Does anyone use lightning bolts?

[slickrcbd]

Of the five offensive spells, it seems odd that one of them seems like just an inferior copy with no advantages over casting Fireball. It always seems like an inferior copy.
Does anybody have any particular monsters that they tend to kill with lightning bolts over fireballs?
Supposedly lightning bolts work on stone golems or animated armor, but I honestly don't recall ever killing them with lightning bolts. They certainly take a lot more MON level lightning than other monsters take fireballs or poison bolts save the red dragon.

While poison clouds at least have situational uses in making monsters move if you get trapped, I never found much use for lightning.
Poison bolts are generally better for solitary monsters, and trollins are particularly susceptible to them to the point where I find groups of two to be better to handle with poison bolts than fireballs (but will fireball a group of four due to it being multitarget).

So, who does use lightning and in what situations?

[timws]

For some reason the game considers lightning bolts a more advanced spell than say, the fireball as it seems to require more mana to cast and also requires 3 symbols instead of the 2 that fireball and poison bolt\cloud require.

Perhaps the damage affects a creature's stamina which is the case in many role-playing games and\or affects their chance to hit, I dunno. Or, the bolt may be able to pass through gates which would be beneficial but not sure.

Other than using them against animated armors, there seems to be no benefit to using them over the other two.

[jayrshaw]

I honestly haven't ever used the Lightning Bolt spell except to experiment when I was newer to the game. It is very expensive to cast, and as far as I know it doesn't do enough damage against tougher enemies which resist fire to be an efficient way of killing them.


--Jay

[Ameena]

Yeah I would consider it more fiddly to click, more expensive to cast, and not really worth it compared to good old lazy Fireball . If Fireball doesn't really work on something (not counting non-material creatures, of course) then I'll just hack it to death physically with some help from any nearby door if available .

[Sphenx]

I ran a little experiment. Lightning bolts are more effective on stone golems and animated armors. Using a master wizard champion, it took me around 100 fireballs to kill a stone golem vs. 16 lightning bolts. Against one low HP animated armor, it was ~20 fireballs vs. 6 lightning bolts. However lightning bolt raw damage tend to be always less than a fireball.
And by checking some numbers, I (re)discovered you can kill a Water elemental with poison cloud. But that's not the topic.

[slickrcbd]

I didn't know you could kill the golems or armor at all with fireballs. For the longest time I thought they were immune to magic the way mummies are immune to poison.
Nor did I know the water elemental was vulnerable to poison clouds.
However 16 lightning bolts explains why I never killed a golem with one. That is a lot of mana. Even six for an armor is a lot.

[m1ckey]

Never bothered w/ lightning bolts either.
Of course I knew they´re more harmful to "knights" since the 80´s.
BUT just not worth the hassle...

[jayrshaw]

I thought Stone Golems and Animated Armor enemies were immune to Fireballs, too...


--Jay

[Ameena]

I don't think I ever thought anything was immune to anything (except non-materials being untouchable except by certain attacks, of course), but based on how slowly some stuff died to certain effects I figured they were at least highly resistant. Makes sense, though - if you're entirely made out of metal or stone, a bit of fire ain't gonna do much .

[jayrshaw]

According to ChristopheF's Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia, Stone Golems and Animated Armor enemies should both indeed be immune to Fireballs. Here is a link to the relevant page:

http://dmweb.free.fr/community/document ... e-details/


"Fire resistance
Resistance to Fireball and Lightning Bolt explosions. Value 15 means the creature is immune.
Poison resistance
Resistance to magical spells involving poison. Value 15 means the creature is immune."


Stone Golems and Animated Armors both have a value of 15 for Fire Resistance and Poison Resistance, so Fireballs theoretically shouldn't land any damage against them.


--Jay

[ChristopheF]

I checked in the source code. Fireballs and Lightning bolts cause two sources of damage.

1. When a champion casts a fireball or a lightning bolt, it creates a projectile that you can see flying in the dungeon.

2. When the projectile hits a creature, it inflicts some damage. Stone Golems and Animated Armors are not immune to this 'blunt' damage.
The damage for a fireball is a random value between 10 and 40.
The damage for a lightning bolt in DM/CSB versions 1.x, 2.x and CSB FM-Towns 3.1 is: a random value between 10 and 40, multiplied by 5
The damage for a lightning bolt in other DM/CSB versions 3.x is: a random value between 10 and 40, multiplied by 16, then the kinetic energy of the projectile is added (a value that depends on the spell power and the skill level of the champion)

3. After the projectile hits the creature, fireballs and lightning bolts create an explosion. That explosion inflicts damage that takes the fire resistance of the creature into account. Stone Golems and Animated Armors are immune to this 'fire' damage.

[slickrcbd]

Is that first damage what spell shield cast from items protects you from? I never figured out what it did, since it didn't seem to help against poison bolts or poison clouds, and fireshield seemed to reduce the damage from fireballs and lightning bolts cast by enemies.

[jayrshaw]

Thank you for researching that, Christophe. This seems to indicate that the main advantage Lightning Bolts have over Fireballs is the 5x multiplier for the "blunt" damage you described.

Do you know whether this "blunt" damage is static regardless of the level of the Fireball or Lightning Bolt spell you cast? In other words, would a Lo level (Level 1) Fireball spell and a Mon level (Level 6) Fireball both deal "blunt" damage of 10 to 40 or would there be some other type of multiplier involved for the Mon level spell?


--Jay