Dungeon Master Forum

Since this is a place for the fanatics (no offence meant, counting myself in), here's a basically useless question, but I'm curious: Has anyone ever used a darkness spell for a certain purpose -besides seeing if it works- and if so on which occasion and what for?

I never used it except to try it out, but I think, that you can maybe delude some monsters with it, for I think I have heard that certain monsters rely on certain senses like hearing the party or seeing it or combination of them.
Yet I was not interested enough to find out what monsters that would be. Does anyone know?

Hmm you may be right, I checked all the manuals and hint books and the ygave an answer similar to yours... question is: is it worth it? The spell costs a lot of mana and you'll see worse yourself... would depend on the enemies I guess. If it were knights or suchlike I might give it a try!

I wouldn't, since running in (near) complete darkness in lower levels is pretty much a suicide, even if it would fool the knights :-P

I don't agree. If you know the dungeons well, you don't need light.

If you know them THAT well, then maybe you'll be able to beat the time records!!!

It's not only knowing the level layouts. It's also (not) seeing where the monsters are! Knight level is full of Faders and Oitus too. Besides playing in total darkness isn't fun once it's novelty fades out :)

When I have had a torch stolen, or being sleeping and the light has faded, the monsters have always been able to find me and attack. I believe from my experience that they will sense you from 3 paces or less regardless of the light level though I can't confirm that. And invisibilty spells I have cast have never seemed to work either, no matter what power. Maybe we should have a new record category: fastest time with no light(!). The only time I have ever cast the darkness spell is by accident!

Invisibility spells have saved me quite a few times way back when I had trouble with the knights. If they chased me down a dead end path, I'd go all the way to the dead end and cast the spell. Then I would go back so I was just able to see the knights (three squares away). They would almost always retreat (which I never understood since they saw me go down that path) leaving me safe. In other words, the Invisiblity spell does work. At least with knights.

I agree on invisibility. Once I had retreated down a dead end corridor and a duo of knights were following.... Wait a second, this sounds familiar :-P

Anyway, my story goes that the knights followed me all the way to the end (I didn't notice it was a dead end until I couldn't swing-back-swing-back any further)... I cast invisibility and lo and behold! The knights stopped swinging at me! After a moment of standing there looking stupid they went away. Was a scary experience though :-P

I think originally there were but a few monsters who were not susceptible to invisibility like Chaos or his demons (lucky us they are susceptible in RTC).
And yes, I do know the dungeons that well, and even without knowing them that well you could use the help of the maps of this site to get along, but I never played on time (even chess tournaments I used to play took up to 6 hours per game), I like to explore every single room, kill every monster and take every treasure, that takes time and won't get me any record. What little time I do have for playing games is currently used up by testing RTC.

I think most people here could get well through the dungeon without maps, notwithstanding some minor errors in tracking.

But I still cannot see the point of this spell. Invisibility at least sometimes works (especially well in "Return to Chaos", where every monster I tried the spell on stopped attacking - even the demons and Chaos himself!), but
darkness costs a lot (if not the most) mana points - so if the only reason to use it were to prove to myself that I know the dungeon, I frankly do not need it.

Maybe the reason for it's existence is more a philosophical one: Balance.
Where there is light there is also darkness. Remember: The ultimate good is balance.

could darkness have any effect while you're sleeping (dark -> better regeneration or something like that)? - anyway the spell costs lots of mana...

I find it's funny to hold a torch with a black screen because of darkness spell !
One reason of its existence would be that programmers worked hard to develop light spell, so they created darkness spell to make more spells available !

i think it has something to do with the story, so light2 and darkness are not spells designed to be cast but spells for the atmosphere.
or maybe they just wanted to fill up to 25 spells...

That could be it...But I wouldn't know(have yet to read the story).

Someone (sphenx, paul of zyx) had found some hex relating to monsters...somewhere in the code (dungeon.dat, .exe, graphics.dat, somewhere!)
I just rememeber it seemed to indicte different levels of awareness for things...wish i could rember where i sw it now....

anyone know what i'm babbling about? : )

As to the invisibility, it could have been bad luck, but it seemed to have a range thing...if you cast it when the creature was beside you, even if not facing you, it didn't seem to fall for it - yet otherwise i have noticed a knight walking away from me with the spell on at further levles

Light2 IS useful, it is so much longer lasting, I tend to cast it if I have the mana to play with as soon as the characters can hadle ~ an = version- i hate having magic torches give up during a battle when mana is scarce

and nope, never used the darkness spell, had to struggle to rememebr it when playtesting RTC to start with!

I think the Darkness-spell is used to track down monster. There is a way of a making monsters' footprints visible in darkness. Well, as far as I remember. I have never used it, the only situation where there MIGHT be some use to it is when you're chasing a giggler.

Only footprints I ever saw in DM where the footprints of the party, created through YaBroRos.

Nope, the spell just gets rid of any light spells- nothing additional is highlighted

Yes, but the Screamers shine pretty in the dark, don't they?

lol, so do the scorpions, a lovely shade of blue!

Beowuuf, I think you are "babbling" about the monsters section in an asciidump.txt file produced with CSB for windows.

Paul, where did you find this information about creatures? Is it buried deep inside the code or in the graphics.dat?

That was it *smacks head*...cheers! I searched through other text files and couldn't find it