Smeagol suggestion

[grassy]

How about giving the slain Smeagol a high probability of having the One Ring. Should make for some interesting early game play.

[Marble Dice]

Maybe if the One Ring had a special curse with a chance to summon ring wraiths every turn you wore it.

Actually that might be kinda cool if you could give artifacts/items a random activation curse that prevented you from activating them normally, but it happened automatically every so often. Then you could change the activation on the One Ring to summon ringwraths, take off aggravation and heavy curse, and give it a stealth bonus.

[Magnate]

Maybe if the One Ring had a special curse with a chance to summon ring wraiths every turn you wore it.

Actually that might be kinda cool if you could give artifacts/items a random activation curse that prevented you from activating them normally, but it happened automatically every so often. Then you could change the activation on the One Ring to summon ringwraths, take off aggravation and heavy curse, and give it a stealth bonus.

We'd also need to change summoning so that the summonees appear 10 or so squares away from the summoner ...

[konijn_]

How about giving the slain Smeagol a high probability of having the One Ring. Should make for some interesting early game play.

We could make it a compile time option

T.

[Derakon]

If this were just implemented straight it'd be completely unbalancing; the One Ring in Vanilla is an amazingly good artifact that any player would love to have, unless they have entirely too much of a love affair with stealth (its only significant penalty is aggravation). Occasionally summoning Ringwraiths might do the trick of discouraging young players from wearing it -- except that it's a discouragement by way of instadeath, which I don't really like.

Thinking about the One Ring, I'd like a different mechanism for it than we currently have. Instead of PERMA_CURSE, it should just be undroppable (but you can equip and remove it freely). Wearing it should draw progressively stronger undead to you. Say, every 10+d30 turns an undead monster is summoned, with level = clvl + (# summoned thus far).

[d_m]

Yeah, it seems clear that to implement this, the One Ring artifact would have to be significantly reworked (also Smeagol might have to actually become dangerous to make going after him risky rather than just annoying).

[Magnate]

Yeah, it seems clear that to implement this, the One Ring artifact would have to be significantly reworked (also Smeagol might have to actually become dangerous to make going after him risky rather than just annoying).

Ha. After the grilling I got for making an inocuous change to Thorin, I dread to think what would happen if anybody messed with The One ...

[d_m]

Ha. After the grilling I got for making an inocuous change to Thorin, I dread to think what would happen if anybody messed with The One ...

Interestingly, I think there would be much less outcry. Many fewer people ever see the one, and I don't think its acquisition figures into most people's endgame strategies the way Thorin does.

Of course, I am not volunteering to find out!

[Magnate]

Interestingly, I think there would be much less outcry. Many fewer people ever see the one, and I don't think its acquisition figures into most people's endgame strategies the way Thorin does.

Of course, I am not volunteering to find out!

You're right, of course - though the fact that it features in so many endgame strategies is precisely why I felt it needed changing. Ho hum.

[Nightmarjoo]

Can you even find the One before you fight Morgoth? I've never seen it outside of a debug mode game.

[Derakon]

The One Ring is an artifact like any other (well, like any other jewelry/lightsource artifact, anyway). It's just insanely rare. I remember seeing a post on RGRA of some ranger character who'd found it ridiculously early, like around clvl 18 or something. If I recall correctly, he died of overconfidence.

[d_m]

Can you even find the One before you fight Morgoth? I've never seen it outside of a debug mode game.

Remember that Sauron (not Morgoth) made the One Ring, and also that he had lost it by the 3rd age. Given that it makes sense to find it before fighting Morgoth (or at least, as much sense as any of the other encounters in V, like killing Smaug with Bard's bow).