Tower(Complete) - Screwy behaviour at NS Familiars

[Draconis]

Just been left screwed at the Sorceress with one turn remaining due to what seems like some horrible default behaviour in the Tower(Complete) Quest option.

Situation;

NS familiars at 1 pound.
Green snowcone available.
Green candy heart available.
Leash, Sympathy active.
Empathy unavailable due to no Turtle Totem.
Disintegrating Spiky Collar available.

I make that four +5lb effects available or active, plus what should be a completely irrelevant +3lb effect.

Sooo... what does the Tower(Complete) script/whatever the correct terminology do?

It uses the Green Snowcone. Fine. It takes the appropriate familiar out of the terrarium (now at 16lbs.) Fine. It then hits the Sorceress chamber, fails to get through, then spends my one remaining turn training in the Cake-Shaped Arena while I have another +5lb familiar item sitting unused in inventory. Then, inevitably, fails at the second familiar.

Two questions, really. First, why does the default behaviour even -include- the Cake-Shaped Arena? It doesn't automatically send you farming for Pixel Potions for the Shadow, it doesn't automatically burn turns at the Shore looking for dynamite, it doesn't, as far as I'm aware, do anything else that will cost you turns (although I tend to farm Hedge Mage puzzles manually, it's possible that is an exception.)

And, more importantly, why is it defaulting to spending turns on something when there is a perfectly good alternative that will take no turns sitting in inventory?

It would be nice if there were at least a way to turn -off- this auto-Arena thing somewhere :-/

Apologies if this was somewhat ranty, still annoyed at the loss of a day...


This is on the current default 13.0 release of Kolmafia, no other scripts etc.

CLI output:

You lose 50 hit points
Checking prerequisites...
Climbing the tower...
Putting Daft Wullie the Green Pixie back into terrarium...
Taking Grog the Sabre-Toothed Lime out of terrarium...
Using 1 green snowcone...
You acquire an effect: Green Tongue (duration: 20 Adventures)
Finished using 1 green snowcone.
Can't buff and equip familiar to reach 20 lbs.
Facing giant familiar...
You lose 50 hit points
Putting Grog the Sabre-Toothed Lime back into terrarium...
Taking Hull the Barrrnacle out of terrarium...
Can't buff and equip familiar to reach 20 lbs.
Retrieving opponent list...
Opponent list retrieved.
Starting training session...
Round 1: Hull vs. Hershey...

[1491] Cake-Shaped Arena
Your familiar gains a pound: Hull, the 2 lb. Barrrnacle
Hull gains 5 experience and a pound.
Using 1 green candy heart...
You acquire an effect: Heart of Green (duration: 10 Adventures)
Finished using 1 green candy heart.
Training session completed.
Facing giant familiar...
Putting Hull the Barrrnacle back into terrarium...
Taking Grog the Sabre-Toothed Lime out of terrarium...
Can't buff and equip familiar to reach 20 lbs.
Facing giant familiar...
You lose 50 hit points
Putting Grog the Sabre-Toothed Lime back into terrarium...
Taking Trip-Trap the Angry Goat out of terrarium...
Can't buff and equip familiar to reach 20 lbs.
Starting training session...
Training stopped: out of adventures.

 

[Veracity]

The Familiar Trainer doesn't know anything about the "disintegrating spiky collar". It could and, presumably, should.

Should it also know about the "Optimist Primal" Arena effect? How about "Chorale of Companionship"? How about the intrinsic effect of Zombo's outfit?

I feel your pain, but MY technique is to automatically buff up in whatever way I desire before telling KoLmafia to finish the tower for me. On my low-skill-currently-ascending character, that just might include getting a lead-necklace and pre-training all five tower familiars to 2 lbs.

If you want to make a bug report that the familiar trainer doesn't know anything about the disintegrating spiky collar, go right ahead.

 

[Draconis]

Hi Veracity, and thanks for the response.

It would, indeed, be nice if the collar was recognised - it's a relatively common drop while using the Green Pixie's absinthe to pick up not-a-pipes, so I'm sure many people would have them available when they get to the Tower in Hardcore. I would certainly expect more to have them available than Snowcones. As for the others, I would say yes for Optimist Primal, yes to Chorale, and probably yes to the Outfit - it seems reasonable to expect that buffs that are turn-free and with either zero (Outfit) or low (Chorale, Optimist Primal) opportunity cost to be included. I can certainly see excluding irradiated pet snacks on grounds of cost, or at least making such optional.

And normally I have no trouble - however, doing a contest lead-in with a fairly lax deadline for completion, I never picked up a turtle totem, otherwise I'm sure that Empathy would have been autocast and used with a green snowcone (although I have had problems in the past with a green candy heart being used -before- the snowcone that takes the familiars to, then, 23lbs.)

If I wanted to make a bug report, where would be the place to do it? The bug tracker on this forum?

 

[Bale]

Yep. Use the bug tracker on this forum.

To me, this illustrates why I tell it to only take me up to my shadow when I'm tight for turns.

 

[zarqon]

I'm with Draco -- I always end up manually using my disintegrating spiky collars for the tower in HC.

 

[Veracity]

I added the disintegrating spiky collar in revision 7071. Untested...