ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

When certain monsters (demons) use Darkness, it makes a bunch of map squares become forever dark. Subsequent attempts on my part to light them up all fail -- scrolls of light, Sun Flare, etc.

Is it supposed to be that way? It's incredibly annoying and rather deadly never to be able to see what's coming for you.

Yeah, only the phial can clear it.

I rather like it, at least on melee characters. It blocks line of sight, so you can just wade through it and sneak up on casters. In my berserker's fight against the blue wizards, one of them filled the middle of the room with darkness. It probably saved my bacon.

Yep, I had the same luck against the blue wizard. Thanks to a demon that created a large area of darkness. And it probably saved my archmage. It may be incredibly useful as a los breaker (too bad it is not available to players...).

And, not 100% certain, but I think that it can be removed by mapping the level (either by vision or a scroll of magic mapping).

Mapping doesn't remove it, but it does reveal the squares. You still only have 1 range vision when walking through, but it makes things much much easier.

Susramanian wrote:I rather like it, at least on melee characters. It blocks line of sight, so you can just wade through it and sneak up on casters.

Fair enough, but what if you're the caster, rather than the sneaky melee character?

greycat wrote:When certain monsters (demons) use Darkness, it makes a bunch of map squares become forever dark. Subsequent attempts on my part to light them up all fail -- scrolls of light, Sun Flare, etc.

Is it supposed to be that way? It's incredibly annoying and rather deadly never to be able to see what's coming for you.

It's definitely a bug. I reported that some time ago, didn't get any response...

Then you don't rather like it. It's being thrown around as a power by endgame monsters. It's not *supposed* to be your friend.

PowerWyrm wrote: It's definitely a bug. I reported that some time ago, didn't get any response...

I mentioned it to DarkGod on IRC a little while back and he said it's a feature. Annoying of course, but it adds a nice amount of fear :)

Makes me think of darkness in ADOM--can be incredibly annoying and even dangerous, but there are certain powerful monsters who can't target in darkness and are sitting ducks.

With my arcane blades and berserkers, I'm with the above posters, where it allows me to get the jump on casters and archers

I never was fortunate enough to have it happen with the blue wizards, though.

It happens in the bloody spider lair. Is that "endgame"?

Happened in Limmir's quest, too.

There is a way to dispel this darkness

Of course, but what if you didn't just eat a tin of baked beans and/or don't have a box of matches handy ?

You live with it

The bug is not about the darkness... it's about the darkness in open areas (during outside quests). If it's a feature, then something should inform the player that a monster casts a "persistent cloud of darkness", which should be compared to a cloud of smoke.