When Artifacts and Monsters match

[Mark]

Does anyone else get a kick out of defeating:

• Shelob while wielding the Phial of Galadriel
• Glaurung while wielding the Main Gauche of Azaghal
• Sauron with Anduril
• Taking on Morgoth with Ringil

And other weapons and enemies that are associated from Tolkien's stories? (There must be many more - can you think of some?)

It would be nice if there was some in-game 'dothing of the cap' to such moments. Maybe uniques could have a flag which specified an artifact, and if the player was attacking the Unique with the artifact, the unique lost a single turn, just emoting:
"<Shelob> notices your <Phial>, and eyes it suspiciously."

It wouldn't improve the game much, but perhaps is the sort of detail the average Angband player (being a strange breed) really appreciates.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Yup and I love wielding the great Axe of Durin to kill the balrog of moria...Durins Bane.

[Timo Pietilä]

Does anyone else get a kick out of defeating:

• Shelob while wielding the Phial of Galadriel
• Glaurung while wielding the Main Gauche of Azaghal
• Sauron with Anduril
• Taking on Morgoth with Ringil

And other weapons and enemies that are associated from Tolkien's stories? (There must be many more - can you think of some?)

Sting - Shelob (Sam wielded this when he wounded Shelob perhaps fatally)
Glaurung - Gurthang (Turin used this to slay Glaurung)
Glamdring - Balrog of Moria (Gandalf wielded this when he faced the Balrog)
Bard - Smaug (should be black arrow, but Bard is closest)

[krazyhades]

Yes, I like this. I also like it when creatures drop appropriate items. The earliest example that most players ever see is Wormtongue and his boots, or a dragon and its armor. And it's always weird when a dragon drops the wrong kind of mail.

edit: eww I used "it's" instead of "its"

[Carnivean]

And it's always weird when a dragon drops the wrong kind of mail.

While I wonder why a black dragon would be carrying chaos dragon mail, I'd wonder more why they were carrying black dragon mail.

"They killed my pa, and turned him into a suit of armour!"

[Zireael]

Oh yeah, an emote for those cases would be brilliant!

[krazyhades]

In those cases I usually assume that you somehow mysteriously use that very dragon's own mail, but thanks to the graphical "richness" of the game, you can't see yourself skin, cure, and work the raw materials over the course of one quick game round. Or something.

And yeah, emotes for flavor are a good idea.

[Timo Pietilä]

Yes, I like this. I also like it when creatures drop appropriate items.

I think themed drops are planned. Like orc archers dropping arrows and mages dropping spellbooks.

[Derakon]

I think themed drops are planned. Like orc archers dropping arrows and mages dropping spellbooks.

Themed drops are already in, to some extent. It's mostly limited to spellcaster "p" and "h" monsters being more likely to drop town spellbooks though. I believe the current drop-association system requires a fully-specified item. That is, you can't say "this monster is likely to drop mage spellbooks"; you have to say "this monster is more likely to drop Magic for Beginners." You can associate many items with the same monster though.

[tynan]

Themed drops would definitely be a good thing. Also random drops could be kept in as well, such as jellies (gel cubes, etc) dropping random stuff they oozed over.
It would also be appropriate for the flip side as well: fire-based and acid-based and to some extent elec-based creatures should never be able to drop items that can be damaged/destroyed by those elements (scrolls, non-ego/artifact armor/weapons). I don't recall what cold-base damage destroys (potions?). If so, then White dragons would never carry potions perhaps.

[Nick]

Themed drops are something I want to be really careful not to overdo. I certainly don't want the situation you see in some MMOs, where it's only a particular monster type that drops a particular awesome suit of armour, and so the obvious thing to do is go and farm a billion of those monsters.

[Derakon]

My general take on this is that it's fine for some monsters to be biased towards certain classes of drops, like archers being more likely to drop ammo (of all types, not just arrows), or casters being more likely to drop spellbooks (both arcane and holy). But most monsters should not have any particular bias, and all items ought to be droppable by anything (or rather, by anything that has a drop to begin with).

Drop biases should be mostly for flavor, in other words. "Oh, yeah, that makes sense" kind of thing.

[tynan]

Well, obviously Artifacts should be able to drop from anything that can drop items, as now. That should not change (perhaps the depths they can be dropped needs to be tweaked some more though). A character should never be able to find the Arkenstone at a thousand feet, for example.

[Derakon]

A character should never be able to find the Arkenstone at a thousand feet, for example.

Why not? I mean, it shouldn't be likely, but a huge part of roguelikes is the possibility that anything could show up anywhere. It should be theoretically possible to generate the One Ring on the floor of 50', even if the odds of it happening are trillions to one against.

[krazyhades]

Yes please.