The Tavern

There was a time when I thought Gastronok was a pretty tough cookie -- he hits hard, has lots of HP, and can spam summons while smite-targeting Airstrike over their heads -- and for those reasons, it was best to just avoid him. But that was back when I was a wet-behind-the-ears buffoon who didn't think to carry a blowgun on every character. Anyone who is faster than Gastronok and can poison him at range will be able to reliably, and trivially, kite him around while being exposed to near-zero danger until he drops.

With poison resistance or immunity, this tedious and perfectly safe slug-extermination method would be gone. Of course you'll still be able to "kill him by walking out of his LOS", as somebody put it in another long-ago thread -- but that's a separate issue, and discussing it would involve a can labelled "Speed-10+ monster debate", which is full of worms, and I'd really rather not open it in this thread.

gastronok is boring "walk or death monster". This will exacerbate it.

But you can't really discuss buffs to gastronok without mentioning speed 10. I mean, I guess you could make him a torpor snail or give him mesmerize or something instead. But the only meaningful way to make him a threat is to nerf walking away. Adding rPois doesn't really change anything.

WalkerBoh wrote:I guess you could make him a torpor snail

Excellent idea! Evil but good.

WalkerBoh wrote:I guess you could make him a torpor snail.

Indeed, a great idea!

Torpor slug? He grew too big for his shell over the years of eating adventurers.

Insofar as every enemy you can escape from is either a "boring walk or death monster" or popcorn, sure: rPois!Gastronok would still only be a threat if you choose to inflict said threat on yourself. But I prefer the (still pretty boring) decision "Should I try to actually fight Gastronok and maybe get a fancy hat, or just walk away" to the (totally not a) decision "Oh look Gastronok, time to swap to my blowgun and spend a few hundred turns kiting him to death". So in that small sense, it is possible to improve on the status quo without addressing the move-speed issue.

But since the can is open anyway, making him a torpor snail sounds like a fine idea to me too. (Commit in 5...4...3...?)

I think he's fine. I think people forget that most of the people playing the game could use him as a learning experience, we don't need to turn everything into newbie killing machines.

except you would still kite him to death with, oh, i don't know, literally any other attack in the game...

FR: Give Gastronok a gun

bananaken wrote:FR: Give Gastronok a gun

He's got one, he calls it 'airstrike'

tedric wrote:"Should I try to actually fight Gastronok and maybe get a fancy hat, or just walk away"

The guaranteed hat is something that does make Gastronok a bit better than most Walk or Death monsters. Kind of like Roxanne's book. It doesn't make a huge difference, but he does give a reward for defeating him besides some experience.

That said, I'll agree that making him a Torpor Snail would make him considerably more interesting (also more dangerous). Or just giving him the ability to cast slow or some other hex could work as an in between option.

Quazifuji wrote:Or just giving him the ability to cast slow or some other hex could work as an in between option.

He can cast slow. (And swiftness on himself too, FWIW)

I find that monster just fine the way it is, one of the few interesting monsters that is under speed 10 for when it generates. I like that there exist interesting slow monsters, and am happy that not all monsters are like say the alligator, a monster that pretends to be normal speed, but is secretly fast on land and very fast in water.

duvessa wrote:except you would still kite him to death with, oh, i don't know, literally any other attack in the game...

the difference is that with poison needles, you can do it while spending 99% of turns out of his LOS

so? with any other attack, you can do it without him getting any actions in LOS

duvessa wrote:so? with any other attack, you can do it without him getting any actions in LOS

How's that?

Slow unique point of smaller unique herd.

If gastronok or roxanne has been generated, there is no need to fight with 4 uniques.

byrel wrote:
duvessa wrote:so? with any other attack, you can do it without him getting any actions in LOS

How's that?

1. let him move into los
2. throw javelin or whatever
3. move back so that he has to use his next action to move into los again
4. repeat

In my experience, that's an extremely tedious way to kill him -- and it may not even work, if the ranged attacks available to you can't put out enough damage to overcome his healing rate, which is pretty likely for many characters who haven't found javelins, haven't trained a ranged skill, etc. Ranged poison is relatively much faster, will definitely work, and is almost guaranteed to be available in some form (usually blowgun) for almost every character by the time they first encounter him.

As I said above, I think it is possible to improve on the status quo without needing to address the more general issues of slow-moving enemies (which I grant would still be a problem for rPois!Gastronok). If the worst thing anyone can say for this small change is that it wouldn't fix everything, well -- it's still an improvement, right?

making people use a more tedious way of killing him hardly seems like an improvement to me

I have certainly been in situations where Gastro used swiftness on himself and was thus a much larger threat than expected.

Making him a torpor slug would certainly make him more interesting, though he might become a new Grinder if that's the case, since he hits really hard and he's durable enough to take a while to kill on generation.

he won't become a new grinder because he can't paralyze you on sight and you probably have lots of escape options by D:10 or whatever his mindepth is

besides you only need to break LOS to escape a torpor slug, even a scroll of smoke should do if no corners are nearby

The torpor snail effect would make it very hard to kill Gastronok, unless it is a character that can overpower him anyway. I mean the whole point of this monster is that it is a built like a tank, has strong, smite-targeted airstrike, as well as hexes, and hits hard in melee.

Duvessa's post about javelins does not seem on-point to me. If you can't kill Gastronok with javelins or weak ranged attacks, it can't be tedious. If the solution involves keeping Gastronok in LoS 99% of the time, it would be a good solution. I think giving Gastronok rPois is the best of the solutions.

The torpor snail effect would incentivize poison more than ever. Since, torpor snails don't slow you when out of sight. A strategy would be to poison Gastronok, while placed near a wall. Then duck behind the wall to break LoS, run away, repeat.

bel wrote:The torpor snail effect would incentivize poison more than ever. Since, torpor snails don't slow you when out of sight. A strategy would be to poison Gastronok, while placed near a wall. Then duck behind the wall to break LoS, run away, repeat.

this is already how i kill him in literally every single game

tedric wrote:
bel wrote:The torpor snail effect would incentivize poison more than ever. Since, torpor snails don't slow you when out of sight. A strategy would be to poison Gastronok, while placed near a wall. Then duck behind the wall to break LoS, run away, repeat.

this is already how i kill him in literally every single game

Yes, that is why I don't like the proposed solution of making it a torpor snail. It does not fix the problem.

The clear solution is something like the clouds and summoning nerfs. Poison stacks decay much more quickly on monsters out of LOS. If that's a power issue for venom mages (could be, since early game is what they're supposed to be good at, and it would take a sizable nerf) just compensate by increasing the damage, stacks applied, accuracy, whatever. And poisonous needle blowguns could stand a nerf.

Let gastronok attack and move in the same turn.

All monsters are capable of attacking and moving in the same turn; they simply need enough energy to get two actions. Slower monsters generate less energy, so gastronok will very rarely ever double move (it could be intentionally set up to happen, though).

tasonir wrote:All monsters are capable of attacking and moving in the same turn; they simply need enough energy to get two actions. Slower monsters generate less energy, so gastronok will very rarely ever double move (it could be intentionally set up to happen, though).

I mean Gastronok gets to do both in one of his turns.

Kind of like red devils

But in the end, this goes beyond Gastronok. Poison working really well, really far out of LOS is a problem for all poison vulnerable, LOS-threat monsters (say, orc priests, Fannar, titans, etc.) It's not hard to find a way to manipulate LOS to make them leave it after they have a few poison stacks on them.

I don't actually think this is a huge problem. You generally need to spend turns in LOS of a monster to get poison into it, and kind of poison's whole point is that it does less damage up-front in exchange for damage over time. Except parrow.

I mean, you can poison a ton of melee brutes and walk away while they die, too, and then they never get to hurt you even though they're still in LOS. But you could also pincushion them with arrows while they walk towards you and they don't get to hurt you then, either.

Regarding the OP: in Gastronok's specific case... meh. There are safe ways to kill lots of uniques; sometimes poison is one of them. He could have rPois or not.

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