Playing with nerfed archery, missile rebalance

[Timo Pietilä]

I was talking about mages. They're too weak for melee and can't rely on attack spells for extended periods of time because either damage is insufficient or mana cost is prohibitively high.

You have mm. Use it instead. It is surprisingly effective. No need to use archery at all. There are winners that have played magic only mages. Dive slower. Mage is supposed to be slow starter. Slowest of all classes.

Lack of ammo was never a problem for them before, why would it be now? They are even chancing mage spells less mana-expensive so that you can rely those beams and ball-spells even more than before.

[Ycombinator]

Sauron's not the only monster with acid vulnerability.

Yes, but Sauron is supposed to be by far the most powerful monster in the game except Morgoth. This resistance hole is possibly the only reason why Sauron is such a pushover compared to Morgoth.

[Timo Pietilä]

Sauron's not the only monster with acid vulnerability. Acid brands are by far the best elemental brands to use in the late game, since acid resistance is far more uncommon than the other types. I don't really have a problem with this since it seems that acid-branded ammo is comparatively rare (vs. flame/frost), though that could just be what the RNG has chosen to hand to me. It does mean that Rings of Acid are much more useful than the other elemental branding rings.

I think reason to monsters lacking of resistance to acid is because acid brand is also new invention and its consequences were not examined thoroughly. In a bit older vanilla only mage could attack monsters using acid with acid ball and acid bolt spells. Those holes in monsters resistances are probably entirely deliberate, so that mage could exploit it during attacks (not that acid bolt of ball were ever very effective).

Now however that element is available to everybody, and few of the artifacts that used to have other brands have now acid (like Aule, which used to have elec brand).

We could of course halve acid brand effect just for fairness sake. After all, all acid damages that monsters do to us are also halved by armor.

[fizzix]

We could of course halve acid brand effect just for fairness sake. After all, all acid damages that monsters do to us are also halved by armor.

With my nerfed archery Sauron was still easy with using Slay evil ammo. That's a x2 brand just like you're proposing acid be. Sauron just isn't that strong, he wastes a lot of turns casting things like fire balls and trying to slow you. Also, DJA allows for a x2 acid branding for the archer class. I used that to take down Sauron with ease (I had extra shots)

The fight against Morgoth seemed easier than most M fights, but that's mostly because he summoned a lot less than usual. I think 350-450 damage per turn with archery makes for a suitably challenging Morgoth fight.

[PowerDiver]

I think removing the to-hit and to-damage values completely from missiles would be a good idea as well. Leave the brands/slays intact.

You are probably right, but I keep wondering if archery brands and slays should only appear on the launchers which I alternate between thinking is brilliant and stupid.

[miyazaki]

Another way to nerf archery/make the game more realistic: when you hit a monster with an arrow, it doesn't immediately fall to the ground, it sticks in. This should happen in the game. You don't get the arrows back until you kill the monster. Practically, they could disappear into the monster's inventory. Same with bolts. Shots/pebbles OTOH wouldn't. They would end up on the floor and could be picked up and reused immediately. This might make slings slightly more attractive.

[nullfame]

IMO the current quiver is too powerful (immunity to damage aside, which IIRC is regarded as a bug). Getting rid of the "enchant arrows to match" game was good but now it is way too easy to carry large quantities of arrows in to the dungeon. Quiver should be 50 arrows per slot or even 40. 99 is too many.

Getting rid of branding spell is okay but I don't think will make that much of a difference. I've never had a hard time finding good ammo once I'm deep enough. YMMV.

Getting rid of extra shots is okay too. I value might over shots right now. I operate under the assumption that every arrow I shoot will be lost so I try to make each go farther not faster.

Limiting bonuses on ammo would probably make the most difference. Maybe arrows should be immune to enchanting too.

Another idea is to not sell enchant scrolls in the store. I feel the same way about restore potions but recognize that is wildly unpopular.

[Derakon]

If you remove enchant scrolls from the stores then you remove the only practical way to break heavy curses currently in the game.

Mind you, given that heavy curses can be broken by enchant scrolls, I'm not sure what point they're serving right now...personally I'd rather see non-permanent sticky-wield removed from the game entirely.

[d_m]

I'm working on a patch right now which implements Pete Mack's idea of adding rather than multiplying launcher and ammo multipliers (so longbow + fire branded arrows would get x6 instead of x9 against fire-susceptible foes). It also applies the multiplier to the damage roll only (like melee weapons get).

I'll post the patch here and then start playing rangers

If the rangers still are able to effectively use archery then I'll probably check it in; otherwise I'll probably tone it down a bit and try again.

EDIT: see http://bearhome.net/erik/ranged.patch for the first stab at this. All I modified is attack.c (for the actual damage) and obj-info.c so you can tell what damage your "new" missile weapons will do. I intend to make things like =damage work with archery to compensate (although that isn't included in this patch)... even so I expect it will be pretty sobering.

[Pete Mack]

Applying the multiplier to the damage is realy brutal for starting players, since arrows are only 1d4. Really, really brutal.
Rather than that, I'd tone down rangers by giving them only 1 extra shot as the next step, as in NPP.

[miyazaki]

If you remove enchant scrolls from the stores then you remove the only practical way to break heavy curses currently in the game.

Mind you, given that heavy curses can be broken by enchant scrolls, I'm not sure what point they're serving right now...personally I'd rather see non-permanent sticky-wield removed from the game entirely.

I think removing heavy curses is in the works.

I agree that enchant scrolls shouldn't be sold in the store, and they should useful to +20 or higher.

[nullfame]

If you remove enchant scrolls from the stores then you remove the only practical way to break heavy curses currently in the game.

Oops! I retract. Unless curses are reworked. Or remove curse applies to heavy curses. Or something.

enchant scrolls shouldn't be sold in the store, and they should useful to +20 or higher.

+1

[d_m]

Applying the multiplier to the damage is realy brutal for starting players, since arrows are only 1d4. Really, really brutal.
Rather than that, I'd tone down rangers by giving them only 1 extra shot as the next step, as in NPP.

Interestingly, it doesn't change a beginning character's life that much. Rather it makes the standard advice to enchant a longbow to +9/+9 much less useful than it was.

Anyway, it is easy to do only half of the change. I'm gonna play around with this for a bit but I expect you are probably right.

[Pete Mack]

Interestingly, it doesn't change a beginning character's life that much. Rather it makes the standard advice to enchant a longbow to +9/+9 much less useful than it was.

That's a huge change to a starting character's survivability. Inability to do 30 dam/turn at a distance (and replace it with ~13) is a really big change. That is at the level of O-combat starting archery, which is already well-established as useless for most characters.

[will_asher]

I think what I did in DJA for nerfing archery works pretty well:
x2 = x1.75
if x1.75 = 2 then x1 = .875 (half of 1.75), so:
x3 = x2.625
x4 = x3.5
etc

EDIT: Also, a missile-nerf idea no one has suggested: Make some monsters resistant to missiles (halves damage for those monsters).