Starting with a Ring of Power

[Scorpius]

I had the idea of creating an incompetent character who would start with a Ring of Power, just for a lark, so I altered Narya's allocation rate to 100 (and then to 99 and to 40, in case there was some cap I was oblivious to) and the min depth to 1.

I pasted DROP_4, DROP_GOOD, and ONLY_ITEM onto Jackals (and, well, every other monster), on the understanding that DROP_GOOD raises the "special" artifact generation rate from 0.1% to 10%.

So far it seems like I've had profoundly bad luck, which leads me to wonder if I did this incorrectly. Allocation at 40% and special generation at 10% should mean that Narya will be 1 in 25 monster drops, no?

Preserve mode is on, I was careful not to lose anything in the bedlam, and I tried 3 characters. I even made Scrolls of *Acquirement* ultra-common at 50', and in piles of 6d6, and nothing came of that.

At this point I just want to put my confusion to rest.

[Nomad]

I don't know about the drop chances, but if you just want to give your character an artefact, you could use the debug commands. (I think using them probably tags your character as a cheater, but that doesn't really matter if you're going to be messing around with such big changes anyway.)

^A will give you the "Debug command:" prompt. Type ? at that prompt to see a list of the possible commands you can enter - I think it's C to create an artefact, and then just type "Narya" at the prompt and it should appear at your feet.

[Scorpius]

Well! That is certainly easier. Thank you.

[Derakon]

I'm not that familiar with the artifact generation code, but it's possible that jewelry, like other items, needs the right base item to drop before it can be upgraded into an artifact. Since no rings are native to 50', then, you're unlikely to find Narya no matter how common you make it.

I could be wrong about this though; jewelry is IIRC a bit of a special case.

[Carnivean]

You can use the 'drop-artifact' line in monster.txt to force an artifact drop. Set on a unique (Farmer Maggot?) and make the unique turn up, kill them and get the artifact.

[Timo Pietilä]

^A will give you the "Debug command:" prompt. Type ? at that prompt to see a list of the possible commands you can enter - I think it's C to create an artefact, and then just type "Narya" at the prompt and it should appear at your feet.

Isn't quite that easy. You need to be exact for artifact name.

Easier is to find its index number in artifacts.txt and use that

(In that ^AC that's capital C, lowercase c is just create item BTW).

For Narya it seems index is 10.

....Or should I say it was easier that way. Seems that at least 3.5.x allows using just part of the full name. I just created The One Ring by typing "One". Don't know when exactly that was changed. A bit older versions it was easier to activate count, type the index number and then ^AC created that. OTOH now there are artifacts with accents in their names (like Oromë and Húrin), and I can't remember all those correctly, in which case index number might still be easier.

[Timo Pietilä]

You can use the 'drop-artifact' line in monster.txt to force an artifact drop. Set on a unique (Farmer Maggot?) and make the unique turn up, kill them and get the artifact.

I think Town is special case for artifact, no artifact drops allowed there, so forcing Maggot drop artifact can cause something unexpected. Might work or not, don't know.

[Carnivean]

I think Town is special case for artifact, no artifact drops allowed there, so forcing Maggot drop artifact can cause something unexpected. Might work or not, don't know.

Oh. yeah forgot about that. Grip or Fang then. Or to make it a challenge, put in on Smeagol and put him on 50'.

[Nick]

I have a feeling that there is some subtlety to the way the special artifacts drop, which constrains Narya from dropping early - maybe they are essentially in some sort of ordered list and they have to drop in that order?

[Nomad]

....Or should I say it was easier that way. Seems that at least 3.5.x allows using just part of the full name. I just created The One Ring by typing "One". Don't know when exactly that was changed. A bit older versions it was easier to activate count, type the index number and then ^AC created that. OTOH now there are artifacts with accents in their names (like Oromë and Húrin), and I can't remember all those correctly, in which case index number might still be easier.

Yeah, I originally tested it (in 3.4) by trying "The Ring of Power 'Narya'" and the creation failed, so I had a go with just "Narya" and that worked fine. Messing around with the debug commands is always a bit of a shot in the dark, since I have no idea how outdated that help file is. (And there are a few commands even in there that are only documented as '???')

[Timo Pietilä]

I have a feeling that there is some subtlety to the way the special artifacts drop, which constrains Narya from dropping early - maybe they are essentially in some sort of ordered list and they have to drop in that order?

That was true in ancient times, but not anymore. They have a special base object though (in bottom of object.txt) which you need to change as well as artifact itself to make it drop early. Changing only artifact.txt is not enough.

[fizzix]

Yeah, I originally tested it (in 3.4) by trying "The Ring of Power 'Narya'" and the creation failed, so I had a go with just "Narya" and that worked fine. Messing around with the debug commands is always a bit of a shot in the dark, since I have no idea how outdated that help file is. (And there are a few commands even in there that are only documented as '???')

Documentation bugs are stuff that I can fix these days even with limited time. I'll look into it.

[molybdenum]

Yeah, I originally tested it (in 3.4) by trying "The Ring of Power 'Narya'" and the creation failed, so I had a go with just "Narya" and that worked fine. Messing around with the debug commands is always a bit of a shot in the dark, since I have no idea how outdated that help file is. (And there are a few commands even in there that are only documented as '???')

3.5 does artifact lookups by partial string match of the name in artifact.txt. You should be able to get Oromë by just typing orom, for example.

[Raxmei]

Inspired by this I tried generating a halfling warrior with the One Ring. That was amusingly superpowered for quite some time.

[myshkin]

Inspired by this I tried generating a halfling warrior with the One Ring. That was amusingly superpowered for quite some time.

A long, long time ago, I posted to Usenet a patch to Angband 2.8.1. If your character was a male hobbit rogue named Frodo, you got Sting, Belegennon, the One Ring, and the Phial, but had a primitive version of ironman and couldn't wear boots.