The Tavern

Now that I've had some playing experience against them, I think they're fine as is. Forcing you to move or initiate petrification otherwise is enough of a tactical issue with the dust attack that it doesn't need scratch damage. (And someone would find a way to exploit that scratch damage with other monsters around, I'm sure.)

Like slime creatures, having another monster that screams "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THOSE WALLS AND FIGHT IN THE OPEN!" is a refreshing tactical change.

The worst is when you are in the corner and he hits you and you have no idea because you can't see the breath effect behind you.

Bim wrote:I've enjoyed them a lot more now that there are fewer, it got a bit much sometimes before. However, I'm not sure if a damage on hit would make them slightly too powerful, perhaps if it was on the low side of the damage 'sweet spot' it might not be too bad? I can imagine them becoming an annoying 'combo' monster otherwise. Not sure though, again, I appreciate all your work!

Thanks! Most of the work is actually just monitoring feedback and stalking the IRC channel for people who have encountered catoblepae and hurrying to watch their games before it's all over, and then tweaking tiny things and testing and tweaking again and testing. It's hardly been a massive coding effort, although having to invent petrifying clouds made it slightly more difficult.

As far as giving the breath damage on-hit, right now getting hit by a catoblepas' breath will deal 2d6 damage (7 damage on average). My assumptions are that squishy characters will have 4 AC (2.5 damage reduction on average) and that armored melee characters will have 9 AC (5 damage reduction on average). Hopefully it will make catoblepae a little more of a threat to casters while not making them too much more dangerous to melee fighters.

And note that all of these recent changes will not be in 0.9, as the feature freeze happened an indeterminate amount of time ago. Also note that CDO trunk right now is not actually trunk, it's 0.9 beta. If you want to try out the most recent version of catoblepae, you need to either be downloading the nightly trunk binaries, or compiling yourself from git's master branch, or playing CAO's trunk.

Stormfox wrote:Now that I've had some playing experience against them, I think they're fine as is. Forcing you to move or initiate petrification otherwise is enough of a tactical issue with the dust attack that it doesn't need scratch damage. (And someone would find a way to exploit that scratch damage with other monsters around, I'm sure.)

Like slime creatures, having another monster that screams "GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THOSE WALLS AND FIGHT IN THE OPEN!" is a refreshing tactical change.

It's actually non-trivial to get a catoblepas to use its breath against other monsters. When it happens, it just sort of happens by accident. Consider it a happy surprise.

As far as damage goes, there definitely won't be any scratch damage in the upcoming tournament, yet people playing trunk will get to try it out and see if it adds anything to the monster. I'll be soliciting feedback from both camps.

Wensleydale wrote:As far as damage goes, there definitely won't be any scratch damage in the upcoming tournament, yet people playing trunk will get to try it out and see if it adds anything to the monster. I'll be soliciting feedback from both camps.

Err, actually I pushed all recent tweaks to the 0.9 branch too. Code freeze is "don't add features", but balance tweaks are fine, at least in my book. If you want some changes reverted for 0.9, just tell me which ones.

I must have just been mistaken.

In which case, catoblepae are more dangerous than ever, everywhere! Hooray!

XuaXua wrote:The worst is when you are in the corner and he hits you and you have no idea because you can't see the breath effect behind you.

Pressing ";" or using x will tell you if you are standing in a cloud, but it's not great to require an active command to tell if you are in a cloud. Maybe there should be a status indicator when you are standing in a cloud. But that area is pretty crowded already.

jejorda2 wrote:
XuaXua wrote:The worst is when you are in the corner and he hits you and you have no idea because you can't see the breath effect behind you.

Pressing ";" or using x will tell you if you are standing in a cloud, but it's not great to require an active command to tell if you are in a cloud. Maybe there should be a status indicator when you are standing in a cloud. But that area is pretty crowded already.

No, clouds should be drawn behind monsters and player, or even better, over them but with a lot of transparency.

galehar wrote:
jejorda2 wrote:
XuaXua wrote:The worst is when you are in the corner and he hits you and you have no idea because you can't see the breath effect behind you.

Pressing ";" or using x will tell you if you are standing in a cloud, but it's not great to require an active command to tell if you are in a cloud. Maybe there should be a status indicator when you are standing in a cloud. But that area is pretty crowded already.

No, clouds should be drawn behind monsters and player, or even better, over them but with a lot of transparency.

And what about in Console?

To answer my own question: maybe have your tile be highlighted by the color of the cloud?

jejorda2 wrote:Pressing ";" or using x will tell you if you are standing in a cloud, but it's not great to require an active command to tell if you are in a cloud. Maybe there should be a status indicator when you are standing in a cloud. But that area is pretty crowded already.

The message that appears when you are hit by petrifying breath is colored red to set it apart from the rest of the combat log, as a visual reminder that you need to move. The messages that appear when you are standing in petrifying dust are also colored red.

Just played my first game in a while with 0 catoblepas encounters in D or L.

From watching a few games with the damaging breath mechanic, I'm really happy with where catoblepae are balanced right now. Most 1v1 fights I see with them are incredibly tense. I think their tweaking is at last complete.

But this does not mean that I will become complacent! Coming soon... THE CATASTROPHAS.

Are catoblepas included in the lair-themed zig monster set? I've gone through 2-3 of those floors in my current zig run, and none contained a catoblepa.

Yup, I've seen a few. Obviously they don't really get a chance to do much in Zigs, but they show up at least.

I've just encountered catoblepae for the first time, and I think they are a well-designed monster that makes for some interesting gameplay.

Obviously fighting them is incredibly dangerous and probably suicidal at the levels where they are first likely to be encountered, and probably for a while afterwards too. Not just because of their petrifying ability but because of the damage they do; the damage from the breath, which appears to ignore EV and blocks LOS, and high melee damage is enough to make them something of a threat to frail characters even if they are high enough level to be mostly resistant to petrification.

On the other hand, they are slow so can be easily evaded, letting you make the decision of whether to run away then continue exploring the level, taking the risk that they will show up again at the worst moment when you are fighting something else, try to fight them or skip the level (and hope not to meet another one on the next level. :roll:

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