Your views wanted on artifacts in V

[Magnate]

Maybe have smallish aggravation range which is cumulative. Then one item does not cause such a havoc. Maybe also have it work like anti-stealth so that it doesn't always wake up everything. Or maybe aggravate only some monster class (like Orcrist aggravating orcs). Maybe make it kind of "ring of conflict" so that monsters that are aggravated do not care about tactics and charge at you so that if there is something in their way they attack it. That would make it mixed blessing. Draw hounds out of room? No problem, wear an item with aggravation. Want to get rid of Colossus? No matter, just wait that those orcs behind it kill it. Feeling that Greater Titan is too tough? Fight it in place where it blocks a way of many other monsters. You fight it and so do they.

I like this idea a lot! I added it to http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/916

Four actually (Thror, Dal-i-thalion, Wormtongue, Feanor) but those others are way way less powerful. Closest to Feanor is BoS +10. in fact Dal-i-thalion is borderline of being junk because it doesn't have speed bonus. BoS are not uncommon anymore, and even small speed bonus have quite a big impact in survival. Maybe make it +3 and give it SPEED?

Another good idea - thanks.

It also is almost unrivaled in damage. +10 in speed means that you can use damage rings or Rings of Power. It is in fact very rare that you use something else than Ringil. Which reminds me: Ringil didn't used to have blessed-flag. For Priests that was *no* no-brainer at all in old days. If you had to decide between Aule + RoS +12 and Ringil and RoP Nenya, you usually ended up using Aule for 0% failure. Now it is almost always Ringil and Nenya.

Hmm. I think the blessed flag was a JLE change, but not sure. I'd be happy to remove it again to lessen the no-brainer status slightly.

[fph]

Another thing that in my (limited) point of view reduces the choices to make: it seems that some intrinsics are restricted to only one kind of item. E.g., you only find the basic 4 on body armour and shields (excluding Colluin, which you don't find all the times, and defender weapons, which suck for most classes), and you only get decent speed bonuses from boots and rings (barring Ringil, which is extremely rare). If there were +10 speed armour and boots providing the base resists, I would definitely have a tougher choice.

This is due to the fact that speed bonuses are currently *huge*, so they have been limited to a restricted set of artifacts. In my opinion, we should reduce the impact of speed on the game. There is the 'don't get double-moved' aspect, which cannot be tweaked, but apart from that dividing all the speed bonuses (for both the player and the monsters) by 2 would be an improvement.

Just my 2 zorkmids.
-f

[Magnate]

Another thing that in my (limited) point of view reduces the choices to make: it seems that some intrinsics are restricted to only one kind of item. E.g., you only find the basic 4 on body armour and shields (excluding Colluin, which you don't find all the times, and defender weapons, which suck for most classes), and you only get decent speed bonuses from boots and rings (barring Ringil, which is extremely rare). If there were +10 speed armour and boots providing the base resists, I would definitely have a tougher choice.

This is due to the fact that speed bonuses are currently *huge*, so they have been limited to a restricted set of artifacts. In my opinion, we should reduce the impact of speed on the game. There is the 'don't get double-moved' aspect, which cannot be tweaked, but apart from that dividing all the speed bonuses (for both the player and the monsters) by 2 would be an improvement.

Just my 2 zorkmids.
-f

As you can see from the opposition to weakening Thorin, I think reducing the speed boosts of Ringil or Feanor would be extremely unpopular. Plus there is also a bit of a consensus that the overall effect should not be to make artifacts too much more powerful, so I don't think adding big speed boosts elsewhere is an option either.

Sounds like you would enjoy playing with randarts. They have far greater variety of what sorts of bonuses are found on what types of item, and they tend to have more smaller speed boosts rather than a few huge ones. (That said, I did once see +11 speed on a shield, which was cool.)

IMO most of the artifacts people think are junk are weapons (except armour/shields that are weaker than Elvenkind). Weapons are v hard to balance because people really only want damage, and if you add damage they start to compete with former non-junk weapons causing an endless cycle of junk. I've tried different ways of improving weapons - I made Avavir a lot lighter, which Timo thinks is too powerful but Eddie still think it's junk (to be fair this is indirectly adding damage by allowing more blows). I added 50 AC to Gondricam, yet still it's considered junk without FA. I added immunities to Firestar and Turmil, which seem to have gone down well. I added small speed boosts to a few (again, indirectly adding damage) and again, some think this is too much while others think they're still junk.

Ho hum.

[TJS]

Another thing that in my (limited) point of view reduces the choices to make: it seems that some intrinsics are restricted to only one kind of item. E.g., you only find the basic 4 on body armour and shields (excluding Colluin, which you don't find all the times, and defender weapons, which suck for most classes), and you only get decent speed bonuses from boots and rings (barring Ringil, which is extremely rare). If there were +10 speed armour and boots providing the base resists, I would definitely have a tougher choice.

I agree with this in my (also limited) point of view. As I've mentioned before items that only cover one or two base resists are pretty much worthless because you're very likely to find an item (either an armour or a shield) with rBase on sooner or later. I'd like to see the number of items with all four resists reduced and rarer and perhaps spread around different equipment types a bit.

My opinion would be to get rid of many of the "junk" items. I didn't comment on items that are not changed, there are some among them that I do consider junk:

Himring, for example. I have used Hithlomir more often than Himring (because it doesn't have basic4).

I think we should be slightly vary of getting rid of items that are junk to people who are very good at the game, but might be of use to worse players.

I looked up Himring in the spoilers and it has resist poison, chaos and nether, which would be useful in earlier levels to me.

Remember not everyone is confident of getting to level 100 and winning the game. Some artifacts are useful if they let you get just that little bit further than your last game before dying.

[fizzix]

IMO most of the artifacts people think are junk are weapons (except armour/shields that are weaker than Elvenkind). Weapons are v hard to balance because people really only want damage, and if you add damage they start to compete with former non-junk weapons causing an endless cycle of junk. I've tried different ways of improving weapons - I made Avavir a lot lighter, which Timo thinks is too powerful but Eddie still think it's junk (to be fair this is indirectly adding damage by allowing more blows). I added 50 AC to Gondricam, yet still it's considered junk without FA. I added immunities to Firestar and Turmil, which seem to have gone down well. I added small speed boosts to a few (again, indirectly adding damage) and again, some think this is too much while others think they're still junk.

Ho hum.

I think there are two separable problems to deal with, and maybe this will help your approach.

1: Artifacts are not useful when you find them
2: Characters use the same artifact set repeatedly

Maybe 2 isn't an issue, but it is for me, and it makes randarts more appealing.

I think the solution for 1 can be solely solved by changing artifact levels, and rarity and some more common. Hithlomir isn't used. Well make it dlevel 1 and pretty rare. It'll show up early maybe once every 20 games or so, and when it does, it'll be very useful. I think this is really the way to approach weapons.

I don't think 2 is as big of an issue as 1 for weapons because the no-brainer weapons, ringil, deathwreaker, are very rare. I have never found either. Something like finding Ringil every 100 games is about right (assume completion in about 1M turns). However, No 2. is a gigantic issue for armor, where there are limited choices and a usually linear improvement between them.

The solution to this, IMO, is actually to ADD more artifacts. They can be exceedingly rare even if not much more powerful than the current set. At the very least, this will add flavor to a stale pattern. The goal shouldn't be to increase how many artifacts you use in a single game, but to increase how many artifacts you use over 50 games. Only if the same artifact always occupies a slot, is there a problem. 4 artifact boots are not enough. Bring at least 10 artifacts into each slot, and fudge rarities so about 3-6 show up for a 1M turn game.

[Rizwan]

I don't know if this has been stated before or not but here I go. I have read that some people play without artifacts and have even won. IMHO this points to ego items being equal to if not superior to at least some artifacts. So the problem, apart from tweaking the level and rarity of certain artifacts is that there are too many ego items that rival artifacts. So my heretical suggestion is to kill all ego item. Slightly less blasphemous is to re-balance all ego items to be at least one step below the respective artifact, this might be a very hard thing to do in fact much harder than just eliminating all ego items. I have no idea how this would affect the game balance though. More experienced banders are invited to inform me how foolish my suggestion really is

[Philip]

So, i am no veteran angbander but i still know that this would make the beginning and early mid-game a lot harder. Many artifacts are worse than ego's if you consider the possibility of a MOD Holy avenger with telepathy.
All ego-items worse than arts would probably be better, but not very good, because you have the same situation. You could improve all currently bad artifacts, but some would still have to be junk.
Fizzix's idea could be good, but there would probably have to be less ego-items for armour slots or something else should be done to prevent TMJ.
Anyway, some ego's could be removed while the artifact's that are similar being better and more common (Defender-Careth Asdriag, Gondolin-all the elf-made weapons). It would probably destroy randart games and i don't know what would happen if it were implemented but something *should* be done to rebalance ego and art stuff.
Also with removing egos i would add a lot of westerness arts and get rid of westerness. And all slay's should be combined with another Slay unless it is slay evil. And, as with Rizwan, more experienced banders are invited to insult my ideas.

[Timo Pietilä]

I looked up Himring in the spoilers and it has resist poison, chaos and nether, which would be useful in earlier levels to me.

Remember not everyone is confident of getting to level 100 and winning the game. Some artifacts are useful if they let you get just that little bit further than your last game before dying.

You never win if you think that you need nether or chaos, especially early in the game.

Drop that thought. What you need is resistances to deadly side-effects for high-elements, and resistance to raw damage for basic4 and poison. That means you need resist blindness, confusion, sound, basic4 and poison. All others are more or less luxury, nexus and disenchantment less than remaining dark, light, chaos and nether. Nether goes last, because chaos prevents hallucination, and both dark and light prevent blindness from their element. Luckily chaos is also rare attack form, and by the time you find something dangerous that attack using chaos you also have resistance for it, or you can easily avoid it.

Resist poison from Himring is something that can be useful, but by the time you get it you usually have multiple choices for resist poison, and not many basic4 items. Himring really has very limited use. It is worse than elvenkind with resist poison. Quite a bit worse than that.

Of course it can be useful in some very rare case, but usually it is not. I gave Hithlomir as comparison because it basically is just elvenkind with resist dark. I still use it more often than Himring.

[Timo Pietilä]

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]I don't know if this has been stated before or not but here I go. I have read that some people play without artifacts and have even won. IMHO this points to ego items being equal to if not superior to at least some artifacts.

Some are, some are not. Some artifacts are way weaker than best ego, but best ego you find very rarely beats best artifact.

[FONT="Comic Sans MS"]
So the problem, apart from tweaking the level and rarity of certain artifacts is that there are too many ego items that rival artifacts. So my heretical suggestion is to kill all ego item.

I would be very strongly against that.

Slightly less blasphemous is to re-balance all ego items to be at least one step below the respective artifact, this might be a very hard thing to do in fact much harder than just eliminating all ego items. I have no idea how this would affect the game balance though. More experienced banders are invited to inform me how foolish my suggestion really is

They pretty much are below artifacts. There is no speed-boosts in ego except Boots of Speed for example. Very few of them compete with something like Aule. There is no equal to Gondor, Caspanion, Rohirrim, Isildur or even Celeborn. Nothing close to Feanor. Nothing that can be even compared to Rings of Power.

Playing without artifacts is a challenge game. It can be done, but it is harder than with them.

[Magnate]

Well, it's good that the discussion is lively - thanks for all the views and ideas. I have no intention of messing with ego items - yes, some of them are pretty darn good, but rare - I personally have never found "Trickery or "Weaponmastery. In general I think JLE did a better job with ego items than he did with artifacts.

My aim is to bring the artifact set up to date so that artifacts are *generally* useful - i.e. better than the ego items you have available for that slot at the point where you find them. I totally accept the point made that this is not just about making artifacts usable for people like Timo and Eddie, who routinely win or nearly win. It's about making the artifacts found in the first 2500' useful by those who don't get further than that. (And it's also about reducing no-brainers, but I realise that it's impossible to get consensus on that.)

I really, really like the suggestion of creating more artifacts for under-represented slots. I'll do an interim set of changes which incorporates a lot of this feedback, and propose a few new artifacts. Oh I do love live betas ...

[Djabanete]

I really, really like the suggestion of creating more artifacts for under-represented slots.

I also like the idea of a wider variety of rarer artifacts.

After trawling through my own recollections and the index of the Silmarillion for a few minutes...

(4 exist)
Boots of Gimli
Boots of Halbarad
Boots of Radagast
Boots of Gwindor
Boots of Hador
Boots of Dain

(7 exist)
The Elven Cloak of Haldir
The Elven Cloak of Voronwe
The Cloak of Faramir

(6 exist)
The Long Bow of Legolas
The Light Crossbow of Saeros
The Long Bow of Valandil
The Sling of Ghan-buri-Ghan

(8 exist, not counting Beruthiel, Gorlim, or Morgoth)
The [Helmet] of Azog
The [Helmet] of Ecthelion

(7 exist, not counting Eol and Camlost)
The Gauntlets of Imrahil
The Gauntlets of Earnur
The Gauntlets of Glorfindel

(5 exist)
The Amulet of Amandil
The Amulet of Celebrindal

Diggers
The Pick of Felagund
The Pick of Anghabar

[Magnate]

Thank you - that's really helpful. Just to warn all the Tolkein buffs now: I'll happily use the names, but I won't be attempting to make the artifacts fit any Tolkeinian description. I'll be designing them to fill gaps in the artifact set and create interesting choices. That said, I'm happy to take Tolkein-ish text descriptions for any of them.

[Whelk]

The Sling of Ghan-buri-Ghan

An artifact sling would be great. I still yearn for Slings of Buckland, now that I know they exist.

[d_m]

Thank you - that's really helpful. Just to warn all the Tolkein buffs now: I'll happily use the names, but I won't be attempting to make the artifacts fit any Tolkeinian description. I'll be designing them to fill gaps in the artifact set and create interesting choices. That said, I'm happy to take Tolkein-ish text descriptions for any of them.

Presumably you would be open to switching names around to better match up the names with the items though?

[Timo Pietilä]

Well, it's good that the discussion is lively - thanks for all the views and ideas. I have no intention of messing with ego items - yes, some of them are pretty darn good, but rare - I personally have never found "Trickery or "Weaponmastery. In general I think JLE did a better job with ego items than he did with artifacts.

Really? Those are pretty common deeper in dungeon.

them. I totally accept the point made that this is not just about making artifacts usable for people like Timo and Eddie, who routinely win or nearly win.

I'm pretty traditional player, I just know what to expect and know how to react. There is no "artifacts usable only for me". If it is usable for me it is usable for newbie.

I think you should encourage people to forget about hording all the resists and concentrate on the things that are really important like detection, evasion, speed, HP and instant-death preventing resists and abilities.

One of your changes was something that hurts newbies more than me: Thranduil made deeper/rarer. Thranduil gives ESP which is basically very powerful detection and that is something that is needed for evasion to be effective.

For poison being first "hard to get instakill -preventing resist" I propose that we change it to truly high element, reduce its raw damage, make resist variable instead of constant, remove double-resist and increase severity of side-effect (being poisoned). That would solve many problems people face at 2000-2500 feet.

It's about making the artifacts found in the first 2500' useful by those who don't get further than that.

That is mostly because people learn wrong things. Angband is hard game until you realize few basic things:

1) don't be greedy. Nothing in this game is a "must have".
2) you don't need to kill everything
3) if it is unknown assume it can kill you.
4) if it is unknown and faster than you flee. Now. Teleport if necessary.
5) if it is unknown and you have a lot of HP and if you choose to fight be ready to flee.
6) you need to know what to expect, so detection is a must.
7) don't get surrounded.
8) speed is your savior

You need: detection, evasion, HP, resistance to raw damage instakillers, resistance to deadly side-effects, speed and common sense. That's all.

With these in your mind and with careful playing anybody can win. It is the people that have learned to trust resistances and defenses and do not respect the monsters that die.

(And it's also about reducing no-brainers, but I realise that it's impossible to get consensus on that.)

I don't think game has any real no-brainers anymore except maybe Feanor. That is the one and only thing that I can't figure out anything that can possible beat it. Everything else has something that with some combination beats it. Even The One has drawbacks that make it less useful than combination of other things.

Not anymore at least. In old days it was always Dor-Lomin, Thorin, Fingolfin, some bodyarmor, Caspanion was popular, Bethronding or Cubragol (or Bard if you played Ranger), Arkenstone and for pure spellcasters something to boost their spellcasting stat. This is no more the case. There are a lot of things that make a lot of different combinations that are equal or better than that.