spellbook drops

[PowerDiver]

I've been playing ironman(*) games recently, and paying particular attention to book drops. Here are some stats from my current game. It's just one game, but seems typical of my experiences in other games. This is from a style of mostly clearing all levels. I'd fight a pack of hounds to get to rubble to dig for that small chance at loot. However, I wasn't crazy enough to fight mystics.

(*) We really need a gender-neutral term for this.


First encountered, in order

mb3 @ 36
pb3 @ 38
pb5 @ 39
mb5 @ 42
mb6 @ 45
mb4 @ 47
pb6 @ 50
mb7 @ 50
pb8 @ 50
pb4 @ 50
pb7 @ 59
mb8 @ 74
mb9 @ 81
pb9 @ 92

That was skewed a bit by a checkerboard vault at DL 50, but the general flavor is about right.

For the totals, the town books were in line with being equally likely once they get into depth. I lost track of how many PB1, PB2, and PB3 got burnt. For the game through DL 98 I found in total

11 pb4
26 pb5
26 pb6
17 pb7
15 pb8
1 pb9

The sad part is that the first 4 books burn, so you can make use of many, but you only need 1 each from pb5 on. I carry 2 to guard against theft, but I cannot remember having a dungeon book stolen.

People who think prices should represent dungeon supply / player demand should make sure to price pb4 at least 10 times as high as pb8, though IMO 100 times the price would be more accurate. I'm not seriously suggesting this, since I think that sort of pricing is wrong, but it's in line with my grumpiness at the moment.

[Donald Jonker]

I've been playing ironman(*) games recently
(*) We really need a gender-neutral term for this.

I move instead to swing the pendulum the other way, and rename them "Iron maiden" games.

The sad part is that the first 4 books burn, so you can make use of many, but you only need 1 each from pb5 on. I carry 2 to guard against theft, but I cannot remember having a dungeon book stolen.

People who think prices should represent dungeon supply / player demand should make sure to price pb4 at least 10 times as high as pb8, though IMO 100 times the price would be more accurate. I'm not seriously suggesting this, since I think that sort of pricing is wrong, but it's in line with my grumpiness at the moment.

While I sympathize with the general sentiment, I've gone through games where you don't find any dungeon books till you hit bottom. Spell books were then yet another dungeon/BM-only consumable to scum for. (Well, not exactly "consumable...", but certainly not as optional as equipment.) Do we really want to make them rarer? Or am I misunderstanding and you just want regular books to be more common?

Or do we want to make all books fire-proof and dungeon-only?

[Nick]

I've been playing ironman(*) ...

(*) We really need a gender-neutral term for this.

Ferromagnetichumanoid?

[s0be]

Ferromagnetichumanoid?

dude, humanoid is not the prefered nomenclature... Biped dude, biped.

[Pete Mack]

Magnetic need not come into play. I think what you mean is ferrohuman. (Unless you are going by character rather than player. In that case, ferrohumanoid is better.)

[Sirridan]

Ferrous entity!

[will_asher]

Save Ferris' Ferret!

seriously, there's no need for political correctness.
Not that calling ironman mode Ferris' Ferret mode would be politically correct.

[Sirridan]

Can we also add drolem mode?

I want to go around the level slaughtering @'s.

[Zikke]

Can we also add drolem mode?

I want to go around the level slaughtering @'s.

I enjoy your wisdom and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[bebo]

getting back on topic (although i admit i'd like to play as a black reaver, those guys are killers ), wasn't there a proposal a bit ago to make dungeon spellbooks artifacts? This would solve all the aforementioned problems, and would only require serious tweaking/balancing of their rarity, but from a coding perspective this doesn't seem too hard (but i'm the first to admit i don't know squat about coding, so....)

[Sirridan]

I'd like it if we could extend fire resistance to books, so they don't burn all the damn time. Such as if we quaff a !fire or have it on our gear, then books wouldn't burn.

I heard it in a different thread, where maybe 1-4 could drop in the dungeon and be immune to elements. (In the item files, there would be two copies of the books, with different ID's, but they are treated the same by the item selection code for casting, but otherwise are different)

[Magnate]

I'd like it if we could extend fire resistance to books, so they don't burn all the damn time. Such as if we quaff a !fire or have it on our gear, then books wouldn't burn.

I heard it in a different thread, where maybe 1-4 could drop in the dungeon and be immune to elements. (In the item files, there would be two copies of the books, with different ID's, but they are treated the same by the item selection code for casting, but otherwise are different)

Sangband has an item you can pick up which confers fire resistance on the rest of your pack (and another for acid resistance, I think). Interesting tradeoff - a whole inv slot to protect everything flammable.

I still support turning dungeon spellbooks into artifacts, but the problem Eddie illustrates is really that the IGNORE_ flags are, in this particular case, hugely valuable. This of course would make the dungeon books *more* expensive than the town books, which is the opposite of supply/demand pricing. Ho hum.

[Nick]

Sangband has an item you can pick up which confers fire resistance on the rest of your pack (and another for acid resistance, I think). Interesting tradeoff - a whole inv slot to protect everything flammable.

I still support turning dungeon spellbooks into artifacts, but the problem Eddie illustrates is really that the IGNORE_ flags are, in this particular case, hugely valuable. This of course would make the dungeon books *more* expensive than the town books, which is the opposite of supply/demand pricing. Ho hum.

FA has scrolls of fireproofing, which (once you've found one) can be ordered from stores (not that that helps ferrodudes).

[Cauldron]

How about a nice, simple 'Ferr@'?

[Atarlost]

You mean Fe@