Standart artifact frequency

[Derakon]

After losing a promising paladin to very stupidly trying to charge some plasma hounds down a corridor (and after we'd just finished discussing the danger of knockouts, even!), I lost a promising warrior to Shelob breathing poison. Forgot she could do that.

Anyway, I accidentally loaded the wrong dead character to make this warrior, which meant I ended up playing a standart game. And, uh, I found them all over the place. I'm used to playing randarts, and not finding anything except maybe the Phial before 2000' or so -- and then having most of what I find being not very interesting. With this guy, I found Eriril, Nimthanc, and Orome in very rapid succession, all before 1600'! Just one of those would have been welcome to my randart characters. Not to mention Hithlomir and Celegorm, whose base-four-covering were quite handy; I'm used to having to rely on Resistance or Elvenkind armor for that stuff. And of course, all of the standart gauntlets are ridiculous, considering that in randart games I count myself lucky to be using gloves of Power.

Well anyway, here's the comments I made for this character. Is his experience anything out of the ordinary? Are standarts usually this common? Because geeze, they're nothing like my randart games have been. I know warriors breeze through the early game, but I barely even noticed my enemies until I got below 2500' or so, and took out several uniques that I wouldn't usually even have considered attempting. In fact, that's why I died...

     24359    550'   12   Found The Phial of Galadriel
     24389    550'   12   --Whoops, guess I'm on standarts this time.
     27722    600'   14   --Bahhh fruit flies.
     56553    800'   19   --Modded -TrapLocation to recharge in 5 turns.
     56553    800'   19   --Traps are lame anyway
     74195    850'   22   --First ego: whip of slay animal. Whoopdycrap.
     91400   1050'   23   --Killed something with the Phial's activation. Awesome.
     95411   1050'   24   Found The Quarterstaff 'Eriril' (LOST)
     95528   1050'   24   --Irony: a warrior using Eriril.
     95685   1050'   24   --But it's better damage than my whip, if only just.
     98265   1050'   24   --And now I can see invisible.
    111273   1200'   25   Found The Soft Leather Armour 'Hithlomir'
    111330   1200'   25   --Well, Hithlomir.
    111330   1200'   25   --So much for worrying about resistances.
    142460   1450'   26   Found The Dagger 'Nimthanc' (LOST)
    142481   1450'   26   --Woo Nimthanc.
    142481   1450'   26   --This is so hilariously broken compared to usual randarts.
    142481   1450'   26   --2d4 frostbrand *dagger*. I get 4.7 blows!
    142481   1450'   26   --135 base damage, compare 77 with Eriril.
    143416   1550'   26   --Ooh, vault!
    143426   1550'   26   --Doesn't *look* especially lethal from dEvil...
    143791   1550'   27   --Though, Ibun is here. Hm.
    143953   1550'   27   --So much for my !Speed.
    145702   1550'   27   Found The Spear of Orome
    145735   1550'   27   --...hello, Orome.
    145735   1550'   27   --Goodbye, Nimthanc.
    145836   1550'   27   --This is just silly now!
    156722      0'   28   --This is, what, my second town trip?
    156793      0'   28   --Yeah, only one thing in my home.
    163541   1900'   29   --Can't ignore missile weapons by subtype.
    163541   1900'   29   --I really don't care about slings...
    166569   1950'   29   Found The Bastard Sword 'Calris'
    166570   1950'   29   --...hello, Calris, how are you?
    166570   1950'   29   --Seriously this is absurd.
    166570   1950'   29   --Four artifacts before I usually expect to find even 1!
    175876   2000'   30   --...!Aug. This is a lucky character.
    175906   2000'   30   --And a ?Banish.
    176927   2000'   30   --And a ?Destruction. Sheesh!
    178659   2050'   30   Found The Leather Shield of Celegorm
    178674   2050'   30   --Hello, Celegorm.
    178681   2050'   30   --This is getting absurd.
    178778   2050'   30   --I mean, is this normal for standart games?
    181173   2100'   30   --Had to burn a !Speed on Kavlax, but oh well.
    181303   2100'   30   --Or rather, I did burn, pre-emptively.
    181615   2100'   30   --No !Speed stockpile at home could be a problem...
    185268   2150'   31   Found The Zweihander 'Gurthang'
    185277   2150'   31   --And here's Gurthang. What the heck.
    185285   2150'   31   --Not as good as Orome, but few weapons are.
    188227   2200'   32   Found The Set of Leather Gloves 'Cambeleg'
    188257   2200'   32   --Aaand Cambeleg. This is still absurd.
    188774   2200'   32   Found The Set of Leather Gloves 'Cammithrim' (LOST)
    188781   2200'   32   --...and Cammithrim too.
    188782   2200'   32   --Not that I care, really.
    191733   2250'   32   --Greater vault.
    191740   2250'   32   --I'm not really equipped for this one, but what the hey?
    193514   2250'   33   --Aaand forced to flee by an undead beholder.
    193514   2250'   33   --Still no teleport other. Oh well!
    199819   2250'   33   --Argh, balrog drained my _Teleport three times in a row.
    207113   2350'   34   Found The Lucerne Hammer 'Turmil'
    211311   2350'   34   Found The Battle Axe 'Lotharang' (LOST)
    212052   2350'   34   Found The Flail 'Totila'
    212135   2350'   34   --Seriously, artifacts EVERYWHERE.
    213629   2450'   34   --Ethereal dragons = bad news.
    213629   2450'   34   --Fast, nasty breaths, bite to confuse.
    213629   2450'   34   --...though I resist the breaths.
    213882   2450'   34   --Ah! Teleport Other! Excellent, now I can clear vaults.
    215118   2500'   34   --Hm, guess I can kill ethereal dragons if I have to.
    215340   2500'   34   --Got lucky though.
    221950   2600'   34   --Blubbering icky thing trampled a shrieker mushroom.
    224385   2600'   35   Found The Dagger 'Angrist'
    228514   2600'   35   --One approach has demonic Q, the other Nexus. Sucks.
    245580   2800'   36   Found The Set of Gauntlets 'Paurnen' (LOST)
    245659   2800'   36   --These were from Acquirement.
    246285   2850'   36   --Goddammit, stealth-killed the blink spiders and Shelob called more
    246403   2850'   36   --Really want to be able to resist enemy teleports.
    247263   2850'   36   Found The Amulet of Carlammas
    247284   2850'   36   --Hey, I'm actually using Carlammas!
    247284   2850'   36   --Because all I've found otherwise is "Infra!
    248429   2850'   36   --Phase spiders suck.
    248429   2850'   36   --Shelob could just breathe me to death as I bounce about.

Also, I'd like to reiterate that adding comments is bugged: the game will let you type more than is actually saved in the file. For example, the comment about Shelob summoning originally cut off the "more".

[Timo Pietilä]

Anyway, I accidentally loaded the wrong dead character to make this warrior, which meant I ended up playing a standart game. And, uh, I found them all over the place. I'm used to playing randarts, and not finding anything except maybe the Phial before 2000' or so -- and then having most of what I find being not very interesting. With this guy, I found Eriril, Nimthanc, and Orome in very rapid succession, all before 1600'! Just one of those would have been welcome to my randart characters. Not to mention Hithlomir and Celegorm, whose base-four-covering were quite handy; I'm used to having to rely on Resistance or Elvenkind armor for that stuff. And of course, all of the standart gauntlets are ridiculous, considering that in randart games I count myself lucky to be using gloves of Power.

You are just lucky. I have found three artifacts as well by 1700', but nothing that useful, Phial is only one I'm actually using, and resistances is best armor (if you don't count various ego helmets and gauntlets).

Standart artifact distribution is much more even through the game, but finding Orome this early is very rare, I usually don't find it at all.

Standart gauntlets are good, but I wouldn't say they are ridiculous, because ego handgears are so powerful. If you get power with +5 to dam and +5 to STR it might well be better than Cambeleg depending how high your STR/CON is without. If that handgear happens to be Cestus, then it might even have +8 to dam to start with.

[Derakon]

The thing is, I would have counted myself lucky to have just found Eriril...by 2000'! The fact that I found three artifact weapons, all useful, plus two useful artifact body armors, is what I find so absurd. I'm certainly willing to accept that this character was lucky; my question is, what's the expected luck for a standart character? Put another way, how lucky was he? As I said, I routinely expect to have found nothing artifact-wise by 2000'.

And yeah, gloves of Power can be quite, aheh, powerful. But they're also quite rare; how rare is Cambeleg? Cammithrim? Heck, even Paurnen has combat bonuses now, though they just got nerfed in the most recent nightly.

[Timo Pietilä]

And yeah, gloves of Power can be quite, aheh, powerful. But they're also quite rare; how rare is Cambeleg? Cammithrim? Heck, even Paurnen has combat bonuses now, though they just got nerfed in the most recent nightly.

Rare enough that I have usually found several +5 Power before finding Cambeleg or Cammithrim.

[Nick]

Shelob in contrast is fairly easy meat.

Obligatory

[Derakon]

Easy enough to be tempting to try to kill early, hard enough to punish you for it. Hell, I killed Kavlax! I think Shelob got a buff somewhere along the line and my lizard brain still hasn't processed that fact.

[Raxmei]

Seems pretty lucky. I just did a warrior and didn't find an artifact weapon until 1700. It was Elvagil so I just kept on using my Westernesse. First really useful artifact was Dagmor at 1850. First artifact armor was Arvedui at 2000, which was then rapidly followed by Thalkettoth, Cambeleg, and Celegorm because the game loves doing that to you. I'll go start a randart game to see how that compares.

[Timo Pietilä]

Seems pretty lucky. I just did a warrior and didn't find an artifact weapon until 1700. It was Elvagil so I just kept on using my Westernesse. First really useful artifact was Dagmor at 1850. First artifact armor was Arvedui at 2000, which was then rapidly followed by Thalkettoth, Cambeleg, and Celegorm because the game loves doing that to you. I'll go start a randart game to see how that compares.

Many mid-level artifacts have native depth around 2500', so getting several a bit earlier from OoD monsters and vaults is not uncommon. Derakon Orome was a very lucky find, otherwise not so uncommon game.