svn branch

[PowerDiver]

Hmmm, that'll teach me to react too quickly to feedback here. A few people noted that randarts were less common than standarts, so I increased the alloc_prob on the lower two categories of randarts - and lo, now you are all drowning in them. Bother.

I wouldn't change it back yet. That could just be an outlier. Dragon pits are the best place to get stuff, and 9 wyrms boosts artifact chances a lot.

I think I got 6 artifacts just from Maeglin once, playing with standarts, in something I posted to rgra, maybe one of the tales.

FWIW, in my current randart game [see the thread with your name on it] I've seen 45 artifacts at DL 96. Given my ability to kill anything, I think that is fewer than I should expect in a standart game.

[fizzix]

FWIW, in my current randart game [see the thread with your name on it] I've seen 45 artifacts at DL 96. Given my ability to kill anything, I think that is fewer than I should expect in a standart game.

I have a lot of experience with randart games, hopefully I'll get a fresh checkout and start another game soon, so I can give some feedback about increased probabilities.

The main problem I found is that I'll pretty much never find anything with a generation chance of 1 (except for the 'special' items.) For example, I'll find all the amulets but, maybe no boots, or no shields.

[Derakon]

I wouldn't change it back yet. That could just be an outlier. Dragon pits are the best place to get stuff, and 9 wyrms boosts artifact chances a lot..

In general, I'm finding far more artifacts than in my previous randart games. This game definitely feels more Monty Haul than past games have. It's actually feeling rather easy.

[PowerDiver]

In general, I'm finding far more artifacts than in my previous randart games. This game definitely feels more Monty Haul than past games have. It's actually feeling rather easy.

I have complained before of "too many artifacts". Randarts now are just more in line with standarts. Rather than mucking with the randart rarities, if there is a problem it would be better to address the likelihood an ego boosts to an artifact in object generation for both randarts and standarts.

If more consumables are generated in place of weapons and armor, with the new object.txt I haven't tested yet, that may counterbalance things a bit.

[Magnate]

I have complained before of "too many artifacts". Randarts now are just more in line with standarts. Rather than mucking with the randart rarities, if there is a problem it would be better to address the likelihood an ego boosts to an artifact in object generation for both randarts and standarts.

If more consumables are generated in place of weapons and armor, with the new object.txt I haven't tested yet, that may counterbalance things a bit.

My sense is that the ego and artifact boosts are still too common, even with the new object.txt, but we'll wait a little longer before messing with it. It looks like there's a bit too much of everything at the moment - consumables, ammo, ego items, artifacts etc.

[ewert]

Magnate, there was a somewhat major oversight in the object.txt about the ammo, did you check the .diff file I posted? That causes atleast the ammo problem, playing with the changes I made and ammo was sorted atleast somewhat now... I missed it myself since I don't use archery at all really.

Also I mentioned it in some thread, currently it feels like OoD checks could be doubled. That'd sort of mean that there is nearly twice as much "good/great" stuff being tried to be generated. But unless object gen is totally revamped to enable multiple lvl ranges for object rarities, I guess OoD checks is the place to stop this issue from being too common. This concerns mostly books, high end amulets, speed rings. It's good to have it for armor/weapons/ammo, as it means the tough opponents that have good/great drops are places for equipment, and the others in general for consumables.

[fizzix]

My sense is that the ego and artifact boosts are still too common, even with the new object.txt, but we'll wait a little longer before messing with it. It looks like there's a bit too much of everything at the moment - consumables, ammo, ego items, artifacts etc.

I was thinking about it a bit more, and I think part of the problem lies in the way the game decides artifacts. In the standart set there's often one (or maybe two) artifacts for each type. As in there's exactly one augmented chain mail, one leather scale mail, one soft leather armor etc. That means if the game generates armor and then tries to generate an artifact it almost always has one to shoot for (unless it's already been found)

With randarts, there's not only no guarantee of this, there's often no artifacts of a given type. This significantly reduces the chance of an artifact being generated overall. I'm not sure if this is enough for the discrepancy, but I should pay attention to the randart spoilers for a couple games and see if the lower counts correspond to many more duplicates of given types.

[Derakon]

Okay, scored a victory in r2025 (I didn't want to update the code mid-game). This was a Dunedain Warrior, and a particularly quick one at that.

Ladder dump

Artifact spoiler
Notables: Avath and Inaur (which both look like they're far too common for their damage output), Forindi, Aiacar, Brelur, Gondolle (if only for its power rating!), Uingion, Anyamar, Ilinor (the caster's dream -- +7 INT/WIS/SPD, and other actually useful abilities), Egalarri. Note that the only ones of these that I actually found were the first two.

I found one non-weapon equipment with +1 blows and nothing else of note, and one non-launcher helmet with +1 shots and nothing else of note. Telepathy was everywhere, though, as was speed on weapons.

I went into the final fight with 420 melee damage/round (against Morgoth; considerably more against practically anything else), nothing special in the archery department, ~20 Healing potions, ~10 *Healing* potions, 1 Life potion...and a full stomach. I spent most of the fight gorged, at +26 speed. So if nothing else, can we please remove the nutritional value from potions? Anyway, only major problems were one manastorm that took me down to double-digit hitpoints (easily fixed with *Heal*), and a few summons that threatened to get out of hand (fixed by -TO, Destruct). Annoyingly, the Witch-King teleported me away once. So did a Nexus Quylthulg when I had Morgoth on the ropes. Coward!

Plenty of useful randarts this time around. In fact, plenty of artifacts, period; I found 69! My paladin only found 34, and my priest, who spent a long time scumming 4950', found 50.

Overall takeaway: artifacts are way too common. Ammo is way too common (and I have a tendency to hoard it despite almost never using it). Healing potions are a bit too common. ?Recharging is absolutely too rare (needed for _ID, _Mapping, _Speed). -Detection showed up early which made life much, much easier. More monsters should resist acid.

[Rizwan]

Maybe this could be the easy option for new players where they find lots of artifacts and the other one could be the challenge option for experienced players where finding artifacts takes a lot of scumming?

[ewert]

Overall takeaway: artifacts are way too common. Ammo is way too common (and I have a tendency to hoard it despite almost never using it). Healing potions are a bit too common. ?Recharging is absolutely too rare (needed for _ID, _Mapping, _Speed). -Detection showed up early which made life much, much easier. More monsters should resist acid.

Randarts has the commoness problem I understand, not standards? If you want to load the ammo-fixed object.txt I posted somewhere (yeah that was an oversight on the rarities, based on early modifications and I missed it because I didn't use archery). Also dropped healing potions in that file a bit. You can sell/rebuy both _id and _mapping to save ?Recharge for _speed/healing/*destr*, but I'm gonna go on a limb and say "RNG" on that one. -Det is a bit later but more common in that object.txt too.

Been playing rangers now since god knows how long, and the new file sort of means ego ammo are damn rare until you start tackling good/great dropping monsters ... Broke a savefile that was in statgain randarts with a very nice bow, but that ranger had not found any ego ammo yet, for example.

[Timo Pietilä]

It was usually not hard to uncurse Calris.

Would you prefer to revert to resting 10K gameturns on DL1 4 or 5 times to collect enough enchant to_hit to break the curse?

Well, in older days it required positive enchanting before it could break the curse, so it needed a lot more enchant scrolls, secondly scrolls of enchant weapons were a lot rarer in shops. It could take quite a while before you could break the curse in Calris. Sometimes you got it to (+10,+20) without breaking it (in which case scroll of *remove curse* was pretty much the only option).

My suggestion is to remove enchant scroll curse-breaking ability completely, and give that to basic remove curse with some small chance (10%? 5%?) of success.

Or remove enchant scrolls from basic store items. Make enchanting much harder to do (that also partially solves the "early bows are too powerful" -problem).