how do monsters prioritize sound??

[Pollen_Golem]

It seems pretty clear that awake monsters know the location of a sound that they hear, and sound always attracts them.
So, monsters always try to move towards sources of sound so long as they have not "noticed" a target, such as you.
However, monsters can hear lots of sounds at the same time - screaming all around them, clashing and clanking from combat, explosions going off.
How do they prioritize what they do about sound? e.g. do they change their mind every time they hear a sound, to follow it?

[partial]

if an orc shouts and nobody is around to hear it

did it make a sound?

[Pollen_Golem]

Really? No responses? Does nobody actually know? Surprising, because this topic is important. Much of the challenge in Crawl is due to multiple monsters being able to attack you. And that is made possible almost exclusively due to sound. Without sound, Crawl tactics would look very different. Luring would actually be plain common sense, rather than ridiculously spoilery. So it's important to know how monsters notice and respond to sound.

[Siegurt]

Well, first of all there's no "same time" in crawl, there's no "time" in the manner you're implying, monsters have a status like awake or not, and a possible destination set if they are "heading somewhere" and if they have noticed you, then they, of course try to kill you.

As far as I know, they don't change direction every time they hear a noise, they only respond to new noises when they're "wandering" (which happens when they get to their destination, presuming they can't see you)

For some of the things you mentioned, it only matters when *you* make a noise, explosions that aren't caused by you don't attract monsters, nor do attacks that you don't make. "Screaming" isn't really a thing, there's a shout, which happens when a critter sees you, which does attract monsters (similar to your own shouting)

So it looks something like this:
1. You do something that makes a sound (Or a monster sees you and shouts)
2. Every monster who doesn't have a destination set has a chance to hear it (and wake up if asleep)
3. Every monster who heard it, now sets that the location of the sound as a destination.
4. On each monster's turn they move toward the destination if they don't see you.

[tasonir]

I propose we call this the "I heard a door open so I'm going to ignore those explosions" model of sound. In any case, thanks for the writeup, it's useful information.

[prozacelf]

I propose we call this the "I heard a door open so I'm going to ignore those explosions" model of sound. In any case, thanks for the writeup, it's useful information.

The monsters are acclimated to all the random explosions in the dungeon. Doors opening is a novel sound though!