ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

What do people find are the most annoying enemies? By "annoying" I don't mean dangerous. Specifically, I'm thinking of mobs that
1) present no real danger to the player.
2) are annoying to kill.
3) stop autoexplore/ require constant attention.

My vote goes to the orc pyro/cryomancers in the Vor pride and elsewhere. They are not very dangerous but they:
i) clutter the screen with effects that do only very little damage
ii) teleport randomly all around so that it's a pain to chase them and kill them. I would be so happy if this ability was removed or reduced. It's particularly annoying for melee characters.

What are your candidates for most annoying enemy?

Enemies with Call Shadows that are behind walls I have to dig through to get to them.

+1

Snakes can be annoying if you are a class that uses projectiles (such as archer or corrupter). Their random movement can make it difficult to hit them.

Orc Mage-Hunters as Anorithil. All your bajillion spell hits will keep your energies at zero because new Antimagic Shield is awful on enemies. They're also complete pushovers damagewise, so you can literally bump them to death with your staff. Over about a hundred turns. And Gorbat Pride is FULL of the things!

Dreadmasters are probably the actual most annoying enemies, but they're actually threatening due to Burning Hex/Disperse Magic. Still belong on this list IMO, because a Dreadmaster has zero chance of killing you on its own.

I second the Dreads/Dreadmasters. How they can go invisible, walk through walls, and kite you around while inflicting all sorts of nasty statuses.

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"You could skip it, i think it drops 0 xp and 1 copper [at most], you are better off selling oxygen to beggars to become rich."

Don't forget that they can also summon lesser dreads while having super high defense and retaliation damage! Or that they're nigh-immune to darkness damage while being heavily resistant to other types! Dreadmasters are the worst.

Luminous horrors when I play a character focused on fire or light damage

Another example that comes to mind: enemies that do a minuscule amount of poison damage, forcing the player to keep pressing the rest key multiple times before autoexplore can work again. Similarly, in Embers of Rage, the poison sewers can go to hell. What is the point of the vanishingly small damage of the poison water anyway?

To make a notable terrain feature without condemning you to death for stepping in it. You take damage there so you're like "Oh, obviously, I shouldn't stand in this" and if you DO stand in it all the time you're likely to die from poison + combat. But if you accidentally step into it once or twice it doesn't kill you. It makes the area more interesting than "just another cave/castle tileset" without being immediately fatal.

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Let slip the toast of war.

While I appreciate the design idea behind it, for me at least it does not work. All that it does is cause additional annoyance because I have to keep pressing the autoexplore button many, many times. I think that removing that feature would increase my enjoyment of that area.

Drakelings. Seriously they become completely harmless after you get past level 10 and their only use is to take up space so that you can't rush the dragons spamming their breaths. They're at their most annoying when they spawn without those dragons though, since they're just trash mobs that come in packs of 4 (which means 4 bumps attacks for nothing) and tend to make the game lag incredibly for absolutely no reason when they spawn in large numbers (which happens way too often). It doesn't help that they're literally everywhere. I'd axe them from the game files in a heartbeat if I could.

Also anything with phase door, but at least crystals and orc elementalists can be dangerous if you try to steamroll them blindly.

Dreadmasters and luminous horrors for sure, as a sustains paladin. Is there absolutely no counter to dispersion? Also anything that regularly blinds or goes invisible. I use blind-sight, but it sure is a pain to right click everywhere to check what is where.