Pillar dancing

Version 0.29: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

This article contains advice from other players, which may be subjective, outdated, inaccurate or ill-advised. Take advice as you see fit, and read at your own risk!

The term Pillar dancing is a technique for avoiding or otherwise forestalling a battle until a more opportune moment. In simplest form, pillar dancing is just walking in circles for an indefinite amount of time. However, there are quite a few complexities that come along with it.

Pillar Dancing

To pillar dance, simply flee a pursuing, non-adjacent enemy of the same (or lower) speed around a small "pillar" of walls - anywhere from a 1x3 block to a whole ring of rooms - always going away from the monster, so that you go around the pillar over and over. Preferably, you should be in a mapped out, open area, to minimize the chances of another monster wandering in. If the pillar is large enough, and you far enough, so that monsters leave your line of sight, then your Stealth might cause the monster to forget about you and wander off.

If the enemy doesn't have any ranged attacks, then you should be regenerating both HP and MP. For the most part, monsters will also regenerate HP. So while not flawless, this strategy can be used to 'reset' fights from the beginning, or to just restore a few extra MP for a spell that'll kill the foe, guaranteed.

Attacks of Opportunity

Main article: Attacks of opportunity

The attack of opportunity mechanic serves to restrict pillar dancing. If a same-speed enemy is adjacent to you, they will have a 33% chance to get a free attack while re-approaching you. This means that you are unable to pillar dance melee enemies that are threatening enough to warrant pillar dancing.

Slow attacking monsters, like ogres, will give up a space after an attack of opportunity. While this could allow for pillar dancing, typically these monsters have strong attacks for their depth. If they can 2KO you, taking even one extra attack can lead to death.

Creating a Space

The following methods can separate yourself from an adjacent monster:

• Being faster than your opponent.
  • Though Swiftness causes you to be slow after it runs out, while faster species could've just kited the monster, anyway.
• Translocations magic: Blink, Iskenderun's Mystic Blast, Dispersal, Lugonu's Bend Space, etc.
• Disable or slow the opponent: curare darts, Hexes spells, wand of roots/Borgnjor's Vile Clutch, nets.
• Swap places with an ally. Summons, charmed enemies, friendly orcs, or an ancestor all work equally well for this purpose.
• Use items. Potion of invisibility, scroll of fear, phial of floods, anything that can cause the above effects.
• Get another, weaker monster in the way. An adder is typically better to face than a wight. It might not help while you're adjacent, but faster monsters will often swap places with slower ones.

Generally, prevention is better than the cure. Early on, don't get melee monsters adjacent to you unless you are certain you are ready to fight. Having unknown floor nearby (i.e. unknown monsters) typically means you aren't certain, so don't be afraid to retreat a little.

Tips & Tricks

• Remember that both you and monsters can cross diagonals. Monsters will generally take the most efficient path to get to you, so one misstep means taking 1 attack.
• If a ranged monster is just on the edge of unobstructed line of sight, you can still pillar dance them (of course, requiring a pillar of sufficient size to do so). Your movement will break LOS, and as monsters can't attack you while out of sight, they'll always spend their turn chasing you.

History

• In 0.29, random energy was replaced with attacks of opportunity, a much stricter counter to pillar dancing.
  • In prior versions, monsters could randomly get +0.1 or -0.1 turn, but without free attacks. The main take away is to always be prepared to take at least 1 hit from a same speed, adjacent enemy, else you could pillar dance melee enemies.
• Prior to 0.26, food served as a (very) soft, medium-term counter to pillar dancing; running out of food would force you to take a turn to eat. Earlier versions had certain foodstuffs take even longer to eat.
• Prior to 0.21, monsters would spawn over time; these monsters could catch you off guard ("backspawn") and interrupt the pillar dance. Pre-generated awake monsters still serve the same function, though the chance of them actually affecting you are quite low.
• Prior to 0.6, monster speed was not random, making pillar dancing much safer.