To play with artifacts or not?

[Remuz]

You should try T.o.M.E then, it seems to address most of your points.

I don't know how the artifacts are generated, but their number seems not to be limited, as long as you play long enough to find them (not sure here, this is just my personal experience). *Identifying* is not a problem, as there are in some towns a special service that will do it for you, for a modest price.

As for a museum, you should the Matthom house in Bree.

The progression you mention (average to good to excellent to special) is valid for every variant that I know of.

[bonzo]

I guess I was wrong then. So randarts completely erase the normal artifact scheme? What would be better is if randarts ADDED to the general proliferation of artifacts, maybe in reduction of the piles and piles of worthless ego items at midgame. Would make a much more diverse endgame.

You may want to try NPP as well. From what I understand, the randarts code was rewritten a few versions ago. Sounds like it included the addition of randarts to the normal artifact list. I'm playing a randart NPP game right now, but my knowledge of regular artifacts is pretty limited so I can't confirm.

Pav posted here on this very issue:

http://nppangband.tannert.name/viewtopic.php?id=542

The NPP option is stated:
"Adult: Randomize some of the artifacts (beta) [adult_rand_artifacts] (off) : Most of the artifacts will get random names and qualities. This can make for a fun change of pace."

Give it a try.

[Nick]

I guess I was wrong then. So randarts completely erase the normal artifact scheme? What would be better is if randarts ADDED to the general proliferation of artifacts, maybe in reduction of the piles and piles of worthless ego items at midgame. Would make a much more diverse endgame.

As some others have indicated, there are variants where exactly this happens. Of the non-ToME variants, Oangband was I believe the first to do this, and FAangband inherited it from O, and I suspect Sangband has it too, although I'm not sure. NPP IIRC has this system plus the birth option to randomise all of them.

[bron]

> currently playing angband without the creation of artifacts

I have been playing Vanilla without artifacts for some time. It is certainly more of a challenge, and it can certainly take a long time to assemble a winning collection of items. But I have won without artifacts several times, so I know it is possible.

I find the biggest single obstacle to be HP, so I'd strongly recommend picking a race/class with a lot of CON and a high hit-die. My personal favorite is a Half-Troll Paladin. It is also pretty much impossble to get resistance to everything (unless you are lucky enough to find Power Dragon scale mail), so you'll probably have to carry around several different pieces of equipment and switch between them depending on exactly what monsters you encounter. So you'll need to have a good monster memory built up.