Costly...

[Adley]

What is the most costly thing one has ever seen in the black market?

[Derakon]

Ring of Speed +2 back in the frog-knows days (when +1 was equivalent to modern +10). It cost several million AU.

[Timo Pietilä]

Ring of Speed +2 back in the frog-knows days (when +1 was equivalent to modern +10). It cost several million AU.

I have seen high pval BoS couple of times in BM before stores were changed with couple of million AU. Now I bought BoS +8 at armory with less than 30k. Cheap. BM probably has same value decrease for BoS. Not sure if RoS also suffers same broken price. It might be that those high-price times are over.

[fizzix]

I have seen high pval BoS couple of times in BM before stores were changed with couple of million AU. Now I bought BoS +8 at armory with less than 30k. Cheap. BM probably has same value decrease for BoS. Not sure if RoS also suffers same broken price. It might be that those high-price times are over.

The most costly things now seem to be high AC dwarven armor for god knows what reason.

[Nomad]

When I was still playing 3.0.9 I once saw speed boots +9 for about 800k. The most expensive thing I've seen in 3.1.2 was an awl-pike of Gondolin with ESP for just under 200k. There doesn't seem to be much that gets over 100k now apart from Defender weapons.

[Derakon]

The most costly things now seem to be high AC dwarven armor for god knows what reason.

I'd guess this is because AC is currently overvalued by the stores, and dwarven armor gets an extra +d15 AC in addition to the boosts it gets from being an ego-item -- plus several other useful boosts.

[Magnate]

I'd guess this is because AC is currently overvalued by the stores, and dwarven armor gets an extra +d15 AC in addition to the boosts it gets from being an ego-item -- plus several other useful boosts.

Is it? Leaving aside the continuing underpricing of speed, is dwarven armour priced correctly relative to, say, weapons of westernesse, or defenders?

[Timo Pietilä]

Is it? Leaving aside the continuing underpricing of speed, is dwarven armour priced correctly relative to, say, weapons of westernesse, or defenders?

Defenders are way overvalued. Westernesse is about right, Dwarven armors should be somewhere around same price as resistance armors. That's how I feel about them.

[Nomad]

Both Dwarven armour and Defender weapons strike me as items that are awesome game changers if you find them early on, but by the time you've assembled enough money to buy them, you've already got most of the bonuses they give covered and are much more interested in looking for higher resistances and ESP.

I think the trouble with trying to work out any consistent system of pricing is that value is kind of self-referential - price determines what stage in the game you can afford to buy, which affects how much you value the bonuses offered by a particular item, which affects how much that item should be priced. Dwarven armour and Defender weapons would both be exactly as valuable as they're priced to a naked newbie character with no base resistances or FrAct and weak stats, but naked newbs aren't the ones who have 100k AU to spend.

It would be interesting to collect some stats on average cashflow over the course of a game - maybe if you recorded how much money the player has every time they go down to a new max depth? That would help in figuring out what stage a 'typical' character has reached by the time they have x amount of money to spend.

[Timo Pietilä]

Both Dwarven armour and Defender weapons strike me as items that are awesome game changers if you find them early on, but by the time you've assembled enough money to buy them, you've already got most of the bonuses they give covered and are much more interested in looking for higher resistances and ESP.

Problem with defenders are that they are weapons without any combat benefits. That makes them weaker than weapon of slay orc, and way way way weaker than Westernesse. Dwarven armors I have actually used sometimes because of +2 CON and FA if I had resistances from other sources.

Defenders are basically just easy money. Like rods of curing. You need to get them _very_ early because as soon as you find your first westernesse / any weapon with more blows & FA and resistance armor nothing it gives is better than that other weapon.

To make Defender comparable to Westernesse you need to give it same slays, and even then Westernesse wins in most cases, because bonus to STR, DEX and CON. Especially CON.

Weapon needs to be good as weapon, otherwise it is junk.

[Magnate]

Problem with defenders are that they are weapons without any combat benefits. That makes them weaker than weapon of slay orc, and way way way weaker than Westernesse. Dwarven armors I have actually used sometimes because of +2 CON and FA if I had resistances from other sources.

Defenders are basically just easy money. Like rods of curing. You need to get them _very_ early because as soon as you find your first westernesse / any weapon with more blows & FA and resistance armor nothing it gives is better than that other weapon.

To make Defender comparable to Westernesse you need to give it same slays, and even then Westernesse wins in most cases, because bonus to STR, DEX and CON. Especially CON.

Weapon needs to be good as weapon, otherwise it is junk.

Unless you're playing a character who kills mainly with archery, or with spells. In either of those cases, Defenders are excellent.

Defenders are the obverse of +speed where pricing is concerned. Speed is a single characteristic that it's very difficult to price highly enough without unbalancing the randart generator. Defenders are a large collection of 11 different things, few of which are notable on their own (FA is about the most important property of a Defender, and that's very common elsewhere) but which are difficult to rate properly in combination without, again, messing up the generator.

But enough of my woes. IMO Dwarven armour should be significantly more expensive than Of Resistance, but YMMV.

[Timo Pietilä]

Unless you're playing a character who kills mainly with archery, or with spells. In either of those cases, Defenders are excellent.

Unless you are trying to play challenge char, every single char uses melee. A lot of melee. Because of that defenders are no use as they are. Nearly anything worth using as a weapon beats it.

But enough of my woes. IMO Dwarven armour should be significantly more expensive than Of Resistance, but YMMV.

Only thing making Dwarven armor worth using is +2 to CON. FA is too common for having high value for it. +2 CON itself doesn't counter Basic4 resistance, because lack of even one of those is _very_ dangerous deep in dungeon. However because basic4 is pretty common that dilutes the value of basic4 resist, so that they are about same value. It just depends of your situation which is more useful.

If you want to make Dwarven armor valuable reduce the weight. Make them very light high AC hard armors with some bonuses. IIRC mithril armor Frodo got from Bilbo was Dwarven origin, not Elven.

[Magnate]

Unless you are trying to play challenge char, every single char uses melee. A lot of melee. Because of that defenders are no use as they are. Nearly anything worth using as a weapon beats it.

IMO this is a problem with V's combat system(s). Many variants provide for non-challenge play with much less focus on melee. It's wrong that so many magi and priests, despite being limited to four attacks per round, still rely on melee in the endgame. We've toned down archery - without rendering it useless - and we've also reduced the mana costs of attack spells to make magic a more viable main attack form - but there is still more to do.

[Hariolor]

It would be interesting to collect some stats on average cashflow over the course of a game - maybe if you recorded how much money the player has every time they go down to a new max depth? That would help in figuring out what stage a 'typical' character has reached by the time they have x amount of money to spend.

Not stats, but anecdotal evidence (the worst kind!) -

1st trip down reach ~DL 10 CL 10, generally recall with ~5000au in stuff

spend all gold buying scrolls, potions, spellbooks, ammo, etc

2nd trip down reach ~DL 30 CL 18, generally recall with about ~30,000au in stuff (due to at least one good ego and maybe a junk artifact, rod of curing, etc)

sell everything, refill kit, buy a few items to fill any empty slots, have maybe 10k leftover

3rd/4th trip down reach DL 60 CL 30, by this point gold is not an issue.

Basically, as soon as Elvenkind/Dwarven/Defender/Gondolin start showing up with any reliability money rapidly becomes a non-issue.

Charisma and the luck-of-the-draw with starting shopkeeper limits seems to be the biggest game-changer for cashflow, IMO.

[Timo Pietilä]

IMO this is a problem with V's combat system(s). Many variants provide for non-challenge play with much less focus on melee. It's wrong that so many magi and priests, despite being limited to four attacks per round, still rely on melee in the endgame. We've toned down archery - without rendering it useless - and we've also reduced the mana costs of attack spells to make magic a more viable main attack form - but there is still more to do.

If you remove melee-ability or even make it non-necessity for normal playing then it is no longer angband. There's nothing to do in that respect.