Monsters summoning monsters in walls, on me

[Repton]

Mac beta 9.

My indestructible dwarf fighter (armour 39, or 51 if I use resilience ) was exploring the old forest, when he met the queen ant. He retreated to the stairs to face the hordes, and the queen ant then proceeded to summon ants above and below him (both occupying forest squares, and thus he cannot attack them except through abilities), and a third ant on the same square as him.

See attachment for screenshot.

You will notice also, if you look at the message log in the screenshot, that the queen ant attempted to use Stun on me, but hit the giant acid ant occupying my square instead. However, the acid ant took 0.00 damage (perhaps due to my armour), and I was the one to resist the stunning blow.

If I sit and do nothing, the queen ant does not attack me (perhaps she's trying to move into my square, but it's occupied by one of her allies). She can attempt to stun me (every few turns), with the same effect as before (and she takes 2.71 fire damage from my flaming shield each time ). She can also summon again -- a few turns after that screenshot, she summoned a giant lightning ant onto my square.

Oh, this is even better! When I attack the queen ant, the acid ant on my square takes the automatic damage!

[pause for brief fight in which I defeat the ants]

It appears there were at least half a dozen ants occupying my square. They kept moving off it to attack me, as I killed the other ants..

[darkgod]

What the ..
Damned!

[Repton]

Could it be connected to the fact that I was on the stairs? Now that I think of it, monsters next to the squares sometimes seem to move onto my square when I enter a level..

(well, I suppose that wouldn't affect the ants being summoned in the trees..)

(also: I've seen an alarm trap summon rogues into the walls in the merchant quest, I think)

[darkgod]

You just arrived on the level and were still on the stairs or you simply moved there ?

[edge2054]

Moral of the story...

Shield Wall needs a nerf

(or a nerf at lower levels and some scaling).

[Shoob]

Shield Wall needs a nerf

yeah, and make it so people don't want to play melee at all...

once the high damage/high apr monsters appear shield wall is pretty much trivial, basically fighters and melee wyrmics already are not that good late game (more specifically wyrmics who have to be more ranged than melee (if they went the melee route at first) late game.

[edge2054]

Hence what I said in parenthesis. Early on it makes non-casters pretty much trivial. Late game it might be to weak, I haven't beaten the game since whichever beta the spider cave was the end so I can't say beyond that (and that was w/5/5 SW).

I do know though that the last fighter I made rolled through OF and took no more then 3 damage from anything except worms and the boss.

Nerfing it and adding scaling might fix both. Anyway it wasn't a serious post to begin with, if it was it would have been in ideas. Sorry for the derail.

[Repton]

You just arrived on the level and were still on the stairs or you simply moved there ?

I moved off the stairs, saw the horde of ants coming towards me, and retreated back onto them..

[Repton]

A similar thing just happened again.

I descended a level in the sandhole, and appeared in a room with a number of nasties, including the sandworm queen. So I paused to activate arcane combat, cast chain lightning, and drink a potion of lesser mana. I didn't leave the stairs.

My first action standing on the stairs caused me to disappear (I think I've seen this before -- vanishing after pausing on the stairs). The attachment shows that a yellow ooze then moved onto my square. The targetting cursor in the attachment shows that I'm still occupying that space.

My next move after the screenshot, I whacked the sandworm queen. She then shoved the yellow ooze aside, moving into my square. The second attachment shows the sandworm queen's efforts to attack me from this position. If I target myself with a spell I can hit the sandworm queen, but she remains unable to affect me.

After I killed the sandworm queen, other another worm then moved into my square. I was finally kicked out when a destroyer used knockback -- this still damaged the sandworm sharing my square instead of me, but it also kicked me out.

[PowerWyrm]

Yes... known bug. Using stairs doesn't place you on the next level until you move from the stairs... so summoners can summon on you, monsters can walk on your spot and so on.

[darkgod]

Yeah still looking for it.
I found a case where this could happen on the sides of the map and fixed it, but there are more :/