Is speed overpowered?

[TJS]

I think that your game is definitely an outlier. I once found a rod of lightning balls on dlvl4 and it made the early game ridiculously easy, but as I dove, the monsters caught up. I died later on. What happened in your game? +15 speed would allow you to dive fast and possible have a shot at finishing quickly, but there is no single piece of equipment that will give you the game. The monsters will catch up to you as you descend, even at that speed! I'd chalk it up to good luck--it probably won't happen again no matter how many games you play!

I managed to get to lvl 98 in around 400k turns and get to character lvl 50 in 550k turns. I found boots of speed +9 and another +10 speed ring to give me +37 speed unhasted.

But I got a bit bored trying to find a source of banishment for the last fights so I've left the game for the moment to come back to later (and get killed).

[miyazaki]

Since more and more fundamental parts of the game are being discussed at the moment I thought I'd ask this.

It seems to me that boosts to speed are by far the most powerful things a character can get. I luckily found a ring of speed +10 and an artifact weapon that gave +5 to speed early in a recent game and it made the game so much easier than usual it seemed a bit silly.
In that game I got 2.5 moves to every one I normally have at that point, so I could for example attack and heal and still have half a move left over compared to just being able to perform one action at normal speed.

Is this desirable speed being so powerful? Also should certain items have such large boosts to speed? Boots of Speed +10 are probably much better than 80% of artifacts.

With less consumables around and hence less !Speed and _Speed it makes lucky finds of +speed equipment that much more powerful.

Maybe a balance could be brought in whereby the faster your speed, the slower your HP and SP are regenerated. The logic for this could be because you're moving so much faster the body has less chance to heal/regain mana. Then you could make regen items cumilative, so you could for example get an amulet of regen +2.

I think that your game is definitely an outlier. I once found a rod of lightning balls on dlvl4 and it made the early game ridiculously easy, but as I dove, the monsters caught up. I died later on. What happened in your game? +15 speed would allow you to dive fast and possible have a shot at finishing quickly, but there is no single piece of equipment that will give you the game. The monsters will catch up to you as you descend, even at that speed! I'd chalk it up to good luck--it probably won't happen again no matter how many games you play!

[TJS]

Since more and more fundamental parts of the game are being discussed at the moment I thought I'd ask this.

It seems to me that boosts to speed are by far the most powerful things a character can get. I luckily found a ring of speed +10 and an artifact weapon that gave +5 to speed early in a recent game and it made the game so much easier than usual it seemed a bit silly.
In that game I got 2.5 moves to every one I normally have at that point, so I could for example attack and heal and still have half a move left over compared to just being able to perform one action at normal speed.

Is this desirable speed being so powerful? Also should certain items have such large boosts to speed? Boots of Speed +10 are probably much better than 80% of artifacts.

With less consumables around and hence less !Speed and _Speed it makes lucky finds of +speed equipment that much more powerful.

Maybe a balance could be brought in whereby the faster your speed, the slower your HP and SP are regenerated. The logic for this could be because you're moving so much faster the body has less chance to heal/regain mana. Then you could make regen items cumilative, so you could for example get an amulet of regen +2.