Invincible when attacking down stairs?

[Skye]

I've found that if I try to go down a set of stairs with an enemy below me, I'll be able to attack the enemy and not receive any attacks in return. But when I try to go up stairs I exchange blows with whatever's above me. Is this how it's supposed to work?

[Bwixie]

it makes sense the one above get's an advantage, though i understand why enemies don't, it would be too unfair.

[Bystandard]

It seems this was patched out but it can still happen. You run a risk trying ths with a tough or immposible creature that they still may one shot you if your unlucky.

[RammingSpeed]

I can attest to this still happening in 2025. Attacking a legendary boss down stairs with no counter attacks. Feels super cheap and unintended.

[DJKingGhidorah]

How it always worked in my experience was that attacking down or up stairs was possible for both the player and enemies, but was limited to melee only. In that sense it was always a cheap (though not entirely unrealistic) way of evening the odds and taking ranged attacks, AoE abilities etc. out of the equation for both sides, but enemies were still able to attack you. If that's not happening any more it's presumably a bug.

[blinkmoth]

In my humble experience:
- if you get to stairs and dont get attacked by the enemy up/down the stairs, you can spam melee and kill them without ever getting hit back.
- if you get to the stairs and immediately get attacked by an enemy up/down, you can still fight them melee only but they will always hit back every turn.

This behavior is consistent.

Especially the first scenario is cheesy at best. But it's somewhat mitigated by the fact that you don't know *when* the enemy will be on the stairs tile, and going down/up too early might get you instantly freezelocked/mutated/dismembered/killed/..whatever it is you are trying to avoid.

Even tho it's basically god mode when it works, I wouldnt recommend this as a strategy at all. If you encounter something that you can't handle but you can reach stairs, take the win and get out of there.

[RammingSpeed]

IMO they just need to have the enemies follow you up after some form of grace period if they are close to the stairs when you go up. So far I've noticed only one enemy following you up then they stop. Then if you have to leave the dungeon entirely they reset positions after a day or two.