ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I first experienced this while adventuring in The Old Forest with a prior character, and I'm not sure if it's a bug, the results of an NPC that can summon allies, or some combination of the two.

In any case, upon entering The Old Forest, my character was IMMEDIATELY set upon by a large number of animals (I'm going to estimate twelve-ish): wolves, wargs, snakes, bees, and bears, predominantly, with a single Treant to add some flavor to the mix.

As soon as I killed the animals, even more would spawn. My character couldn't even move off the spot he entered in.

I'm not sure what ultimately STOPPED the creatures from spawning (The death of the Treant? I'm not sure.) but either way, it seemed like an ungainly number of creatures attacking all at once.

This scene was later repeated with a new character, in the second level of the initial "Troll forest" dungeon, although there was no Treant involved.

If there's any way I can get a log to the folks who need it, let me know: I'm brand new to ToME (it's awesome!), and the in-game connectivity hasn't been working too well for me.

Regards,
Corporate Dog

That's actually not a bug at all, it's called a pit. A pit [also other names as crypts, spawning pools, summoning circles [those are actually a bit different] nests ect] consists of a certain type of enemy [undead, animal, fungi, ect] and lots of them, tightly nit togeather.

Glad you enjoy the game!

Final Master wrote:That's actually not a bug at all, it's called a pit. A pit [also other names as crypts, spawning pools, summoning circles [those are actually a bit different] nests ect] consists of a certain type of enemy [undead, animal, fungi, ect] and lots of them, tightly nit togeather.

Maybe? We might be talking about two different things.

I mean, I know there are places where I go to open a door that appears to be sealed (according to the popup dialog), and THEN I get swamped by a horde of creatures when I choose to open the door. That, at least, has a direct cause-and-effect, which tells me it's an actual, intended game mechanic.

But these hordes that I'm talking about just suddenly appear out of nowhere.

It's possible I missed a trigger message of some kind in the game log, but if it's not a bug, I'm thinking that there ought to be more prominent notification to the player that he's stepped into a pit.

Glad you enjoy the game!

It really does deserve all the attention it's getting from it's Roguelike of the Year win. I tip my hat to the devs, because it's hit a certain "minutes to learn/lifetime to master" sweet spot for me.

Regards,
Corporate Dog

My guess is you had a combination of honey trees (2-3) and probably 2 pits/nests in fairly close proximity.

So typically there are about 20-30 creatures in a next (6x5 squares), so that x2 = 60, plus some honey trees could easily add another 10 or so more creatures.

Corporate Dog wrote:I mean, I know there are places where I go to open a door that appears to be sealed (according to the popup dialog), and THEN I get swamped by a horde of creatures when I choose to open the door. That, at least, has a direct cause-and-effect, which tells me it's an actual, intended game mechanic.

These are called vaults, and tend to have out-of-depth monsters, and/or random uniques. Pits are what Final Master described, and as opposed to vaults, they're often not closed, so enemies might come out of them and you'll just feel like you're getting swarmed out of nowhere. As far as I can tell pits aren't really that common, or they're not always obvious (especially when comparing ToME to, say, Angband). I know it took me a while to realize that there were in fact pits in this game.

Pits show up in very few zones. Old Forest and Ritch Tunnels are the only ones that come to mind. It's less of a level feature and more of a level generation tool, if that makes any sense.

My guess is you had a combination of honey trees (2-3) and probably 2 pits/nests in fairly close proximity.

So typically there are about 20-30 creatures in a next (6x5 squares), so that x2 = 60, plus some honey trees could easily add another 10 or so more creatures.

The math certainly sounds about right on that.

These are called vaults, and tend to have out-of-depth monsters, and/or random uniques. Pits are what Final Master described.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification.

It's less of a level feature and more of a level generation tool, if that makes any sense.

It does, actually. I have yet to do any serious delving into the mod tools, but I noticed the various generator classes for level creation in the API, and read a little bit about it in the Wiki.

At any rate, thanks for humoring the noob, guys! It's appreciated!

Regards,
Corporate Dog

bricks wrote:Pits show up in very few zones. Old Forest and Ritch Tunnels are the only ones that come to mind.

In any dungeon-like level there closed rooms ( not locked, not vaults) packed with undead, open treasure rooms with gold and several undead, long open halls with gold and a lot of rats - at least 20