Features of Smell:
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Monsters who can smell will follow smell if they cannot see or hear something they want to attack or flee from.
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Smell has a numerical value, and monsters will follow the strongest scent they have.
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Smell does exist as an overmap value, however it is not used for too much yet. It may be used for wandering hordes, but otherwise it serves to let the debugger track player presence.
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Fire will destroy smell, to a significant degree. For instance distant zeds will wander to the fire but be unable to track your smell.
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Closed doors and windows will prevent smell from passing, unless you stray too close.
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Taped windows and doors, and other means of reducing smell, work.
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Smoke and gas effects will destroy smell locally.
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Rain (especially the heavy stuff) will destroy smell rapidly.
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Strong scents will slightly increase the radius of you scent, but absolutely up the numerical value of your scent. Weak scents will do the inverse.
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Strong smellers will track you with much more efficiency, and will use their pathing IQ in conjunction with smell. (Pathing IQ varies from mon to mon, from ‘3’ to ‘50’ tiles. A mon with low iq will try to ram through a fence rather than walk around it)
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Due to how rivers work ingame, a mon on land can smell you if you are in the water, and a mon in water can smell you if you are on land and it in water.
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Zombies and other mons used to be able to reliably track you for up to 15-20 tiles via smell. Many still can, if they catch a whiff of you. This is why zoms can sometimes find you in the dark (other times its the sound of your combat . . . )
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Smells typically last for about 90 seconds outside.
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Smells last longer inside than outside.
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Smells get destroyed by gas effects, such as smoke or pot smoke or cigarette smoke. Or a smoking candle.
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Smells has numerical values, which guides monsters to you.
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Blood and slime used to carry scent, but caused some monsters to attract their kin away from you and to them.
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Scents do not do Z-levels very well. Yet . . .