What happened to artifacts?

[fizzix]

3.4 did reduce the number of artifacts. This was essentially from popular demand (artifacts were too common) I believe the numbers I quoted were about a 30% reduction of artifact generation for a full clearing of 100 levels.

There are some problems with the artifact allocation algorithm, they tend to really favor depth for artifact creation, so you're just not likely to get artifacts at low levels. There's also a problem of randarts getting based off of uncommon types.

When I get home tonight, I'm going to push to github a fork of 3.4 that has played around with these issues in an attempt to improve the situation (with some moderate success.) The main idea is that it reduces the chance of getting an artifact from a "good" drop (i.e. vault square) and increases the chance of getting an artifact from a new category, a "unique" drop. The chances of generating them from a normal drop are still the same. Alongside this, I implemented a significant flattening of the level curve, so that there isn't as much of a skewness towards drops at high levels (although there are significantly more *items* generated at high levels, so there will be more artifacts there.) As a last step, to counter an overwhelming amount of egos at low levels, I implemented a level based ego drop system, where lower level ego drops tend to be weaker (right now ego item types are equally probable at all levels.)

The upshot of this is that artifacts are slightly more common in my version (10% or so) than in 3.4, but they are much more likely to come as rewards for killing uniques, which always seemed more satisfying to me anyways. They also have a flatter level curve, although it does turn out that a lot of the skewness here comes from item avalanches like ainu/dragon pits and greater vaults.

[Mondkalb]

That sounds like a nice idea. I always hated it, that lots of the uniques are a mere annoyance without a real benefit in drops.

[debo]

but they are much more likely to come as rewards for killing uniques, which always seemed more satisfying to me anyways.

+10e9 LOVE

[Derakon]

It really bugs me to have uniques have mysteriously better drops than other monsters, personally. But then I realized I'd be perfectly happy if the system were modified so that instead of it being a "unique" drop category it was just a "super-boosted" drop category that happened to only be assigned to uniques.

My mind's funny that way.

[Estie]

It really bugs me to have uniques have mysteriously better drops than other monsters, personally. But then I realized I'd be perfectly happy if the system were modified so that instead of it being a "unique" drop category it was just a "super-boosted" drop category that happened to only be assigned to uniques.

My mind's funny that way.

Does it bug you that uniques have mysteriously more hit points, too ?

[Derakon]

Does it bug you that uniques have mysteriously more hit points, too ?

IMO the only special thing in the code that deals with uniques should be the handling of the UNIQUE tag, which ensures a) that there's only ever 1 generated at a time, b) that the monster can't be re-generated if ever killed, and c) the special handling of the monster recall text.

Everything else ought to be handled by other flags -- e.g. if UNIQUE is what causes the monster's hit dice to be maximized instead of the use of a FORCE_MAXHP flag or something, then that should be fixed. If that means a ton of redundant flags that all unique monsters share, then there should be a "unique monster" template that applies them instead.

It's really about ensuring that changes are done in a readily-extensible and reasonably-transparent fashion.

[donalde]

When I get home tonight, I'm going to push to github a fork of 3.4 that has played around with these issues in an attempt to improve the situation (with some moderate success.)

While you tweak on it, can you also look on RNG favouring tunneling heavily on randarts? Sorry, bit OoT, but I thought while you are doing something, you might give it a look?

[Estie]

IMO the only special thing in the code that deals with uniques should be the handling of the UNIQUE tag, which ensures a) that there's only ever 1 generated at a time, b) that the monster can't be re-generated if ever killed, and c) the special handling of the monster recall text.

Everything else ought to be handled by other flags -- e.g. if UNIQUE is what causes the monster's hit dice to be maximized instead of the use of a FORCE_MAXHP flag or something, then that should be fixed. If that means a ton of redundant flags that all unique monsters share, then there should be a "unique monster" template that applies them instead.

It's really about ensuring that changes are done in a readily-extensible and reasonably-transparent fashion.

So better drops are fine as long as they are handled by the BOSS_DROP flag ?

IMHO unique drops (handled in whatever manner) should be of high quality to reward the hassle of killing the unique and not affected by dungeon depth, because killing Lagduf at clvl 40 down at dlvl 98 isnt what you want to reward. Taking him on at clvl 10/ dlvl 10 is the hard thing and to be rewarded with something a typical lvl 10 would consider desirable.

In earlier versions, I tried killing every unique even at considerable risk with warriors, because uniques were a good shot at the Phial. Non-warriors a) werent usually as efficient at unique killing and b) didnt care as much about the Phial, so those tended to make the bee-line around uniques.
These days I pretty much leave early uniques alone unless the fight is trivial.

[fizzix]

that instead of it being a "unique" drop category it was just a "super-boosted" drop category that happened to only be assigned to uniques.

Actually, that's exactly what I did. Unique_drop gives extra artifact rolls.

[Mondkalb]

While you tweak on it, can you also look on RNG favouring tunneling heavily on randarts? Sorry, bit OoT, but I thought while you are doing something, you might give it a look?

Yes, please!
I don't know what the RNG thinks would be so fabulous about tunneling. ^^

[PowerWyrm]

Actually, that's exactly what I did. Unique_drop gives extra artifact rolls.

I'm supporting this. Uniques should not drop cloaks [1,+1] or similar junk 99% of time...

[fizzix]

I'm supporting this. Uniques should not drop cloaks [1,+1] or similar junk 99% of time...

well...you're always going to get some crappy drops from uniques. There are far too many uniques for them all to drop something useful. The general idea is to weight the useful drops more towards uniques and less towards other areas.

[fizzix]

Yes, please!
I don't know what the RNG thinks would be so fabulous about tunneling. ^^

Sadly, I haven't looked at all at the randart calculation. (Paging magnate)

[Magnate]

Sadly, I haven't looked at all at the randart calculation. (Paging magnate)

Observer bias, I'm afraid. Tunnelling has the same chance of occurring on randarts as it does in the standart set, but the brain notes things it doesn't like much more readily than things it does.

For example, Deathwreaker has +6 tunnelling, which nobody complains about because it's such an awesome weapon. That same tunnelling on a pretty crummy weapon makes you think "shame, if only that was more damage or blows or slays instead".

[Derakon]

I expect that the generator doesn't consider tunneling to be especially powerful though, so it's not like giving up, say, +3 tunneling would get you anything especially worthwhile in exchange. After all, it's trying to generate an artifact with a certain target power level.

I mean, it's not like you could trade featherfall for +5 to-dam, say. Tunneling is presumably fairly similar.