Black Dragon weirdness and problems

[Zephyr]

I'm creating a post here to address both a general problem of the Black Dragon, and a more strange personal one.

First of all, the Black Dragon system with its blindness that lasts for as long as the cooldown is effective is extremely bad. We just don't have ways to fight that, as the cure blindness spell has a low range, no AOE and there is a strong chance your priests won't see anything anyway. It blinds the player more than the monsters, and you have to play around the mechanics to manage to locate and hit the Dragon. This is tedious and not fun. I could understand doing that in a single character roguelike(like adventurer mode, being blind there when you are alone and have to deal with it by yourself and not seeing anything is normal, it works), but when you control groups, it just doesn't. If you give us Black Dragons, and give us priests with an anti blind spell(which by the way, has almost no use out of the black dragon), at least allow it to be just as good as the Black Dragon's blind, with a decent range, and an AOE.

With that said, I had a strange occurence when fighting a black dragon underground in a place which looked like an old dwarven citadel. I got my army mass blinded, I heard sound of fighting, and I know the Dragon died somehow. But I don't know how. I don't find the corpse. have no idea what happened. I suspect the Dragon may have gone into magma somehow and died, but I'm not sure. Message history says nothing. One dwarf has black dragon slayer as a title, he didn't hit the Dragon once.

Thanks to the mechanics of the Black Dragon, I can't tell if its a bug, nor what happened. I'm sure there was foul play, but I'm in no position to tell you how.

[Arne]

Due to its ability to blind everything, they are really good mounts. I love them

What may have happened in your case:
Maybe you inured his wings, so that it didn't fly anymore. The dragon is blind itself and it seems, that those creatures walk around aimlessly - sometimes in lava (or maybe it was injured, while it flew above the lava)

[Zephyr]

The lava was way up in the north behind a single tile tunnel. So unless it can teleport or cast escape, there is no way it would have walked into the lava.

I was wondering if it didn't get in a fight with shaman spirits as I'm not sure they get blinded. Interesting that the dragon is blind itself, are you sure about it? Because this is a pretty huge thing if true.

[Arne]

Yes, they are blind and they have the spells:
spells = { "healing" "haste" "cure poison" "black dragon blindness" "dragon greeting"}
-> so no teleportation.

Did you check, whether you have the black dragon scales somewhere? (you can craft an armor with them at the workshop)

Btw:
Telepathy is the natural counter to Blindness

[Zephyr]

I did checked to see if there was a corpse and scales(I really wanted the scales, but I would have liked the dragon alive even more, I just didn't even see it for one turn). I haven't seen anything and my minions didn't either.

It is literally a closed room mystery. This is why I suspected magma.

The blindness seemed to be centered on the citadel-like structure. No door was breached. Yet the dragon died. There was some brief fighting noise, but none of my troops got even injured. There were no others things that could have killed the dragon inside, just corpses.

[Arne]

You can try the retired "Arnfried"-dungeon one day, there are some black dragons + scales (and I am really curious, whether someone can conquer it :D)

[Vampyr]

Originally posted by Zephyr:

The lava was way up in the north behind a single tile tunnel. So unless it can teleport or cast escape, there is no way it would have walked into the lava.

I was wondering if it didn't get in a fight with shaman spirits as I'm not sure they get blinded. Interesting that the dragon is blind itself, are you sure about it? Because this is a pretty huge thing if true.

Did you have spellcasters? because I had a similiar situation where the black dragon got killed instantly, all I had near him was a troll and it was behind a door. But my theory is that when spellcasters are blind they will randomly cast and there might be something in the system that allows them to auto target. My confusion would only be that none of the spellcasters were in range...I did have archers as well though...Anyways if you want to catch the blag dragon easier and see him just stop controlling your minion because blindness can' not affect your overview if your not controlling someone. Good luck!

[Zephyr]

The shamans' spirits are my best bet to this day. As I said, spirits probably aren't affected by the blindness, so if they found the dragon, they probably attacked it.

But that doesn't change the big mystery: Where the hell did the dragon go/died?

There is no corpse and no scale to be found anywhere on that level.

The other silly theory I have, is that there was an infernite weapon in a weapon rack inside the castle. If that thing does damage to tiles around it, it may be possible, but extremely unlikely that the dragon stood on the weapon and died from it, and then the corpse and scale burned. But that makes very little sense still. I doubt a single infernite weapon in a rack can burn an entire dragon, and I clearly heard fighting noises, although, as I said, I have no idea where. The kill also went to a dwarf somehow.

Closed room. No broken door. Sounds of struggle. No body. No injuries. The dragon is confirmed dead. Everyone was blind and no one saw anything. This is driving me nuts thinking about it, because I have no concrete explanation as to what exactly happened.

[Zephyr]

I finally found the Dragon's corpse. I was right in that the Dragon actually teleported, despite not being technically able to. He ended up near the magma, and must have been killed by spirits there, despite the kill going to a dwarf(maybe the dwarf landed a hit? No idea). Corpse was under a bunch of dwarven bones. I suspect a imp must have brought them here, and dropped them for some reason.