Deep detrimentals?

[scud]

I've returned after a year in the wilderness. To be honest I've not registered a whole heap of differences between 3.4.1 and the 3.3(?) I had been playing (other than the max stack size, the excellent new quiver dynamics, and the horrible un-resizable window).

What I have noticed for the first time – and this isn't to say it wasn't there in 3.3 – is how late in the game the negative scrolls/potions appear. I discovered my first Curse Armour at CL40+, and have *just* identified Potion of Sleep at 1.8m Game Turns and 21m XP. Didn't these use to be <500' items?

Oh, and one quick question: what do folks do for rNether these days? I've spent quite some time killing things around DL90 and as far as I can see the only resistor I've encountered is Hithlomir. What else is out there?

Oh, and happy new year!

[Derakon]

Vanilla generally shouldn't be trying for lots of really big changes. It's a well-playtested game and it just needs a few subtle tweaks.

Potions of Sleep and Booze were always shallow items, but just because they're shallow doesn't mean you'll necessarily encounter them. They may be more rare now than they used to be. Curse Weapon and Curse Armor have always been deep items (as were Potions of Death / Detonations before they got removed).

Artifacts with resist nether:

$  grep -E "^N:|RES_NE" artifact.txt | grep -B1 RES_NE | grep N:|cut -d: -f3
of Power 'The One Ring'
'Evenstar'
'Bladeturner'
'Mediator'
'Soulkeeper'
of Isildur
of Arvedui
of Himring
'Hithlomir'
of Morgoth
of Hammerhand
'Colannon'
of Fëanor
'Dal-i-thalion'
of Melkor
of Ulmo
'Bloodspike'
of Aulë
of Olórin
of Fundin Bluecloak
of Éowyn

[scud]

Vanilla generally shouldn't be trying for lots of really big changes. It's a well-playtested game and it just needs a few subtle tweaks.

Indeed. Once the game window is again resizable rather than rescalable, and once there's a squelch by value option, vanilla will be complete.

I have Evenstar; will see how I can integrate it with my other stuff.

I also have Arvedui but it has the four basic resistances plus shards and nexus, according to the description. Will try it on the next time I go home...

[Derakon]

...d'oh, RES_NETHER and RES_NEXUS both start with "RES_NE", so my above list is invalid. Fixed list:

$ grep -E "^N:|RES_NETH" artifact.txt | grep -B1 RES_NETH | grep N:|cut -d: -f3
of Power 'The One Ring'
'Evenstar'
'Bladeturner'
'Soulkeeper'
of Himring
'Hithlomir'
of Morgoth
'Dal-i-thalion'
of Melkor
of Ulmo
of Olórin
of Fundin Bluecloak
of Éowyn

Sorry about that.

[Oramin]

Unless they changed it from 3.3.2, "Elvenkind" items should have a chance to spawn with Nether Resistance (like the Law Dragon Scale Mail of Elvenkind that was my endgame armor for my most recent Ranger).

[scud]

Cheers, both.

I suspect that in the *vast* majority of my games I'd be wearing a swanky pair of Dal-i-thalions by now, so rNether is rarely an issue.

The lack of Dal is the RNG's punishment for my 'conjuring forth' Aiglos at DL 38!

I've recently downspeeded by a couple of points to wear Stormwalker, which means I currently have Acid, Electricity and Fire immunity. Which is nice.

Have also just found Soulkeeper, but will continue with Isildur until I manage to work rConf back into the equation. In the meantime I'll keep on looking at elven cloaks and dragonmail...

[Timo Pietilä]

Oh, and one quick question: what do folks do for rNether these days?

Nothing basically. Nether is so called Luxury Resist, you don't need it because its side-effect is harmless and damage is highly variable so that you can't rely on it saving your day. If you can get it with otherwise good set of things, then fine, if not, it doesn't matter.

Important high resists: nexus to prevent teleports and stat scrambling, chaos to prevent hallucination, sound or pStun to prevent stunning (all of them in case of pStun), dark&light or pBlind to prevent blindness (melee blinding still blinds with dark&light) and pConf to prevent confusion.

...blind is protection and not resist, right? Can't make difference between those types based on edit-files, and can't remember because I play mostly dwarfs. I know stun is protection and falls in category of abilities with ESP and FA instead of resistances (magi instead of aman), but edit-file flag for it says RES_STUN.

[Derakon]

Yeah, there's Protection from Blindness. Blind, confusion, hallucination, and stunning are all status ailments instead of elements, so they get protections instead of resistances.

[scud]

Nether is so called Luxury Resist, you don't need it because its side-effect is harmless and damage is highly variable so that you can't rely on it saving your day. If you can get it with otherwise good set of things, then fine, if not, it doesn't matter.

Hmmm. Storming into graveyards is one of my greatest pleasures, and rNetherlessness would put an end to that (and to me).

Anyway... have killed the Big Guy. Went in with 75x *healings*, 49x lifes, and 43x mass banishments. In hindsight that might have been overkill

Was a strangely artifactless kit I ended up with:
Amulet of Trickery (for nexus and DEX sustain)
Power Dragon Scale Mail (which ended up as my only rElec and rShard)
Elven Cloak of the Magi (for INT points and sustain)

Dal-i-thalion seemed to be the only viable source of rNether, and the best weapon I found was the Lance of the Eolingas (having spent 99% of the game with Aiglos). Looking at the ladder it appears Eolingas is regularly used as the Morgy killer in more recent games.

If I had my time again I would have kept Cubragol for speed: I barely fired a missile in the 500k turns between killing Sauron and Morgy. I'd also have gone in for the kill a bit quicker, although it took me an *age* (and the Crown of Gondor) to max my CON.

Noticed that after nearly 2.5m turns and 77m XP I'd still failed to find one staff, three scrolls, a potion, three rings (The One; Vilya; plus?), and a mushroom. I wonder what they were...

[Timo Pietilä]

Hmmm. Storming into graveyards is one of my greatest pleasures, and rNetherlessness would put an end to that (and to me).

Nether resist reduces damage to only 6/7 at it's worst, 1/2 at it's best. 550 becomes 471 (full strength only dracolichs, Carcharoth and Ossë (new) or Azriel (old)). It isn't that dangerous, only relatively common (as bolt or ball), and resist doesn't help you in worst case scenario that much: you still can't be in sight of two Dracoliches (or nightcrawlers if already wounded) at once even with it. You can clean graveyards just fine without it, it just takes a bit more planning.

I find shard more important: Gelugons are common, get summoned by bazillion other demons and move at speed +20. That one type of monster makes it more important than nether.

Noticed that after nearly 2.5m turns and 77m XP I'd still failed to find one staff, three scrolls, a potion, three rings (The One; Vilya; plus?), and a mushroom. I wonder what they were...

Probably some useless/bad shallow stuff that you dived past before they got generated.

[scud]

Nether is so called Luxury Resist.

You're right, as always.

Have just had my first ever clean win as anything other than a Half Elf Ranger: Prudence the Half-Troll Paladin took the Big Man down for the cost of 18 *Healings*, 6 Lifes, and 15 Mass Banishments.

Played 3.3.2 because I 'need' a properly rescaleable window, and used randarts for the first time in any serious attempt. Never found a usable rNether, and never found a usable pStun. The closest I came to death was shortly after reaching level 50 when I lay unconscious for several real-time minutes while watching bad guys bounce off my Protection from Evil!

Randarts was interesting. There were ridiculous stat and speed boosts (was cruising at +48 speed) but the actual weapon damage seemed poor – best Morgy killer I found had average damage of 342 – and I couldn't get my armour class above 170, which Horned Reapers in particular seemed to carve through at will. Furthermore I ended up without *any* magical sustains other than HLife.

If I learnt one thing from playing a Paladin rather than a Ranger, it was just how much I love Stone to Mud!

EDIT: Are there a finite number of randarts? Around the time I hit CL50 they seemed to almost completely dry up. There were plenty of weapons, but looking at my final artifact knowledge the categories that stood out were helms (5), gloves (4), DSM (5, and all but one of them useless), and 'other armour' (8 in total). Looked a bit 'light' to me.

[Derakon]

There should be one randart for each standart in the game, and I think the game tries to ensure that there's more or less the same number of items in each equipment category. Honestly your counts look about right, though I'm unsure what "other armor" covers.

[scud]

your counts look about right, though I'm unsure what "other armor" covers.

Not sure why there's a distinction between the two, but I had 5x 'hard armor' and 3x 'soft armor'. Add to that the 5x DSM and you get 13, which is indeed the number of 'body armors' listed in the 3.1.2v2 spoiler.

Appears I was way down on headgear (11 listed, including His Massive Iron Crown) and handgear (nine listed).