Talk:Leash

I will like to know what does a blessed leash does. --84.229.49.241 11:32, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

It won't get cursed as fast by spellcasting monsters. Apart from that, there is no difference to uncursed. -Tjr 12:00, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

trap detection

How reliable is a leashed pet at detecting traps? My own experience finding polymorph traps in the mines tells me it's the most effective method, short of using a crystal ball or gold detection. Are there hard numbers on this subject? --Tjr 19:50, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

From what it looks like in the source code (dogmove.c, line 659), the pet is guranteed to whine if it attempts to step on a trap, but since you can't predict the pet where the pet is going to step, you can't be 100% confident that your pet has covered all nearby squares. So I guess the reliability of this method is dependent on the time you spend with a leashed pet in a certain area, but still could theoretically never find a trap after an infinite number of turns ( assuming the pet's path choice is random ).

--Dptr1988 20:01, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

The way I read that code is: The pet considers all adjacent squares until it has decided on its next move. For each square, it first whines if there is a trap, and then draws a one-in-available-tiles chance of moving there. So I think it's guaranteed to whine for traps in any direction if it happens to decide on the last tile it considers.

I believe it always goes through the list of neighboring tiles in the same order. That means it should have a 100% chance of whining if there is a trap in the starting direction; 7/8 chance in the next direction etc. The big caveat is: I don't fully understand the pet movement code. --Tjr 05:00, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it looks like I grossly misread the pet movement code and just made some incorrect assumptions. Sorry for the noise.

--Dptr1988 17:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)