Item generation suggestion

[Sirridan]

We've had a few threads get derailed by discussing how to improve DSMs. There's a number of fairly obvious possibilities; personally I favor reducing the recharge time on their activations drastically.

DSMs are still useful if you find them way out of depth, though. Rods of Curing don't have that distinction IMO.

Yeah, but if your character has a bad fail rate, the DSM is still virtually worthless, beyond the above average AC it gives (if you aren't a weak caster type)

I'd like to see leather armor type DSM's early, with the chaos, law, balance, and power being heavy like they are.

[miyazaki]

I completely disagree, particularly with high stealth characters. I think determining stuff about a sleeping monster or unique that you may not have complete monster memory for is great. The fact that you retain monster memory between characters only makes it better.

Learning what kind of drops you can expect, as well as what kinds of spells or attacks the monster can do, is crucial for deciding whether a fight is safe enough and worth it.

I love probing, especially when deciding which ammo to use against high-level uniques. Because there is an in-game mechanism for learning about monster abilities, I consider using monster spoilers cheating (but recognize that I am in the minority here!) I think it should be in the first spellbook and available early/cheaply to all spellcasters.

(It could also pave the way for random/semi-random monsters and uniques.)

[ekolis]

I love probing, especially when deciding which ammo to use against high-level uniques. Because there is an in-game mechanism for learning about monster abilities, I consider using monster spoilers cheating (but recognize that I am in the minority here!) I think it should be in the first spellbook and available early/cheaply to all spellcasters.

(It could also pave the way for random/semi-random monsters and uniques.)

Ooh, that would be cool...
Of course, it should probably have some significant chance of failure or incomplete information, depending on, say, your WIS vs. the monster's level... otherwise you could run a mage or priest through the game analyzing all the enemies for future characters, who would not have to go to the trouble of doing so! But with a chance of failure, it would be a tactical choice - do I learn more about the enemy, while suffering its attacks, or do I just try to blast it with everything I've got until something works?

Cecil casts LIBRA at Golbez! -1MP
Target could not be analyzed!
Rosa casts LIBRA at Golbez! -1MP
Absorbs: Fire, Ice, Earth, Wind, Holy, Dark
Vulnerable: Lightning
Rosa summons RAMUH! -30MP
Critical hit on Golbez! -4523HP
Golbez casts BARRIER SHIFT!

[Sirridan]

Cecil casts LIBRA at Golbez! -1MP
Target could not be analyzed!
Rosa casts LIBRA at Golbez! -1MP
Absorbs: Fire, Ice, Earth, Wind, Holy, Dark
Vulnerable: Lightning
Rosa summons RAMUH! -30MP
Critical hit on Golbez! -4523HP
Golbez casts BARRIER SHIFT!

Terra casts Vanish on Goddess!
Locke casts Doom on Goddess!

*Win*

[Timo Pietilä]

the following DSM's: Red/White/Blue/Black, Pseudo, Gold.

And Rod's of Probing :P

EDIT: I'm sure some folks may want to use those items, but usually when they show up, you have better, or the weight and fail rate on the breath makes it useless.

Also probing is useless, wasting a turn to find out monster hp would be better suited to attacking said monster (or avoiding it). This is especially true when you know how tough monsters are from experience and/or spoilers.

I have used all of those, especially Gold one, for resists they have. AC/weight ratio is also quite good in DSM:s. Gold ones breath is also *very* handy. Sound stuns, and I just recently used it to kill Lokkak. He was stunned for about half of the fight. Too bad that all dragon armors take forever to recharge. Cutting that recharge time to about 1/10 of what it is now would make them much more useful.

Probing is very handy filling gaps in your monster memory. It tells you all the resistances, attacks etc. monster has. Once that is done it isn't very useful and can be sold.

Mostly I find selling all beam-attack rods ASAP and all wands of low attack power.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

The root problem with all the DSMs, tho, is they're showing up much too deep. Armor is a key resists slot, so a single, relatively low-value resist like sound isn't worth the other things you lose. The AC is nice, to be sure, but usually not enough. Remember that many artifact armors also provide very useful stat boosts.

I like the idea of something closer to dragon leather armor. Base AC, say, 8; has the appropriate resists. No activation. Weight maybe 10 pounds. AND, starts dropping fairly early...no later than dlvl 10. Red, blue, white, black, gold, pseudo, and bronze can show early, and maybe green as well. MH, law, and balance would be later.

[Derakon]

Anecdote: I had a character who found a red DSM at around 300'. He wore it, of course, and used its activation to completely wreck Wormtongue and Brodda (though it wasn't a one-hit kill in either case, it did make the fight short and very one-sided). Then he saw a cap of Telepathy in the armor shop and sold the DSM without any regrets.

DSMs do three things: they have large AC, they have resists, and they have an activation. Of these three things, only the activation is at all unique, so I don't think it should go. What I do think is that it recharges way too slowly. 450-900 normal-speed turns for a shot that can't even kill low-level uniques outright? The activation becomes practically useless except to streamline killing the occasional group of weak mobs, as early as 800'. Consider that a Rod of Acid Balls has a recharge time of 27 and doesn't cost an equipment slot. DSM has no business having a recharge time of over 100 rounds, even given that the damage dealt per-activation is a bit higher.

So here's what I think. Keep the activation, and drop its recharge time by at least a factor of 10. Then make the basic types start showing up around about when mature dragons do, and more commonly. That way, the player will basically be given the option of trading his current armor (probably armor of Resistance or Elvenkind) for armor that gives him a nifty breath weapon that he can use frequently. It becomes a question of balancing defense (missing resists) with offense.

Leather dragon scale sounds interesting, but again, I think the activation is the key thing that makes DSM stand out. A leather variant should have lower AC, the resist, and a much weaker breath weapon that still recharges quickly.

[Jungle_Boy]

I agree with what Derakon was saying. The breath part, and the simple fact that is is dragon armor are what makes DSM's cool, reducing the recharge time and decreasing the rarity would be good, perhaps the leather versions could be a bolt spell instead of a ball?

[Tiburon Silverflame]

The advantage of dragon leather would be:

a) It's light.
b) It gives a useful resist.
c) It can give a high AC.

Dragon leather would only be useful if it dropped early...OR, if it's allowed to have all the enhancements. That's a major factor with DSM; it never has more than its stock advantages, not counting the artifacts. Armor that's [8,+12] with both cold and fire resistance, could remain attractive for a while, especially if it keeps the IGNORE_ACID aspect of DSM.

[kaypy]

Returning for a moment to an earlier subtopic- lack of consumables

A large chunk of the problem here I suspect comes down to:

Everything native to below L50, and hence most of what constitutes interesting fights, has drop_good.

kind_is_good excludes all consumables.

Thus no interesting fight below L50 will drop consumables. If a stack of healing potions was considered a good item, there'd be more of them around.

BTW, is there any particular reason for a hard-coded good item lookup instead of a flag in objects.txt?

[Derakon]

Good items generally consist of magical equipment. How do you mark that in object.txt?

But yes, expanding DROP_GOOD to include stacks of useful consumables would be one possible fix for the problem.

[kaypy]

The kind_is_good routine checks for *potentially* magical equipment to set up the great item rarity table. This could as well be done in objects.txt as it could hardcoded, as near I can see.

The decision on whether the item is actually magical or not isnt done till much later (where it is overridden by the normal/good/great drop type)

The main problem I can see (having done some more digging) with consumable good drops is that they would also be used for great drops...

[ewert]

IMHO adding several consumables to the "good" listing is probably the easiest fix for the consumables question.

Heck, make some consumable items "great" instead.

I mean, which would you rather have:
yet another magic weapon at dlvl99 or
potion of healing or
armor of elvenkind or
potion of *healing* or ...

You get the drift. Things that don't drop as stacks in black market.

[Timo Pietilä]

Good items generally consist of magical equipment. How do you mark that in object.txt?

But yes, expanding DROP_GOOD to include stacks of useful consumables would be one possible fix for the problem.

Or even single useful consumable. When I'm really deep I would like to see potion of healing more than Ringil. *healing* and Life even more. *Acquirement* is junk. Mass banish is valuable.