Sandworm Queen crushed/suffocated in her own lair.

[Freddybear]

So I'm doing the sandworm lair, and I made it down to the bottom. I'm standing on the up stairs, waiting for the Queen to show up and fighting off the miscellaneous critters when suddenly I see the "level up" message float up. Sure enough, the poor sandworm Queen got crushed by a tunnel collapse and I got credit for it. Now somewhere in all that sand is a nice pile of loot. I'm not about to pass that up.

It took a while, but following the burrowers around for a while, I did find the last remains of the poor Queen, and I ate her heart.

[shooth]

Are you sure she was killed by a collapsing tunnel? I thought she could burrow? Maybe burrowing doesn't imply resist to tunnel? I've noticed many places where mobs start off attacking me, then end up fighting each other, and I know there are some area attacking mobs down in the tunnels. This is very common with dragons and area attacks late-game. Sometimes its a rush to see if I can kill them before they kill themselves. They rob me of xp Its fun to watch the loot suddenly appear on the other side of the map though. I've also seen the troll boss drown himself, die to traps, etc. Took me forever to find the spot where he died one game, just so I could get the Rod of Recall.

shooth

[Freddybear]

I've seen her get caught by a tunnel collapse before, but this is the first time she was killed outright.

[yufra]

The Sandworm Queen declaration doesn't have move_project digging and the AI isn't smart enough to follow burrowers closely. A few suggestions tossed around IRC would be to give her digging or make her immobile (think ant queen). Thoughts?

[Grey]

Add a "collapse_immunty" variable and make her and other sandworms immune to the effects of falling sand. Also make them not require breath of course.

Immobile would be a shame I think.

[yufra]

Add a "collapse_immunty" variable and make her and other sandworms immune to the effects of falling sand. Also make them not require breath of course.

Sandworm tunnelers don't follow preset paths, so this could lead to the queen being stuck (alive and fine) in sand for large amounts of time. This has an obvious solution: have tunnelers regularly move towards the sandworm queen. That behavior could be done as a change to the sandworm tunneler AI or (much cooler in my opinion) add a talent to the sandworm queen that calls all tunnelers to her and have a log message show up regardless of line of sight, something like "You hear a mighty bellow resonate through the hardpacked walls." Once the tunnelers reach the queen's location they will again pick random rooms to travel to... voila! Here is an untested talent that should do that: (note the particle effect should be updated... note sure what would look best)

Code: Select all

newTalent{
	name = "Sandworm Call",
	type = {"wild-gift/other", 1},
	points = 5,
	cooldown = 20,
	tactical = {
		CLOSEIN = 10,
	},
	range = 0,
	radius = 20,
	target = function(self, t)
		return {type="ball", range=self:getTalentRange(t), radius=self:getTalentRadius(t)}
	end,
	action = function(self, t)
		local tg = self:getTalentTarget(t)
		self:project(tg, self.x, self.y, function(px, py)
			local act = game.level.map(px, py, engine.Map.ACTOR)
			if act then
				if act.define_as == "SANDWORM_TUNNELER" then
					act.ai_state.spot_x = self.x
					act.ai_state.spot_y = self.y
				elseif act.player then
					game.logPlayer(act, "You hear a mighty bellow resonate through the hardpacked walls.")
				end
			end
		end)
		game.level.map:particleEmitter(self.x, self.y, tg.radius, "ball_light", {radius=tg.radius})
		game:playSoundNear(self, "talents/devouringflame")
		return true
	end,
	info = function(self, t)a
		local radius = self:getTalentRadius(t)
		return ([[Calls sandworm tunnelers within a radius of %d to you.
		]]):format(radius)
	end,
}

[Grey]

Funky :) You could just let her dig of course, but this is cooler...