Randarts now have random activations in trunk

[Magnate]

The game is here. I guess you'd call it a dive, but it is not Eddie-speed. I don't recall seeing many bad randarts - certainly not lately. I am still wearing the first helm and armour I found.

P.S. How did you get the dump to show the build version?

[Psi]

Well, you are wearing 9 randarts, carrying 2 more as swaps and keeping 7 at home. They are all pretty good (the broadsword is superb, as is your current shield). Admittedly you've found no gloves or boots, but there's certainly no overall shortage. There could be as few as four of each, so you're looking for 8 out of 135. If you want to send me the savefile I'll generate the spoiler and double check that all is in order. It's possible that all 8 have max depths shallower than 99, but unlikely.

No worries. I'll generate the spoilers when I finish. I'm just comparing the game to those I played at 3.1.1 when artifacts seem to turn up a lot more plentifully. It was just a question rather than a complaint.

Regarding the build version, I didn't do anything to make it display.

[Magnate]

No worries. I'll generate the spoilers when I finish. I'm just comparing the game to those I played at 3.1.1 when artifacts seem to turn up a lot more plentifully. It was just a question rather than a complaint.

Regarding the build version, I didn't do anything to make it display.

Something is very weird then, as it doesn't display in my dumps. Hmmm.

I'm afraid I don't understand your observation that artifacts are less common than in 3.1.1: you've found almost 50 in under 500k turns (18 kept and ~30 lost). Last time I got to dl98, in about the same 0.5M turns, I found a total of about 20! You seem to be finding more than twice as many as I do!

[PowerDiver]

I'm afraid I don't understand your observation that artifacts are less common than in 3.1.1: you've found almost 50 in under 500k turns (18 kept and ~30 lost). Last time I got to dl98, in about the same 0.5M turns, I found a total of about 20! You seem to be finding more than twice as many as I do!

It's more about kills than turncounts. It might be nice to have #uniques killed and #monsters killed in the dumps. Or even \sum {DL of each killed monster}

[Magnate]

It's more about kills than turncounts. It might be nice to have #uniques killed and #monsters killed in the dumps. Or even \sum {DL of each killed monster}

Nice idea - added to http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/342

[Psi]

I'm afraid I don't understand your observation that artifacts are less common than in 3.1.1: you've found almost 50 in under 500k turns (18 kept and ~30 lost). Last time I got to dl98, in about the same 0.5M turns, I found a total of about 20! You seem to be finding more than twice as many as I do!

It is just an observation based on comparison of my games. It may just be because the max limits are stopping the crud appearing which I might usually find. It may be just because I've been unlucky with gloves. I was just asking whether anything had changed because the games since 311 felt different. Honestly, it may be nothing!

[fizzix]

Just noticed a bug in my randart dagger.

It says it activates for a 'fire bolt' when it actually activates for a 'fire ball'

dump here.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9663

I can make a save-file if you want.

[Magnate]

Just noticed a bug in my randart dagger.

It says it activates for a 'fire bolt' when it actually activates for a 'fire ball'

dump here.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=9663

I can make a save-file if you want.

Well spotted - that's been there a long time. Fixed in r1847.

[Psi]

I have a randart that activates for breathe confusion, but the message says it 'floods the area with goodness' - is that really right?

[Magnate]

I have a randart that activates for breathe confusion, but the message says it 'floods the area with goodness' - is that really right?

This was always going to be a problem. The message is a property of the parent artifact, not of the effect. So the moment the effect is randomised, there's every chance that the message will sound odd. I guess I could go and make them all generic - but I'd rather move them into the effects framework. Will open a ticket for this - thanks.

[Psi]

No worries. I'll generate the spoilers when I finish. I'm just comparing the game to those I played at 3.1.1 when artifacts seem to turn up a lot more plentifully. It was just a question rather than a complaint.

I've generated the spoilers now Morgoth is down (Grond was 3d9 in his drop but 9d9 in the spoilers btw) and the five pairs of gloves had generation probs of 1,1,3,7 and 25. The 25 had max depth of 88 (and I would actually have liked them in the circumstances...). I am not sure what those probabilities really mean, so as to know whether I was just unlucky not to find any of them or not.

[Psi]

(Grond was 3d9 in his drop but 9d9 in the spoilers btw)

Actually it is unnamed and marked as {squelch} in my dump, so I'm not sure it is even an artifact...?!

[PowerDiver]

I think maximum depths for randarts is a mistake. You should only have a maximum depth on a randart that is superseded by a not too rare ego/base item combo. Unless you want to code that up, I'd prefer no max depths on randarts.

I'm not in favor of maximum depths on standarts either, even though I think the idea came from something I wrote. So you see the common artifacts every game. That's not a real problem. My wife likes to play "how many artifacts can I find this game", and presumably there are others like her.

You only use maybe 100 to 200 significant wieldable items even in a winning game. You can only upgrade so many times. That means that almost everything is junk no matter how hard you try to design it otherwise. You cannot eliminate junk. It is a mistake to try. What is needed is game design that makes junk easy to deal with.

[Magnate]

I've generated the spoilers now Morgoth is down (Grond was 3d9 in his drop but 9d9 in the spoilers btw) and the five pairs of gloves had generation probs of 1,1,3,7 and 25. The 25 had max depth of 88 (and I would actually have liked them in the circumstances...). I am not sure what those probabilities really mean, so as to know whether I was just unlucky not to find any of them or not.

Ok. The messed-up Grond is very bad news: we thought this was http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/641 fixed ages ago. Certainly you are the only person that's reported it for a long time, so it's an intermittent bug at best. Can you post the save file? Not sure how to track this down.

I'm reassured that the randarts are still generating fine: five pairs of gloves is fine, and only the commonest (and weakest) will have had a max depth below 100 I suspect. Basically the probability is 100 / the old rarity - so 25 is rarity 4, 7 is rarity 14, 3 is rarity 33 and 1 is rarity 100. You were a little unlucky to get two out of five pairs at rarity 100 - that explains why you didn't find any. I hope they were all really damned good!

[Magnate]

I think maximum depths for randarts is a mistake. You should only have a maximum depth on a randart that is superseded by a not too rare ego/base item combo. Unless you want to code that up, I'd prefer no max depths on randarts.

I'm not in favor of maximum depths on standarts either, even though I think the idea came from something I wrote. So you see the common artifacts every game. That's not a real problem. My wife likes to play "how many artifacts can I find this game", and presumably there are others like her.

There are others like her - this point has been raised before. Anyone who wants to collect all the artifacts can edit artifact.txt to set all the max depths to 127 (a single sed command).

Admittedly this isn't possible with randarts. But if you're playing with randarts, you have no idea how many there are, so you can never know if you've found them all. So I don't really see the problem. (ok so I haven't yet made the actual number of them random, but you see my point.)

Your first point comes back to your long-standing objection to rating object power. I believe that max depths for weak randarts are fine - analogous to those for standarts. You don't trust the power calculation, so you would rather use explicit tests like the one you mention. I would rather put my energies into improving the power rating mechanism than doing this. Sorry.