ir36@sdccs6.UUCP (04/17/84)
In Version 5.2, when you throw an arrow (or whatever) into a dark room, the program tells you what you hit (or missed). If this is a UHulk, he can still confuse you when he gets next to you. BUT if you zap him with a wand of cancellation, he can't do this. So despite what others have said, cancellation CAN be used in this (admittedly limited) situation to cancel UHulks. But since the U will not always confuse you, and since you are standing in the doorway anyway and have a few free shots at him, maybe this is a waste of the Cancel stick. In Version 5.3, the useful feature of finding out what's in dark rooms just by tossing objects in is no longer present. You just receive the message "You hit it", so you don't know what you hit until it is next to you (or you light the room, or quaff a monster deet, etc. In this case, the cancel is never useful (why cancel a monster that might not even have a property to cancel), except possibly if a monster deet potion has shown you a Medusa in the room. (But in this case, why are you asking for trouble?) Ubik
emrath@uiuccsb.UUCP (04/19/84)
#R:sdccs6:-135200:uiuccsb:18800003:000:568 uiuccsb!emrath Apr 19 01:14:00 1984 We don't have 5.3 up yet, we're still playing on 5.2, but the base note here says that if you toss an arrow into the dark and it hits something, you are told that you hit it, but 5.3 no longer tells you what you hit. This seems like a step in the wrong direction. You mean monsters don't make characteristic shrieks that let me identify them when hit? If not, how do I know whether I hit anything at all? Whether or not the monster grunts when hit, and whether it is recognizable, could of course be stochastic. However, if I miss, it's as if nothing is there at all.