AAR: no OP items

**Sky** · December 11, 2017, 16:40

for comparison, this is a different character: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=21318

i started it earlier, but finished just now. no sense really in going down to morgoth when i know how it's gonna end, either a joyless win, or a miserable defeat.

this run i had a hard time finding both speed and resists, i went down without rNether.
however, i found an endgame weapon .. on DL20. i had to look at it a few times to understand how amazing this thing was.

the Beaked Axe of Curion (4d6) (+13,+24) [+21] <+3>
---------------------------------------------------
+3 intelligence.
+3 dexterity.
Slays dragons (powerfully), demons (powerfully), undead, giants, trolls.
Branded with weak lightning.
Provides resistance to lightning, shards.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Sustains wisdom, dexterity.
Speeds regeneration.

When activated, it heals 5000 hit points, restores experience and stats, heals
cut damage, and cures stunning, poison, blindness, and confusion.
Takes 172 to 252 turns to recharge.
Your chance of success is 88.9%

Min Level 46, Max Level 127, Generation chance 21, Power 276, 18.0 lbs
Random polearm of power 276.

due to the weight, it was doing only 90 or so damage, barely more than a knife, and it almost got ditched in favour of a flail of slay troll with ESP.

note the activation for Life, which made RLL and Restoration redundant.

i also found TWO arkenstones (thank you Nick) which made exploration a breeze. To balance that out, i missed a dragon artifact on the floor, for some reason.

However, it all came to an end when i found this:

the Band of Naroth (+12,+8) [+10] <+2, +3>
------------------------------------------
+2 wisdom.
+3 dexterity.
+3 constitution.
+2 attack speed.
Provides immunity to cold.
Provides resistance to acid, fire, light, dark, shards, nexus, chaos.
Provides protection from blindness.
Cannot be harmed by lightning.
Slows your metabolism. Prevents paralysis.

When activated, it creates a large frost ball with damage 200.
Takes 106 to 130 turns to recharge.
Your chance of success is 86.8%

Min Level 91, Max Level 127, Generation chance 5, Power 631, 0.2 lbs
Random ring of power 631.

with three swaps, i could chose between 764 vs evil @base speed 24,or base speed 19 with 700 vs primary plus 500 vs all(the Life axe above), or 1900 vs demons and 550 vs all, this bad boy here:

the Flail of Athis (10d6) (+18,+10) <+4>
----------------------------------------
+4 strength.
Slays demons (powerfully).
Provides resistance to cold.
Provides protection from fear.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Grants the ability to see invisible things. Sustains your life force. Blessed
by the gods.

Min Level 40, Max Level 127, Generation chance 17, Power 228, 15.0 lbs
Random hafted of power 228.

went down with, not sure, but around 30 Heal, 20 *Heal, 3 Life, NINE rods of heal, 5 runes, 12 MBan.
i wasn't worried one bit.

for both this fight and the one above, i runed in a corridor, meleed morgoth, when i got down to 600 i would Phase and then use CCW or 1 Heal + CCW, maybe eat a mushroom of vigour.
i banished a couple times, but mostly i would just Phase and let morgoth's earthquakes take care of the summons.

needless to say, i took down just about every unique i could find before this fight.

i had spoilers on for this game, so i knew that band with +2 attacks was coming, i just waited it out until is showed up.

**Philip** · December 11, 2017, 19:21

Perhaps it is normal now in Angband, even without OP randarts, to have all resistances, protections, 3 immunities, between +7 and +13 to every stat, and +32 speed unhasted (when severely over-weight even) on an end-game character without finding every artifact. Perhaps Angband would be speed-runnable in a certain sense.

Perhaps Angband needs to be harder.

**Sky** · December 11, 2017, 22:05

does this mean we going to get back the ring of acid + glave of pain combo?

**Derakon** · December 11, 2017, 22:32

That combo was removed because it was too powerful.

IMO the target should be around 400-500 damage per round for endgame warriors in melee, rarely more, and less DPR for literally any other source of damage because those mean you don't have to take melee hits.

**Grotug** · December 12, 2017, 02:49

Originally posted by Derakon

That combo was removed because it was too powerful.

IMO the target should be around 400-500 damage per round for endgame warriors in melee, rarely more, and less DPR for literally any other source of damage because those mean you don't have to take melee hits.

It's rare my damage output is that poor by the endgame, and most games I'm rushing to Morgoth, not trying to find every artifact. The last game I reported on was the worst damage output to Morgoth I've ever had.

I think Immunities are a bit too common in randarts at the moment. I seem to easily get at least two useable artifacts with immunities each game. In my current game I already have a good source for lightning immunity in an amulet of slaying (+8, +8), and I've only just begun finding good artifacts as Im only in the DL40s.

**Sky** · December 12, 2017, 03:02

what's an "amulet of slaying" ?

**Grotug** · December 12, 2017, 03:09

An amulet with (+8, +8) on it.

I like giving meaningful descriptions to artifacts I find since randarts don't get atmospheric descriptions like the normal artifacts.

**Pete Mack** · December 12, 2017, 12:32

Grotug--theres a standard artifact amulet with (+6,+6). (+8,+8) isn't so unbalancing. It's off weapon brands/slays/attacks that are hopelessly unbalanced, as was true for the infamous branding rings from the 3.2- 3.3 era. It's also a problem when you find a Glaive of Pain type weapon that also has slays or attacks. The standard weapons (except Deathwreaker) all have a fairly strict upper bound in damage against the bosses. (Of course there is also the crazy MoD +2 attacks that does 1000+ damage against undead, but that still can't do much more than 600 damage against everything else.) But Deathwreaker is very rare. With randarts, the ladder shows Deathwreaker-like (or higher) damage in a large fraction of games.

**Estie** · December 12, 2017, 14:45

The "max 500 damage" topic for randarts comes up every week or so, what noone ever adresses is how to do that without ending up with the same kit every f+++ing game.

Standarts are only ever so slightly better than the everpresent ego items, and if you randomize artifacts you get more spread, and if the randarts are as bad as the standarts you end up with ego-only kits every other game.

Angband is a simple game, you collect various mods which make you more powerful you go fight the boss. The part where it becomes boring (imo) is when

a) collecting mods becomes a checklist only that leads to the same superhero every time. The possibility to end up with a good or a bad character must be there.

b) the amount of permutations of mods that result in a good kit are severly limited.

Off-weapon slays and blows are what break out of a). The reason they are needed is because other ways of doing that have been shut down in the past by way of capping their effect.

- Speed is soft capped to prevent @ from ever becoming able to out-move the boss - which degrades it to checklist material.

- Stats cap at 18/200, and importantly, thus do blows/round.

Now I could see a super-wimpy mage class winning by way of out-moving M, similar to tome2-sorceror, but overall undoing the speed cap doesnt look promising for the greater picture.

That is, however, not true for the stats. I envision stats to have effect more or less linearly throught their range. With standarts, their range is predictable and balanceable by the fixed amount provided. Randarts, and this is where the fun would be, can vary, and you might end up with a set that makes you super strong, or dextrous, or both or neither.

Then you can remove off-weapon blows and still have variance in the endgame power. Instead of +2 blows from your armour, you might get +0,6 or so from the +6 str on your armour. The puzzle would change from "how do I equip my +2 attacks armor without losing poison resistance" to the more intricate and interesting one we all know and love, because we play it in the early game where stats arent at the cap yet. Abovementioned armour +6 str would actually be worth its full +6, even for a half-troll.

There are many more things to say about this but ill cut off here, to keep the post length reasonable. Maybe one more point:

Currently, race/class combo choice affects the difficulty of the early game only, in the endgame everyone is basically the same because everyone hits the same cap. This would change, and a half troll warrior would end up more powerfull than a human warrior. I would actually like this, as it offers an indirect difficulty setting.

Anyway, Nick is doing his thang and even if he likes the idea he might not want to go down that route for various reasons. I´ll keep playing and rambling for as long as the game holds my interest.

**Sky** · December 12, 2017, 17:02

The real jewel in the standart set is not DW, but the Great Axe of Eonwe. It deals less damage, but activates for MBan, which otherwise a warrior would not have.

Also OP are the thancs, Cambeleg and Fingolfin, Feanor, and obviously the Arkenstone.

The GOP will not generate in a randart game, not even close.

**Philip** · December 13, 2017, 01:50

I believe the crowding near the top of theoretical character ability identified by Sky is a serious issue with the game. If every end-game character has all resists, protections, and telepathy, 18/*** stats, and +30 base speed, and damage scales nicely, then players are going to expand into damage. Randarts make that easier of course, with off-weapon slays and blows. Sky seems to be proposing to have the cap be fluid in more places than just damage capability (I would nominate resistances in particular, since we have great examples of it working in variants, without distorting the game). I feel like this would alleviate the particular problem of sky-rocketing damage because everything else is static, and probably make the game better in a couple other ways.

I have a solution that is phrased somewhat differently, but is actually rather similar, except explicitly reversing power creep. Make the cap for ordinary skills harder to get. Make players have to sacrifice resists/damage/stats to get +30 speed. Characters will not all look the same if getting 18/*** CON and +30 speed already forces you to decide between high resists and damage output, because some will choose one and some the other.

There is the question of how to do that. Well, as a start, reduce the stats/abilities on standarts, or remove them if necessary. This will also make randarts weaker. Then, make egos weaker, or remove them if necessary, because otherwise everyone just uses enough egos to do what they wanted in the first place. After that, it may still be necessary to rebalance randarts, who knows.

This would make the game harder, in particular for late-game characters. I don't think that's a very bad thing.

**Estie** · December 13, 2017, 03:13

Philip - If difficulty is all you want, it would be easy to introduce a no-egos birth option. Or, if you agree that the same items every time are boring and you want some variation, making the monsters harder might be easier than to reshuffle everything on the @ side.

Uncapped stats or not enough gear to reach the caps is the same thing, as long as there is enough room for stats to make a difference. What I mean by that: if, for example, you could only ever find combined +2 to strength in a game, that wouldnt have enough impact to create a meaningful itemisation puzzle.

As for defensive properties, they are firmly rooted down in what I called checklist behaviour. I would love to move away from that, but it would be a more daunting task (unless you are happy with the no-egos game option and its skeletal itemisation).

**PowerWyrm** · December 13, 2017, 09:27

If you find the game too easy, try this challenge: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=20489

And if you find that still too easy, you can always add ironman to it

**Sky** · December 13, 2017, 11:36

remember that in order to get a character maxed out, i will run 20-30 times through DL98, plus i grind DL20 about another 20 times, and i do about 2x between DL30 and 40. I also don't use DD.

AAR: no OP items

AAR: no OP items

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