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Why does it seem like most artifacts are either found on the floor or dropped by normal monsters? Its rare that a unique will drop anything worth keeping. It seems somehow wrong that an Archon drops The One Ring and all the badass uniques aren't dropping anything worth keeping. Hell I'd even be happy if they at least dropped some good ammo or potions.
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Unique drops aren't sufficiently better than normal drops to overcome the fact that there are way, way more normal drops than there are unique drops. This has always been the case; there's nothing special in the item generation code related to uniques. All that affects item generation is the monster's native depth, your current dungeon level, and the DROP_GOOD and DROP_GREAT flags on the monster.
What I'm about to say may have changed; it's basically how drops used to work. The game decides to generate an item. If the dropper has DROP_GOOD or DROP_GREAT, this is automatically forced to be a piece of equipment (and, if jewelery/light source, forced to be one of a few specific subtypes). Then it rolls to see if the item is magical -- if the dropper has DROP_GOOD or DROP_GREAT, this automatically succeeds. Then it rolls to see if the item is an ego-item -- if the dropper has DROP_GREAT, this automatically succeeds. Finally, it rolls to see if the item is an artifact; this roll never automatically succeeds. If it passes, then the game picks one of the appropriate artifact types (and if all artifacts of that type have already been generated, then it just generates an ego-item with extra to-hit and to-dam bonuses).
The thing is, modern item generation is heavily skewed towards generating good and great items already (when items are generated at all), in an effort to cut down on junk items. So the effect of the DROP_GOOD and DROP_GREAT flags is apparently greatly reduced. Once you're consistently getting good item drops (which happens probably around the 800' range), DROP_GOOD is pointless. Once you're consistently getting ego item drops (does this ever happen?), DROP_GREAT is pointless. Someone who knows the code better should feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. -
There is however change in this that made unique drops worse than before (but still better than average monster): If you are deep in dungeon monster level doesn't affect the drop at all anymore. Calculation just takes which is deeper mlvl or dlvl. This means that Archon at 4900' is just as likely to drop artifact or very good ego as...lets say Carcharoth.
It used to be average of dungeon level and monster level, which means that drops were considerably weaker for shallow monsters and floor items were better than most drops.
Now that this average is removed group of novice rangers is just as likely to drop stat-potions at 2000' as group of trolls. Any orc can be as good as any giant. Group of orcs is more likely to drop good items than Ancient Dragons.Comment
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Lately I've been sort of feeling that monsters significantly below their native depth should not have any drops at all. Right now the game rewards avoiding combat enough to begin with - making weaklings more worthwhile to kill only exacerbates the problem.
And I'm still for artifacts only coming from Uniques and GVs.
But that's neither here nor there.Comment
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I test-played back in 3.0.6 with all uniques past a certain point (say 2000') and some of the higher level undead, demons and wyrms given drop_great flags and it made a significant difference. I have no idea whether it would still make the same difference.
My proposition would be to expand drop_great and drop_good flags to include various consumables, like stat gain for drop_good, and !Life, !Exp and some of the higher end staves for drop_great. And then add these flags to more of the deeper monsters and uniques.
I have no problem with a giant pit and saruman having the same chance of dropping an artifact, as seems to be the case now. You are just more likely to see artifact drops from non-unique monsters because you kill several hundred times more of them.Comment
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