Talk:Mold (SLASH'EM)

Extinction

Does mold respect extinction? What about in Vanila Nethack? Ndwolfwood 01:53, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Mold generation from corpses does not respect extinction, as I've finished games with 255 of each type killed. Random mold generation should still respect extinction (in SLASH'EM and vanilla) -- Qazmlpok 03:12, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

is there any reason you killed exactly 255 of each type?Ndwolfwood 05:54, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The kill counter is an 8-bit unsigned int, so it stops counting at 255. --Darth l33t 09:21, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Acid attack

I have never been splashed with acid by these monsters. I would guess that their acid attack was removed between the latest version of SLASH'EM and the one for which we have the source code, but perhaps something about their passive spore (poison) attack interferes with the acid attack? I could definitely see that being a possible bug. -Ion frigate 00:33, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

I have never seen it either, but the source is not out of date: the template was generated using a local copy of the source code on my machine, not the files on the wiki. Specifically, slashem-0.0.7E7F3, while the wiki source shows F2. I think the issue is rather simple: uhitm.c in SLASH'EM 0.0.7E7F2, line 3034 has a loop over all of the attacks that stops once it hits a AT_NONE - a passive attack. Which means that a second passive attack, e.g. the mold's acid, will never be triggered. I don't think any vanilla monsters have two passive attacks, either. -- Qazmlpok 00:44, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense; I'll go ahead and note it in the article. -Ion frigate 03:32, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

One more thing. I think the passive attack is completely unimplemented in monster-monster combat, meaning your starting cat/dog could kill the mold as well; it doesn't need to be poison resistant. I'd like confirmation before the article gets changed though. -- Qazmlpok 03:45, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Just wiztested that, and indeed it isn't. And neither does the acid attack become relevant; the mold just doesn't do anything. However, these two molds are high enough level that early pets may be hesitant to attack them. I had actually always assumed that they didn't attack *because* of the passive attack, but I guess that's assuming too much of SLASH'EM's AI (SLASH'EM does implement some improvements in AI; intelligent monsters sometimes won't willingly stone themselves). I almost never use pets, so I hadn't really paid much attention. I'll change that right now. -Ion frigate 08:18, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Acidic Corpses

Do corpses sometimes turn non-acidic over time? Brown puddings are acidic, but I'm pretty sure I can farm them for molds if I'm patient enough. Maybe it's just random molds spawning? (Seems unlikely since I'm at a high-ish level, and I'm getting much tougher random spawns) --AileTheAlien 18:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Corpses do not lose their acidity. I'm guessing there's just something wrong in the code that prevents acidic corpses from molding, although I have no idea what the issue would be. -- Qazmlpok 19:22, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Passive attacks in infobox

Is there an actual difference between a "Passive 1d8 poison" attack and a "Passive 0d4 poison" attack? As far as I can tell, they are identical (2/3 chance of spores being released, in which case there is a 1/30 chance of instadeath, a 1/6 chance of losing 3-5 points of strength, and a 4/5 chance of losing 6-15 HP). The 1d8/0d4 doesn't seem to be used anywhere. Am I missing something?

--Erica 06:58, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Probably nothing, yeah. Every monster attack has numbers attached to it like that (including, for example, spellcasting attacks). 0dx in general means (monster level + 1)dx, but if the effect is hard-coded like that, it would make no difference. These numbers aren't entirely pointless still, though - they affect monster difficulty and I believe experience - if an attack can do 24 or more "damage", even for non-direct-damage attacks like spellcasting, it adds to difficulty. An Archon, for instance, has a 4d6 spellcasting attack. This drives their difficulty even higher, which I believe is intentional, as Archons are probably the nastiest casters in the game. The 4d6 itself does nothing, but serves as a difficulty marker - yet another example of a bug becoming a feature, it would seem. -Ion frigate 09:29, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! I removed the 1d8/0d4 from the infobox, since they were misleading and other monsters that have such "useless" damage values do not have them in their infoboxes. The 4d6 spellcasting attacks seem very arbitrary; why is an arch-lich's spellcasting attack 0d0 but a golden naga's 4d6? --Erica 02:57, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed arbitrary. Every attack that could deals 24 or more damage (4d6 is exactly 24 maximum damage) has an addition <level> added to their experience. For whatever reason the devteam decided that a golden naga gets this experience bonus, as does an archon, and whoever else. -- Qazmlpok 03:36, 22 November 2011 (UTC)