What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened:
Stone Mefyt’s spell says that it poisons a random enemy for each green gem under or around the selected gem.
In reality, it counts only the green gems around the target, but not any green gems below the target in its column.
How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
Consistently
Steps to make it happen again
Use the spell and select a spot with no green gems around but some green gems under, and you can see that no enemies are poisoned.
Disability bug in another current event troop! How far can sloppy programming go? Do they ever test these things?
Why? Didn’t you just say “under“? Because they are “under”?
What about “above”? Isn’t it buggy language to mention “under” (or around) but not “above”? So should the one gem right above the target be counted or not?
My point is, if you went to an American public school, do not believe that they have taught you proper English literacy.
You are taking it literally from only one point of view.
Here’s another:
I may consider the gem that is selected with the mouse or finger as the one being ‘under’ the placed Gargoyle gem, and those ‘around’ it would be in the surrounding 8 cells.
Because there is no precedent for having a gem of one type ‘under’ a gem of any other type until this description came along. Which is why I think the description needs modifying.
Redmist, thanks for pointing that out. I agree with you and DAeron: the spell text is badly worded.
It actually involves visualizing the gargoyle gem overlaying the replaced gem while the next effect is being resolved, before the replaced gem gets discarded afterwards. There is no such description or visual effect anywhere in the game. Thus this is an absurd choice of words.
Moreover, most precedents where you select a Gem and perform additional effects based on the adjacent Gems prompt you to specifically explode that Gem, in which case it’s crystal clear that the relevant region counts only the adjacent 8 gems.
some examples
Typical spelltext: “Explode a Gem. Cause X for every Y destroyed.”
(apparently, this spell type is a “Golem” signature…)
Arcane Golem (Stun)
Bone Golem (Death Mark)
Coral Golem (Submerge)
Corruped Urska (Berserk)
Cursed Effigy (Curse)
Deep Golem (Barrier)
Green Golem (Entangle)
Ice Golem (Freeze)
Petrified Golem (Barrier)
Volcanic Golem (Burn)
Obviously, there are many other Troops that boost their base effect (usually DPS) by adjacent Gems (e.g. Volthrenax) but I purposely limited this to effects that exclusively occur via adjacent Gems. Sorry.
Better question: Why does Stone Mefyt not just function as “Poison a random enemy for each Green Gem adjacent to it” ? You’re basically never going to find more than 4 Green Gems around the target location as is.
IMO the problem is in nothing but the use of the word “under”, because the replaced gem is not “under” the gargoyle unless you invoke the visualization.
Attika board game rulebook wording, for comparison:
“From the building cost, the player may reduce his payment by the landscape symbol shown on the space he builds and by each landscape symbol shown on empty spaces directly adjacent to the building space.”
More precisely, for those abilities it is clear that they count the 9-gem (not 8- ) area of the explosion. SZ not exploding is precisely the reason why dev is at a loss of the proper word, leading to the poor choice of the word “under” - because with “adjacent” it is not clear that the center space is included.
Just verified: the spell fails to count the green gem “under” (i.e. overwritten by) the gargoyle. So it is bugged, sloppy programming all the same.
If my test under the following criteria has any loopholes, please point it out:
Start with no enemy poisoned, no enemy has immunity to poison.
Cast Poison Stone, select a green gem with no other green gems adjacent
Result: no enemy becomes poisoned. (Also no immunity text effect indicatng any enemy resisted the poison.)
This is totally unsurprising, considering the sloppy programming in many other places of this game: if the algorithm first creates (converts) the gargoyle gem, and then merely checks the 9-space area for green gems, the overwritten gem won’t be there by the time of the checking.
Yeah, I concur, I just acquired Stone Mefyt myself and ran tests by casting on a space with exactly one Green Gem nearby:
My results
Upper-left: Poisons 1 enemy
Directly above: Poisons 1 enemy
Upper-right: Poisons 1 enemy
Directly left: Poisons 1 enemy
On same tile: no effect
Directly right: Poisons 1 enemy
Lower-left: Poisons 1 enemy
Directly below: Poisons 1 enemy
Lower-right: Poisons 1 enemy
I am willing to accept if this spell only counts Green Gems adjacent to the created Gem – it barely changes the result.
Heck, when I first read the spelltext I was confused as well, I thought it was referring only to the 2 gems to each side and 3 adjacent gems on the row beneath, which seemed very suspect. Glad to see it counts all 8 adjacent Gems, but then why didn’t the spelltext simply say that to begin with? e.g:
“Create an Evil Gargoyle Gem. Poison a random Enemy for every Green Gem adjacent to it.”
