ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

From time to time in a dungeon level you can have a bunch of monolith and a "friendly" cultists near them.

Trying to do something to them, with all that time i never even though about it, thinking it was just some decoration.

But then in Daikara, i met such a monolith covered level, and for fun my Ghoul Necromancer decided to Retch on a cultist.
... that turned of course hostile and my angry minions annihilated him in second.

the Monolith turned into a dark blue and was renamed "disrupted monolith".

I did the same to all the monoliths on that level, killing their cultists i mean, and they're now all dark blue, one of the cultists said something about the monolith disruption at some point and a counter set to 210 appeared.

And .. nothing, i completely cleared that Daikara level, all the monoliths present there are "disrupted" , all the friendly cultists were turned hostile and killed, buy nothing happens at all.
The counter is still set to 210

Thinking it could be some bad dungeon generation that would have encased a lost cultist into stone, i decided to spend time to dig every diggable stone of that Daikara level.

But still nothing at all, the counter is still at 210 , going to another Daikara level and coming back does not change this, the counter re-appear when i come back but does not move.

Anything i'm missing or is that an unfinished random event or a really buggy one ?

as soon as u kill one cultist the counter will appear. it seems like u killed all cultists before the counter ended? usually its best to kill 1 cultist then wait (a strong demon boss - the sects god - will appear which u have to fight) - or kill all cultists but leave 1 of them alive (a much weaker boss will appear) and let the counter run out in both cases.

the strength of the boss will also affect his loot

if the counter didnt move at all for you it would be a bug (dont remember what number it starts at) but never had issues with this event and did it multiple times

Very odd, the counter never moved since it appeared.

Now it was the alternate version of Daikara, the one in which most levels are bombarded with meteors that destroy parts of the dungeons and make lava tiles.

I wonder then if by any chance one or more of the monoliths/cultists were actually annihilated out of my view by one of those meteors and it bugged the event completely.

I'll have to retry when the monolith and cultists will appear in a dungeon again to see if it works out of Daikara.

So that's what those do... I had no idea it spawned more things to kill.

For added fun, try and get a monster to hit one of the cultists with an AOE - the entire lot will go hostile towards the monsters. On an open map like alt daikara 4, they can clear the level pretty damn quickly.

Although if they kill said Cultist... Uh-oh?

Is this related to that weird orb that summons two or three humanoids and then a demon? Never met such a monolith.

No, this is a rarer event than the doombringer.

Yes, when the event is setup on the level you are, there are several tall monoliths (less rare during your dungeon exploration you sometime can see small version of those monoliths) and next to each of those big monoliths there is a cultist (similar to the ones you can meet in dark crypt or in spellblaze) except that they're friendly.

You need to kill them apparently to start the event, though looks like on my game the alternate Daikara meteor showers bugged it

I came back from the east, my ghoul necromancer still being good (and much more powerfull than before) and while exploring the elven ruins i kept until then, i ran into the last level with lots of monolith+cultist again.

This time as there was no meteor shower like in the alternate Daikara, once i killed a cultist, the counter appeared and ... worked.

I could then get that boss spawning and kill her (despite her power and her meteors at the level 36 i was , my minions + surge + the very excellent rigor mortis, made short work of her )

Got a very nice item (the "Crown of Burning Pain" ) from her death that allow me to cast meteor showers myself too

So it looks like the alternate Daikara may have bugged seriously the event, as in the elven ruins it played without a problem, i'll post a bug report then

It's items like that that make the Fearscape Invasion such an awesome idea. That's probably just an inkling of what could be there... And it summons meteor showers. Of Pain!

I had the same problem in 1.25
Daikara, meteors, the counter started but never moved. If i am not totally wrong there was one more cultist than monolith. Can a meteor destroy a monolith?