playtesting new item distribution - r2025

[Pete Mack]

@fizzix-
stat gain is the one object distribution that is definitely better in 3.1+ than it was earlier.
There used to be an absolute flood of stat potions by dl 60. (Everything could drop stat potions, and pretty much everything did.)

The whole notion of "stat gain" is pretty much gone in 3.1+, partly because it's easier to get your stats up with equipment, but also because stat potions don't come in floods from orc and dragon pits anymore.

[PowerDiver]

they can't be. I think it's pretty obvious that I don't think they should be useful.

There is a current design paradigm that things that are never useful should be removed. That's part of the attack on TMJ.

If you do not want them to be useful, you need to argue to have them removed rather than changed.

FWIW, I am agnostic on both the design paradigm and on the gain-one-lose-one potions.

[fizzix]

There is a current design paradigm that things that are never useful should be removed. That's part of the attack on TMJ.

If you do not want them to be useful, you need to argue to have them removed rather than changed.

FWIW, I am agnostic on both the design paradigm and on the gain-one-lose-one potions.

Potions of sleep, poison, lose memories, confusion, are all not useful, but I don't think anyone is thinking of removing them. Amulets of adornment are the most useless item imaginable, and I haven't heard any desire to remove them either. TMJ should not be about removing useless items, squelch does that. So I disagree with the 'current design paradigm' also, as you put it.

@Pete: I'm more talking about the way that SP, HP, blows are based on stats rather than how the stats are actually gained. They're completely different issues, but I find that thinking about stat-gain invariably brings me to thinking about these effects. I realize this wasn't at all clear in what I was saying before, that was just my mind going off on its tangents and making the horrible assumptions that others would do the same.

[PowerDiver]

Potions of sleep, poison, lose memories, confusion, are all not useful, but I don't think anyone is thinking of removing them.

In order to keep them, they were improved to do more damage when thrown than avg shots from a sling.
[edit] I'm not sure about the damage. I think they do 2d6, but I don't know why I think that.

[fizzix]

In order to keep them, they were improved to do more damage when thrown than avg shots from a sling.
[edit] I'm not sure about the damage. I think they do 2d6, but I don't know why I think that.

and the amulets of adornment? There's a specific purpose to having useless items that you need to learn to find the flavors of the good items. This is a very important purpose if you really want to promote an id-by-use system. Removing all bad/useless items would really take the fun out of it.

[PowerDiver]

and the amulets of adornment? There's a specific purpose to having useless items that you need to learn to find the flavors of the good items. This is a very important purpose if you really want to promote an id-by-use system. Removing all bad/useless items would really take the fun out of it.

It's a paradigm, not a 100% rule, and it is work in progress. I would not be surprised if amulets of adornment disappear in the future.

I don't disagree with your viewpoint, but that doesn't matter. As I have said many times, I believe in squelch as the answer to TMJ, but squelch is not yet accepted as a design principle. The powers in charge believe that squelch is a necessary evil, and anything that makes squelch necessary is a fix waiting to happen.

[PowerDiver]

I've played most of a game with changes up to 2038. Here's the dump. I've killed 4600+ monsters and collected 70+ artifacts. This char would be ready to kill M except for a hole in rChaos and a preference for a couple CLs to get 0% fail on banish and massBanish. It wouldn't be a stretch to kill M now, so AFAIAC the game should count as over for consumables purposes.

I think I've used about a half dozen !rMana and 1 !LIFE, and no !heal or !*HEAL this game. Those potions seem to be abundant. Part of that is the excessively powerful CLW spell of course. I finished stat gain at what I consider to be a reasonable time. I think the gain-one-lose-ones are fine. They drop when with previous drop level you would have gotten a stat potion anyway. Ego ammo seems fine. There are two serious shortfalls that I noticed.

I saw only 2 -map all game. Compare that to 9 -dAll. There does not seem to be any pattern to drop rates. Perhaps we should create one.

I saw only 1 PB8 and no PB9. However, I saw 2 MB9 and lost count of the number of MB8. That's not fair. The priest books should have the same level, rarity, and costs as the magic books.

[ewert]

Wow 3 rods of healing. =P 46k active turns so pretty fast.

Is there any design choices with the mage/priest book differences, or does it harken back to days of yore when someone just ... inputted numbers in there. =P If not, I agree they should have same lvls and rarities.

As for patterning ... well I guess one could do a system, where if x turns pass and all item's get +y to rarity allowance. If the system generates that base item, then the rarity is reset to default. This would:

reward exploring, because if you don't you might miss that (insert really wanted item type that you have not yet found) that had gathered double, triple or more of rarity allowance, and was generated on the level finally

generated a pattern eventually much faster than pure RNG

Whatcha think?

[PowerDiver]

Is there any design choices with the mage/priest book differences, or does it harken back to days of yore when someone just ... inputted numbers in there. =P

I believe the current PB distribution is the old MB distribution. Mage spells were redone long long ago [removing Globe of Invulnerability], and the mage books made easier to find, but the priest books have been ignored. Those two mage books are more powerful than the corresponding priest books, so it is doubly unfair.

It didn't matter so much with the old max{ML,depth} drop calculation, but with (depth+ML/2) and 3.1's smaller drops the deep priest books are too rare.

[PowerDiver]

Here's a diff vs 2038 with a couple boot rarities fixed and the PBs set to match MBs.

[d_m]

Committed as r2040.

Thanks for fixing the boot rarity. I had meant to do it this weekend but I've been sick as a dog and haven't done anything productive. Much easier to apply a patch than actually have to think!

I didn't look closely at the PB changes... I think I followed the argument that they were broken. If anyone thinks the patch was wrong please let me know.

[PowerDiver]

I think the gain-one-lose-ones are fine. They drop when with previous drop level you would have gotten a stat potion anyway.

Boy was that mistaken. I'm still used to looking at the W: line instead of the A: line. These should drop 20 to 30, maybe 25 to 30, not 10 to 30.

[ewert]

Well, not looking at the level numbers, how do they feel when playing?

I know if they were 25-30, they would be pretty moot for almost all of my games. 20-30 levels are definitely one of the areas which I tend to take first stairs down, when I am ready for statgain depth. And I don't drop past 20 usually until I am ready.

My view on most items are that they should begin to appear before they are needed. Dlvl 30 almost obsoletes completely statswap potions. Dlvl20 is where you may find them useful. I could go with them being 15-30 though, maybe 10 is too low. OR we could put statgain into fixed +-1 or +-10 amounts, because then they won't be so powerful (now you realllllly want to get minimum 17 and more likely 18 base, because at 18 base one potion can jumpstart it more than it will go down with next potion).

[PowerDiver]

Well, not looking at the level numbers, how do they feel when playing?

I know if they were 25-30, they would be pretty moot for almost all of my games. 20-30 levels are definitely one of the areas which I tend to take first stairs down, when I am ready for statgain depth. And I don't drop past 20 usually until I am ready.

My view on most items are that they should begin to appear before they are needed. Dlvl 30 almost obsoletes completely statswap potions. Dlvl20 is where you may find them useful. I could go with them being 15-30 though, maybe 10 is too low. OR we could put statgain into fixed +-1 or +-10 amounts, because then they won't be so powerful (now you realllllly want to get minimum 17 and more likely 18 base, because at 18 base one potion can jumpstart it more than it will go down with next potion).

Most items are moot for most of the time in most of the games. That's just how it is.

The potions were changed to +/- 1. Then they were unchanged because stat potions were too rare. Now that you changed rarities, we could go back to +/- 1.

[Timo Pietilä]

My view on most items are that they should begin to appear before they are needed. Dlvl 30 almost obsoletes completely statswap potions.

Note that almost nothing is absolutely needed. Stat-potions are one thing that is needed because chars starting stats rarely are high enough that equipment bonuses can negate their need. Stat swap potions are not needed because there is stat gain potions. They are fun, but not any way necessary.

So that sentence should be "...items are that they should begin to appear before they are made obsolete by something better". (and if that means they start to appear too soon, then there is something wrong in either item in question, or that item that makes it obsolete or perhaps one of them is "junk" and should be removed).

For example of item that most consider "is needed" is RoRPoison. My comp char got first of those after killing Sauron. That is how much it was actually needed. With modern angband abundance of poison resist we could quite well remove that whole ring and people would hardly even notice lack of it after getting used to dive without permanent rpoison below 2000'.