Monte Carlo Level Simulation

[Magnate]

I think it's reasonable to want to get a similar number of randarts as standarts in a given game. However, it's also reasonable to want a challenge game where artifacts as a whole are less common, though not eliminated outright. Basically, a slider that ranges from 0 (no artifacts) to 5 (standard distribution) to 10 (artifacts are very common).

I think people may be underestimating the difficulty of tuning any kind of drops to that sort of granularity. Personally I am stunned that fizzix's figures show randart drop numbers to be within 15% of standarts. I suspect that before the last change the error was in the region of 50% (the other way), and before that probably also somewhere between 25-50%. That's a swing of roughly 100% with each change.

I do plan on using the stats to improve balance in various areas, but I'm not going to lose any sleep over whether a statistically average randart game produces ten more or ten fewer artifacts than a standart game. There are way too many more important things to think about (like what the artifacts are actually like, and whether egos and consumables are dropping in roughly the correct relative amounts etc.).

[Derakon]

I wasn't suggesting worrying about the tuning of randarts vs. standarts; just adding detail to the "should I generate an artifact" check that makes it harder/easier depending on a user-defined value. I agree that randarts and standarts are likely to have different overall rarities, but as long as they're in the same ballpark I wouldn't worry overmuch.

[Magnate]

I wasn't suggesting worrying about the tuning of randarts vs. standarts; just adding detail to the "should I generate an artifact" check that makes it harder/easier depending on a user-defined value. I agree that randarts and standarts are likely to have different overall rarities, but as long as they're in the same ballpark I wouldn't worry overmuch.

My sense is that if takk were to introduce a "difficulty" rating, it wouldn't be related to artifact generation (there is already a binary no_artifacts option). I think it would be more likely along the lines of higher monster hp and/or slower xp gain.

[ewert]

I think it assumes you kill all monsters generated. Do you completely clear dungeon level 98 a lot? (without banishment, *destruction*, etc)

Well no, but hitting pits and vaults accounts for a big part of the level ... and I sometimes do erm, dozens of 98ish dlvl pits/vaults. =P

[fizzix]

Haven't gotten randarts to work properly yet. But in the meantime here are statistics on magic books. Magic books and prayer books have exactly the same allocation probabilities so you can use one as a proxy for the other.

Here are the mean and standard dev for the first level you find each of the magic books by level clearing each level once:

mb1   mean: 9.650000  std-dev: 5.396990 
mb2   mean: 15.990000  std-dev: 6.144095 
mb3  	mean: 25.660000  std-dev: 6.392527 
mb4  	mean: 34.460000  std-dev: 5.261977 
mb5  	mean: 41.490000  std-dev: 8.368387 
mb6  	mean: 48.950000  std-dev: 9.957284 
mb7  	mean: 54.400000  std-dev: 9.866104 
mb8  mean: 60.550000  std-dev: 10.674619 
mb9  	 mean: 71.200000  std-dev: 13.203030

one of the things borne out in the sims is that dungeon books become too common (IMO) deep and town books are not common enough early.

[PowerDiver]

Here are the mean and standard dev for the first level you find each of the magic books by level clearing each level once:

For the purpose of discussing selling vs non-selling, I'd be interested in the number of dungeon spellbooks produced. I don't know if I'd even want to look at all of the data level by level, so per game would be good enough to start.

[fizzix]

For the purpose of discussing selling vs non-selling, I'd be interested in the number of dungeon spellbooks produced. I don't know if I'd even want to look at all of the data level by level, so per game would be good enough to start.

This is trivially easy to do, gimme a sec.

edit: here they are. Std devs would take me a tad longer to write, but I could do it if you want.

mb5: 33.600000
mb6: 29.685000
mb7: 25.750000
mb8: 19.075000
mb9: 10.200000

[ewert]

This is trivially easy to do, gimme a sec.

edit: here they are. Std devs would take me a tad longer to write, but I could do it if you want.

mb5: 33.600000
mb6: 29.685000
mb7: 25.750000
mb8: 19.075000
mb9: 10.200000

Comparing to my recent Duhmage with unlimited home, with all uniques killed, a little bit but not much of dlvl 98 pit/vault hunting, I ended up in home roughly 1/2 - 1/3 of those amounts due to autopickup and compulsive "run over items" reflexes. Just a FYI, I think it gives a little bit of informative value, that a full clear of each lvl is maybe around 50% more stuff atleast than for example my "icings first" playstyle.

Good to know atleast for me personally, so I know how much I miss out.

[PowerDiver]

This is trivially easy to do, gimme a sec.

edit: here they are. Std devs would take me a tad longer to write, but I could do it if you want.

mb5: 33.600000
mb6: 29.685000
mb7: 25.750000
mb8: 19.075000
mb9: 10.200000

Thanks. For a mage, those get picked up without thought and don't even cost a slot. If we assume a max of 25K at the store, that's roughly 320K + 560K + 1250K is over 2M. I don't see any point in worrying about late game effects of a gold multiplier when there is that much free money floating about.