Randart plans

[Nick]

Currently there are 137 artifacts. I plan to add a few more, maybe 13 to get it up to a nice round number.

But I am not planning to design 13 new artifacts. The plan is

• If you play with the standard artifact set, there will be 13 randomly generated artifacts as well;
• If you play with randarts, there will be a small random selection (maybe 13 again) of the standard artifacts which will appear.

In addition, randarts are going to be updated to incorporate all the latest changes to the game properly - lights and other special artifacts will be properly randomised, curses will be properly incorporated, etc.

Partly in preparation for this (and partly just in the push to get stuff out to data files), there are now data files containing object properties and power constants (object_property.txt), and the actual object power calculations and more constants (object_power.txt).

Thoughts?

[Sky]

well dang, i was going to suggest this very thing. you beat me on speed.

i suggest that the rings of power be kept as they are in the standart set. because i rarely see a RoP being generated in randart that can compare to the usefulness of the standart RoP, and also, because of the mythology of agband.

alternatively, you could also have a smaller artifact pool for each game. let's say you make the overall database larger, but only allow 70% of those to show up in each game.

i would also .. hear me out, ok? lower the rarity of artifacts. it's kind of pointless to have ringil in the game, if nobody ever sees it. i'd prefer an easier game, but with more flavour (i.e. richer artifact drops). you could balance this with (slightly) more OOD mobs.

[Grotug]

@Sky. I am swimming in artifacts lately. Two rings of power last game and PDSM and one of the best }Bucklands the game produces; and a ring of power almost every game. These were mythical items back when I first started. But that has more to do with reaching DL70 being a mythical thing back when I started.

I have gotten Ringil at least twice.

I personally think artifact frequency is kind of perfect, not that my sample size is big enough to really know.

I kind of like your 70% idea. Sometimes I feel like I get the same artifacts over and over while not getting others (some speak of the boots of one Faenor, but I don't know nothing about them and hopefully can keep it that way until the mythical day I finally do find them). Otoh, I like that there are certain artifacts I still haven't found, and I recently made a suggestion to that end in another thread.

@Nick: I really like this proposal, especially as it applies to the Standart set. I guess my only concern is: how will the 13 randomized artifacts in Standart get proper lore descriptions?

[Estie]

Errm, why ? I very much like the fact that I dont find anymore Caspanions and Thancs. Please no.

[Derakon]

I don't get why I'd want to find any standardized artifacts in a randart game. The entire point of randarts is that you're always finding new things. So chalk me up for a no vote for your second proposal.

I could perhaps see some point in having randarts in a standart game, though; plenty of variants have standarts and then have an unlimited supply of randarts as a sort of "super-ego-item" kind of thing.

[Pondlife]

I think one of the big problems is too many artifacts. In particular too many useless ones (or effectively useless, in that they are eclipsed by something else by the time you find them); and too many that seem very similar.

I don't think that creating more artifacts is the way to go. I'm not sure that we need a "nice round number"; but if we do, why not round down rather than up?

[Pete Mack]

I'm thinking 13 new artifact dagger and weak glove (no FA, no melee bonuses) types...

[Sky]

like a mix between easyband and fastband, more high-power drops, more OOD dangers. add the new TO saves and you got an idea of what 5.0 could be like. the death of me is spending the whole evening in clearing out a vault and coming home with a completely useless weapon that is outmatched by everything i already have.
let's also show some love to the traps. a dart that does 10 dmg might as well not even be there, if i regen it before i reach the end of the corridor.

[Pete Mack]

No matter how many good weapons there are you will ALWAYS see vaults that have nothing useful (with the likely exception of some branded ammo.) Making endgame weapons more common does nothing to change this. It just unbalances the game by giving you an endgame weapon earlier on.
See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

If you really don't want to run into this, you can't have vaults with piles of 20 level OOD items.

[Nick]

Well, I'll do the update part, anyway.

[Sky]

hmmm.. thats not how the secretary rule works. it's so irelevant here that i'm not sure how you imagined it would work as a comparison.
and the problem isn't clearing vaults after you have found too many weapons, it's when you haven't found any major endgame weapon - no hammer, no axe, no ringil, no trident .. and all the game can do for you, at DL95, is throw out an artefact which is immediately squelched.
the very choice of words, "endgame", is because a player would want to have endgame gear in the endgame, but as of now, this gear is too rare to ever show up, specifically, the aforementioned weapons plus fundin's, eowin, doomcaller, deathwreacker, cubragol, essentially all the artifacts over power 300 will rarely show up *even* if you reach the lowest levels and then GRIND.
just to be clear, i take practically every character to morgoth, regardless of how many times it dies - i just dont upload it to the board. these artifacts just never show, i've never found ringil or the one ring, once in maybe 100 games i got feanor's, never once bladeturner, eonwe twice.
now, consider instead a game where a couple of these show up, yet - unknown to you - a solid portion of the artifact pool is not in the game. maybe, you could be missing the arkenstone, which drops pretty much every game. you balance the extra endgame weapons by not having other useful artifacts and some extra danger from OODs. but, at least you get, as a player, to play with some cool gear in every game, instead of making it a once-a-year thing.

[jevansau]

Putting the data out to text files doesn't seem to have any negatives.
I quite like the idea of throwing in a few randart/standarts into the mix.
I do wonder if making artifacts a bit more common, but restricting their available depth more would lead to more of a progression.

[Grotug]

It's a logical idea, but the "you never know what you're gonna get" aspect of Angband is a large part of what brings me back again and again. For example, my latest @ found a RoS under a pile of rubble at 950' on a 3 feeling level. I personally think the unpredictability of what item will show up at what depth balanced with it not being completely random is what keeps Angband fresh.

[Pete Mack]

Your definition of 'endgame strong' is a bit stringent. I end up using a HA or +2 attacks bug dice weapon about half the time, not to mention occasional uses of Eorlingas and other good but not great weapons. Getting Ringil, Aule, Deathwreaker etc is supposed to be a big deal, not something you can rely on.

[PowerWyrm]

Currently there are 137 artifacts. I plan to add a few more, maybe 13 to get it up to a nice round number.

But I am not planning to design 13 new artifacts. The plan is

• If you play with the standard artifact set, there will be 13 randomly generated artifacts as well;
• If you play with randarts, there will be a small random selection (maybe 13 again) of the standard artifacts which will appear.

Meh.

1) There are base items without artifacts. And there are base items with cursed/mixed/aggro artifacts. The result is this list:
- MHDSM (Razorback -- aggro)
- Iron Crown (Beruthiel -- mixed)
- Heavy Crossbow (Umbar -- aggro)
- Scythe of Slicing
- Mace of Disruption (Deathwreaker -- aggro)
- Lead-Filled Mace
- Whip (Gothmog -- aggro)
- Blade of Chaos (Doomcaller -- aggro)
- War Hammer
- Maul
- Awl-Pike
- Sling
- Shovel
- Pair of Leather Sandals
- Pair of Iron Shod Boots
- Pair of Ethereal Slippers
- Robe
- Studded Leather Armour
- Metal Scale Mail
- Bar Chain Mail
- Partial Plate Armour
- Metal Lamellar Armour
- Ribbed Plate Armour
- Fur Cloak
- Set of Mithril Gauntlets
- Set of Alchemist's Gloves
- all other DSMs except Power and Balance

If you want to add 13 more artifacts, just pick 13 of these base items and add an artifact for them. There are examples of already designed ones (check PWMAngband for example).

2) With randart game you don't want to see Paurs and Thancs. If you have more arts available, you just need to randomize them...