TeleFlash Illustrated - by Moriah

Good day. I'm one of those snobish Elitists that like to share some wisdom to all of you.

Who haven't had this or a similar setup:
Your mage finds Nightmare/Hell level 15 filled with Soul Burners and Steel Lords. They have 421-676 (SB) and 541-541 (SL) HP and both are immune to fire and resist lightning and magic. You know that it will take loads of Chain Lightning to bring them down.

What would you do now?
a) you'll probably sigh and leave for a new game?
b) you buy TONS of blues and burn it away with that gappy CL?

*yuck*

When I ask "Isn't there another option?" for sure 99% of you say "NO WAY!".

But I say "Yes there is one!" I show it to you and it works for all those monsters out there that are immune to fire and resist both lightning and magic. It will also save you a few trips to Adria for more mana and you won't wake up more monsters off screen as you would with Chain Lightning.

The alternate is called "TeleFlash".

What you need for it:
* Stone Curse - slvl 8+ would be best to maximize stone time
* Teleport - any slvl will do
* Flash - the higher the better; slvl 15+ preferred
* Mana - of course ;)

First off a special note about the Flash spell. Whenever you cast Flash you have to wait until it's finished before you can cast it again or another spell. BUT when you cast it very quickly you can set of two Flashes instead of one! This doubles the amount of damage that is deal to the target! This technique will be referred to as "doubled Flash".

Now how does that "TeleFlash" work?

Correct positioning to maximize Flash damage is elementary. Some of you may know that Flash sometimes does not kill a monster even after 10+ doubled flashes. This obvious bug finally bugged me so much that I did a little testing on my LAN. I don't go too much into details and only show you the results.

Each monster or player that stands still can be attacked with Flash from 8 different spots. The X represents your target and the numbers the possible attack spots as you see them on your screen.

           1
          2 3
         4 X 5
          6 7
           8

From any of the 8 spots the target takes damage when you cast Flash. BUT! Because of some buggy program routine the target takes only approx. 10% damage when you invoke Flash from spots 4, 6 and 8! This renders Flash rather useless when you try it on these three spots. So under all circumstances try to move to spots 1, 2, 3, 5 or 7! Here your Flash will unleash its full damage potential!

For moving targets it's the same. But you can gain an additional bonus when this happens. This is explained further in example 4.

Those of you that are familiar with the TeleKill strategy of the warrior know that the warrior always end up on spot 6 when he teleports onto target X and spot 6 is free. A warning for all you duelists out there: don't try TeleKill on a mage that knows about Flash! The mage as target X will then automatically sit in your warriors Flash spot 3. Even with maximum magic resistance a doubled lvl 18-20 Flash of a lvl 30+ mage can easily inflict 500 points of damage. Bye bye warrior!

One last word about listed Flash damage in the spell book. It says something like 150-300 or 500-1000 if you have a high-level Flash. I can verify that the damage that is really deal out tends to be close up to the maximum damage listed! The listed minimum damage is misleading and far too low. More correct numbers would be something like 75%-100% listed damage instead of the current 50%-100%.

Example 1: Nightmare dif. The mage M encounters 3 Soul Burners (S) in a corridor leading from southeast to northwest.

          ---------------------
                       S
          M            S
                       S
     ---------------------
                   
First the mage stones each of them. Then he teleports behind(!) them ...

              ----------------------------
                                 S
                                 SM
                                 S
              ----------------------------

The mage arrives in the Flash spots 1, 3 and 5 of the Soul Burners and casts a doubled Flash! WHAMMO! 3 SBs falling to dust!

If he teleports in front of them ...

              -----------------
               S
              MS
               S
      -----------------

he ends up in spots 4, 6 and 8 and his Flash does only 10% of the estimated damage. That's a waste of mana because it won't kill anything.

Example 2: Mage M encounters 2 Balrogs in h/h, same direction as in example 1. He is able to stone them in this position:

              --------------------
                    YB
       M            BX

      --------------------

He then teleports to spot X and sets of a doubled Flash. Both Balrogs are dead meat now!
The mage could also teleport to spot Y. But then he would be in spot 6 of the Balrog to his right side and this one will survive the assault.

Example 3: The perfect Flash! Try to stone your enemies into this position

                         S 
         S X 
          S S
           S

and teleport to position X. Now you can kill five enemies with one invocation!

Example 4: A monster is stoned between two tiles.

The game handles this situation in a very simple way: it thinks that two monsters are attacked by the player. For the player it is the same situation as if he has stoned two monsters on both occupied squares. Therefore the inflicted damage from each square is added together and implied on the poor lone critter.

Note that you can attack from more than the standard 8 spots when you face this situation. In fact you have twice 10 and twice 12 possible attack squares. Now how can this occur and which of the Flash spots are most effective? The spots in the following diagrams are rated like this:

 - X marks the two squares that the stone monster occupies
 - P marks a perfect Flash spot where both target squares receive maximum damage. In this spots a single Flash is able to kill a monster that would require a doubled Flash on one of the G spots
 - G marks a good Flash spot where at least one target square receives maximum damage.
 - B marks a bad Flash spot where only minimum damage is deal to the target

Here are the 4 different possible situations. Our lone stoned monster made

a) a 90 degree west-east (or left-right) move

                          G G
             G P G
            B X X G
             B G G
              B B

Note: here the P spot is in a bad position because it's directly behind the monster sprite, almost impossible to target/reach by the Teleport spell and also hard to walk to.

b) a 90 degree north-south (or up-down) move

                         G
         G G
        B X G
         G P
        B X G
         B G
          B

c) a 45 degree southwest-northeast (or lowerleft-upperright) move

                           G 
          G G
         G X G
        B X P
         B G
          B

Note: this is the best of the 4 situations. It has only 3 B spots and the P spot can be reached very easy.

d) a 45 degree northwest-southeast (or upperleft-lowerright) move

                          G
         G G
        B X P
         B X G
          B G
           B

Additional note: these 4 situations are the same when you have stoned 2 monsters on the adjacent X-squares. BUT since you're now attacking 2 individual monsters you have to move in on the P spot to get them both at once with Flash. Attacks from the G Spots will only bring down one of them while the other one goes nearly unharmed.

Finally here are some of my favorite victims for TeleFlash:

Normal and Nightmare        Hell                 Any Difficulty
--------------------                 ------------                --------------
Magistrates                  Vortex Lords         The Butcher
Steel Lords                      Balrogs          Stareye the Witch
Azure Drakes                                             The Vizier
Soul Burners

My basic advice for casting spells is: Check the resistances of your enemies! If they are immune to fire and resist lightning look at their magic resistances. If they are not immune here give the TeleFlash a shot.

Sometimes those underrated spells like Flash are the best.

Dr. Disaster
aka Niriel`{SNOB} Elitist mage