Artifact and object creation

[camlost]

So, as I understand it, object generation works something like this:

* Choose a base object type
* Once in a blue moon, try for an artifact
* * Check rarity of artifact

Thus, rarity of artifacts is tied both the drop chance of the base object, and the rarity of the artifact itself. It complicates getting the rarity correct; artifact and base object may drop at very different levels, and there are two numbers controlling rarity.

It seems rather that the artifact creation chance should happen before base object selection, much like special artifacts already do.

Is there something I'm missing or getting incorrect?

[RogerN]

For balance reasons it's helpful to choose the base object type first. This way you don't have to worry about results being skewed by disproportionate numbers of artifact definitions between object types. It's OK to have 100 different artifact longswords, as these will never crowd out the artifact boots, helms, shields, etc... You might crowd out some of the other artifact longswords but that's all.

[Magnate]

So, as I understand it, object generation works something like this:

* Choose a base object type
* Once in a blue moon, try for an artifact
* * Check rarity of artifact

Thus, rarity of artifacts is tied both the drop chance of the base object, and the rarity of the artifact itself. It complicates getting the rarity correct; artifact and base object may drop at very different levels, and there are two numbers controlling rarity.

It seems rather that the artifact creation chance should happen before base object selection, much like special artifacts already do.

Is there something I'm missing or getting incorrect?

I don't think so - what is the purpose of your question? Are you thinking of trying some changes to artifact generation?

Back in the days before alloc_prob, the randart generator used to track the total rarity of an artifact, simply by multiplying the base item rarity by the artifact rarity. Since both were "one in X" chances, multiplying them was consistent - though this didn't ever deal with OOD generation issues (and I don't see how one could).

Now that both base items and artifacts have moved to alloc_prob, multiplying them is a little trickier but not fundamentally different. But IMO alloc_prob needs greater granularity than %, it needs to be chance in 1000 or 10,000.

Anyway, not sure if any of this is relevant to why you were asking. If you have a way to calculate the impact of OOD generation on overall rarity, I'd love to know.