drop_good and drop_great

**PowerDiver** · August 22, 2009, 23:10

Originally posted by fizzix

One of the things that's always bothered me before is that monsters with drop_good and drop_great don't really seem to drop useful items. I always find it annoying when I hunt down some unique and it drops a great hammer (+3 +4) or something. While, it seems that the item drops have been improved a bit on the weapons and armor side, some of the most useful items can't find their way into the best drops. IMO this makes scumming the floor a lot more powerful than it should be, and gives a prevalence to diving as opposed to some of the more OCD players that enjoy mapping out the entire level.

I disagree with the last part. More powerful floor scumming is a bias against diving for turncount. It used to be that you could kill monsters to get your stuff. Now, you have to collect it from the ground. That means that you have to spend more turns moving about the level, and that the rewards for efficient killing are reduced in comparison.

The huge boost in egos and artifacts means that diving is easier, but that is because the overall game is a lot easier and the relative penalty for diving isn't as much.

**pampl** · August 23, 2009, 22:41

Originally posted by PowerDiver

It used to be that you could kill monsters to get your stuff. Now, you have to collect it from the ground.

What change are you referring to here?

**PowerDiver** · August 23, 2009, 22:55

Originally posted by pampl

What change are you referring to here?

The attack on TMJ resulted in far fewer objects dropped by monsters. The number of objects generated on the floor [including vaults] appears to have remained about the same. Thus the proportion of objects that come from the ground, out of total objects, has gone up by a lot.

This is one of the fundamental changes introduced by 3.1.

**Atarlost** · August 24, 2009, 00:47

It may increase turncounts, but it also reduces the rewards for meticulously clearing levels. I'd guess it would most benefit, or rather least hurt, scumming with detect treasure.

**grapejoose** · August 24, 2009, 06:18

My latest mage diver actually made it to dlvl 98 and is scumming floors with detect enchantment and I find it sufficiently quick. Recall, detect a bit, recall, recall, detect a bit, oh a vault, mass banish TO TO TO TO get loot.

On a similar note, I found my first ever scroll of *Acquirement* and I noticed upon inspection it said it creates "good" items, not great. It also didn't drop me a single artifact. Is this normal? (playing with randarts on using r1626 I believe, the one put up for the competition that fixed the "pushes past" stuff)

joose

btw: when I hit dlvl 98 I had dived so fast I had only rbase, about 200 hp, and half my equ slots were empty. that makes for fun scary times

**Pete Mack** · August 24, 2009, 06:51

Clearing vaults with TO and banishment is a time-honored way of getting stuff off the floor without fighting. That was Eddie's point--such techniques are relatively more powerful now, since
* individually, objects are better
* monsters drop fewer objects

**Atarlost** · August 24, 2009, 20:11

What you lose is the stuff you would have previously gotten by wearing Thorin and killing a black dragon pit, or wearing Narya and killing a red dragon pit. Stuff that was as good for loot as a lesser vault now isn't. It's an especially big difference for priests and paladins who can take on low danger pits quickly with dispell spam. If you don't find any immunity items until late it's less of a difference so whether there's an effect on divers would be kind of luck dependant.

**fizzix** · August 24, 2009, 20:58

Originally posted by Pete Mack

Clearing vaults with TO and banishment is a time-honored way of getting stuff off the floor without fighting. That was Eddie's point--such techniques are relatively more powerful now, since
* individually, objects are better
* monsters drop fewer objects

I think that pumping stealth and sneaking through the dungeon picking stuff up off the floor is a perfectly reasonable option for item gain, and gameplay. I don't have a problem with this being more powerful now than before. It's not my preferred style, but I can see the fun of it.

I can try to explain the problem I see it a little better.

If you are sitting at dlevel 98 and are looking for certain items it often makes more sense to kill off trolls and novices instead of monsters that have a drop_good or drop_great flag. Drop_good and drop_great monsters seem to have a much higher chance of producing one or two great items at the cost of everything else they produce being junk. However this chance is offset by the fact that they are much more difficult to kill, can damage equipment, and can use up consumables, and cannot be slaughtered en masse like orcs. Therefore it's often much more worthwhile to clear out an orc pit instead of trying to kill a lesser balrog. (I think they have drop_good flag).

Also, below a certain monster level most monsters have at least a drop_good flag so the chance of finding certain items anywhere but the floor is pretty much nil, since they would still be out of depth for a lower leveled kill. This isn't all that bad, since these items *should* be rare. Still, I'd like to see the mere possibility of them appearing in drops of greater wyrms.

To me it seems that reevaluating what items are good and great and what ones aren't solves most of these problems.

Eventually I'll get off my lazy butt and start messing around with the code itself to add in all the features that I want...but in the meantime, just thought I'd share my suggestion.

(How a group of novice warriors made it down to dlevel 90 without getting breathed on by a dragon is beyond me, but a discussion for another day.)

**ChodTheWacko** · August 25, 2009, 00:34

Originally posted by fizzix

If you are sitting at dlevel 98 and are looking for certain items it often makes more sense to kill off trolls and novices instead of monsters that have a drop_good or drop_great flag.

To me it seems that reevaluating what items are good and great and what ones aren't solves most of these problems.

I'm going to add on some extra comments regarding his point.

The attack on TMJ made monsters drop less items, but in theory, they instead should drop, on average, better objects. This has certainly made the mid-game a lot easier, as it's much easier to get out of depth objects now.

Because the level for an object is now min(level,monster level), it almost makes sense to just go after weak monsters, since at level 99, you get a level 99 object regardless of what you kill. The main thing to care about is what type of drops the monster does. (monsters which drop, or might drop only gold I usually ignore).

As you get deeper, and 'out of depth object' has less meaning (since the highest objects are Dlvl 100), then the concept of good/great objects starts to have less meaning.

You do have a higher chance of getting an artifact with DROP_GOOD/DROP_GREAT. The interesting question to ask is - How much larger is the chance to get an artifact when you slay a Great Swamp Wyrm versus a Ancient Green dragon? I'll have to crunch the numbers.

- Frank

**fizzix** · August 25, 2009, 02:13

Originally posted by ChodTheWacko

Because the level for an object is now min(level,monster level), it almost makes sense to just go after weak monsters, since at level 99, you get a level 99 object regardless of what you kill. The main thing to care about is what type of drops the monster does. (monsters which drop, or might drop only gold I usually ignore).

I didn't even realize this change. This just exacerbates the problem in my mind, since from an item perspective, it makes much more sense to kill weaker monsters with item drops. (assuming that min means lower in the dungeon)

Also, since there's no difference in artifact creation between drop_good and drop_great (did this change also) you might as well not even bother with the drop_great monsters. Which means, why bother even killing the higher level uniques, when wyrms are plentiful and much easier? There are ways to deal with them if sauron or morgoth summons them. The chance of picking up a small stack of !*healing* or !life or _magi might actually make killing the Tarrasque worthwhile.

Ok, maybe not the Tarrasque...

**ChodTheWacko** · August 25, 2009, 02:37

Okay, I did the numbers, I think there might be a bug here:

as far as artifacts go, when you make an object it does a call to make_artifact() which has some percentage chance of making it an artifact. The exact percentage isn't interesting.

DROP_GREAT monsters make_artifact 4 times per object.
Note only a few uniques have DROP_GREAT

All monsters killed at level 32 or deeper are treated as if they have DROP_GOOD (this seems like a bug?)

good_chance = (lev+2) * 3
if (good || (randint0(100) < good_chance))
.....

At level 40 or deeper, each monster kill has a 50%
chance of making a 'great' object, which means power=2,
and one make_artifact call per object.

======================

It doesn't seem like the DROP_GOOD flag has any interesting effect which is why Killing a Great Wrym (which has DROP_4 | DROP_GOOD) currently has no
real difference between an Ancient Green Dragon (which has DROP_4).

Perhaps there should be some sort of halfway point,
where the 'generation level' of an object could be
max(lvl, monster_level) (got the min mixed up with max on my last post, sorry), but the 'power level' of the object could be average(dlvl, monster level)

- Frank

**takkaria** · August 25, 2009, 07:55

Originally posted by ChodTheWacko

Okay, I did the numbers, I think there might be a bug here:

as far as artifacts go, when you make an object it does a call to make_artifact() which has some percentage chance of making it an artifact. The exact percentage isn't interesting.

DROP_GREAT monsters make_artifact 4 times per object.
Note only a few uniques have DROP_GREAT

All monsters killed at level 32 or deeper are treated as if they have DROP_GOOD (this seems like a bug?)

good_chance = (lev+2) * 3
if (good || (randint0(100) < good_chance))
.....

That's not a bug, no, it's a feature, the idea being that anything that's not at least {good} by dlev32 is junk at that depth.

At level 40 or deeper, each monster kill has a 50%
chance of making a 'great' object, which means power=2,
and one make_artifact call per object.

======================

It doesn't seem like the DROP_GOOD flag has any interesting effect which is why Killing a Great Wrym (which has DROP_4 | DROP_GOOD) currently has no
real difference between an Ancient Green Dragon (which has DROP_4).

Perhaps there should be some sort of halfway point,
where the 'generation level' of an object could be
max(lvl, monster_level) (got the min mixed up with max on my last post, sorry), but the 'power level' of the object could be average(dlvl, monster level)

- Frank

**Pete Mack** · August 25, 2009, 15:25

Originally posted by takkaria

That's not a bug, no, it's a feature, the idea being that anything that's not at least {good} by dlev32 is junk at that depth.

It's a little too much of a good thing. I'd rather see a little more junk, and more stat potions. (The max(dl, ml) rule makes them rarer than they should be.)

**takkaria** · August 25, 2009, 15:57

Originally posted by Pete Mack

It's a little too much of a good thing. I'd rather see a little more junk, and more stat potions. (The max(dl, ml) rule makes them rarer than they should be.)

Yeah, I'll be a-tweaking these things for 3.1.2 when I get back to coding.

drop_good and drop_great

drop_good and drop_great

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