Cheating at Sumo Wrestling: Mustard Gas Exploit 2.0

Today I finally discovered a legitimate way to cheat during the sumo match, and along with it a way to kill off the audience of the sumo match without any consequences.
And all within the latest release of vanilla IVAN.

The big problem with trying to cheat at sumo wrestling before was that the old devs had thought of basically all the ways you could have cheated or given yourself an unfair advantage during the sumo wrestling match (haste notwithstanding) and had put in safeguards to prevent you from doing so:

• If you sneak in, any items dropped in the arena are automatically cleared out once you leave. This means you can't leave a weapon or wand at the entrance to give you an unfair advantage over Huang Ming Pong.
  
• The structures inside the sumo arena belong to New Attnam, so setting traps or damaging the walls in any way causes the town to become angry, which in turn means that you will never be able to challenge Huang Ming Pong. This stops you from being able to set traps or consistently/safely leave acid on the floor for Huang to stand in during the fight - breaking a bottle of acid inside the arena is likely to get some on the walls, which means the town will get angry when that wall inevitably melts.
  
• Not that this is normally ever possible, but attacking the audience, stealing a lantern or damaging the arena will cause you to be instantly disqualified.
  

However, after a little bit of experimentation I found that once again, gas grenades have proven to be the number one choice for exploiting the game!

The necessary items to cheat at sumo wrestling are as follows:

• At least one mustard gas grenade (the more, the better)
  
• A way to sneak into the sumo arena (food to lure Huang outside / invisibility)
  

And to kill off the audience:

• Wand/scrolls of teleportation
  
• Ring of teleportation control (optional, but useful to ensure you don't get stuck outside the arena)
  

Once you have collected the appropriate items, follow these steps:

1. Become bloated or overfed.
2. Sneak into the sumo arena.
3. Throw mustard gas at the northern wall - if you want to kill the audience, use your teleportation items to exit the glass arena and gas the southern wall.
4. Exit the arena.
5. Challenge Huang Ming Pong to battle.
6. Watch everyone choke on mustard gas - if you're trying to beat Huang Ming Pong this isn't going to clinch you victory because he'll descend upon you like a raging gorilla and punch your spine out anyway, but now he'll be taking damage every few turns from the mustard gas too. You might also want to try skunk smell grenades to maximize the damage over time.

If you've gassed the audience, victory will trigger the moment one of them dies - the code doesn't care about WHO dies in the sumo arena, just that someone does. Usually this is Kaethos or the child tourist.
Once you've exited the arena, it's likely that all the other audience members will die from mustard gas exposure within a few turns.

This works because much like liquids, gas clouds persist even after you have left a dungeon level.
In addition to that, you are not subject to normal hostility rules during the sumo battle, to facilitate you being able to fight Huang Ming Pong without making the town mad.

This is awsome.

The only other way I know of is to set a mine in front of Huang's house when nobody is nearby, then let a tourist trigger it. This is likely to heavily damage Huang, so it makes the fight quite easier. But your way seems much easier and more elegant.

I didn't know you could set traps in New Attnam and have them triggered without making the town mad!
Or does it have to be one of the tourists that triggers it?

I think it might be time for more SCIENCE.

These are both amazing. I like the mine idea as i still play 0.50

Upon further investigation I am very pleased to have replicated Red Kangaroo's mine trick.
Turns out it's not limited to the tourists setting off the mine - the game's actually logical and no blame is assigned when nobody knows who set the trap!

In fact, it works in Attnam too. I'm doing some further testing since I think any of the characters present with Infravision or ESP will cause the town to become hostile when the mine is set, but you might be able to avoid that...

EDIT: Yep, the NPCs with infravision/ESP definitely do take notice when you place a trap and turn Attnam hostile.

Actually, scratch all of that.
Turns out that nobody actually cares if you set a trap outside of a building in New Attnam or Attnam proper, even if it hurts or kills someone.

Unfortunately even a 100% undetectable invisible golem (in 0.50 too, not just 0.504 where I'm not sure that bug was fixed) is still blamed when a trap is set in any owned property.
I would argue that this is something that needs to change as there is absolutely no logical way anyone would be able to tell WHO set the trap, even if they did see it apparently materialize out of thin air.

They do know that there's exactly one person running around town carrying mines and polymorphing themself... and the dolphins probably know how to get fingerprints or DNA off a shard of mine shrapnel. If they're not affected by polymorphing.

How do you get the gas grenade at the middle of the southern wall to explode without affecting you? All three locations you could throw it from are inside the cloud.

I did consider this. They don't necessarily know that you've got mines and the ability to polymorph until you demonstrate it, and even then they'd have to be smart enough to connect the dots back to you - and most of the citizens have pretty low intelligence. I think it would in fact have to be up to the Dolphins or Petrus to CSI you.


It doesn't necessarily need to be right in the middle of the south wall since the audience moves around, but the ways you can avoid it are:

• Gas immunity from some source. Unfortunately the only reliable one would require you to reach Ivan first, with the most immediate temporary sources being magical bubble clouds and fountains. Maybe eating giant mushrooms too? Not sure if gas immunity is in the list of possible effects for eating them.
  
• Place the grenade on the floor NOT ON THE SAME TILE AS THE LANTERN and detonate it with a wand of striking - carefully, so you don't accidentally break a wall.
  
• Teleport Kenny or a different ally outside of the arena and hit them with it instead.
  

I just remembered a different trick that has just become relevant again!

Unlike thrown bottles of sulfuric acid, a wand of acid rain doesn't assign blame to you, as long as you don't hit an NPC with it.
So you can sneak into the sumo arena, blast the walls with acid rain and not even have to worry about teleportation to get outside!

This also has the effect of leaving acid puddles everywhere for Huang or the audience to hurt themselves on, as well as making it easier to position the mustard gas on the southern wall.
It also allows you to exit the arena proper and start punching the audience, but that results in immediate disqualification.




As a side note, I REALLY like how the explosions set things on fire now.
Here's a gif showing that nobody cares about you killing people with mines in New Attnam:

I'm glad the fire system works to your liking

I'm still partial to the classic tactic of vomiting where he stands while he's away eating.

That's my favoured method too. I'm a bit too keen not to mess it up, so I end up hoarding about 15 cans of banana flesh before I try it. That often means I'm well into GC before I get the prize. I probably ought to just settle for Zolku's bananas instead.

Plus if Zolku's bananas spoil you can eat them anyway; they are just going to come right back up.

Has anyone tried selling stuff to Zolku? Like how much do Jenny's fruits go for?

Far as I remember he refuses to buy anything because Decos would get mad at him.