The Tavern

Scroll of Flash illuminates all creatures in the LoS of the player, blinding them and revealing invisible ones, while applying corona to everyone including the player. Such light is noticed throughout the dungeon, keeping its noise aspect.

Oh my fucking god this would be amazing. Invisibility is frustratingly annoying in the early game and this will add a much more accessible way for anyone and everyone to illuminate unseen horrors and orc wizards.

Edit: Blinding is a little OP for stabbers. Have it be resistible based on evocations or XL or something.

I think this upgrade to Noise might be a little too good...

A familiar encounter in crawl: you've just entered D:10 in search of the Lair entrance when you run into an unseen horror in an open area. You instantly know the situation could turn dangerous. But what plan should you choose? Right now there are lots of different options to consider: you could think about teleporting, you could look for a bottleneck in the terrain and try to melee it, you could swap to a sInv item if you are lucky enough to have found one (but at the cost of turns), you could try zapping wands and hope to hit it, you could run for a stair and gamble that it doesn't follow... What is the right solution?

Similarly, late in Spider, the problems get even more intense when ghost moths enter the picture, especially if you are playing a caster. Now you have to figure out a solution at the same time as likely dealing with tough emperor scorpions and the like...

If scroll of noise became scroll of flash as proposed, encounters like these would cease to be interesting, because you could just blow the consumable and light up the invisible monster. It would be easy, automatic, optimal, and boring. Think about it, how many times per game is monster invisibility truly threatening to you? 6,7 times max? Generate that many scrolls, and you've "solved" all those encounters by instantly eliminating the tactical problem, but those encounters are no longer memorable or threatening.

That said, I like the idea of an effect that lasts more than a turn. I would prefer an upgrade to Noise where it gave you the Mark status instead of just making a one-off noise that idiotic monsters quickly forget about (or are unable to find their way to due to their poor understanding of dungeon geography.)

I'd just get rid of scroll of noise because crawl has too many items right now, but if the devs want to change it into something useful this scroll is an ok idea.

elmdor wrote:If scroll of noise became scroll of flash as proposed, encounters like these would cease to be interesting, because you could just blow the consumable and light up the invisible monster. It would be easy, automatic, optimal, and boring. Think about it, how many times per game is monster invisibility truly threatening to you? 6,7 times max? Generate that many scrolls, and you've "solved" all those encounters by instantly eliminating the tactical problem, but those encounters are no longer memorable or threatening.

Since the monster will presumably only be visible as long as Corona is active, I'd suggest making the duration fairly short, like even as low as 3-5 player turns. Thus, the early unseen horror isn't "solved" - killing a fast, batty monster with nontrivial AC and EV in a short time isn't guaranteed. In particular this would present the player with a choice, of whether or not to use consumable-limited means of inflicting higher damage (like wands, potions of might/haste/berserk rage, etc).

elmdor wrote:I think this upgrade to Noise might be a little too good...

A familiar encounter in crawl: you've just entered D:10 in search of the Lair entrance when you run into an unseen horror in an open area. You instantly know the situation could turn dangerous. But what plan should you choose? Right now there are lots of different options to consider: you could think about teleporting, you could look for a bottleneck in the terrain and try to melee it, you could swap to a sInv item if you are lucky enough to have found one (but at the cost of turns), you could try zapping wands and hope to hit it, you could run for a stair and gamble that it doesn't follow... What is the right solution?

There's no guarantee you'll have ID'd the scroll before lair, much less have found one. Also, SInv items are allowed in the game and this isn't much different than them with regards to the design philosophy.

After lair Unseen Horrors are inconsequential anyway since the player will almost always be strong enough to brute force them.

The ghost moths thing though... tbh I totally forgot they are invisible since I normally have SInv by that point. I see what you're saying but that is so late in the game that such a petty thing shouldn't still be an issue.

Thinking about accessibility and drop rate --- turning noise (not exactly an uncommon scroll) into flash would make it even more likely than now to have a sInv solution early. As a result, it would reduce the challenge of these encounters significantly over the course of many games.

I like the direction of the concept... Full line of sight blind and corona seems a bit strong, especially without a subsequent reduction in spawn rate... how exactly does blind work for the player? Having ~5 turns of everyone blinded followed by ~5 turns of everyone Corona'd could be a possibility. That way it's certainly not an immediate solution to invisible monsters, you're both stumbling around a bit until you can see each other clearly.

It should also still be loud too. Louder even. I'm thinking the scroll is a magical flashbang grenade.

scroll of flash should instantly unequip all your armour

The cloak of flash should do that too.

You could make it just create a halo centered on the user that quickly shrinks like !silence. Still keep the alert all monsters effect though.

let it keep the noise effect and call it "scroll of flashbang"

Having it as a Sinv solution doesn't seem OP as long as it's loud enough to actually attract more monsters.
So yeah, you revealed and killed that pesky wizard but now a second pack of orcs (maybe with another invisible wizard!) is heading to your location.

There were suggestions earlier to make ?noise apply Mark to the player, which seems like a good idea but doesn't make much thematic sense with the "scroll of flash".

Maybe a "scroll of visibility" that coronas all nearby monsters and marks the player.

genericpseudonym wrote:Maybe a "scroll of visibility" that coronas all nearby monsters and marks the player.

Scroll of Reveal.

a scroll of blinding monsters may be alright if it doesn't check MR and the scroll of fear is removed, since that scroll is not very good as a consumable since it has a pretty substantial learning curve as you learn what monsters have low enough MR to be affected by the scroll's exact amount of power.

oh no, the learning curve!

I mean, it's not like monsters' MR is listed in their description or anything...

Sar wrote:oh no, the learning curve!

I mean, it's not like monsters' MR is listed in their description or anything...

You're right, it doesn't. It has a couple of pips that have huge range as to what they mean, and the scroll of fear's effectiveness or chance to beat any MR is unclear in-game as well.

Unless you think that using Sequell commands to retrieve accurate information and searching for information on the effective spellpower of the scroll with no actual in-game indication of this information is the kind of learning curve we want to set. In which case I don't know what to tell you.

It has a couple of pips that have huge range as to what they mean

Actually for monsters this is not true. MR was standardized a while back so each pip of monster MR has exactly one meaning.

crate wrote:
It has a couple of pips that have huge range as to what they mean

Actually for monsters this is not true. MR was standardized a while back so each pip of monster MR has exactly one meaning.

Well I stand corrected on this then. It's seemed more complicated than that to me... does it represent like, how much MR to HD they have then? Because I could swear I've seen much more variation in success chance for hexes than that.

I think the idea of the Flash scroll is nifty, I wouldn't be afraid it trivialises unseen horrors.

Aethrus: I have a hard time following you. Sure, Crawl is opaque, but do you really say that players have trouble understanding the scroll of Fear?

dpeg: yes, and you can see evidence of this in "how do I get out of this situation?" threads.

crate wrote:
It has a couple of pips that have huge range as to what they mean

Actually for monsters this is not true. MR was standardized a while back so each pip of monster MR has exactly one meaning.

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rats have 0 MR, adders have 10 MR; rats are indeed easier to hex, but rats and adders all show zero MR pips

being able to see the chance for a given monster being affected by your scroll of fear would be probably nice, though

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Scroll of Noise > Scroll of Flash

Scroll of Noise > Scroll of Flash

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