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(6) Monster details =================== (6.1) Monsters -------------- All creatures in the game apart from special 'questors' and player characters are actually "monsters", aka your enemies. Some might exhibit rather neutral looking movement or no movement at all, some might not even inflict damage, but none of them is friendly towards you and all of them will in some way or another make your survival more difficult. Right after creating a new character you will already encounter "monsters" of some sort: Townspeople, denoted by the letter 't' and maybe some cats, birds or fish (if you happen to walk nearby the lake). Since all creatures are basically hostile, you will auto-attack them when you move onto an adjacent grid. Killing townies is a good way to make some easy money. Just beware of mean-looking mercenaries and battle-scarred veterans. In Bree, the starter town, you might also meet an exception: The 'questor' standing a bit south of the inn, the 'Town Elder'. He is a purple 't' that sometimes flashes a bit and is actually not hostile, you can talk to him a bit by bumping into him. When you enter the training tower or the dungeon you will soon notice the variety of monsters, for example you will probably encounter a "floating eye", denoted by an orange 'e'. These cannot inflict any damage on you but if you get too close they will gaze at you which will in most cases paralyze you! If you're unlucky or your Saving Throw stat (Shift+C to check) isn't particularly great a floating eye might even lock you in paralysis forever, making you easy prey for any other monster around. To check monster information you have these ways: Press ~2 for monsters you have killed or ~3 for a list of 'unique' monsters. Press ~7 for the 'monster lore' search. It contains all monsters in the game execpt for ego-variations (see below). Press ~l for spoiler files and there check 'r' and 'E' for base monster races and for ego monster types (modifiers that are applied to the base monsters). There are three types of monsters: -Basic monsters (over 1100 of those), such as "a Hill Orc" or "a Zog". -Unique monsters (over 200), such as "Azog, King of the Uruk-Hai". You can recognize these by distinctly flickering (like a colour 'spike'). -Ego monsters (over 50). These are not actually monsters but modifications of basic monsters, for example: The basic monster "Hill Orc" receives the ego-power "Archer", it will become "a Hill Orc Archer" and instead of trying to punch you in the face will shoot arrows at you. Ego monsters can also be recognized by flickering: They receive the ego-power colour in addition to their base colour. For above's example that would be the green base colour of the hill orc and the orange colour of "Archer" ego-power resulting in a green orc that flickers orange. If the ego-power colour is actually the same as the basic monster colour the resulting ego monster will instead flicker in random colour spikes just like unique monsters do. Some ego monsters can be extremely nasty at low and mid levels. Among the most feared are probably the (dark-brown) melee-specific egos "Monk", "Warrior" and "Unbeliever" and the somewhat less bad "Chieftain" and "Possessed" animals as well as the dark-green "Archpriest" ego which moves fast, has a powerful curse attack and can summon more monsters. Monsters have specific loot tables, a base level (r-level, racial level of the basic monster type in general) and an actual monster level (m-level, the real level of a monster standing before you, which can be above its basic r-level, because monsters can appear as levelled-up versions if you encounter them on much deeper dungeon levels than where they usually start to appear). See (6.3) for loot tables, see (0.4) for details on m-level and r-level. Some unique monsters are "dungeon bosses", which means they can only be found on the final level of a particular dungeon and when you kill them you will "conquer" that dungeon (press ~8 to check your dungeon info). See (4.5d) for info about dungeon bosses. Morgoth, the Lord of Darkness is the game boss. To actually encounter him you first need to defeat Sauron, the Sorceror though. See (1.3b) for details. By defeating Morgoth the player is awarded royal status. There will be two more dungeons that can only be entered by royalty and offer further, insanely hard challenges and new unique bosses. Variant-based monsters ---------------------- The TomeNET bestiary consists of 4 actual variants plus additions: - Monsters from original Angband aka "vanilla" monsters. ('BASEANGBAND' flag). - Monsters from ZAngband variant. ('ZANGBAND' flag.) Tend to be notably nasty. - Monsters from CthAngband (based on ZAngband) which is set in H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamlands and the Cthulhu mythos. ELDRITCH_HORROR monsters are almost all from this variant except for a few exceptions which are either related to Warhammer or of unknown origin (search the guide for 'eldritch' for related information). ('CTHANGBAND' flag.) - Monsters from PernAngband (which was later renamed to ToME) which is based on the Pern novels about Dragonriders by Anne McCaffrey (whose lawyer sent a cease and desist order causing the name change and removal of Pern references notably except for the still existing "Dragonriders" which is a sufficiently generic term to be safe). ('PERNANGBAND' flag.) - "BlueBand" monsters. This is not a variation but simply refers to monsters that I (C. Blue) created and added to the game. ('BLUEBAND' flag.) In general, BASEANGBAND monsters are probably the easiest monsters of their respective level, while ZANGBAND and BLUEBAND monsters are probably the hardest with CTHANGBAND monsters following closely. However, this isn't true for very-high-level monsters, where all great wyrms, balrogs, and various top end uniques including the game's boss Morgoth are actually BASEANGBAND. Then there also seem to be errors in classification, for example Tik'srvzllat is currently carrying BASEANGBAND flag but it is definitely a special ToME addition. These could be corrected in the future, but in the end it doesn't really matter except maybe a bit for... Variant rarity - The default server settings for monster spawns consist of the following table of probabilities: - VANILLA_MONSTERS = 100% - ZANG_MONSTERS = 33% - CTH_MONSTERS = 33% - PERN_MONSTERS = 67% - CBLUE_MONSTERS = 67% This means that if a monster of the respective flag is generated, it must pass the percentage roll to actually be generated. So for example monsters from group ZANGBAND or CTHANGBAND are just 1/3 as common as normal Angband monsters, while PERNANGBAND or BLUEBAND monsters are 2/3 as common. This can have a bit of an effect on players looking for certain monsters - their rarity in the spoiler files (or in ~7) must then further be multiplied by this variant-rarity %chance to obtain the actual final spawn chance. Well, or almost final, as some dungeons in turn have rules for spawn rarities depending on monster classification, for example mostly undead and nonliving monsters in the Paths of the Dead, etc. - theorycraft is never over!
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