The Tavern

Hi Guys,

Just posting here first as I'm not sure what the expected behaviour should be (having never used frenzy needles or Dartura darts before) but this seems a little off to me. I suspect the documentation is just misleading...

I saw a group of orcs and a centaur. I threw a datura dart at the centaur - It happily started pinging away at all the orcs helping me kill them all.

Now, from the Wiki 0.24 notes:



But no further information exists. There is no such thing as a dart of frenzy according to the Wiki. But remembering there were needles of frenzy, I looked at those:

From the "Needles" Wiki area:



From the "Neutral" definition in the Wiki ( I know it references Elyvilon but it's all I could find)



Having seen all of this, I expected the Centaur to kill everything and then wander around until the Datura wore off, or at least let me get a free hit before it turned hostile on me. However, it instantly turned hostile once all enemies were dead, pinging me with arrows at lightning speed. I am also unable to attack it. The game just says the Centaur won't make way for me when I try and hit it; It's like the game thinks it's not hostile and so won't let me attack it; But the Centaur is Berserk and peppering me with arrows.



Two points I guess:

1) I assumed the strength of Datura darts would be to get the strongest monster on screen to help you kill a mob and then only have to deal with it one-on-one afterwards. If you have to do this while said monster is frenzied and berserk, I feel thats a really significant drawback that'll probably make me just not bother using Datura.
2) If the monster turns on you afterwards, why can't you hit it? There is of course CTRL+Direction - but I still think the game is kind of looking at the statuses of the monsters incorrectly to make you do this.

Third (minor) point - How do i CTRL+Attack on a Mac Book Pro? If I do CTRL+ A direction it tends to just minimise or maximise the browser. Do I need to mod my RC or something? I'm currently unable to attack this Centaur because of it...

Dartura causes a monster berserk (get speed+might) and to continually attack the closest thing (without regard for freind/foe), that includes you if you should be closer than anything else. Needles of frenzy worked the exact same way.

They aren't "neutral" in the sense of peaceful or non-aggressive, that's just a slightly confusing wording in the wiki (which isn't official documentation in any sense)

Generally speaking you do have to be careful about using Dartura, it's *very* powerful however in some circumstances, also it does wear off eventually leaving the creature slow.

Probably one of best ways to use it is to frenzy something that's part of a large group and walk away while the carnage ensues, and check back later when things are dead and the status has worn off.

I also like to use it against stuff that casts nasty spells, but isn't very threatening in melee.

This is intended behaviour, afaik. I understand from your post that the behaviour is not well documented, but a frenzied monster will attack whatever is closest to it - including the player if there are no closer monsters!

1) The strongest use of Datura I know of is to tag a strong monster with it and then run away. The monster will kill other monsters out-of-LOS, and usually end up being killed itself. Regardless it will be busy enough killing its former allies to give you time to run away - provided there are enough other monsters around.
A secondary use I haven't tested yet, but which should work based on the description, is to use datura on spell-casters. Berserk things can't use spells, right?
PS: datura is definitely my favourite dart type. Very powerful.

2) I agree the controls are annoying. Probably it would be fine to be able to attack frenzied monsters normally. I have a problem with CTRL-attacking diagonally, and sometimes waste a turn getting orthogonally adjacent to such monsters

Heh heh nice one

Seriously though, it's better to use the knowledge bots instead of the wiki (or at least, use knowledge bots first, then the wiki if more information is desired). The information is more accurate in general, and definitely so for datura.


By "pinging" do you mean shooting arrows? This sounds like the real bug here. For players, berserk prevents usage of ranged weapons; I guess monsters don't behave symmetrically in this respect, but they probably should.

So, it seems to me it would be good to:

-Update description of needles of Frenzy to remove the reference to making the monster neutral. Neutral monsters do not attack unless attaked first, AFAIK. This Centaur turned on me the instant everything else was dead. Current text:



Suggested Text:



-Make players able to attack monsters affected by Datura normally. Currently the game behaves as if the monster is not hostile, which it most definitely is.

-Potentially look at removing the ability for Datura affected monsters to shoot arrows and the like. If players can't, why can monsters?

Should I submit a bug request on points 1 and 2? Where do I do this?

Is anyone able to update the wiki on point 1?

Mantis is the bug report area (https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/main_page.php, click "report issue" at the top)
It's the same login as these forums.

Please don’t use mantis to report wiki inaccuracies. The wiki is an independent project run by the chaosforge community and not the dev team, I’m not sure any of us have access.

The in game descriptions are the only canonical documentation, if they’re incorrect then it’s a bug. In this case, the in game description reads:



The interface for attacking frenzied monsters could be improved. I’ve made a note.

Yeah, I mean the "frenzied monster's shouldn't be able to shoot" suggestion, which may or may not be a bug (given the difference in effect between monster and player) at a glance, it doesn't appear intentional.

Things in the wiki are definitely *not* anything to do with DCSS development. It's just an unrelated fan-created project.

^ I had long thought that "frenzy" = "berserk", but that isn't true. Since it isn't true, the game should make the difference more clear. Berserk monsters can't shoot AFAIK, while frenzied ones apparently can.

Similarly, undead can be frenzied (though not with darts IIRC, you CAN with discord spell) though frenzy seems to share berserk's limitation on the might/hastelike effects on undead.

IMO it would make more sense to just make it "berserk and attack closest", but whatever is fine in principle as long as it's clearly represented.

Interesting that Frenzy isn't the same as Berserk. Makes sense. Seems the Wiki is just wrong.

In that case, shooting while Frenzied is fine - but I think the interface could be improved. If you try and attack an affected monster, it just says it refuses to move out of the way for you, and that monster gets a free hit on you.

"Monster refuses to move out of the way" should not cause a turn to pass.

I can't be 100% certain... but...

I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm saying it shouldn't. There's no good reason for that interaction. A random "gotcha". If the player actually wants to do literally nothing while near enemies, there's already a button available for that.

I appreciate that... What I was saying was I'm not saying it does, I'm just pretty sure it did; and my game logs seem to imply that... But I honestly can't remember!