Least Favorite Monster
 

What is your least favorite monster in the game?

For me any sort of ooze or jelly is really got to be at the top of the list. When I see those things I just turn the other way. I can't stand them. Most of them reduce my stats or destroy my armor and leave me with nothing! GRRR stupid oozes.

In general, anything that wrecks my equipment. It just gets tedious, dragging my ass back up to the town and replacing everything after every level, hoping against hope for another piece of armor that can't be harmed by the elements, and wearing fifteen armors of Resist Acid (in addition to one armor of Elvenkind or Resistance) just because I won't have to replace it.

Especially Water Hounds. God, I hate Water Hounds.

The other Hounds are kind of stylish. I mean, Dark and Light are actually kind of scary to fight. But Water Hounds piss me off.

Where do I start?

Ochre jellies and Acidic cytoplasm
Fire, Water, Air, Nexus, Gravity, Inertia, Time, and Ethereal hounds
Magic mushroom patches
Umber hulks
All Quylthulgs
Drolems and AMHD
Dreads, Dreadmasters, and Dreadlords
Ethereal dragons
Black reavers

I could never pick just one. Some of these enemies I'll still avoid at level 50, some of them I eventually out-grow. I never mess with molds or jellies but they don't mess with me so we're cool. Ochre jellies make my list because they're the only 'j' with jelly in their name that moves.

What he said. Hounds, mobile jellies and magic mushroom patches. Argh.

Time hounds.




oh, and Time hounds.

Hill Orcs. BORING Black orcs better.

...and water hounds in NPP.

What? I'm going to have to be the one to say it, huh. Death Mold .

I've only ever encountered a couple of these (which is a pretty good indication of how good of a player I am).

I still remember the first time... I just walked right up to it... thinking... after all, I'm obviously very powerful... and... it's only a mold.

I've only ever been killed by one once: one of those teleport-with-one-hp-and-land-next-to-whatever deaths. They just sound so scary that I've never gone anywhere near one.

I use them as a gauge of how prepared for end-game nasties I am. If I can safely melee Death Molds then I have rDisenchant and HoldLife which are usually two of my last resists, unfortunately.

After that they're easy.

Oh, so close! My answer is


Time hounds.




oh, and Time vortices. :)

I was going to say vortices but they don't usually spawn together in large clusterf*ck packs of doom :(

Any mimic, followed very closely by those stationary skelly druj mage things.

My vote goes to Gravity Hounds. But, that's just me. :)

No, it's not.

Hounds show up on telepathy, though, so can be easily avoided. Vortices don't.

Never understood the hatred of magic mushroom patches: they're easy enough to ignore, since they can't run after you.

In fact there aren't really any monsters I hate. ToME water hounds, I suppose, since they stun, destroy potions, and cause significant damage, and generally appear on watery, and hence open, levels.

My least favourite / most hated unique has to be the Mouth of Sauron: spells powerful enough to kill many characters, and if you let him get to melee range he has disenchant and drain-charges attacks.

Hm, it depends on depth.

First nasty ones are basic element hounds because they can destroy (expensive and useful) parts of your inventory or damage your armor.
Well, I just tend to ignore the armor damage and struggle my way to deeper levels since soon enough acid resistant armor will show up.

Then there are some early uniques and monsters that can disenchant which really can be painful if a powerful weapon gets disenchanted.
All the undead that drain stats are similiar naughty.

Later on when you are powerful and may have resistance to disenchantement and even immunities to some elements you have to fight monsters that drain charges from your precious speed and healing staves.

And the game has monsters to attack you with powers beyond any resistance (most hated are plasma and gravity) or where resistance is very hard to get like nether (which can cause immidiate death).

Even with hold life and sustain stats you fall victim to time breathers.

What a cruel game! ;)

I see I have so much to look forward to. I have been more successful lately then ever before and it seems that success will be rewarded with more monsters I will avoid like the plague! :)

Black Reavers. Won't even go near them.

Filthy street urchins. I fancy a quick trip to the general store for some apple juice and I get jumped by a million and a half of the little cretins. Thank goodness for ball-spell activators.

Those darned 'Z' hounds. Nothing else causes me more aggravation.

Also, time vortices. "Time" is such a cheap mechanic. "So you worked hard to get all your sustains, and hold life? Well, they DON'T work!"

Also, Time Hounds, because they're an unresistable disenchant away from being the Perfect Storm of "cheap".

I'm kind of fond of death molds.

There used to be a point in a mages life when he could crack a jelly nest and splatter everything but the death molds with fireballs. Then he could get a few thousand exp using magic missile on the deathmolds since they have no ranged spells and don't move. That was when Ben Harrison was maintaining, though, and things have changed a lot since then.

My most hated is probably the hummerhorn. I had a traumatic experience with them as a child. Well, early teen. Boolean status ailments allways feel somehow unfair to me.

Hounds.

First it's annoying blinding ones, then the annoying ones that wreck your kit, then the ones that can kill you, then the ones that can wreck your kit and kill you at the same time, then the ones that kill you and you can't resist it and you just want to genocide all of them all the time but you can't because you're a warrior.

/wrists

I forgot to mention Storms of Unmagic.

Undetectable by telepathy, burrows through walls, and has God-knows-what shooting out of them..

The Tarrasque! :mad:

... followed closely by Dreads and the higher level hounds.

Chaos Hounds are particularly high in my "least favourite monsters list"; reminds me of one game where I got to Chaos hound depth at about level ten and one breath later I was at experience level zero and dead. It was hilarious to be at about level ten and that deep in the dungeon! :D

I second the hummerhorns. . . breeding and confusing. Can't phase door out, and get nibbled to death in a corridor 200 turns later.

Anything that breeds explosively, especially on early levels. You can encounter lice as early as level 3 or 4 I believe, and if you don't have a line of sight to a stairway, you might as well just give up.

Later they can be annoying, but on low levels, explosive breeders are deadly.

You just need to leave the level. Breeders are annoying, but you can get away.

The reason people all mention time hounds is that:
1. If there are several in LOS you are dead.
2. They move "very quickly", so they can always run you down.
3. Even a single breath can have really nasty side effects

/signed

Just got killed by the damn thing. How much fire damage can it breathe? Even with resistance I lost ~600 points with one single breath.

Yeah, I know, but breeders have an annoying habit of getting between you and stairways. And as I said, they are only annoying on higher levels, but in the beginning, they hit as hard as anything else, so early on they are the worst thing that can happen to a character. I don't even know how many new characters I lost to giant white lice.

Of course, once the really broken hounds start showing up, you'll cry for the times when all you had to worry about were lice or worm masses.

With single resist, it'll keep doing 533 fire or cold damage per breath until you have it down to 5 stars. Double resist or immunity or run away.

Too late! ;)

Gothmog is my most hated unique - he's killed two of my most promising characters.

You know, I'm surprised nobody has even mentioned Morgoth.

He's the only monster that anyone actually wants to kill. Except maybe Wormtongue. Everyone else is just an obstacle.

He is an ---hole, though, no doubt about it. Killed the hell out of me the only time I fought him, 'cept in Tinyband.

And Sauron. The thing with the "bosses" is you shouldn't be taken by surprise - you KNOW which levels they are on, and can prepare accordingly.

Except that with the bug in the current version, you don't have to kill Sauron and you can keep going way past 100 if you want ;)

After playing awhile on the current comp (Steamband), White Fang is rising pretty high on my list... like an uber version of the Maggot dogs.

Have you had the pleasure of Spring Heeled Jack's company?

He dusted my 'best ever' practice character, in a single turn, just when I was beginning to build a little confidence. Somewhere about DL45. He breathed. I died. 100+ damage (even with 40% resistance).

Advance warning - the Marquis de la Tour and the Queen of Hearts both deal out massive single round damage. Approach with caution.

No warning necessary. I learned my lesson. I approach the Four of Hearts with caution.

I hold a grudge against Cave Spiders for all the characters of mine they killed in my early days of playing, across Angband and just about every single variant, spanning over a decade. I've become a cautious enough player to deal with them one way or another now so they aren't much of a menace anymore, but when I see the pack of black Ss I still scowl.

Moaning Spirits are annoying too, they have a habit of sapping the DEX of my early-game characters who often haven't got See Invisible then, and don't have loads of cash to be splashing out on Restore potions.

Anything that has Time attacks is annoying and to be hated.

Qulythulgs summoning summoners, then blinking away just as you get close enough to hit them... *hate*

I will append this with Nexus Qulythulgs, which teleport me across the map about 9 times in 10 as soon as I am within line of sight >_<

I loathe the Greater Hell Beasts that appear in some variants...

IMHO, no game should have invincible monsters that exist soley to spam harmless attacks and irritate the player.

I also hate Gumband's Kobold Shamans...low depth summoners who can summon other Kobold Shamans...

They're like breeders, but much, much worse.

Giant white louse, or zephyr hounds... depends on my mood.

Mass banishment 'Z' .. every level.

Good call, I forgot about these guys, but I'm the same way. These days I just avoid 'em like the plague until I'm powerful enough to walk through them naked without blinking (which, granted, doesn't take long).

Yep. I second that. Before, I used to hate Gravity Hounds the most. But, that changed recently after a scary experience with some Time Elementals that chased me in the Z+Angband wilderness while at char lvl 20-22. Because of this, I am now convinced that I hate 'Time' monsters the most (e.g., Hounds, Elemental, Vortices, etc.).

As of today for a rogue at dungeon level 20 it is definitely crebain in a room with dark hounds. :rolleyes:

Salamanders are like miniature Tarrasques. In Ironman.

You need to spend points on stats--you can't expect to win every ironman game, only those in which you get lucky. And your chances of getting lucky with a weak character are much, much lower.

To clarify, that's "spend *all* points on stats". If you care about money, play something that can kill townfolk, and scum the town for as long as it takes.

IMO escape is the most important thing, so I've been playing ironman priests while I work on ID-via-use. I have no patience, so I buy an extra ?PB1 and 2 ?PB2 and maybe a ?phase or some arrows if I have any extra money, and then I go down.

I don't think ironman is ready without my mods. You cannot squelch things until you id them, and id is in short supply. You'd better keep a text editor open to write down notes on which flavors do what.

I meant inventory-destroying-wise.