Yagd

[ewert]

Yet another greedy death, Lumbar the poor warrior first got a rod of tele other from a GCV, then Saruman teleing him in front of a great wyrm teled out before.

Anyways, artifact spoiler file:
The Blade of Chaos of Tanaron (7d5) (+20,+25)
---------------------------------------------
+5 strength, infravision.
Slays evil creatures, orcs, trolls, giants.
*Slays* dragons, demons, undead.
Branded with lightning, flames, frost.
Provides resistance to cold, poison, dark, sound, chaos, disenchantment.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Slows your metabolism. Grants the ability to see invisible things.


Min Level 41, Max Level 127, Generation chance 10, Power 327, 18.0 lbs


I think I would have liked that if found it... *drool*

[ewert]

The Morning Star of Mioned (9d6) (+21,+24)
------------------------------------------
+3 strength, speed, attack speed.
Slays evil creatures, undead.
*Slays* dragons, demons.
Branded with acid, lightning.
Provides resistance to poison, dark, confusion, nexus, chaos.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Sustains charisma.
Prevents paralysis. Grants the ability to see invisible things.

When activated, it restores both intelligence and manapoints to maximum.
Takes 420 to 800 turns to recharge.


Min Level 62, Max Level 127, Generation chance 5, Power 493, 12.1 lbs


Oops, take that back, now THAT's a weapon for a warrior.

[Derakon]

Let's see, average dice damage 31.5, nine attacks per round is 283.5. Triple that from acid damage and you have 850 dice damage alone against Sauron. Add in, oh, 50 bonus damage from the weapon, strength bonus, and other equipment bonuses, and you're talking 1300 melee damage/round if all blows hit. Yeegh. Or 1017 against Morgoth with the lesser slay.

Why can't I ever find these? My paladin used a Scythe of Slicing of Fury and counted himself lucky; my priest used ranged combat (with, granted, an amulet of +3 shots). I haven't taken another character to win depth since then...

[Magnate]

The Morning Star of Mioned (9d6) (+21,+24)
------------------------------------------
+3 strength, speed, attack speed.
Slays evil creatures, undead.
*Slays* dragons, demons.
Branded with acid, lightning.
Provides resistance to poison, dark, confusion, nexus, chaos.
Cannot be harmed by acid, electricity, fire, cold.
Sustains charisma.
Prevents paralysis. Grants the ability to see invisible things.

When activated, it restores both intelligence and manapoints to maximum.
Takes 420 to 800 turns to recharge.


Min Level 62, Max Level 127, Generation chance 5, Power 493, 12.1 lbs


Oops, take that back, now THAT's a weapon for a warrior.

Wow, that's pretty near perfect - and the gen chance should be 1 rather than 5 ... (this is a result of the recent armour changes unbalancing the calculation - this will be fixed).

It's *very* near perfect, in fact - if the undead was a x5 rather than x3, it would be pretty close to unimprovable. Nice one.

[Pete Mack]

That weapon is comparable to Doomcaller, in every respect but one. +3 blows????

Nothing should ever, ever, give more than +2 blows.
And +blows valuation should be scaled proportionally to total damage valuation, so a +2 blows Blade of Chaos is worth exponentially more than a +2 blows short sword (aka sting)

Using this invariant, off-weapon artifacts that give extra shots or blows should be valued assuming that the weapon they are multiplying is end-game strong. So +1 blow on a shield is worth ~+90 damage/turn, or ~+20 damage/blow...

And +1 shot is worth ~+300 damage/turn, or +60 damage/blow.

Edit:
To be fair, +1 shot and +1 blow isn't worth much more than +1 shot alone. So the new Haradrim shield really isn't worth more than a +1 shot randart version of Umbar.

[Magnate]

Nothing should ever, ever, give more than +2 blows. And +blows valuation should be scaled proportionally to total damage valuation, so a +2 blows Blade of Chaos is worth exponentially more than a +2 blows short sword (aka sting)

Using this invariant, off-weapon artifacts that give extra shots or blows should be valued assuming that the weapon they are multiplying is end-game strong. So +1 blow on a shield is worth ~+90 damage/turn, or ~+20 damage/blow...

And +1 shot is worth ~+300 damage/turn, or +60 damage/blow.

Well, I had +1 shot at 50dpb, and that was still too low - way too many extra shots on nonweapon artifacts. So it's now something like 75, and that seems to be better. +1 blow was 16dpb and that was also way too low, so it's now about 35. So my figures aren't too different to yours.

Please rest assured that +blows on weapons (and +1 shots on launchers) are rated according to the power of the weapon (or launcher), so yes, +2 blows on a BoC adds much more than +2 blows on a dagger.

[PowerDiver]

Well, I had +1 shot at 50dpb, and that was still too low - way too many extra shots on nonweapon artifacts. So it's now something like 75, and that seems to be better. +1 blow was 16dpb and that was also way too low, so it's now about 35. So my figures aren't too different to yours.

The reason both of your numbers are so far off is that you ignore the fundamental advantage of missiles over melee. I believe that to be balanced, missiles should do 1/3 the damage of melee. So if you figure out a value like 75 above, I'd say it should be converted to 225 after accounting for missiles vs melee.

[Pete Mack]

@Eddie,
I would agree with you except for one thing: Rune of Protection.
4 out of 6 classes get Rune, and so can melee with almost the same benefits as archery.

I agree that my estimate was way low: I should have been considering +1 shot (Slay Evil) from Umbar, or ~110 damage/blow.

Edit:
That's 69 damage/blow in the svn branch. So the current +75 is actually very close to what I would guess.
I suspect the crazy +3 shots is coming from 3.1.2 rather than svn.
I will have to play more svn randarts to see how the balance is.

[PowerDiver]

@Eddie,
I would agree with you except for one thing: Rune of Protection.
4 out of 6 classes get Rune, and so can melee with almost the same benefits as archery.

This is a game where the difference between winning and losing is how often you take 1% risks. Rune is not in the same class as archery. It's also typically sufficiently expensive that you cannot use it as often as you would use archery.

However you do it, are you coming up with Haradrim shield having approximately 2 times the power of Thorin [if you ignore aggravation]? Each time I found it, I never seriously considered using Thorin again except as a swap for fighting acid users. I don't know if that means 1.5x power or 3x power, but even with aggravation it is not close.

OTOH, lack of understanding rune is possibly the biggest weakness in my game. Perhaps I am mistaken.