return.

I can park him in a single space corridor against melee creatures that would stomp me in a few rounds and he will stand his ground evading almost all attacks while I pick them off. Most importantly I made his attacks drain health so as he hits creatures the life drained is added to my own hit points. This is incredibly useful and gives a Necro a huge advantage as they have a spell that drains their own life to give themselves back spell points, giving me an almost limitless supply of power.

All in, with the familiar fighting with me I spend a lot of combats fighting toe to toe with even fairly big hitting creatures using my poison touch attack, stepping back every now and then to let the health drain heal me/top up spell points etc.......

I've been very careful and never had him go into the red on his health before. Most fights end with the familiar and the Necro at over 50% health anyway. It was just the Scatha fight when it seemed obvious that something was wrong that caused me to ask questions.

I've had a great time with this @ and will definately go back to him later but I'd rather not do it while the bug is present or without using the familiar as it's a massive part of the Necro's play style.

[andrewdoull]

I've had a great time with this @ and will definately go back to him later but I'd rather not do it while the bug is present or without using the familiar as it's a massive part of the Necro's play style.

There's a slight problem with that line of thinking. Once a familiar is dead, it is really dead...

You could take an honesty forfeit at this point and just keep playing without the familiar, because it sounds like Scatha would have killed him with that first breath.

But if the familiar is so integral to your play style, that it might be too difficult a decision to make.

Andrew

[Matthias]

Or you could make it a feature and keep it immortal. Sounds like a nice reason to play Necromancer.
Or make it killable and have it autorevive after a medium amount of turns. That way it won't be abused but can still be the important part of the necromance it seems to be atm

Edit: Also Re: Characters on hold. I have several Un characters on hold. Getting back is a lot harder than it sounds. For most of them I'd rather redo them instead of returning

[Arralen]

Or make it killable and have it autorevive after a medium amount of turns.

.. btw - do Vampire Bats still {charge} and revive after some time?
So if monster corpses can do that, why not familiar corpses?

Also Re: Characters on hold. I have several Un characters on hold. Getting back is a lot harder than it sounds. For most of them I'd rather redo them instead of returning

Yeah. I hate restarting. Nevertheless, I have at least 5, stuck in various versions from 0.6.2 to 0.6.4preX ...

[Djabanete]

Maybe a spell, Revive Familiar? Make it so you have to pick up the corpse for it to work?

Not that I know anything about Un. (*Are* there corpses?)

[Ashkir]

Oh yes, there are plenty of corpses .............. and heads, skulls, chopped limbs etc ...............

There is a spell already in the game that raises your familiar from the dead. I found it in "a Book of Devilry". Can't remember off the top of my head what level it is though. I'm sure I can cast it though with a big failure rate and mana cost.

It's not the fact that the familiar can die "permanently" that is the problem. It is the fact that as it stands, by my understanding, I can park him on guard blockling a unique or ood monster from getting to me and they cannot kill him. As long as I can hide away, the familiar will slowly but surely kill whatever is sent his way.

Apparently a lot of mages lose their sidekick early on due to friendly fire. I was very careful not to do this and now I have a seemingly indestructable bat who, even if he did die ( can traps kill it?? ) I can raise from the dead anyway. Although this sounds brilliant, I cannot continue this @ as I won't be playing in the spirit of the game. I'm sure Andrew hasn't meant this as a feature and he has posted earlier that this is a bug.

Having said that, the familiar does randomly leave its' master's service. Sometimes you can resummon. Other times he will not return until you change the dungeon level you are on. I haven't really found what prevents the resummoning although he tends to refuse to return if I have raised a large number of undead previously. Maybe there's a cap on the number of summons/pets/familiars etc...... on any given dungeon level???

I will return to this @ later as Un is an absolutely fantastic variant, full of flavour, choices, atmosphere and pretty damn harsh and difficult too. It is my current favourite and I will continue to plug away

[andrewdoull]

Yeah. I hate restarting. Nevertheless, I have at least 5, stuck in various versions from 0.6.2 to 0.6.4preX ...

They 'should' all be save file compatible AFAICT

With varying degrees of should...

Andrew