Drolem damage ?

[Frenchminstaer]

Hello fellow angband crawlers

I'm quite new to this game and I don't understand how a drolem, which is said to make 3d10+3d10+5d10+5d10 damage manage to put my char to -391 HP ? The last message in the board was "The drolem poisons you" or something roughly equivalent ^^ is it maybe the damage from the poisoning which is very high from the drolem ?

Thanks in advance and sorry for my english

[Sideways]

Originally Posted by Frenchminstaer

Hello fellow angband crawlers

I'm quite new to this game and I don't understand how a drolem, which is said to make 3d10+3d10+5d10+5d10 damage manage to put my char to -391 HP ? The last message in the board was "The drolem poisons you" or something roughly equivalent ^^ is it maybe the damage from the poisoning which is very high from the drolem ?

Thanks in advance and sorry for my english

Welcome to the oook forum! You're looking at the drolem's melee attacks. Drolems can breathe poison for very high damage; if you don't have poison resistance, avoid drolems. (Even with 1x poison resistance a full drolem breath still does ~250 damage.)

All of us have learned this the hard way; drolems are one of the classic deaths that happen to most new (and sometimes not-so-new) players at least once.

[Frenchminstaer]

Thanks for the response ! I guess you're right I learned it the hard way, won't get cocky with a drolem for a while haha but I wonder what treasures this 9-9 room I met it in had though.

[Derakon]

Breath weapon damage scales with the current HP of the monster, up to a cap of 1600 for fire/cold/acid/electricity, 800 for poison, and inconsistent lesser numbers for other elements. Drolems are one of the first monsters that a) have a breath weapon, and b) have a lot of HP, so they're a bit notorious for how much damage they can potentially deal. They're also not evil and not detected by telepathy, which makes it harder for warriors, priests, and paladins to see them coming.

[Pete Mack]

Dying to drolem is one of the rites of passage in Angband. It's the first monster that breathes for massive poison damage. (The Ancient Multi-hued Dragon comes close.) Other early killers are Kavlax (when he breathes gravity and then piles on) and Castamir (water ball after water ball, for confusion and damage.)

[luneya]

But hey, at least with the addition of breath attenuation in 4.1, the drolem only destroys you from reasonably close range. In the old days, drolems used to destroy you with poison breaths from halfway across the map. Back then, it was a firm rule never to descend to depths where drolems appear without poison resistance. Now, you can dive freely, as long as you're careful.

[Moving Pictures]

Originally Posted by Pete Mack

Dying to drolem is one of the rites of passage in Angband. It's the first monster that breathes for massive poison damage. (The Ancient Multi-hued Dragon comes close.) Other early killers are Kavlax (when he breathes gravity and then piles on) and Castamir (water ball after water ball, for confusion and damage.)

And Osse, esp if you have no nether resistance.

we should start a thread: novel ways to die in Angband.

[Pete Mack]

@luneya--drolem poison breath does 710 damage. Even at full attenuation, that is enough to kill most CL ~30 characters. This kind of huge damage is why I consider light rods essential, until you've got full detection (and ESP, If you are really low on HP.)

[Pete Mack]

@MP-- Osse is bad, sure. But actual deaths to nether breath are more likely to be caused by Dracolich. They are common, and much lower level than Osse.

[Thraalbee]

For poison I find the Greater Basilisk worse than drolem. I always remember to stay away from that tiny g, but who (in Vanilla) has any respect for a capital R?