Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

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DharmaTel
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Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

Post by DharmaTel »

I know skeletons are surprisingly strong, but this was bizarre:

I was playing Neo, Master Rogue level, 73 HP, AC 4, +2/+0 longsword, wearing Ring of Searching and Ring of Regen, on floor 16.

I ensured we were alone, no traps nearby, and I had full hit points and no status effects before I engaged the skeleton. I stepped on him, he appeared, and I got a single hit in. He then attacked and, in what appeared to be single hit, he took me from 73 HP to -3!

That seems like a freakishly high amount of damage. I've never had any monster hit me that hard before and I've taken characters down as far as floor 50 before.
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Nighthawk
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Re: Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

Post by Nighthawk »

The Skele might have rolled out of his mind, and your AC4 isn't exactly strong, especially for Floor 16. Not unheard of, just unlikely.
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CommanderData
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Re: Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

Post by CommanderData »

Good point Nighthawk. I think a good question would be, what secret character were you playing for the last few games prior to that? What rank were you at death?

76HP in one smack is pretty high, based on the math I'd have thought the best hit one of them could do prior to strength or magic bonuses would be roughly 54HP. Still a powerful hit, but survivable.

Maybe this is related to the old "pack corruption" issue that skeletons exhibit. For some reason, items in the players pack never get corrupted, but the skeleton's pack can (and does at times). That usually gets seen as a crash when you try to engage the skeleton. If their stats were corrupted too- could change AC or Damage to an unusual value and still allow play to move forward.

Their pack issues are on my radar still, so I might as well expand that to include the entire skeleton data save. :ugeek:

I'd really like to get an OpenGL version of Rogue Touch done before tinkering with the guts too much more, but if OS 4.3 fixes some of the speed issues in the next week or two maybe I'll shift back to bug-hunting instead. :mrgreen:
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Nighthawk
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Re: Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

Post by Nighthawk »

CommanderData wrote:Good point Nighthawk. I think a good question would be, what secret character were you playing for the last few games prior to that? What rank were you at death?
Good point... I almost never play with secret characters or muck about with skeletons (due to the possible corruption), so this thought never occurred to me.
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DharmaTel
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Re: Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

Post by DharmaTel »

CommanderData wrote:Good point Nighthawk. I think a good question would be, what secret character were you playing for the last few games prior to that? What rank were you at death?
The last few games I had been running Neo and seeing how far down I could take him. So the last several were characters Rogue Geek level, floor 30+ characters. I have noticed that every time I manage to kill the skeleton (at least 3 times I can remember), he drops the same loot: +3/+1 Katana of Troll Slaying, ~250 +0/+0 Arrows, -5 Banded Mail, +1/+1 Mace, and a +0/+0 Two Handed Sword. The mace is the starter item, and the katana was one a previous character had, but the -5 Banded Mail and 200+ arrows are weird.
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Nighthawk
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Re: Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

Post by Nighthawk »

DharmaTel wrote:...he drops the same loot: +3/+1 Katana of Troll Slaying, ~250 +0/+0 Arrows, -5 Banded Mail, +1/+1 Mace, and a +0/+0 Two Handed Sword. The mace is the starter item, and the katana was one a previous character had, but the -5 Banded Mail and 200+ arrows are weird.
So if I read this right, none of your previous runs had managed to get a -5 Banded Mail or accumulate 200+ arrows?

CD, from what you've told me about how the code is written, I'm betting that somewhere either when the skeleton is created on that floor, or when its loot is "rolled up," you're stomping on memory somewhere and reading garbage that your code is translating into never-owned items. Stomp hard enough, and you've got the makings of the hard crash we regularly see with this. This would be one of the finer (read: suckier) aspects of C programming. :D
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Re: Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

Post by CommanderData »

Nighthawk wrote: So if I read this right, none of your previous runs had managed to get a -5 Banded Mail or accumulate 200+ arrows?

CD, from what you've told me about how the code is written, I'm betting that somewhere either when the skeleton is created on that floor, or when its loot is "rolled up," you're stomping on memory somewhere and reading garbage that your code is translating into never-owned items. Stomp hard enough, and you've got the makings of the hard crash we regularly see with this. This would be one of the finer (read: suckier) aspects of C programming. :D
You got that right! I suspect there is a bit of gold old memory stomping here... I just need to stare hard enough to see it. Sort of like the old crash where I mistakenly was not clearing flags/status bits the bottom row of the map when I generated the next. This ended up creating a huge crashing mess when a corridor was drawn through that bottom row of the map! Only took about a year to figure out I needed a 24 on that for-loop instead of a 23, because the exact circumstances were so hard to generate :oops:

Maybe this one will be simpler after all... there is a limited window for writing the skeleton's info when you die. And only a couple places to read it all in at. I'll start with those and see if anything pops out!
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DharmaTel
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Re: Skeleton dealing 76 dmg with 1 hit?

Post by DharmaTel »

Nighthawk wrote:So if I read this right, none of your previous runs had managed to get a -5 Banded Mail or accumulate 200+ arrows?
Correct; I've only ever seen the 200+ arrows and -5 Banded Mail dropped from the skeleton. The +3/+1 katana of troll slaying is definitely from a dead character I played, but one that must have died 30+ characters ago. I'll try to find the skeleton again and grab a screenshot.
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