Slime creatures & splitting

[njvack]

So, with my most recent character, I brought my Troll down to Slime Creature depth and ran into a pack. Clever guy that I am, I thought, "OK, let's stay out of the corridors" and took out a creature in the open, while the others merged into a big guy. Ran around for a while, periodically managed to pick off a straggler, but finally got pinned between a Very Large creature and a troll, and thought "I could blink, but kiting this guy sucks. Maybe !Rage would finish him off." Nope; YASD.

Two bits of feedback:

1: I get it. Fight unjoined creatures in the open. That's good. But now that I understand that, would the creatures kindly split a bit more frequently in rooms? I get that spending 40 turns pillar dancing a slime allows other creatures to show up, but it's still not fun. I took a stupid risk (that I really knew was a stupid risk) here quite literally because I was bored with kiting the big dangerous slime.

2: I can't 100% confirm this, but I'm pretty sure that even the Enormous and Titanic versions of the slime creature were showing up as yellow difficulty in the monster list, when they were both extremely dangerous. Is there a way to special-case their danger level?

[Kate]

They'll move closer to you rather than splitting. Once they're next to you, they split 50% of the time as long as there's room to do so. Otherwise you could just kite them until they split.

[jejorda2]

I'd been assuming you were supposed to prevent them from splitting, then kite them until they split. Knowing they will pretty much only split in melee range really changes things.

[njvack]

Why is this? I'm actually curious -- I've been playing for a couple years and never managed to pick up on that behavior. Your explanation certainly helps but it's not an obvious thing; staying out of melee range with big slime creatures always seemed like a prudent choice.

If it's so players can't delay slimes by causing them to merge and split or something, I'd be fine with merge/split being instantaneous...

[Grimm]

The best tactic is to pull them upstairs one at a time.

[KoboldLord]

They don't shout, growl, or roar to wake each other up, so as long as you stop walking towards them once you see the first one you should never have trouble with pulling too many at once. Just wait for that first one to wake up, and then make it follow you back to a cleared area.

[sardonica]

Slimes are one of my favorite things about Crawl, because I hate them sooooo much. They break mah <tab> sprees!

I wish there were a lot more "puzzle mobs" like that. Fortunately new stuff is being added all the time like the Cableoctopus or whatever it is (the bull that shoots petrify) and harpies that steal food.

If there's going to be more monsters I hope they have a cool gimmick like slime or something.

[njvack]

They don't shout, growl, or roar to wake each other up, so as long as you stop walking towards them once you see the first one you should never have trouble with pulling too many at once.

I'm not saying slime creatures are too hard. Drawing them off one at a time is also tried and true, if also tedious. (Then you can even fight them in corridors like proper Crawl melee!) I'm just saying that having them split spontaneously in the open would make the mechanic more clear and also make fighting joined ones in the open less tedious.

Maybe a 1 in 4(?) chance of splitting and moving in one turn would make them clearer without unduly changing balance...?

[Kate]

...you could just kite them until they split.

And they're speed 10, so that would still be a problem if they moved and split in one turn.