Whatever happened to Narya?

[Pete Mack]

It seems to be nerfed in the 3.1.0 (dev).
I see that Narya now has ESP, but no longer has RNether. That is unfortunate, because while there are many sources for ESP, there are few useful sources for RNether. I won't report this as a bug exactly, but it sure is a bummer.

[roustk]

It seems to be nerfed in the 3.1.0 (dev).
I see that Narya now has ESP, but no longer has RNether. That is unfortunate, because while there are many sources for ESP, there are few useful sources for RNether. I won't report this as a bug exactly, but it sure is a bummer.

Interesting -- all the rings of power have been changed. Narya and the One Ring are far weaker, Nenya is a wash, and Vilya is more powerful, in my opinion.

Narya:
* Add ESP, sustain DEX, and activate for Protection from Evil.
* Lose sustain CON, WIS, CHR, resist Nether, resist Fear, activate for Fire (3 - ball?).

Nenya:
* Add activate for Restore Life.
* Lose sustain CHR, activate for Frost (5 - big ball?)

Vilya:
* Add ESP, sustain INT, resist Dark, activate for Heal (2).
* Lose resist Disenchant. activate for Elec (2 - ball?).

One Ring:
* Add resist Dark
* Lose resist Poison, Nether, Blind, Disenchant, Fear

[takkaria]

It seems to be nerfed in the 3.1.0 (dev).
I see that Narya now has ESP, but no longer has RNether. That is unfortunate, because while there are many sources for ESP, there are few useful sources for RNether. I won't report this as a bug exactly, but it sure is a bummer.

The change in question is:

http://dev.rephial.org/trac/changeset/428

I can't find the original mail/ng post that persuaded me that change was a good idea, but there was one (it was about making the rings generally a bit more pre-2.9.3ish). I agree the rings has been toned down a bit too much, though they are somewhat less rare to match.

[roustk]

The change in question is:

http://dev.rephial.org/trac/changeset/428

Giving the rings defensive (rather than offensive) activations seems appropriate, but I'm less confident of the changes to resists. I also am concerned that the One Ring had its recharge time increased 15x -- maybe its activation (BIZARRE) was changed in code...

Looking at the diff, I fear that a bug may have been introduced. I do not know how the edit files are parsed, but Nenya is missing a trailing "|" on one of its middle "F:" lines (line 233 at r428).

Kevin

[Pete Mack]

The trouble is that there is now essentially no way to get RNether reliably. For the most part, you can live without RNether, but there are a few uniques who are just about unkillable without. (Azriel, Carcharoth, unless you are playing Priest/Paladin.)

What I would do is given Pazuzu some kind of melee that is not electricity-dependent. He is a total joke with Taratol (or Vilya): 0 melee damage.

Also note: Narya was never rare. It was about as common as Dethanc.

[roustk]

The trouble is that there is now essentially no way to get RNether reliably.

Hmm -- in 3.0.9 the artifact sources are Narya, the One, Bladeturner, Soulkeeper, Himring (armor), the Crown, Dal-i-thalion, Melkor, Ulmo, Olorin, Fundin, Eowyn. The current 3.0.10 takes it away from both rings. I don't see any guaranteed ego sources (just the usual random resists).

So, aside from weapons and unavailable sources, we are left with Soulkeeper, Himring, and Dal-i-thalion. Himring is fairly specialized (poison, nether, chaos, no bonus), Soulkeeper is rather rare (cold, dark, nether, nexus, chaos, conf, fear), and Dal-i-thalion offers no speed (only nether, chaos, confusion). Interesting that they all protect from chaos...

Kevin

[Pete Mack]

Soulkeeper and Himring are both pretty rare, and even Dal-i-thalion is no gimme--Narya was by far the most common source. In my current game, I've been scummin 4950' to get to a reasonable character level, and have found no source of RNether the entire game.

I did find Narya (4950') and Nenya (4900'), very soon after getting deep. With them and Taratol, I have been mowing down a lot of big elemental breathers, including all the Demon Uniques. But not Carcharoth--he really pounded me, before I realized that Narya no longer protects so well against him.

[roustk]

Soulkeeper and Himring are both pretty rare, and even Dal-i-thalion is no gimme--Narya was by far the most common source.
...
But not Carcharoth--he really pounded me, before I realized that Narya no longer protects so well against him.

I just double-checked my last winner (slow Half-Troll Mage). I did find all three, but they were pretty deep. Found Himring in a vault at 3350', but couldn't afford to lose Caspanion. Eventually covered Nether at 3950' using a Shield of Deflection of Preservation. Got Soulkeeper from Lungorthin at 4350' and started using it. Dal-i-thalion was dropped by Carcharoth at 4500'.

For some reason I was remembering Dal-i-thalion as being common enough earlier that I'd see it with early speed boots. Maybe I just had a run of lucky characters when I was last playing seriously (2.7.9 era). Of course, this last winner matched my memory as well -- *never* found boots of speed (wore Boots of Stability until finding Thror at about 3600').

Kevin

[Mondkalb]

I can't understand why rNether has been removed from Narya.
It was really hard to get rNether anyway, but Narya was pretty sure to be found at least for my few characters who managed to go that deep.

I am currently scumming around nintyish levels to get any of the few other sources that remained, but it looks pretty hopeless (since greater vaults are also much rarer now).

This is really the one thing that might let me go back to 3.06 or whatever was the last version without this horrible change.

[Mondkalb]

My above char has lost his quest, but his heir has nearly the same problem.
It may be even bigger.
I have found pretty decent stuff and all resistances are covered except of course nether.
The only item with rNether I have currently is Olorin. It is not a bad weapon, but also by far not my best. It is good enough to fight the occasional hordes of nether/aether hounds but attacking some of the dangerous nether breathers/casters is pretty much like hitting them with a walking stick.

OTOH I have not found Narya yet anyway, so it wouldn't help me much.
But it seems that getting rNether is not easy in the current versions of the game.

(RPoison is much less of a problem in the early game because of the new potions and double resist is now possible for all classes.)

[Magnate]

But it seems that getting rNether is not easy in the current versions of the game.

Play with randarts. That way you never know *which* resist will be hard to get in any given game.

[Elsairon]

Play with randarts. That way you never know *which* resist will be hard to get in any given game.

This seems to make pricing flavor/resist by rarity irrelevant.

[Magnate]

This seems to make pricing flavor/resist by rarity irrelevant.

I think this is why I had such a hard time accepting the importance of rarity in pricing.

This really is pretty difficult. On the one hand you could say that pricing should ignore artifacts altogether, and go according to how common/rare things are on standard or ego items ... but then you might go many many games without seeing a Sling of Buckland, an Amulet of Trickery or a weapon of Gondolin. So it doesn't really make sense to ignore artifacts.

The best I can come up with is that attributes are supposed to have the same overall rarity in a randart set as in the standard artifact set, so pricing with those rarities taken into account does kind of make sense. But the joy of randomness is that that normalises over many thousands of sets, so in any given game you might get one particular almost unfindable attribute.

Ho hum.