Feature Handling L & T monster attributes and perhaps skeletons

A humbly submitted feature request: support handling of modifiers for medium and hard L & T quest monsters and perhaps procedural skeletons. The complete discussion starts in the Batbrain thread at post 1986.

I haven't done any spading of the attributes but the wiki was correct for the one I tripped across this morning. I apologize for being light on details but I wanted to get the request in before I got side-tracked. I'll add what details I can tomorrow morning if no one else has done so.

Magus_Prime said:

Another L & T issue with Batbrain: cow cultists can have the "Vile" or "Reprehensible" label. Vile reduces elemental damage by quite a bit (the wiki says it's approximately 80%). The reprehensible label reduces all elemental damage to 1.

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Veracity said:

Yeah. KoLmafia reduces them to the same monster object since they have the same monster id. All LT&T monsters have three variants, depending on whether you find them in the Easy, Medium, or Hard quest. I don't know if we track that, but if, rather than batfactors handling it itself, we wanted to have an additional array of attributes a la OCRS attributes for "vile" or "reprehensible", KoLmafia would have to use that info itself.

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zarqon said:

Yes, BatBrain has no particularly handy way of accounting for the additional attributes of the L&T monsters, since according to mafia they are the same monster as the base version. Those aren't the only two ways they get harder that BatBrain doesn't know about yet, either.

Since the random_modifiers proxy field recently got multipurposed to also include Intergnat-added modifiers, perhaps it could be multipurposed yet further to include L&T modifiers? That would be extremely handy and might be worth a feature request. And while we're at it, maybe it could include procedural skeleton modifiers, heh.

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Particulars are not well spaded but even recognizing the labels would help. For the L & T monsters the labels all appear as modifiers to the monster name in the same HTML tag as the Intergnat modifiers.

I'm missing some modifiers but I'll fill in what I have. If no one beats me to it I'll add information on the procedural skeletons tomorrow.


Coal snake


Modifiers:
red-hot
white-hot

Effect: Hot aura. White-hot does more damage than red-hot.

Drunk cowpoke


Modifiers:
somewhat angry, somewhat drunk
very angry, very drunk

Effects - From the wiki: "Somewhat angry, somewhat drunk cowpokes deal 10% of your maximum HP in damage every hit, while very angry, very drunk cowpokes deal 20% of your maximum HP in damage every hit."

Cow cultist

Modifiers:

vile
reprehensible

Effects - From the wiki: "Vile cow cultists greatly reduce elemental damage (by ~80% or so?) and reprehensible cow cultists are immune to elemental damage (reduce damage to 1)"

Camp cook

Modifiers:

talented
very talented

Effects - unknown

Caugr

Modifiers:

relentless
unstoppable

Effects - From the wiki: "The relentless, unstoppable caugr cannot be stunned or staggered"


Grizzled bear

Modifiers:

tough-as-nails

Effects - From the wiki: "Tough-as-nails grizzled bears appear to take significantly less damage from all sources, has approximately 90% damage resistance."

Hired gun

This one is a bit different in that the monster ID remains the same but the monster name is replaced rather than simply applying a modifier to the base name.

Modifiers:

professional gunman
trained mercenary

Effects- From the wiki: "On moderate- and hard-level telegrams, this opponent is named 'professional gunman' and 'trained mercenary' respectively, although they all show up as one monster listed as 'hired gun' in Monster Manuel. Professional gunmen deal ? of your maximum HP in damage every hit, while trained mercenaries deal 30% of your maximum HP in damage every hit."

Moomy

Modifiers:

hulking
cyclopean

Effects - From the wiki: "Cyclopean Moomy has 60% physical and 20% elemental resistance."

Mountain lion

Modifiers:

vicious
rabid

Effects - From the wiki: "Vicious, rabid mountain lions have +300% initiative."

Pyrobove

Modifiers:

blazing

Effects - From the wiki: "Blazing pyroboves set you on fire, dealing lessening hot damage for a number of rounds:"

Restless ghost

Modifiers:

vengeful
shrieking

Effects - From the wiki: "If shrieking, has 75% elemental resistance."

Spidercow

Modifiers:

terrifying
horrifying

Effects - From the wiki: "If terrifying or horrifying, has a spooky aura that deals damage regardless of whether it attacks or not:"

Wannabe gunslinger

Modifiers:

insecure
with a chip on his shoulder

Effects - From the wiki: "Wannabe gunslingers with chips on their shoulders cannot be stunned or staggered."

Diamondback rattler

Modifiers:

big
huge

Effects - unknown

Frontwinder

Modifiers:

ticked-off

Effects - unknown

Buzzard

Modifiers:

smelly

Effects - unknown

Surly gambler

Modifiers:

fat

Effects - unknown

Skeletal gunslinger

Modifiers:

spooky
terrifying

Effects - unknown

Magus_Prime said:

Coal snake

Code:

<span id='monname'>a white-hot coal snake</span>

Modifiers:
red-hot

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This is already enough for me to want to reject this feature request in its current form -- how would the script author disambiguate between OCRS red-hot, which changes alignment, and LT&T red-hot, which adds an aura?

Other duplicate names from OCRS, and comments:
- restless + unstoppable caugr looks like same effect as unstoppable from OCRS (nostagger + stunresist(100)). Unclear which half is nostagger, if that's even how that works.
- huge diamondback rattler vs huge in OCRS -- I'd think it'd be pretty clear if it were "double stats".
- spooky skeletal gunslinger vs spooky in OCRS -- is this another instance of aura vs alignment?

And for what it's worth, I'm mostly sure that LT&T monster names are purely based off of the quest difficulty. I imagine we probably incorrectly disambiguate (OCRS) huge diamondback rattlers, if my memory serves me correctly re: implementation details (entry in consequences.txt).

edit: then again, we probably parse OCRS modifiers out of var ocrs, so maybe not.

Yes, you can work them all out from the quest difficulty preference and the monsters.

Yes. Setting "lttQuestDifficulty" + monster should let a script do whatever it needs to do.

Also, I trust my own spading more than "unknown contributor on wiki" -- http://kolmafia.us/showthread.php?6445&p=132409&viewfull=1#post132409.

Some additional notes, after spending turns in the zone for the first time in months:

Looks like white-hot is ~110 hot damage (slightly less? variable?). I tried increasing max HP (and stats) and reducing DA, neither of which made a difference.

Weapon of the pastalord did 224 (+448) damage against a cyclopean moomy (+10 spell, +40% spell, 1458 buffed mys). That should verify my claim of 60% resistance (elemental and physical) while simultaneously refuting the 20% physical resistance claim on the wiki.

Huge diamondback rattler does not have extra stats or do extra damage. It does have 275 init, but I'm also pretty sure that hard adds 200 init (which means that vicious, rabid mountain lion's special ability is _not_ an init bonus as speculated on the wiki).

Terrifying gunslinger does not have a spooky aura.

Monsters on hard seem to have 50% delevel resistance (at 90 medicine, bad medicine only deleveled half of their current stats; crayon shaving also only did 15%).

I'm happy to defer to the knowledge of the developers on this. If there's a better way to do this that's wonderful. I made the feature request because when I raised the point in the Batbrain thread the discussion seemed to indicate that there was no way to handle monsters that were the same monster ID but had different modifiers.

Perhaps zarqon can add something to the discussion with regard to Batbrain.

I wouldn't necessarily say better way, but there is currently A way, and I think the Devs won't add this unless robustly spaded.

Veracity said:

Yes. Setting "lttQuestDifficulty" + monster should let a script do whatever it needs to do.

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I don't think it can get much simpler than this.