Game-breaking corruption

[Chris]

I was deep in the CoC when I got the "You are attached to ChAoS corrupting your foes" corruption. I didn't pay it much attention, since I could still kill chaos monsters easily. Did the Mana Temple, Earth Temple and went for the Air Temple. I get Yulgash critically injured and then he transforms into a writhing mass of primal chaos. One more hit and it's dead. By this time I was surrounded by summoned nasties, so I retreated back to the corridor and took care of them one at a time. When I go back to pick the corpse and orb up, I can't see them. No problem, I think, something must have picked them up. I empty the temple of all creatures and I still can't find them. "Oh, shi-"
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Yulgash didn't drop the Air Orb. To top it off when I returned to the stairway where I had dropped all my items, they were also gone. Zapped a wand of monster detection and killed everything (including a ghost which I thought had stolen my stuff) but no luck. Weird game.

[grobblewobble]

Clearly a bug, it's worth posting a bug report for this one.

[anon123]

After reading this, I did some testing in 1.1.1 with Adombot. Yulgash is immune to thrown PoRCs, but can get corrupted from traps and weapons of corruption, and eventually be transformed into a WMoPC. He/it won't drop the air orb when killed then.

You should report this in the issue tracker. The simplest fix would be to make orb guardians should be completely immune to corruption.

[JellySlayer]

Or maybe it should heal them...

[Stingray1]

Or maybe it should heal them...

It does heal them, but not enough. The damage is more than the healing.

When I first got this corruption, I was very concerned too, but soon learned that I can still slay ChAoS creatures in melee, because of above.

Also rats are worth a bit more xp with this corruption, which is cool.

edit- This should have fixed it. http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=752

[jt]

Issue 752 was related to transforming, e.g. with a potion of exchange. It think the conversion to a "writhing mass" is not handled correctly yet.

[Pim]

I get Yulgash critically injured and then he transforms into a writhing mass of primal chaos. ... I'm pretty sure that Yulgash didn't drop the Air Orb.

I'm not sure this qualifies as a bug. It's always been possible to corrupt enemies with weapons of corruption, though actually getting them to transform before dying is difficult.

I might (...) interpret this as, the "You are attached to ChAoS corrupting your foes" corruption you suffered is a bad thing, and caused you to no longer be able to win the game, although you still live. There are other ways to accomplish this, they aren't "gamebreakers," they're just cases where the character failed.

Maybe the best thing now is to pack up, head to the surface, remove all corruptions, and leave the Drakalor Chain, head hung low in defeat.

P.S. I also see a strong argument to be made in favor of transferring a creature's inventory upon conversion / transformation.

[Stingray1]

I might (...) interpret this as, the "You are attached to ChAoS corrupting your foes" corruption you suffered is a bad thing, and caused you to no longer be able to win the game, although you still live.

So you are suggesting every character that gets this corruption has lost. Many times I melee the 'needed' artifact bearers to death. I think it's a bit unfair, because of this one corruption effect I no longer can risk this.

The ORB can't just disappear out of existence because it's bearer changed form.

[Grey]

Clearly a bug / unintended feature, and I'm sure it'll be treated as such. It's usually bad game design to let the player get in a completely unwinnable state, and certainly nothing else in ADOM treats the player like this, with resources like the Infinite Dungeon and constant monster respawning letting you always find the tools you need.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I'm not sure this qualifies as a bug. It's always been possible to corrupt enemies with weapons of corruption, though actually getting them to transform before dying is difficult.

Of course, corrupting enemies is not a bug, and getting them to transform is not a bug either, in fact it's the only point of corrupting them (I'm not aware that corrupting an enemy can be useful for anything other than transforming him into a WMoPC).

The bug is that orbs should be indestructible. It doesn't make sense that they just disappear when the monster that carries them is turned into a WMoPC. They should be either in the WMoPC's inventory, or fall to the ground when the transformation happens.