Artifacts found at 600ft

[Napsterbater]

Then we can make ego items in general less common, secure in the knowledge that if they do get generated they're more likely to be useful. The actual number of useful generated ego-items is the same (more or less), but fewer are created.

Junk egos or junk magical items. 6 of one, a half-dozen of the other. Unless you lower the amount of drops in general, you'll still be getting lots of junk. Squelch is the way out of this problem if you really really don't like sifting through junk. You should be able to squelch individual egos. Or at least squelch all but a certain kind you're looking for. Maybe keep a "Gold mode" that turns off squelch for high-value egos that you want to truck back to town for when you run low on cash.

[buzzkill]

Without really putting too much thought into it, the problem may be that there are far too many weapon and armour drops. What if W&A (generated or dropped) were limited to 2 or 3 of each per level (vaults and unique drops would be an exception). The number can be randomized and debated, but it would make all W&A rarer. Slaughtering an orc pit wouldn't yield 22 weapons and 16 armours.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Junk egos or junk magical items. 6 of one, a half-dozen of the other. Unless you lower the amount of drops in general, you'll still be getting lots of junk. Squelch is the way out of this problem if you really really don't like sifting through junk. You should be able to squelch individual egos. Or at least squelch all but a certain kind you're looking for. Maybe keep a "Gold mode" that turns off squelch for high-value egos that you want to truck back to town for when you run low on cash.

I generally don't use squelch I like to see what gets generated, but in this instance it might be a good idea to give it a try, at least if something gets dropped you know it's going to be pretty good.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Just cleared a vault on DL44 found, Orcrist,boots of wormtounge, no big deal.
But I also found the Mithril plate mail of Celeborn. I thought Celeborn was another end game artifact?

[Pete Mack]

Unsurprisingly, I agree with Eddie wrt artifacts: adding even a modest number of artifacts that are potential game changers is likely to be (and actually is!) unbalancing.

Previously, there were only a tiny handful of light weapons that could do big damage early. (Sting, Forasgil, Haradekket, Dagmor, *Thancs less so, and maybe a few others.)
Many of these are quite rare.

Now there are several more such weapons, and the *Thancs are significantly stronger; the net effect is you are much more likely to find such a weapon early.

Previously, there were only 2.5 endgame-quality amulets. Now there are 5. (RES_CONFU!, RES_NETHER!, CON(+4)!)


Similarly, the number of common uber-shields has effectively doubled: Thorin has been joined by the truly devastating Haradrim.

I also agree with Derakon: there's no reason to have 'excellent' (aka 'crappy') ego types after dl 50. Putting an upper limit on them, and adjusting the probabilities of the the remaining ones, is an excellent idea.

[Magnate]

The outcry of removing Thorin entirely would of course be tremendous. It was designed to be assumed to be used in the endgame, or equivalently the egos were designed assuming you would have Thorin available in the endgame. Removing it breaks fundamental assumptions that were used to set up the definitions of what powers should be in which other artifacts and egos and flavors That's entirely different from doubling or tripling the power of early chars sooner by giving them more frequent more powerful early artifacts.

I've never bought the theory that Thorin is part of some carefully designed set of endgame artifacts, with ego types designed around them. Where did you get this idea? Is there some ancient dev blog for frog-knows?

My suspicion is that the artifact set evolved in much the same way it continues to evolve, but with a long freeze between 2.7.x and JLE.

Why not start every char with Dethanc? That is just a frequency issue and wouldn't change the overall power of the artifact set more than 1%, so should be OK if your point about total artifact power were relevant. Yet, it would ruin the game. You ought to have to work for your rewards. Boosting and increasing the frequency of early artifacts takes that away.

The current object generation system generates lots and lots of artifacts. I just checked my wife's current game [randarts], in which she doesn't repeat levels but clears each DL once, and the first artifact at DL 13, six by DL 30, and a dozen by DL 38. IMO we should be increasing artifact rarities, not decreasing them.

These figures and others posted indicate that the too-many-egos problem is quite severe. I agree with Pete and Derakon that ego types ought to move to the alloc_prob system so that max depths can be specified.

Once ego items are back to their proper frequency we'll have another look at artifacts and see whether I really have broken the game by making too many too common. I agree with your contention that rewards should not be too early or too common.

[Magnate]

I agree with Pete and Derakon that ego types ought to move to the alloc_prob system so that max depths can be specified.

Nice to be ahead of the curve - turns out I opened ticket #1080 for this six weeks ago. Ticket #720 is the one which should address the basic too-many-egos problem.

[PowerDiver]

I've never bought the theory that Thorin is part of some carefully designed set of endgame artifacts, with ego types designed around them. Where did you get this idea? Is there some ancient dev blog for frog-knows?

I get it the idea by looking at the available items, and human nature. Do you think JLE would have considered adding a shield ego that provides rSound+rChaos? Of course not. Such an ego is pointless when everyone gets Thorin.

I remember old posts when people were told not to worry about a particular hole. They could fix it by rearranging their kit as soon as they picked up Thorin. Etc. I remember believing that it was assumed to be part of the descent.

I specifically remember a particular time I read about it. Someone wrote, roughly, "when you see Thorin" and I wondered for a moment if Thorin was an NPC waiting in the dungeon to talk to me.

I also think the lack of items providing confusion resistance is a throwback to the days when Thorin's rChaos provided resistance to confusion effect. Lack of rConf items is not such a big deal when you expect to be using Thorin by DL 50.

Remember the slow diving style that used to be a given included waiting for maxxed stats before passing to DL 40. I can only guess at the likelihood, in pre-3.1 object generation, that in the time to generate enough DL 30 items to get 75+ non-chr stat potions, that a char would get Thorin. I could never stand "stat gain", so I have little personal experience, but I think that likelihood of getting Thorin during stat gain was substantial.

[Pete Mack]

It's certainly something you can plan for. I see it in well over half my games (not counting early deaths), and I try to finish in 0.5M-1M turns.

[Nick]

It's certainly something you can plan for. I see it in well over half my games (not counting early deaths), and I try to finish in 0.5M-1M turns.

This thread makes me angry. I've found Thorin three times:

1. V Dwarf Warrior, had still not worn it (because it would have left me without RElec) when I got killed by The Tarrasque;
2. V Dwarf Warrior winner, dropped by Morgoth;
3. O High-Elf Assassin, wore it briefly before being killed by Gothmog.

So enough with all the "can't win without Thorin", "I always find Thorin", OK?

[Magnate]

This thread makes me angry. I've found Thorin three times:

1. V Dwarf Warrior, had still not worn it (because it would have left me without RElec) when I got killed by The Tarrasque;
2. V Dwarf Warrior winner, dropped by Morgoth;
3. O High-Elf Assassin, wore it briefly before being killed by Gothmog.

So enough with all the "can't win without Thorin", "I always find Thorin", OK?

Agreed (though I can't imagine Nick writing a seriously angry post, so there must be a smiley in there somewhere). While Eddie cites evidence that old posts tell people not to worry because everything will be fine when they find Thorin, that doesn't mean that it was designed like that. Thorin has become an expected part of endgame kit because it is (a) very powerful and (b) a very common base item and (c) a fairly low artifact rarity value. I'd bet a dime to a dollar (or whatever it is) that its role as critical endgame kit is 100% accident and 0% design.

[PowerDiver]

I'd bet a dime to a dollar (or whatever it is) that its role as critical endgame kit is 100% accident and 0% design.

Perhaps "design" is the wrong word, but it I think is closer than you think.

When you made your changes, and are considering new ones, how often do you think "I could fix this by adding rCold"? II'd bet it doesn't occur to you. Lack of rCold is not a problem, so you don't even think of that change. Your current "design" of artifact changes does not include rCold because it is assumed to be present already. OTOH, I bet you would consider adding rElec to some artifact to make it more interesting. The difference between the values of rCold and rElec is an accident of the history that made rCold common on typical kits.

There has been an accumulation of changes, which were "designed" to fix holes, that happened in a particular environment and what got changed depended upon the assumptions of what was expected at the time.

Past accidents drive current design. Far past accidents drove past design.

[Pete Mack]

I'm with eddie on this. If you decend slowly, you are pretty much guaranteed to find a few basic artifacts, including Thorin. If you consider elemental immunities,
Thorin + Narya, the two most likely finds, cover the two most important immunities.

There's no way it's entirely by accident.

[Magnate]

Perhaps "design" is the wrong word, but it I think is closer than you think.

When you made your changes, and are considering new ones, how often do you think "I could fix this by adding rCold"? II'd bet it doesn't occur to you. Lack of rCold is not a problem, so you don't even think of that change. Your current "design" of artifact changes does not include rCold because it is assumed to be present already. OTOH, I bet you would consider adding rElec to some artifact to make it more interesting. The difference between the values of rCold and rElec is an accident of the history that made rCold common on typical kits.

There has been an accumulation of changes, which were "designed" to fix holes, that happened in a particular environment and what got changed depended upon the assumptions of what was expected at the time.

Past accidents drive current design. Far past accidents drove past design.

Yep, I'll buy that.

Sigh ... Sunday night's scheduled argument has been cancelled folks ...