New nightly

[Derakon]

Often randarts will have a hole that you have to fill with egos. I'd really like "magi to go back to rconf instead of rblind. That seems like a good choice to fill a possible rconf hole.

There's also the possibility of getting rconf on cloaks and helms of magi (i think) so you could use them also. I have no problem with having randart sets have a 25% probability of not generating a useful item with rconf (or any other resistance)

I'm seeing more like a 75% chance though, which is what bothers me. Again, four randart games, only one of which had pconf on an (i.e. single) otherwise-usable item, and even then only in the endgame. This is not tracking even close to how standart games normally go. I agree that randart games should be able to have different "it is hard to cover this hole" issues than standart games, but they shouldn't always be the same issues.

[fizzix]

I don't have artifact spoilers handy for my previous games, but basically the same held true: confusion protection was incredibly rare, and when I did find it, it was typically on weapons that simply couldn't compete.

Contrast that with standart games, in which you're practically guaranteed to find one of Isildur, Rohirrim, or Caspanion fairly early on -- and Holhenneth and Thranduil, which also show up reliably and early, are excellent contenders for covering blindness resistance. In other words, the standart set is designed (intentionally or not) to give you access to blindness + confusion resistance with a minimum of fuss. And of course, all of these artifacts are, if not great, at least usable in the endgame. And eventually you'll probably find Gondor, which is great -- in fact, it's freakin' absurd -- telepathy, blindness/confusion, STR/WIS/CON/Speed, and a 250HP healing activation!

One question: is randart rarity based solely on power? I wouldn't be surprised if the rarities for standarts deviate from the formula used to generate randart rarities, if so. It'd be interesting to see which standarts are more common than they "should" be, and which less.

Often randarts will have a hole that you have to fill with egos. I'd really like "magi to go back to rconf instead of rblind. That seems like a good choice to fill a possible rconf hole.

There's also the possibility of getting rconf on cloaks and helms of magi (i think) so you could use them also. I have no problem with having randart sets have a 25% probability of not generating a useful item with rconf (or any other resistance)

[fizzix]

* This is the second time I've seen an orc unique with an escort composed entirely of a single normally-solitary race (first time orc captains, second time orc shamen). Is this expected?

This is the difference between the ESCORT and the ESCORTS flag. Most uniques have the ESCORT flag which means that they only get grouped monsters if those monsters normally occur in groups. A couple of the orcs have ESCORTS flags (I think Azog, can't remember who else). These orcs can get groups of captains or shamans. Similarly, Lungorthin, Moria, and Gothmog can get escorts of Balrogs, Gelugons, Horned reapers, and Pit Fiends. All these are demons that occur only solitarily on their own.

[Derakon]

I am working on this but don't have a fix yet. I have definitely seen this issue with spider summoning as well.

Okay. I didn't remember if you had a fix yet, hence the report. Good to know you're able to reproduce it at least.

I think I have seen this before. I wonder what the best thing to do is. I'm not sure I mind the current behavior, but it is a little strange. Unfortunately the fix would be to give monster detection a "-- more --" prompt or something, after which the monsters all disappear (you can't keep displaying them since the monsters might move before your next turn, and the game doesn't currently have structures to separate the view from the actual reality of the situation).

Yeah, this may be one of those things where the fix would either require a horrible hack or a complete re-do of how the game tracks and represents state. There's a few cases where we want to be able to separate what the player sees from what's actually going on (e.g. undetected monsters picking up objects, opening doors, boring through walls, etc.), so this might be worth doing eventually, but it'd be a lot of work.

Yeah, that is disappointing. Do you think dragon pits are too lucrative, vaults are not lucrative enough, or both?

A bit of both, I guess. Part of the issue here is that what I was really looking for at this stage was late-game consumables, like scrolls of Destruction / Mass Banish and big heal potions. Those kinds of things just require generating very large numbers of objects, which dragon pits do better than vaults. For gear, vaults may still be better.

I haven't taken the time to load up your savefiles yet, but do you think it's the case that too few items have rconf? Or that they're all terrible? Or just that they're not nearly as good as other items in the slot?

If you compare the numbers between my randart set and the standart set, you'll see that a similar number, total, have protection from confusion. The problem is twofold, really: first, most of the sources were on weapons, which absolutely have to be decent damage sources for everyone except mages and the occasional priest. Second, the items that did have confusion protection were quite rare. I counted several items in the spoiler that I would have considered using, had I found them, but the ones I did find were either unusable or late.

I don't have artifact spoilers handy for my previous games, but basically the same held true: confusion protection was incredibly rare, and when I did find it, it was typically on weapons that simply couldn't compete.

Contrast that with standart games, in which you're practically guaranteed to find one of Isildur, Rohirrim, or Caspanion fairly early on -- and Holhenneth and Thranduil, which also show up reliably and early, are excellent contenders for covering blindness resistance. In other words, the standart set is designed (intentionally or not) to give you access to blindness + confusion resistance with a minimum of fuss. And of course, all of these artifacts are, if not great, at least usable in the endgame. And eventually you'll probably find Gondor, which is great -- in fact, it's freakin' absurd -- telepathy, blindness/confusion, STR/WIS/CON/Speed, and a 250HP healing activation!

One question: is randart rarity based solely on power? I wouldn't be surprised if the rarities for standarts deviate from the formula used to generate randart rarities, if so. It'd be interesting to see which standarts are more common than they "should" be, and which less.

[d_m]

Thanks for the detailed feedback! I will respond inline:

Summon spells can still pull up nothing (e.g. Dwar trying to summon hounds). Dunno if this was supposed to have been fixed yet.

I am working on this but don't have a fix yet. I have definitely seen this issue with spider summoning as well.

With fire immunity, when I get breathed on I get the message "The Foo breathes fire. You resist the effect!" The resistance message is new; what exactly am I resisting here that I otherwise would be vulnerable to?

This is probably the result of Jeff/Gabe's work refactoring messages. The message should either reflect the immunity or just be hidden... I'm not sure which.

This is the second time I've seen an orc unique with an escort composed entirely of a single normally-solitary race (first time orc captains, second time orc shamen). Is this expected?

I think this is a result of refactoring Gabe did to generalize monster bases and remove some of the hardcoding that was present. I will have to think about whether this is worth fixing, although I agree that it seems weird (maybe some kind of orcish officers convention was going on).

I detected a Quylthulg, after which it blinked. I saw it at its previous location, then saw it update to the new location (which was still not normally visible to me) after it blinked since my next turn hadn't come yet. Is this intended?

I think I have seen this before. I wonder what the best thing to do is. I'm not sure I mind the current behavior, but it is a little strange. Unfortunately the fix would be to give monster detection a "-- more --" prompt or something, after which the monsters all disappear (you can't keep displaying them since the monsters might move before your next turn, and the game doesn't currently have structures to separate the view from the actual reality of the situation).

I saw the message "gazes at you with mind blasting". I'm pretty sure that phrasing is new and it could be better. What's wrong with the old mind blasting message?

I think this is also fallout from Jeff/Gabe's work with messages

When squelching ammo, the top setting is for all non-artifact [arrows|bolts|etc.]. Given the total lack of artifact ammo as it stands, this seems a bit odd. Then again, maybe there's plans to introduce artifact ammo in the future?

Yeah, there has been talk and I think we should keep our options open (rather than doing a bunch of work to hide this option).

Clearing a dragon pit is far, far more lucrative than clearing a vault. Which is rather sad.

Yeah, that is disappointing. Do you think dragon pits are too lucrative, vaults are not lucrative enough, or both?

I can confirm that the earthquake bug is fixed.

Great!

This is the fourth randart game in which protection from confusion has just not been available on anything useful -- though, this time right at the endgame I got an aggravating pike that had it. I generally consider getting blindness + confusion resistance to be an important turning point for my characters, since it allows them to ditch non-0% failure escapes. This turning point happens routinely for standart characters somewhere before 3000', if I recall correctly. Blindness and confusion are important protections, and while I don't expect every randart game to provide them, going 4 in a row without them tells me that something is wrong with protection distributions.

I haven't taken the time to load up your savefiles yet, but do you think it's the case that too few items have rconf? Or that they're all terrible? Or just that they're not nearly as good as other items in the slot?

[Derakon]

Having won with the character I posted notes for earlier, here's the remainder of what I wrote down. This is all as of the April 9th nightly.

* Summon spells can still pull up nothing (e.g. Dwar trying to summon hounds). Dunno if this was supposed to have been fixed yet.

* With fire immunity, when I get breathed on I get the message "The Foo breathes fire. You resist the effect!" The resistance message is new; what exactly am I resisting here that I otherwise would be vulnerable to?

* I got two randarts that activate for polymorph. It'd be nice if randarts didn't get duplicate activations. The only duplications in the standarts are between the *thancs and the Paur* gauntlets, if I recall correctly.

* This is the second time I've seen an orc unique with an escort composed entirely of a single normally-solitary race (first time orc captains, second time orc shamen). Is this expected?

* Randarts seem to get off-weapon combat boosts a lot. Though I recall Magnate saying this is going to change.

* I detected a Quylthulg, after which it blinked. I saw it at its previous location, then saw it update to the new location (which was still not normally visible to me) after it blinked since my next turn hadn't come yet. Is this intended?

* I saw the message "gazes at you with mind blasting". I'm pretty sure that phrasing is new and it could be better. What's wrong with the old mind blasting message?

* When squelching ammo, the top setting is for all non-artifact [arrows|bolts|etc.]. Given the total lack of artifact ammo as it stands, this seems a bit odd. Then again, maybe there's plans to introduce artifact ammo in the future?

* Clearing a dragon pit is far, far more lucrative than clearing a vault. Which is rather sad.

* If an item is inscribed with !*, and it is in a pile of items on the floor, then when you try to pick it up you are prompted to confirm. If it is alone then you just pick it up. One of these two should hold in all cases.

* I can confirm that the earthquake bug is fixed.

* From my randarts, 9 weapons, 2 launchers, 2 pieces of armor (body and shield), and 2 rings provided protection from confusion. Compare that to the standart set, which has protection from confusion on 1 amulet (Ingwe), 4 pieces of body armor (Bladeturner, Rohirrim, Isildur, and Caspanion), 3 hats (including Gondor), 1 pair of boots (Dal-I-Thalion), and 1 weapon (Totila).

This is the fourth randart game in which protection from confusion has just not been available on anything useful -- though, this time right at the endgame I got an aggravating pike that had it. I generally consider getting blindness + confusion resistance to be an important turning point for my characters, since it allows them to ditch non-0% failure escapes. This turning point happens routinely for standart characters somewhere before 3000', if I recall correctly. Blindness and confusion are important protections, and while I don't expect every randart game to provide them, going 4 in a row without them tells me that something is wrong with protection distributions.

For what it's worth, pre-Morgoth dump, post-Morgoth dump, and artifact spoiler.

Also, I just want to say that the devs are doing a great job. Keep it up, guys!

[Derakon]

It doesn't even need to be that complicated; just something like putting "--" at the beginning would suffice. That'd even be preferable if there is a limit on the maximum line length for notes that this would infringe upon.

[fizzix]

* First off, it'd be nice if there were some way that manual notes stood out from automatic notes in the file, so they'd be more greppable.

Do you have something in mind? If it's as simple as entering "Player note:" or "<name> says:" before hand, that should be relatively straightforward to add.

[Timo Pietilä]

Ah, it's the early encounters with Mirkwood spiders that used to be so scary.

Nasty buggers, they were. And probably still are.

To me it's cave spiders because you meet them so early. Poisonous spiders come into play so much later that you have some survival capability (if not much). Stepping into room full of cave spiders can be instant death to early char.

[scud]

Ah, it's the early encounters with Mirkwood spiders that used to be so scary.

Nasty buggers, they were. And probably still are.

[Derakon]

Wood spiders poison, as do Mirkwood spiders. Cave spiders are simply the second monster that shows up in groups, and they're fast, have twice as many HP as Jackals, and deal about 2.5x more damage on average. That's more than enough.

[scud]

To my knowledge, cave spiders have never poisoned.

Did they not? They've certainly got a nasty nibble on them.

It's a rubbish sword, but I feel rather bad that it never encountered a single slayable thing.

Live fast, die young, leave a charisma-enhanced corpse.

[Derakon]

To my knowledge, cave spiders have never poisoned. However, they didn't use to have the "smart" pack AI, so they'd chase you into corridors; given their speed that could actually be more dangerous for young characters.

[scud]

Wasted one turn failing to Phase Door, wasted one turn panicking and trying to get back to a corridor, and by that time they were on 3-4 sides. It was horrible, it all happened so fast, etc.

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have got into such a position. I'm very gung-ho for the first 10-12 character levels.

[buzzkill]

Surely that sword, in the hands of just about anyone, would 1-hit cave spiders. So my question is, why tip-toe?