Morgoth doing more than 600 damage in a single round
 

I couple of months ago, my comp97 character died while fighting Morgoth, and I didn't exactly understand why: I had over 600HP, but died before I could act again. The "post your latest insta-death" thread got me thinking about this again, and I believe I now understand what happened:

Morgoth has two "HIT:SHATTER:20d10" attacks. If he hits with one, the average damage from the attack is 110, reduced by armor. The earthquake from the SHATTER then does additional damage, which is not reduced by armor. If you are standing in a location with no "safe" grids to be pushed to, you get the "You are severely crushed!" message, and the additional damage done by the quake is 300 HP. On top of which, since you were not displaced by the quake, Morgoth can then swing at you again with another SHATTER attack (and potentially follow that up with a "HIT:LOSE_ALL:10d12" attack).

So, if you get severely crushed twice in a single round (as happened to my poor Hanna), you can easily take over 700 HP from Morgoth in a single round. I admit the odds of it happening are low, but it is something to consider.

Any chance we could get the "severely crushed" damage reduced to 200? Or possibly set the "do_break" flag in monster/melee1.c even if the player is not pushed away?

The same thing has happened to me. I suppose you could calculate the probability of this happening if you knew how earthquake rearranged the walls?

I'd actually suggest removing the earthquake effect, or at least the wall rearranging aspect, as besides the mentioned issue, phase door is extremely (too?) effective when meleeing M. Melee damage would probably need to be increased to compensate.

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Last messages:

> You smite Morgoth, Lord of Darkness.
> Morgoth, Lord of Darkness hits you.
> The cave floor twists in an unnatural way!
> You are severely crushed!
> The Master vampire wails out in pain!
> Morgoth, Lord of Darkness hits you.
> The cave quakes!
> You are pummeled with debris!
> You are severely crushed!
> The Vampire wails out in pain!
> Morgoth, Lord of Darkness hits you.
> You die.

I disagree with you both. Earthquake is there to mess with anti summon tactics, it needs to stay. Also possibility getting hit twice by crushing is nearly zero, you need to be in GV or something for that to happen (it almost always pushes you away from attack). There is also technique to make that impossible to happen. Think: what does not get destroyed by earthquake no matter what happens?

Also: one death every now and then from that is only good thing. It makes Morgoth the most dangerous monster in the game. (Actually using crushing Atlas has worst melee, it hits twice to shatter and twice to confuse with over 900 points of damage, if you get crushed twice)

That's a good point - something I hadn't considered.

The game I posted was a while ago, but I'm pretty sure I was just in a regular area. I'm sure you could calculate what the probability is of such an attack happening. After that experience, I just adjusted my !heal threshold to 700 HP instead of 600 HP and haven't worried about it since, though fighting near stairs as you hinted would work as well.

Fine, so long as you know it can happen. Breaths are displayed as the maximum possible for this reason. To my knowledge, earthquake damage is not listed anywhere.

Hm, that's two tactics to prevent crushing then. Didn't thought about stairs.

Timo, were you thinking of dropping an artifact on the ground?

Yes. Those things can't be destroyed no matter what happens, so earthquake can't drop a rock in your head if you are standing on a artifact.

It still means that M can hit you. I prefer runes, which can be destroyed, but prevent so much melee-damage that it is worth the short period of risk getting double-crushed when M gets thru. It's almost non-combat if you stand on a rune and keep hitting M in the head. M hits hard enough even without earthquake that it is beneficial to prevent it from happening.

Current nightlies remove artifacts from the level on destruction. (unknown artifacts will get recreated with preserve on, known artifacts are lost)

Earthquakes don't, but after reading this thread I'm tempted to make them do that also. (as well as give an earthquake a chance to break a rune/glyph)

I'm also a proponent of removing "create stairs" from the game altogether.

That one already happens. Runes get destroyed in case wall appears in its place. I don't think there is any kind of save for them.

In my experience, Morgoth never needed more than two or three turns to break a glyph at most, making the cost of casting them more than the cost of healing for priest-types.

I would support this.

Cost of healing is one turn not used to attack. With rune you might get four or five basically free turns to attack without healing. It pays out to use them. However priest is not the only class that has access to the rune, all of them have. Mage has it as a spell, and rest can just collect the scrolls.

As a warrior I've never found enough of the scrolls for them to be that useful against Morgoth. That said I do use them!

My experience differs from yours -- for me it's not four or five turns. Turn 1 I cast the rune, Morgy doesn't break it. Turn 2 I attack; Morgy doesn't break it (maybe). Turn 3 I attack, Morgy breaks it and I get hurt. Runes are still useful, but only because I can set them up ahead of time; they aren't worth casting in the heat of battle.

I haven't played an arcane caster in awhile, but warriors don't find enough ?Rune to make them worth saving against Morgoth, and priests/paladins in my experience get better mileage from leveraging their cheap heals. Just phase away before healing and Morgy won't get any free attacks on you.

I was not advocating removing the earthquake effect, I was suggesting that the crush damage be reduced to 200 from 300 so that the maximum damage that a player can take in a single turn would be reduced to 600 or so, which is I think what most of us have been assuming it to be up until now.

And clearly you do not need to be in a GV or something for this to happen, since I was not when it happened to me. Reading the code, it can happen whenever there are no empty spaces among the 8 surrounding ones. "Not empty" includes spaces with monsters on them. If there is nowhere safe to be "pushed" to, you get the "crush" effect, and you stay in the same place. If you are unfortunate enough that the subsequent earthquake *still* leaves you with nowhere to go, it can happen again. It appears to me that standing on an artifact (or stairs) is irrelevant since the code does not check the space you are *on*, only the 8 surrounding ones.

Mostly though, the post was intended as a cautionary tale. Up until now, I had believed the common wisdom that 600HP was a "safe" level. Plus, when fighting Morgoth hand-to-hand I would in fact deliberately seek out places clogged by stone in order to reduce Morgoth's ability to summon. The "severely crushed" effect shows that such places are less safe than I had believed, and it is worthwhile to be next to at least one empty space, and/or to keep HP at a higher level (or not engage HTH).

Good point about Atlas: with four 13d13 attacks, even with average damage rolls and a high player armor class, if all four hit that will be around 200 damage, plus two "crush" is another 600, for 800 or so damage. With high rolls on the attacks, or a lower armor class, it could go over 900. Which goes to show that avoiding the possibility of being severely crushed can be an important consideration.

If you use phase, you can use rune as well. You probably have more than one turn time to wait for M to get you, and it only takes one turn to heal and one to cast the rune. One thing I collect when playing priest is restore mana. In 3.2.0 they are plentiful way beyond need, so I usually have very large supply of those before last fight.

I have a benefit of being old-timer with knowledge that Morgoth can do 800 or so damage in melee. It was actually much more common in old days, because pushing player to other grid didn't stop Morgoth attacks there. It always got all four in even if you changed place twice during the combat.

AFAIK crushing happens only if the game tries to form a rock where you stand, and that doesn't happen when you are standing on a artifact. Checking escapes happens only after it has already passed the check of generating the rock there.

You got unlucky with escapes.

I'd say for a Priest, glyph is definitely worthwile but wouldn't collect ?'s for the final fight as a fighter.

My last winner in 3.2 was a Priest. I fought M in a dead end in a vault and kept casting glyphs all through the fight. It was a long fight and I'd say the average time per glyph was rather 3-5 turns than 2-3, I had high speed if it matters.
I only chugged a single !Restore Mana and that wasn't really neccessary, Staff of Magi worked fine in combination with the glyphs. My immediate comments after the fight was that the glyphs were too powerful, but after thinking about it more I'd say it's ok as it is. Priests are easy in the late part of the game, I see no problem with that.

/Mathias

That's not the way I read the code: in "earthquake()" in spells2.c, the game can *try* to form a rock on a location regardless of what is there, *then* the player on that location gets hurt, *then* the code checks cave_valid_bold and decides not to place a rock there after all if there is an artifact on the floor. But it looks to me like the player still takes the crush damage.

As I said in the original post, I admit that the odds of this happening are low: there is only a 15% chance that the game will try to put a rock onto the space you are in, and you have to fail that check twice, and be surrounded both times. OTOH, people worry about getting to speed +30 to face Morgoth even though the odds of him doing a double mana-storm during the precise turn that he also gets a double move are quite low. It is, however, something to be aware of.

That's how I read that too. Odd. I was sure that standing on a artifact prevented you from being crushed by rock. Checked older code and I'm seeing exactly same there too. Maybe it has been just in my mind. I haven't actually done that many times, I prefer runes, so it might be that it just not had happened when I have been standing on a artifact. Using runes Morgoth doesn't get many hits through during endgame.

It's the opposite: M can't hit you until he breaks the rune. So the broken rune leads to the earthquake, not the other way around.

I mean that other runes, not the one you are standing on, can be destroyed by earthquake. Obviously M needs to break the rune to hit you in order to make earthquake, so that part earthquake can't destroy the rune because it simply doesn't happen.

Hmmm....Maybe we should make earthquake as monster spell?