3w ago

The necromancer AI needs a buff!

I walked through a doorway and saw a necromancer adjacent to me in the prison. As I stepped back out, the necromancer followed me through the doorway and summoned a skeleton on the other side of the doorway (never seen either of those things happen before). Instead of moving out of the way it was stuck zapping the skeleton that was doing nothing until I killed the necromancer!

I'd upload a video, but Lemmy keeps giving me an error message.

7 comments

It is somewhat intended that their logic is exploitable. I'd rather the player be able to consistently outsmart them than always getting forced into fighting both a necromancer and a skeleton.
- I'm not opposed to the idea of having intentionally dumb AI, but seeing a necromancer with its back turned to me on an adjacent square zapping its minion in another room came off as a programming error more than anything else and was kind of immersion breaking imo.
  
  Would you prefer for necromancers to teleport the skeletons whenever they can't reach you, essentially forcing you to deal with the skeleton's attacks in all cases?
This is how they work and it's the best way to kill a necromancer. If you walk into a room and see a necromancer, count the number of steps it will take them to reach the door, back out and wait, step back into the door when they should be right on the other side. When they start summoning back out and they follow you into the doorway. The minion will spawn on the other side and you can kill the necro with no danger. You need to make sure the skeleton can see you through the doorway or it will wander off and the necro will resummon it on your side of the door.
This won't work if the necromancer is in a hallway and there is only one space free inside the door. The necro will summon on your side of the door in that case.
The reason this works is because the necromancer prioritizes buffing its minion over movement but only after the minion finishes spawning. So you can strategically place the necromancer in the minion's path before it finishes spawning because it will follow you for that one turn that it takes the minion to spawn.
- I see. Thanks for the explanation. Still seems like flawed AI logic to me though. If the skeleton doesn't have valid attack target the necromancer should consider teleporting the minion, which it can already do.
Necro allies!

7 comments