Opening Chests

[Ian Clark]

Alternatively, in some versions, you can kill the dragon by falling on top of him through a pit on the level above. Presumably this is mechanical as the party and a monster cannot co-exist on the same tile.

[slickrcbd]

I only found out about that on accident something like 20 years after I first played the game. Because I got startled by the phone ringing and accidentally hit the wrong direction button, and fell into a pit, then saw the "smoke" you see when a monster is killed, and a bunch of dragon steaks at my feat.

[MasterWuuf]

Game envy here. I've never had the pleasure of this experience.
Anyone know if you can time a fall through one of the pits above the dragon,
being reasonably sure you'll kill the brute?

[Prince of Elves]

I suppose you can save your game just before going down a hole and then check where he is in relation to you, checking out the most promising options. May take some reloads but unless he's stationary till you visit him and spawns right under a pit that would seem the best option to me.

[ChristopheF]

You should be able to use a Magical Box to freeze time for a few moments

[Gambit37]

Andy Jaros recalled the telefrag bug and said it was fixed in later versions. Do you know if that's the case Christophe?

[ChristopheF]

I checked the source code.
I was wrong saying that you can use a Magical Box, as they only freeze creatures located on the same map as the party.
Creature groups are indeed killed if the party moves over them (by falling in a pit or being teleported), and this is true in all versions of DM and CSB, I did not see any fix to prevent this. So telefrag exists in all versions but is pure luck.

[slickrcbd]

Do creatures move on levels other than the one the party is on? I'd think for memory purposes that the game might only concentrate on the current level.
So freezing the creature long enough to get to the stairs might be enough.
On the other hand I find the dragon in a different place every time I play, so that might not be the case.

[ChristopheF]

Creatures on other maps use less memory than creatures on the same map as the party: some information like the direction each creature in the group is facing is not stored for them.
Creatures on other maps are always moving, although slower than creatures on the same map as the party, in order to limit CPU usage.
The higher the distance between party map and the creature map, the slower the creature is.

[jayrshaw]

That's definitely interesting information. It's kind of neat that the monsters are slowly moving around even on lower floors of the dungeon as you are exploring the earlier floors...


--Jay