Randart luck :)

[Estie]

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9021

I´ve never been a fan of cloning; I´ve done it at times, but for my winners the turning point was a checkerboard pit more often than not.
In this game however I arrived at level 98 without having seen any greater vault and accordingly, pretty mediocre equipment. So when I detected a clone wand a great ice wyrm nearby, I decided to give it a go. And joy, the wyrm and his clones dropped me both the most awesome randart melee weapon I have ever seen and a PDSM to go with it. Also some randart jewelry, but that turned out less than spectacular.
Happily I turned quality squelch to "only artifacts" for all melee weapons and sold off the MoD of Slay Evil I had stored at home for possible Morgoth use

Time to kill the major uniques; but when I saw the effect my mace had on them, I felt I could skip that part. Acid ring for Sauron, *splat*. Downstairs, Mr. Ugly appearing on radar, but then I spotted another cloning wand, and right in the same room a great storm wyrm. Hmmm. So Mr. Ugly got temporarily *destructed* in a remote corner and I busied myself again with wyrm clones. Among the junk was nothing of note except another randart ring - but this one was juicy.

When I recalled down next time, I appeared right next to Him. Phase door, buff up was followed by my shortest Morgoth fight ever.

So now I´m feeling like getting a brandy. A toast to the RNG, may he be with you!

[d_m]

10 blows per round! Violent!

[Ycombinator]

Absolutely insane combination. Grond looks like a toy compared to this.

[Pete Mack]

1760 damage/turn vs evil... Poor M -- he didn't stand a chance.

[Magnate]

Absolutely insane combination. Grond looks like a toy compared to this.

You're not kidding. 9d8, +2 blows, all three *slays* and evil, and regen / susCon / ImmElec / rChaos to boot. The ring would be good enough without the 42% increase in damage output ... definitely time to tone these down!

[Estie]

You're not kidding. 9d8, +2 blows, all three *slays* and evil, and regen / susCon / ImmElec / rChaos to boot. The ring would be good enough without the 42% increase in damage output ... definitely time to tone these down!

Dont be too quick with that.

I have been playing with randarts for ages now. The main reason for me is that I dislike the predictability with the standard set: Cambeleg solves your glove slot, Thorin shield slot, "now I need to look out for Caspanion" and so on. Instead, I like the variety coming with the randart option: its a bit like playing standart Angband before you know all the artifacts by heart.

However, variety means there are going to be spikes for the quality of the set, both upwards and down. A few random combinations will turn out more powerful than the standart set, others weaker if the average randart game plays about the same as the standart game.

I have taken a look at the artifact dump of the game I played, and if I´m not mistaken, my weapon is Deathwreaker and the ring Vilya.

The ring is listed right above The One:

The Ring 'Esgalad' (+14,+13) *snip* Min Level 88, Max Level 127, Generation chance 1, 0.2 lbs

The weapon is the top entry in "Hafted":

The Mace of Disruption of Ostolwar (9d8) (+13,+10) [+5] *snip* Min Level 96, Max Level 127, Generation chance 5, 36.0 lbs


What I would do is to generate a few randart sets and compare these two entries in power to the standarts Deathwreaker and Vilya. "Assume a player is lucky enough to find these two, will he be weaker, stronger or about the same as the standart player ?"

In my set, both Ostolwar and Esgalad are better than their respective counterparts, but from what I have seen sofar in other artifacts, I suspect thats not true for the average set.

[Magnate]

I have taken a look at the artifact dump of the game I played, and if I´m not mistaken, my weapon is Deathwreaker and the ring Vilya.

It's rather more likely that the weapon is Bladeturner - it's a *lot* more powerful than Deathwreaker. The ring could well be Vilya.

What I would do is to generate a few randart sets and compare these two entries in power to the standarts Deathwreaker and Vilya. "Assume a player is lucky enough to find these two, will he be weaker, stronger or about the same as the standart player ?"

In my set, both Ostolwar and Esgalad are better than their respective counterparts, but from what I have seen sofar in other artifacts, I suspect thats not true for the average set.

Please rest assured that I have generated a fair few (hundred) artifact sets and looked for exactly this issue. There aren't that many people playing 3.1.2 with randarts, and even if we assume that the only posts are about the eyebrow-raising ones, there have still been quite a few of those in the short period since 3.1.2 was released. It's true that we are only talking about perhaps one in ten games, but that's still too often for comfort.

Note that I'm not saying that randarts like these should never exist, simply that they should be a lot rarer.

[will_asher]

I agree with whoever said things like +shots and +might should never be on anything other than a bow. Same for +blows being on anything other than a melee weapon. +3 attacks on a ring is silly and shouldn't be possible.
Nothing wrong with the weapon 'Ostolwar' though. No change is needed for that.

[Nightmarjoo]

Amazing weapon, especially in conjunction with that crazy ring, but I'm laughing my ass off at its activation effect. The ring's is pretty hillarious too, you could've sat there and made your weapon even stronger with enough patience!

[PowerDiver]

I agree with whoever said things like +shots and +might should never be on anything other than a bow. Same for +blows being on anything other than a melee weapon. +3 attacks on a ring is silly and shouldn't be possible.
Nothing wrong with the weapon 'Ostolwar' though. No change is needed for that.

The problem is how items are evaluated. IMO the proper way to evaulate +1 attacks is to generate 100 sets of artifacts and look for the best weapon in each of them. Take an average over the 100 sets as follows. Assume a 4-blow character using it with total to_dam of +100. So it should have the same value as a +dam boost of (best weapon + 100)/4. Similarly, for +1 shots, generate 100 sets of randarts and find the best launchers. Assume you are using seeker ammo of holy might with dam+25 on the ammo. Calculate the damage shooting that ammo, divide by 4 to convert to a melee +dam bonus and then multiply by 3 because it is so much safer to shoot than to melee.

[edit] That +100 is probably excessive. I forgot that the weapon's bonus is included. +60 seems more reasonable.

That will get you started, but there are lots of things that are overvalued that need to be toned down. I'm always selling artifacts that seem like junk for far more than things that I consider to be valuable. It is not enough not to undervalue the powerful flags. You also need not to overestimate that weak flags.

[Estie]

Amazing weapon, especially in conjunction with that crazy ring, but I'm laughing my ass off at its activation effect. The ring's is pretty hillarious too, you could've sat there and made your weapon even stronger with enough patience!

I actually did that; mostly because I was curious of how good the chance for the activation was. I did 30 attempts, with no success. Then I bought 30 scrolls and the weapon went from +10 damage to +11. Unfortunately, thats too small a sample to get any information, but my patience is limited

[Derakon]

Why figure things out empirically when we have the source code? Here's your N-in-1000 odds to fail enchantment, based on the current enchantment of the item:

    0, 10,  50, 100, 200,
    300, 400, 500, 700, 950,
    990, 992, 995, 997, 999,
    1000

(taken from spells2.c).

So by the time your weapon is +10, the odds of enchanting successfully are 8 in 1000, or 1 in 125.

[Estie]

Errr, is that for scrolls, for the activation, or for both ?

The description on the ring says "high chance", so I assume its better than some other way of enchanting.

[Derakon]

That's the basic "attempt to enchant an item" effect, which is used by all enchantment in-game: scrolls, *scrolls*, spells, and activations. The only thing the *scrolls* do differently is they try multiple times (I think it's 1d3 or something like that), which means that they can give multiple plusses and are more likely to succeed at all.

[Estie]

About extra attacks on non-weapons, what Eddie said. But theres something else.

The more I think about it, the more I find that the game breaker here is PDSM. Its one insanely powerful base item; compare it to the best weapon-base, MoD (+0,+0). If you find it, you have (almost) covered all your defensive needs with one slot. It makes Bladeturner so good without it having many additionl powers.

Note that my character basically has two items of Bladeturner proportion, in the weapon and the armor, which is impossible with the standart set.

How about removing PDSM completely from the game ? Lets see:
No more Bladeturner; modify Mediator to something useful to be the new bestest armor.
Players who use "no artifact" option get screwed; to unscrew, introduce a new base item, lets say a Dragon Helm, which provides the missing high resists (PDSM minus BalanceDSM; rbase can be covered trivially with shield). Maybe base Dor Lomin on that too, to have an artifact Dragon Helm in the game. Now it takes three slots to get all resistances, but its possible.

This would remove the biggest spike in your randart set, and arguably improve the standart game as well. As I said before, I like spikes, but if "toning down" is wanted, this would hit at the root.