Your views wanted on artifacts in V

[Pete Mack]

A quick diff shows
1. Amulet changes are too good
2. Too much rNether
3. +2 blows is a dangerous addition
4. Artifact depths should generally be deeper than object native depth
5. Probably too many speed bonuses.
6. Artifacts are going to litter the floor at shallow depths

[Magnate]

A quick diff shows
1. Amulet changes are too good
2. Too much rNether
3. +2 blows is a dangerous addition
4. Artifact depths should generally be deeper than object native depth
5. Probably too many speed bonuses.
6. Artifacts are going to litter the floor at shallow depths

Thanks Pete - I love the way you're so relentlessly positive about my contributions. Briefly:

1. Carlammas and Ingwe were suggestions from this thread which seemed ok (though I agree that Ingwe may not have needed that suggested change). I tweaked Dwarves because otherwise its CON boost was lower than Carlammas (I did quite a bit of consequential tweaking to avoid that kind of outcome). Evenstar was just an idea to see if Eddie no longer considered it junk - segues nicely into:

2. Precisely two. Rnether was previously the least common resistance in the artifact set - a fact which has been remarked upon many times over the years. Four or five additions might have been too much, but not two.

3. Indeed it is. That's why it was only added to one weapon, which aggravates. (I also thought I added three blows to Gothmog, but as has been pointed out I failed to notice that its pval is -3!)

4. Agreed, with the exception of really crappy artifacts which need to be found early if they are to be worth finding at all.

5. A total of +3 via increased pvals on two cloaks which already had it, and +8 over three separate weapons. Weapons which will be used for a fairly small proportion of the game, won't be found particularly early, and won't make a huge difference even with +2 or +3 speed. One of the cloaks is extremely rare, and the other got one more point (+2 to +3).

6. Here you may have your one and only valid point. Playtesting will tell. The artifacts to which you refer are three Paurs, three 'thancs and two crappy swords - eight artifacts which have consistently been among the least used for a long time. If the changes result in them being used more often, that's a measure of success - but I'm no expert in depth/rarity stuff so it's possible that I have overcompensated and things will have to be tweaked back a bit.

[PowerDiver]

If the changes result in them being used more often, that's a measure of success - but I'm no expert in depth/rarity stuff so it's possible that I have overcompensated and things will have to be tweaked back a bit.

I disagree. The current situation is too many useful artifacts being dropped. What we need is less junky artifacts, not more useful ones. If you want variety, than I suppose more numerically is fine so long as drop rates go down so there are fewer being generated.

The brand egos have a rarity of 8 to 10. Surely the thancs should have a minimum rarity of 10. Telepathy has a rarity of 6, so Thranduil should have a rarity at least 6. I don't know what the odds of an ego turning into an artifact are, but even if it is 1 in 10 I think at a minimum the rarities on the artifacts should match the rarities on the lesser egos.

I'm probably going overboard here, but artifact inflation is out of control, so excuse me while I overreact.

[Marble Dice]

The brand egos have a rarity of 8 to 10. Surely the thancs should have a minimum rarity of 10.

Are you implying that brand egos are less useful than *thanc? Or are you simply trying to say you don't want the artifacts to be common, because you would rather have the egos?

[fizzix]

Are you implying that brand egos are less useful than *thanc? Or are you simply trying to say you don't want the artifacts to be common, because you would rather have the egos?

Disclaimer: I have not tried the new set yet, and probably won't get the chance until this is already solved.

I think the point is that just making an artifact useful is not good enough *if* it also obsoletes an ego item which won't show up until after you have the artifact. There is a very small window of the game in which a branded weapon is going to be your weapon of choice. If you find a more powerful artifact always before you find a branded weapon, what's the point of having branded weapons at all? So the problem isn't just useless artifacts, it's useless egos also, and artifact/ego balance.

Ask yourself when was the last time you ever used a basic slay weapon in a game? Those have the smallest windows of usefulness of all.

Regardless of whether we can agree with what I said above, I think we can all agree that we don't want a determined set of equipment. If you automatically wield *thanc at dlevel 5 and paur* at dlevel 10 every game then we've completely crushed the random aspect that makes the game so fun and replayable.

If that's not Eddie's point, it's still my point.

[buzzkill]

Regardless of whether we can agree with what I said above, I think we can all agree that we don't want a determined set of equipment. If you automatically wield *thanc at dlevel 5 and paur* at dlevel 10 every game then we've completely crushed the random aspect that makes the game so fun and replayable.

Just make these artifacts rarer (and rarer still if necessary), so they won't consistently render other items obsolete. Hell, *thanc and paur* could show up at DL1, as long as it's extremely rare. It's a better option than eliminating them.

[fizzix]

Just make these artifacts rarer (and rarer still if necessary), so they won't consistently render other items obsolete. Hell, *thanc and paur* could show up at DL1, as long as it's extremely rare. It's a better option than eliminating them.

yes, that is the obvious solution. 4 out of 5 games you wield a weak ego during dlevels 5-10 and the 1 out of 5 you wield an early artifact. Seems fine to me.

[Nick]

Thanks Pete - I love the way you're so relentlessly positive about my contributions.

Any involvement in maintaining V makes you a legitimate target

Along the lines of a recent post of mine about randarts, I'd suggest that having a greater variety of negative qualities available would make the balancing of artifacts very much easier. The fact that more negative qualities are coming relatively soon make me think that perhaps we could wait for that before tweaking artifacts.

Also, I think concentrating on single artifact properties out of context is too much of a simplification. For example, while one might not use an artifact like Haradrim because of the aggravation, it comes back into consideration if you find the Palantir.

In summary, you're all idiots and I'm great.

[Pete Mack]

@magnate--sorry about that.
I actually like the changes for the most part. But I do think the changes to the +CON amulets are going to be too big.

As for the +2 blows and the rNether (possibly): mea culpa. That's what I get for trying to review your changes on an iPod while riding the bus.

[Atarlost]

The old *thanc were so weak they were barely worth anything. You might well choose a rapier of fire over narthanc if you could get as many blows with it because of the dice. They really only truly obsoleted daggers because they have so little use beyond being a branded dagger. Paur* are a useful superset of the corresponging ego, but the *thancs really aren't because of their weak dice unless a dagger is the heaviest thing you can get multiple blows with.

[PowerDiver]

Are you implying that brand egos are less useful than *thanc? Or are you simply trying to say you don't want the artifacts to be common, because you would rather have the egos?

Narthanc is better than any ego fire branded weapon until you can get at least 3 blows with the ego [because if it has bigger dice you will get twice as many blows with Narthanc] and by then you've got something better anyway. If you make it too common, you might as well eliminate the ego.

Then I also have problems with the implications of distribution sampling telling me that say half of all fire branded daggers in the dungeon are Narthanc, but that doesn't really matter to gameplay.

[PowerDiver]

the *thancs really aren't because of their weak dice

The thancs have 2d4. To get 2d5 you have to go to a longsword, 4 times as heavy as the 3lb minimum for computing blows.

[Pete Mack]

The thancs have 2d4. To get 2d5 you have to go to a longsword, 4 times as heavy as the 3lb minimum for computing blows.

Yup. Thancs beat all early ego weapons except +attacks hands down. Yes there are better early artifacts, but they are much less common.

[Atarlost]

Okay, I guess I'm remembering the *old* *thancs.

[Pete Mack]

Okay, I guess I'm remembering the *old* *thancs.

Eddie and I are talking about the old thancs! For straight up damage, you aren't likely to do better until around dl40, if you are diving fast.