3w ago

What is the purpose of the shadowmeld buff in the garden room?

I try to take advantage of the invisibility by long tapping the wait button to recover as much hp as possible, but enemies still show up and attack me. Am I doing something wrong?

5 comments

You aren't doing anything wrong, per se, but I will only use a garden to recover health if there is a sungrass plant there. The longer you wait around doing nothing, your satiety ticks down and more enemies spawn. They aren't hunting you down, they're just randomly running into you.
Garden invisibility isn't some big thing you need to leverage for success, imo. In my experience it's useful to lure an enemy or two into it opportunistically, but I wouldn't drag monsters from a far corner to it.
- You do gain hunger slower in a garden, so if you have to sleep to heal, it's a better place than just out in the dungeon. Other than that, I find it useful for the assassin to build up turns of preparation without spending cloak charges or potions/scrolls; just remember to turn on your cloak before you leave or it all goes to waste.
  
  Yeah, I play with the On Diet challenge and I'll still save my food for gardens since hunger is halved with the shadowmeld buff in effect.
  Also for Clerics, it's a good place to build up your tome charges.
  You can constantly get surprised attacks with hit-and-run so it's comparatively safe to hang around for food or artifact charges. About the only worry is blazing champions.

It’s kind of specialized. An assassin can make really good use of it to take out dangerous enemies. If there’s one in a centralized area then you can use it to take out a lot of enemies! If it’s out of the way then it’s not as useful.

That'll happen, yes, and when the enemy steps near you, you can do one of two things:
Surprise attack them (because they didn't have vision on you between your last turn and your current turn).
Take one step away from them, causing them to lose track of you for a moment, and then take a second step away from them and now they have completely lost track of you and will likely leave the room. (Not always.) They are usually smart enough to follow you after the first step, but after the second, they will flash a "?" above their head, and you've officially lost them. But they can still randomly walk next to you again.
You can do a sneak attack, then take 1 step, then do another sneak attack, forever. You will get guaranteed hits, but their attacks can still be evaded. But they might at some point lose track of you.
So, if you're going to wait in that room to heal or recover artifact charges or wand charges, do so close to the door so you have plenty of room to walk away from enemies.
If you have some sort of mind vision and ranged weapons, you can get surprise attacks them them without retaliatory attacks.