Randarts, again

[Carnivean]

Do you want players to have less than perfect resists, less than 30 speed, less than 600 dmg?

Yes, sometimes.

As Philip pointed out, you can end up with a basically perfect set from the standarts fairly comfortably. With randarts that might be easily done or impossible.

Your understanding of randarts generation is still warped. You don't get the same abilities shuffled around. You get a grab bag of all of the available bonuses and resists. Randart Ringil will still get a high power number, but it'll probably also have 3 or 4 of the base resists, +1 light, and other essentially useless things. It's highly unusual that a randart will be more helpfully powerful than its equivalent standart.

Most randarts are kind of pathetic. Rarely you might get some stupid large damage dice on a weapon, but more likely you'll find some boring weapon that looks like a defender or gondolin but is actually less useful.

[Philip]

Check out some Powerdiver dumps, Sky. All you really need to have a decent chance of killing Morgoth is +20 base speed (though Powerdiver may have gone below that, since doublemoves by Morgoth are risky but not necessarily lethal from full hp and at range), a half-way decent way to deal damage (good bow and shots will do), battlefield control (teleport and monster removal) and sufficient healing (if ranged, then staffs can save you a lot of potions).
A priest can kill Morgoth with a couple staffs of speed, a couple of magi, and most of the books (they don't need all of them). A mage replaces speed with healing and does much of the same, though because they don't have 0% fail heal, they need some backup plans (Door Creation is wonderful).

Anyway, what randarts do is let you discover the set and the new combinations that you can have. No more standard combos, no more "if mage then slot goes to x, if warrior then y" and "if mage then x and if warrior then x".

[Sky]

Well, i've been looking at randarts, meaning i start a game, wizard it, and look at every artifact generated. In my observation (of maybe 15 games, not more) there are always a couple artifacts that really make the build, and the rest are a jumbled mess, that yet results in a viable character becauee of the randomness spread; so, more powerful than standarts.

[Derakon]

Well, i've been looking at randarts, meaning i start a game, wizard it, and look at every artifact generated. In my observation (of maybe 15 games, not more) there are always a couple artifacts that really make the build, and the rest are a jumbled mess, that yet results in a viable character becauee of the randomness spread; so, more powerful than standarts.

Looking at the artifacts does not remotely give you a feel for what it's like to play with randarts, because you don't see every randart in every game. Every randart game has its equivalents of Bladeturner, Ringil, Feanor, etc. -- super-rare artifacts with high power levels. The fact that powerful items exist does not mean the player will find them. It's not that all randarts are useless, mind, just that the percentage of randarts that you find and think "yes, this will make me stronger" is much lower than in standarts.

My experience with randarts is that there's usually one or two "important" abilities that I find much harder to acquire, compared to a standart game. In particular, pBlind and pConf are all much more difficult to get. Stat bonuses are much more ad-hoc: in a standart game you can usually count on getting Thorin and Cambeleg, which between them give +5 STR/CON and have no realistic competition for the vast majority of the game. Good luck getting similar in randarts.

And this is a good thing, but it does illustrate, by way of contrast, that the standart set makes it relatively easy to piece together a set of gear that effectively covers a broad range of useful abilities and bonuses. You don't need to find any super-rare artifacts in the standard set to get a character that's easily powerful enough to win the game. Whereas it's not uncommon for a randart character to still feel "incomplete" somehow while going into the final fights.

[Pete Mack]

You guys are missing a couple points:
1. Deathwreaker and Soulkeeper are *rare*. The item base probability on these items is low, and the artifact probability is low, so the combined probability is extremely low. Turn Deathwreaker into a broadsword, or Soulkeeper into studded leather armor, and suddenly the odds of seeing them is significantly higher.
2. In the ordinary artifacts, the top items are concentrated in two slots: weapons and armor. Getting Doomcaller is useless if you already have Deathwreaker. But getting one of these for gloves and another for a bow, and suddenly your character is unbelievably strong.

[Estie]

You guys are missing a couple points:
1. Deathwreaker and Soulkeeper are *rare*. The item base probability on these items is low, and the artifact probability is low, so the combined probability is extremely low. Turn Deathwreaker into a broadsword, or Soulkeeper into studded leather armor, and suddenly the odds of seeing them is significantly higher.
2. In the ordinary artifacts, the top items are concentrated in two slots: weapons and armor. Getting Doomcaller is useless if you already have Deathwreaker. But getting one of these for gloves and another for a bow, and suddenly your character is unbelievably strong.

1. I am fairly sure that it doesnt work that way. Deathwreaker is also rare if it is based on a longsword. I dont know (but would love to learn) how exactly distribution works.

2. It is very rare that Deathwreaker and Bladeturner turn into something other than a melee weapon or armor. I have seen Deathwreaker as a heavy xbow occasionally (in which case it invariably aggravates, which makes me suspect that power is capped for low base items, and xbow only passes if it aggravates, which should lower the score ?) or a mithril shield. Bladeturner basically always ends up a melee weapon or armor.

[Derakon]

1. Deathwreaker and Soulkeeper are *rare*. The item base probability on these items is low, and the artifact probability is low, so the combined probability is extremely low. Turn Deathwreaker into a broadsword, or Soulkeeper into studded leather armor, and suddenly the odds of seeing them is significantly higher.

I believe, though I have not verified, that randart rarity is meant to take into account the rarity of the base artifact. Like, Bladeturner is a pretty common artifact on a very rare body armor; if it got transferred to a common base item like a Dagger, then its artifact rarity would shoot way up to compensate.

2. In the ordinary artifacts, the top items are concentrated in two slots: weapons and armor. Getting Doomcaller is useless if you already have Deathwreaker. But getting one of these for gloves and another for a bow, and suddenly your character is unbelievably strong.

Depends on how you classify "top item". Like I said earlier, Thorin and Cambeleg are super-common and pretty damn awesome items in comparison to the kinds of randarts players are forced to roll with. They don't have as much power as Doomcaller or Deathwreaker, maybe, but they're really solid power boosts for the player and you're going to find them in every single game.

Randarts don't have those kinds of "bread and butter" artifacts that the player can lean on to help them climb the power curve. Empirically, randarts usually have a dearth of good items in any slot and have to cobble together a more-or-less functional kit from what they find. Which is good!

[Nick]

I believe, though I have not verified, that randart rarity is meant to take into account the rarity of the base artifact. Like, Bladeturner is a pretty common artifact on a very rare body armor; if it got transferred to a common base item like a Dagger, then its artifact rarity would shoot way up to compensate.

This is correct - the rarity of the randart is set so that the product of base item rarity and artifact rarity remains the same.