Do Trees Earn XP?

[DreadArchon]

It looks like I'll be crossing the animated forest from time to time due to the stairs in the DH levels being very far apart. I don't have any trouble killing them, but are they going to get stronger every time I cross?

[Soirana]

I don't have any trouble killing them, but are they going to get stronger every time I cross?

If you keep doing this soon they won't have any trouble killing you...

On more serious - they do gain xp and gain rather fast. Ofcourse there is shitload of pregen trees but beeing cornered by few is not so funny. On other hand there is not much reason to cross it many times... 6 max i guess?

[Maul]

Besides, eventually you'll gain teleport+control, monster detection and invisibility - and if you have already descended there once, then you won't have anything to fear from DH.

[DreadArchon]

Besides, eventually you'll gain teleport+control, monster detection and invisibility - and if you have already descended there once, then you won't have anything to fear from DH.

I actually checked the Halls. The down stairs in DH2 double as a Death Ooze + Ancient Blue Wyrm tension room.

Edit: DH1 has a Greater Moloch, but I don't think he saw me.

[Dudley]

Take profit from the greater moloch. Had a tension room of them there once. Was FUN.

[meekrab]

One would think the Shortcut would be far more useful than climbing all the way up through the CoC after the first couple Forest crossings...

[mike3]

Take profit from the greater moloch. Had a tension room of them there once. Was FUN.

Dang, what sort of stuff did you have and what was your XP level? That would be suicide for a teens-level PC and the crossing through AF/DH is not exactly a late-game thing.

[psy_wombats]

Generally moloch's aren't much of a threat as their speed value makes them laughably easy to hit-and-run, or at the minimum, run away.

[Pumpernickel]

Generally moloch's aren't much of a threat as their speed value makes them laughably easy to hit-and-run, or at the minimum, run away.

Ordinary molochs, arguably yes.
Greater Molochs have afaik speeds in the 60-80 range, which makes hit-and-run against them a far shot from 'laughable'. Not to mention their gargantuan PV: doing damage against one of those mothers is almost out of the question if all you have are non-piercing physical attacks.
Oh, and if you ever miscalculate and the GM gets _one_ attack, it seems to do well over 100 hp of damage in a single non-critical blow.

[Silfir]

Greater molochs are easy to run away from (but aren't they slower than regular molochs, even?), and hit and run using missiles is about as safe as things can get. It only makes sense if you have missiles that actually do damage, though. Short of blessed demon (humanoid?) slayers or "penetrating" missiles, that is quite hard. Melee hit and run is fairly safe, if you know what you're doing - though again, you need a demon or humanoid slayer, "of penetration" or a phase dagger. (Something I would not try against greater molochs is tremendous blows to overpower the PV).

Either way, cracking open that shell, if you can do it, is quite worth it for the experience. Whole tension rooms of greater molochs are a whole another story, since you can't really do it with missiles, and they can pick up each other's armors and kill you faster than you can say "What? How do you wear two sets of equally-sized armor over one another?" (You'll likely live as long as "What? How")