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.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=10702

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.