How deal with Death Cobs

[nago]

Inspired by gdd's topic where some players claim death cob aren't dangerous, if you know how to deal with them, I'm asking how is this possible: the monster is so fucking quick that you have at most a couple of actions before being engaged, and in total you have like 5/6 turns before faint.

What I know for now is:
- AC is totally useless, EV is good as SH - so !agility, phase shift, having a shield gives some more turns against them
- melee is totally impossible
- dispel undead is good, as AoE spells but you often have to blink around because they'll get close too fast
- nets are strong as against any other monster, but their high EV makes it kinda unreliable
- they have practically no MR so the best tactics I've found so far is to disable them with whatever hex is available
- summons are goods as always
- they don't have sinvis so it may be another buff to put it, but probably haste is better for anyone isn't a stabber

Other suggestions?

[Celerity]

In my experience, any decent 2h will kill them in max 8 swings depending on luck. You might have to eat a couple permafood in this time, but it's manageable as long as they're alone.

If they come in packs, I usually go with wands of para/enslavement which are also abundant by this stage of the game. Other good items are anything that offers invis, iron rod, rod of clouds, lamp of fire.

[le_nerd]

Invis is a lot better than you give it credit for. -35% accuraccy if the cob correctly guessed position is a great boost in EV, and in Zot any melee char can use invisibility anyway against draconians. Its also a lot more common to have renewable invisiblity than haste.

[Lasty]

Celerity and le_nerd both have good advice here. I mostly just kill them by hitting them with whatever I'm holding, but if I'm worried !invis and/or !agility and/or phase shift are good options.

Edit: or by casting Confuse. Absurdly good spell.

[Floodkiller]

I'll say that it isn't impossible to melee a death cob, it's just probably a bad option. I'm not that good of a player since I often don't properly diversify my skills from melee/defense/invocations/maybe evocations; most of my characters end up as heavy armor bruisers with few/no ranged attacks. However, I have not struggled with death cobs nearly as much as other people have. Here's what strategies I use as a non-ranged character:
-Save one-turn permafood (fruit, jerky) for Zot unless it is necessary to use earlier. I rarely needed more than 10-15 of them, even on a MiBe with no ranged attacks (aside from some wands I forgot to use), but it's always safer to be prepared anyway (especially if you skill like I do, since you won't need to ration your permafood anyway)
-Only allow one death cob to hit you at a time. It seems like basic advice, but it really is a situation where I will take a random teleport in an unexplored Zot level or use a scroll of blinking just to reset the fight and avoid a potential starvation stunlock.
-Use any source of summons available. Even if it is only a stone of tremors with low Evo, any summon could distract the cob for a turn, which is valuable.
-Potions of agility are strong due to the extra EV being able to help you dodge the hunger drain. It is also a situation where I'm willing to Haste up, if the death cob has backup.

As can be seen by the advice above me as well, these aren't even the best approaches. Other than attacking satiation being an annoying mechanic, I don't really see the deadliness other than potential surprise due to previously being harmless.

[advil]

I have a SpNe with high ev and good sh in zot right now, and it is almost startling how much difference that makes; I've taken at most one hit from them despite standing next to them a bunch and having 8ac, they haven't been any more dangerous to this character than they would be without the hungering attack. Also, dispel undead 2-3 shots them at decent spellpower. On AC chars I've had good luck with summons, because cobs don't actually hit very hard. But it actually seems to me like the most reliable strategy for AC characters (reliable in the sense of being broadly applicable to just about any character and RNG) has been simply stockpiling fruits(/jerkies/pizza, but fruits are by far the most common).

(Which means that now fruits are a gear check for zot?? I just really don't get the arguments that that's not spoilery.)

[WingedEspeon]

Mos tof the time I just kill the by hitting them with a big stick. Problem solved.

[duvessa]

Melee is always a bad option and they only appear in zot. That should be all you need to know to deal with death cobs. If your character cannot kill them at range then avoid them in any situation where you do not have complete and thorough control, same as you do with orbs of fire, octopode crushers, etc.
But they are easy to kill at range, summon spam and dispel undead work fine, as does just using a wand of paralysis if you have evocations skill (and evocations skill is a no-brainer now, so...). If you are trying to play a pure melee character they are functionally unkillable but that shouldn't be surprising; since the beginning of time crawl has had monsters that were specifically designed to be unkillable for pure melee characters (old curse skulls anyone?).

[prozacelf]

Everyone keeps acting like the massive abundance of permafood doesn't exist. Eat your bread/meat/royal jelly to get to engorged before going into zot, and have some pizza/jerky/fruit around in case you somehow get mobbed by multiple cobs and are also somehow incapable of doing damage to them. In that case, I hope you have a plan for dealing with egolems and aliches and oofs, because death cobs are pretty harmless if you are aware of what they do. I've won at least 4 melee based characters since the introduction of the new cobs, quite probably more. If you somehow made it that far without training any way to hurt monsters other than smacking them with your weapon, I'm kind of impressed.

Hex wands, all rods except inaccuracy, some weapon that you can actually hit with, or pretty much any area effect spell can neutralize them pretty quickly.

[Sphara]

Wand of teleportation or dispersal projectiles aimed at them can be a great help if one of them catches your malnourished melee-Trogger.

[tabstorm]

I just hold down tab until they die, you will be fine as long as there is not more than one onscreen and not too many dangerous enemies to damage you while you are eating. A single cob is not that dangerous, but with more than 1 it is nearly impossible to out-eat them. The principle of the enemy is why most people hate it.

[MainiacJoe]

Are there any messages associated with AF_HUNGER? I don't recall them with hungry ghosts, haven't met cobs in 0.17 yet. I think a warning message, "foo drains your satiation" or "foo greatly accelerates your hunger" on every hit might not be a bad idea for unspoiled players. Experienced players can turn it off in the rc-file after all.

[tabstorm]

When you reach starving it will stop you from autofighting.

[nago]

Uhm, I see it seems there aren't better tactics than I thought.
I'm surprised so many reliably tab death cobs, I've tried some times but with the swingness of combat I always felt it's a big game - even with big weapons sometimes they die in two hits, sometimes you miss ten in a row and then you're fucked and need to teleport. I guess I'll have to try invis and use more!agility

[asdu]

You can pretty reliably neutralize them with a hex wand and a bit of evo skill, if you remember to spare an inventory slot for that purpose (and, likely, only that purpose).
Which, to me, really drives home the point of death cobs being a stupid gimmick presumably meant to entertain people who find that packing their luggage is the best part of travelling.