YAWP: Gastrolith, Half-Troll Priest

**Nick** · June 23, 2010, 04:02

If you didn't make up those properties (+4 to *what*? RWHAT?), then the RNG has become not only sentient, but very, um, frank.

**buzzkill** · June 23, 2010, 05:18

So, do you buy that at the Black Market or the (ahem) Book Store?

What, no activation?

**Magnate** · June 23, 2010, 08:25

Originally posted by Derakon

Ladder link

The main thing of note for this guy is that he found an amulet that does nothing except provide +3 shots. I'm not used to relying on archery, so I didn't realize how overpowered this was...but after spending 40k turns or so at 4950' looking for a better melee weapon so I could melee Sauron and Morgoth to death, I got some acid bolts and decided to try shooting Sauron down. That was so uneventful that I went for Morgoth with the same strategy...and the results are about what you'd expect. The only consumables I used all fight were !Speed, !Heroism, and !Mana, and I only used two of the latter.

I've uploaded the artifact spoilers here. Looks like there were plenty of good ones this time: Inuvil, Rebron, Cargolin (not blessed, but for +3 blows I think I can ignore that flaw), Harath...again, just most everything I found wasn't worth using.

Incidentally, now that I've remembered what it's like to play with a weapons restriction, what's the power rating on the "blessed" attribute? Seems like that would be rather hard to calculate, since it's useless for all but one class, but for that one class, it's critical...so long as the weapon isn't hafted.

Unlike last time, I got a few good artifacts this time, though I did spend a fair amount of time just loading levels, beelining to vaults/pits, cracking them open, and emptying out the juicy contents. And up until I got to the depths, I was running around with really crappy equipment (modulo the amulet, which showed up early but wasn't used much at all).

I think next time I'm going to try a Hobbit Rogue.

Finally, not that I expect the game to have name filters...but geeze, guys.

On that last point, you can now edit lib/edit/names.txt and satisfy yourself that none of the names are remotely offensive. Just for the record, I didn't change any of the names when they were extracted from randname.c to names.txt - they've been untouched for years.

Sadly I couldn't see the full spoiler, but it looks like you got a nice interesting set of nonweapon randarts - so perhaps the scarcity of weapons is fair enough. I already have an open ticket for increasing the rarity of off-weapon blows/brands/shots for 3.1.3

To answer your question, Blessed is rated as a paltry 1 or 2 power points - it's just so often utterly irrelevant. On the rare occasions when it's on a pointy weapon found by a priest, that's a bonus. That said, any weapon that gets a +WIS pval is automatically blessed, so we have tried to make it a little less arbitrary.

**Derakon** · June 23, 2010, 15:35

Sorry about the spoilers being offline; we had a power outage overnight so my computer was off. It's back now.

Edit: as for availability of randarts, yeah, this game felt more generous in that regard than my paladin did. Then again, my paladin spent a lot less time hunting, since as soon as he had Wrath of God and a good melee weapon he was good to go win. I definitely didn't feel that confident with the priest, even if the amulet meant I could probably have won much earlier than I did. Oh, well.

**nullfame** · June 23, 2010, 15:48

Originally posted by buzzkill

What, no activation?

I'll assume I am in polite company and not go there. Though it is hard to resist. There is also a lot of potential for last messages.

**Magnate** · June 23, 2010, 18:14

Originally posted by Derakon

Sorry about the spoilers being offline; we had a power outage overnight so my computer was off. It's back now.

Edit: as for availability of randarts, yeah, this game felt more generous in that regard than my paladin did. Then again, my paladin spent a lot less time hunting, since as soon as he had Wrath of God and a good melee weapon he was good to go win. I definitely didn't feel that confident with the priest, even if the amulet meant I could probably have won much earlier than I did. Oh, well.

The truly stunning thing about your randart set is the fact that it contains no fewer than EIGHT randart DSMs! I've never seen that many - I think I might have seen five, but no more. Usually only one or two, and plenty of randart sets get none at all.

You also had a splendid set of shields on offer - but that said there was nothing special in cloaks, gloves, hats or boots.

The +3 shots amulet is an aberration: it's based on Ingwe, which should not be powerful enough to get +3 shots, even with no other mods. I'll have to look into this.

**Ycombinator** · June 23, 2010, 18:37

Originally posted by Magnate

The truly stunning thing about your randart set is the fact that it contains no fewer than EIGHT randart DSMs! I've never seen that many - I think I might have seen five, but no more. Usually only one or two, and plenty of randart sets get none at all.

While we're on this topic: does base item affect actual generation chance? IOW if there is Bar Chain Mail 'Foo' with generation chance N (as listed in the spoiler file) and MHDSM 'Bar' with the same generation chance, is the latter going to be rarer?
I'm asking this because in my last game there were a few DSMs with gen. chance 33 and pretty low min level, but I've never found any of them. This doesn't mean anything, of course (random numbers are, well, random), but I wonder.

**Derakon** · June 23, 2010, 18:45

Originally posted by Magnate

The +3 shots amulet is an aberration: it's based on Ingwe, which should not be powerful enough to get +3 shots, even with no other mods. I'll have to look into this.

How do you tell what the basis is for a randart, anyway? The rings tend to be pretty obvious because the Rings of Power are so much better than other standart rings, but otherwise?

**d_m** · June 23, 2010, 18:59

Originally posted by Derakon

How do you tell what the basis is for a randart, anyway? The rings tend to be pretty obvious because the Rings of Power are so much better than other standart rings, but otherwise?

IIRC you can tell because the artifact numbers are the same, but I might be wrong.

**Magnate** · June 23, 2010, 19:19

Originally posted by d_m

IIRC you can tell because the artifact numbers are the same, but I might be wrong.

Correct. If all you have is the spoiler, you can only tell with the lights/amulets/rings, because they're in order and don't change base item type. If you have the randart.log file, you can check the number (though this could be made a lot easier).

**Magnate** · June 23, 2010, 19:23

Originally posted by Ycombinator

While we're on this topic: does base item affect actual generation chance? IOW if there is Bar Chain Mail 'Foo' with generation chance N (as listed in the spoiler file) and MHDSM 'Bar' with the same generation chance, is the latter going to be rarer?
I'm asking this because in my last game there were a few DSMs with gen. chance 33 and pretty low min level, but I've never found any of them. This doesn't mean anything, of course (random numbers are, well, random), but I wonder.

Artifact DSMs are hard to find because DSMs are hard to find. In object generation the base object is chosen first, so you only get a chance of a DSM if a DSM is chosen, and that's not often. Then the good/great/artifact checks are performed - there are no ego types for DSM, but you still have to pass all three checks to get an artifact. (You can skip one or two with DROP_GOOD and DROP_GREAT, of course.)

So yes, gen chance 33 for a randart DSM is a whole lot rarer than gen chance 33 for a longsword, and your MHDSM will be rarer than the bar chain mail with the same gen chance.

**Derakon** · June 23, 2010, 19:40

Why can't you find Dwarven DSMs or DSMs of Elvenkind, anyway? Those might actually be useful; in fact, I could well imagine a Balanced DSM of Elvenkind being an excellent armor for the late-game, though that's obviously an extreme example.

**Magnate** · June 23, 2010, 19:49

Originally posted by Derakon

Why can't you find Dwarven DSMs or DSMs of Elvenkind, anyway? Those might actually be useful; in fact, I could well imagine a Balanced DSM of Elvenkind being an excellent armor for the late-game, though that's obviously an extreme example.

I'd support this too. It's a simple change to lib/edit/ego-item.txt, to adjust the "allowed tval" ranges for the ego body armour types to include DSMs. They wouldn't be very common, but that's ok.

**Nick** · June 23, 2010, 22:49

Originally posted by Magnate

I'd support this too. It's a simple change to lib/edit/ego-item.txt, to adjust the "allowed tval" ranges for the ego body armour types to include DSMs. They wouldn't be very common, but that's ok.

Already done in FA - as usual

YAWP: Gastrolith, Half-Troll Priest

YAWP: Gastrolith, Half-Troll Priest

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