The perils of Superb feelings

[ulrichvonbek]

I'm playing a Pally, and I figure I can just cast remove curse if I put something on that isn't a good item. I mean it worked for the = of protection -11 and the cloak of enveloping, right? And I got a superb feeling, that could be an artifact helm sitting there on the ground.

You feel more stupid!
You feel more naive!
You are wearing The Iron Helm of Gorlim
Oops! It feels deathly cold!

It was an artifact all right

[Tregonsee]

What version are you using? In 3.2 it would at least say what artifact it was...

[ulrichvonbek]

What version are you using? In 3.2 it would at least say what artifact it was...

3.1.2 - I did the really bad lazy wield, straight off the ground without dropping something else to pick it up first Now I either need to suffer through until I find *remove curse* or scum the BM for it.

[scud]

Wandering a little...

My recently deceased CL46 ranger says from beyond the grave:

a. next time you've got a nearly dead Greater Draconic Q two squares from you just shoot the bloody thing rather than melee, even if you're very low on nice arrows. Just because you've recently killed Glaurung, his eleven summoned Big Worms and two dozen assorted Ancients doesn't mean you're dragon-proof.

b. in 700k turns I don't recall encountering a single bad non-artifact: no Rings of Swiping and Missing, or Boots of Running Through Treacle, or Armour of Weapon Magnetism, or Amulets of Nearsightedness, or even a simple Sword of Feather-Tickling.

Is the sudden absence of bad stuff deliberate or accidental?

[Derakon]

Cursed items are gone from the game, except for cursed egos and artifacts. In general the game tries to reduce the number of items generated, without affecting the number of useful items generated, the goal being to reduce the tedium of sorting through vast piles of loot. You can still find "bad" items early on (e.g. weapons with minuses to-hit and to-dam) but they won't be cursed. Still, that doesn't mean you can blindly wield everything you find, as my poor hobbit who got a Morgul weapon stuck to his greedy little paws discovered much to his dismay...

[PowerDiver]

Early jewelry with negative values is still cursed. Do not test-wield jewelry until you have a means of remove curse.

[scud]

You can still find "bad" items early on (e.g. weapons with minuses to-hit and to-dam) but they won't be cursed. Still, that doesn't mean you can blindly wield everything you find, as my poor hobbit who got a Morgul weapon stuck to his greedy little paws discovered much to his dismay...

And the bad stuff is sensed as 'bad'? Given the derisory offers I get at the 'Cosh Converters' weapons store I'm squelching average stuff pretty much from the outset, so perhaps I just never notice them.

Was it once the case that regular negative items / armour were 'magical' (in the same way that your Morgul weapon was presumably 'ego') or am I imagining things again?

Early jewelry with negative values is still cursed. Do not test-wield jewelry until you have a means of remove curse.

I'm not sure I saw so much as a ring of Unsearching, but does this mean no Rings of Undamage*, Unprotection**, Unspeed etc?

Earlier this year the first found example of every item of jewellery was pretty much guaranteed to be bad.





* If there every was one. Not sure.
** See '*' above.

[buzzkill]

Now it's only a matter of time before Gorlim is recognized as an cursed item outlier, a reason to commit suicide, a cause for town scumming and a general nuisance. Any one of which are unbearably tedious and make the game less fun and so it will converted to uncursed status, and then later enchanted into something more useful.

[Magnate]

Now it's only a matter of time before Gorlim is recognized as an cursed item outlier, a reason to commit suicide, a cause for town scumming and a general nuisance. Any one of which are unbearably tedious and make the game less fun and so it will converted to uncursed status, and then later enchanted into something more useful.

You jest, but there *are* people who suicide if they wield a heavily-cursed item.

[buzzkill]

You jest, but there *are* people who suicide if they wield a heavily-cursed item.

Or a non-heavily cursed item. What ever happened to the sticky curse? Where did that that sticky Longsword (-4,-4) go?

I jest, but it's all to often used argument when somebody wants something changed or not changed... and I don't don't hear a "that'll never happen" from our chief spokesperson .

[Derakon]

The sticky curse is still around. It got dropped for bog-standard bad items in the interests of making test-wield feasible.

And yeah, I suicided a character who put on a Morgul weapon around 600'. How long would it have taken me to scum/find a scroll of *Remove Curse*? And in the meantime my capability to kill things came down entirely on archery, which I personally find rather tedious (imagine trying to kill an entire orc pit by trying to shoot each monster down). In the amount of time it would have taken me to get such a scroll, I could have raised five characters from birth through to 1000' at least.

I'm all for unexpected challenges, so long as they're interesting challenges. Suddenly turning your weapon into a nerfbat that you are required to use for the forseeable future is not interesting to me, so I don't continue playing if it happens.

That said, Gorlim has no need to be tweaked, since the only time you're going to put it on without knowing it's unusual is when you wield straight from the floor. If you really felt the need you could patch that too, by having artifacts be noticed on walkover.

[Magnate]

The sticky curse is still around. It got dropped for bog-standard bad items in the interests of making test-wield feasible.

And yeah, I suicided a character who put on a Morgul weapon around 600'. How long would it have taken me to scum/find a scroll of *Remove Curse*? And in the meantime my capability to kill things came down entirely on archery, which I personally find rather tedious (imagine trying to kill an entire orc pit by trying to shoot each monster down). In the amount of time it would have taken me to get such a scroll, I could have raised five characters from birth through to 1000' at least.

I'm all for unexpected challenges, so long as they're interesting challenges. Suddenly turning your weapon into a nerfbat that you are required to use for the forseeable future is not interesting to me, so I don't continue playing if it happens.

That said, Gorlim has no need to be tweaked, since the only time you're going to put it on without knowing it's unusual is when you wield straight from the floor. If you really felt the need you could patch that too, by having artifacts be noticed on walkover.

Which has been proposed several times, and will doubtless be implemented, making the game a little easier. But it's been several years coming, so that makes it ok.

I think 600' is fair enough. My earlier comment about people who quit after wielding a heavy-curse item kind of assumed that they were down in the depths where finding *RC* might actually happen - 2000' or so.

The original assault on TMJ held that un-usable items (like broken sticks etc.) had no place in the game. One wonders whether that will indeed result in things like morgul weapons and Gorlim being removed, or not. Is there anything other than flavour which keeps them in?

Leon Marrick always used to say that there was at least one possible use for every single item in Sangband. I found that rather appealing, given that the game lacks nothing for flavour.

[Derakon]

Gorlim (and sticks, etc.) have a use: you can chuck 'em at sleeping monsters to wake them up and have them chase you down.

More seriously, Gorlim is potentially usable by a warrior or a hybrid that doesn't care about casting -- so long as the curse gets broken. It's a weak replacement for Hammerhand. If you made its combat bonuses higher it'd be more tempting. You could also give it some stat bonuses to go with the penalties, now that we have multiple pvals.

[ulrichvonbek]

Still no ?*Remove Curse*, but a RoS+10 showed up in the black market, and I found a =rPoison while making quick trips down to find egos to raise $$ for the RoS.

I'm still stuck with Gorlim, but it's a lot more tollerable now, especially since I got a few !Wis and now my spellcasting is just weak with a small mana pool, not feeble with a tiny mana pool.

[Magnate]

Gorlim (and sticks, etc.) have a use: you can chuck 'em at sleeping monsters to wake them up and have them chase you down.

More seriously, Gorlim is potentially usable by a warrior or a hybrid that doesn't care about casting -- so long as the curse gets broken. It's a weak replacement for Hammerhand. If you made its combat bonuses higher it'd be more tempting.

That would attract a lot of criticism, since we're trying to go the other way on off-weapon combat boni, but ...

You could also give it some stat bonuses to go with the penalties, now that we have multiple pvals.

... that is exactly what multiple pvals are for.