Artifact Activations?

[Grotug]

How often do you use your artifact activations in your games? Also, your armors? I rarely remember to. Most activations aren't really powerful enough to remember to use them. Unless it's for speed early on.

[mrfy]

How often do you use your artifact activations in your games? Also, your armors? I rarely remember to. Most activations aren't really powerful enough to remember to use them. Unless it's for speed early on.

I use them a lot if they do something useful. Currently I have one that maps, lights up the entire level and detects objects. Another one has a teleport ability, but I'd forgotten I had that until I looked at it now. Could certainly be useful if character is in danger.

Early on, the rings of [Flames,Ice,Acid,Lightning] can be very useful, same with Dragon Scale Mail.

[Grotug]

Now that you mention it, I think I use the activations more in the early game. I just had a game (after I made this post) where I found white dragon armor pretty early on and, yeah, I was using that activation a lot. Makes me wonder, though, why do the deep dragon armors only do twice as much damage as the basic ones, when the deeper enemies have 5 times the hitpoints? I rarely use the activations of my balance armor or shining armor etc. People always talk about how great these dragon armors are, but honestly I don't think they are very good and I never wear them, as artifact armors I find are always so much better--how many posts do we see where people don't even wear power dragon armors when they find them! ?(me included; found em about 5 times or so and maybe I wore one once for a little while).. I think the deep ones (balance, for example) should breathe for much more damage, say 500 (or even 800) damage. Then I'd use the activation. But I would still not use it all the time, because it's just easier to use my weapons that are doing 500+ damage *every turn*. Or maybe the deeper armors should charge faster if they aren't going to get an increase in damage. 250 AOE damage is not very meaningful at the time you find these armors, it will hardly hurt those major demons, and is much more preferable to just pick them off one by one than slightly injure a bunch of them. If they are only going to do 250 damage, they should charge often, like every 8 (normal speed) turns, that would be pretty useful (that would be about every 28 turns for your average late game adventurer moving at +25 speed).

[Estie]

I hardly ever use dragon armor|s breath attack. Early game, while it would be useful, I usually prefer to not carry the weight of the armor and later, the damage is not meaningful, as Grotug observed.

I might use it if I am desperate for damage early on; however, a magic dagger with a few attacks/round or a sling of power means I'll rather go naked.