Bug KoLmafia fails to use gong if hit by astral flashback instead of welcome back

[Gramphos]

When KoLmafia is told to use a gong after a gong effect just has ended it will adventure once in the Noob cave to receive the Welcome Back! adventure required before a new gong can be used. If however the adventure in the Noob cave results in Violet Fog as an astral flashback KoLmafia will try to use the gong and fail because the Welcome Back! adventure has not occurred yet.

 

[lostcalpolydude]

This is caused by

UseItemRequest.retrying = true;	// prevent recursing more than once

in UseItemRequest. Under "normal" circumstances, you could chain a flashback, arrowed monster, nemesis monster, and FoB monster all before you get Welcome Back (if you have a stretch of non-adventure.php adventures, you can trivially force all but the flashback). UseItemRequest.retrying could be changed to an integer maybe, and if it's >= 10 then prevent using another one. However, mafia assumes it will take 0 turns and causes counters to be ignored, which is a problem when it actually does take a turn and would be more of a problem if multiple turns were spent.

Edit: Removed some items from the list that were mutually exclusive and made it technically inaccurate, but the idea is the same.

 

[lostcalpolydude]

Veracity expressed interest elsewhere in fixing this, so I'm bumping it.

 

[Veracity]

This is caused by

UseItemRequest.retrying = true;	// prevent recursing more than once

in UseItemRequest.

That whole mechanism looks a little suspicious to me. I think rather than setting a "retrying" thing, we should do something to inform the ChoiceManager to immediately use another gong after it actually gets the Welcome Back.

Under "normal" circumstances, you could chain a flashback, arrowed monster, nemesis monster, and FoB monster all before you get Welcome Back (if you have a stretch of non-adventure.php adventures, you can trivially force all but the flashback).

...which would solve this. But, do we really want KoLmafia to repeatedly auto-adventure in the Newbie Cave - and be shunted elsewhere - until it gets that choice? Given that we are doing this in response to the user attempting to "use" a gong, I guess so - but this seems dangerous.

However, mafia assumes it will take 0 turns and causes counters to be ignored, which is a problem when it actually does take a turn and would be more of a problem if multiple turns were spent.

... especially for this reason. Which is more of a problem: having your counter script fire (or have the counter removed) before adventuring, since the Newbie Cave adventure MIGHT (although almost never will) take an adventure, or assume that it will take no adventures, go to the Newbie Cave, and discover that it took an adventure and a turn was taken?

If you were right on the semirare counter, say, you should probably try to go where you wanted to go. That will either trigger the Welcome Back adventure or - assuming the other events can override a semirare - you will lose your semirare anyway.

This looks like a can of worms. Would it be a problem if we simply refused to use another gong if you haven't already gotten Welcome Back, rather than trying to go get it and then use a gong? How, exactly, are people using this feature?

 

[lostcalpolydude]

I ran into it when I was using gongs while aftercore farming (melange farming not as a DB, so I wasn't using skills), and no other counters were particularly important to me. And I had nemesis assassins coming after me.

I don't use gongs during an ascension any more now that there are so many other spleen options (and birdform with lots of +ML is a good way to get beaten up).