Randart Players PLS REPLY

[Pete Mack]

I don't understand this. Other than the activations, random light sources are completely randomized. How can they be more so?

I want lights more randomized than they are currently but I don't want them "FULLY" randomized. I want the Phial to always have the phial room-lighting effect, the Arkenstone to always have the level mapping effect, etc.

[Nick]

Reasons to have stuff like that include more class specialization and more variety.

I was planning to do this (for 4.2) by making classes more special and varied

[krazyhades]

Hopefully rogues don't lose their uniquely special gameplay niche of having a wonderful quality of life package without needing macros :P

[Sky]

i never bother picking up quarterstaves, they suck for a warrior.
then for some reason i broke my own rule in this randart game.
oh look, it's an artifact. probably some +2 wis piece of junk ...

the Quarterstaff 'Thros' (7d9) (+13,+14)
----------------------------------------
Slays undead (powerfully), demons (powerfully).
Provides resistance to fire, dark.
Cannot be harmed by acid, fire.
Slows your metabolism.

When activated, it detects doors and stairs nearby.
Takes 49 to 54 turns to recharge.
Your chance of success is 93.6%


Min Level 54, Max Level 127, Generation chance 6, Power 342, 15.0 lbs
Based on Sting.


currently doing 1400 vs undead, 520 vs normal.

[PowerWyrm]

the Quarterstaff 'Thros' (7d9) (+13,+14)

Grond is 9d9. And has permanent aggravation... Anything close to that (and mostly coming with slays and even *slay*s) should either be nerfed, or aggravate.

[Grotug]

It's one thing for a weapon to gain one or two dice, and on rare occasions 3 dice, but 6? Jeez Louise.

[Derakon]

Grond is 9d9. And has permanent aggravation... Anything close to that (and mostly coming with slays and even *slay*s) should either be nerfed, or aggravate.

Given that its other powers are trivial (compared to Sting which has +3 speed, +1 STR/DEX/CON, and +2 blows, among other things), presumably what happened here is a randart weapon that just happened to dump most of its point pool into damage.

Personally I like the artifact; I think it's a fun thing to find every once in awhile. Of course things like that shouldn't be remotely common (one game in 20 might be about the right frequency). If we were to try to take corrective action based on a single data point though...well, we shouldn't. But. I would suggest measuring DPR vs. dungeon level for the existing weapon standarts, and then varying the "power price" of purchasing damage-related abilities for randart weapons based on where they currently are in relation to that measured curve.

So for example, say Sting has a DPR of 300, and our Quarterstaff starts out with a DPR of 50 (base dice, no to-dam, no slays). It's distinctly under par, so damage-related abilities (dice, to-dam, to-hit, slays/brands, +blows) will be cheaper, not counting heavily against its power. As it acquires those abilities, however, its DPR increases, making additional such powers more expensive. Once it passes 300 DPR, the cost of those abilities will be more expensive than baseline, because a weapon that focuses entirely on damage to the exclusion of other powers is probably going to be better than a weapon that has lots of powers but no damage.

Stuff like resist fire, free action, or stat boosts will still cost invariant of DPR because their utility doesn't depend on how much damage you're dealing.

[Egavactip]

I don't understand this. Other than the activations, random light sources are completely randomized. How can they be more so?

No, they are not. They were, briefly, but for some reason they didn't have light activations, so they went back to the way they were before. But during that time period, some of the random lights were very interesting, if only they had their light actitions.

[Egavactip]

Your statement is certainly true, but somehow there's something...almost offensive, I guess? about the game generating an item that would be completely awesome for somebody else. Items that are "bad, therefore junk" (straight downgrades of items you already have) are just a fact of life for a difficult-to-balance loot system, but items that are "good, but not for you, therefore junk" are more irritating.

Again, we already have items that are for "someone else"--at least, that is, until YOU become that someone else, which we almost all do. There is no character class I don't play, for example. If I can live with 18 different useless magic books appearing when I play a fighter, I think you ought to be able to live with the Thief's Bag that appears once in a while even when you are playing a mage.

[Sky]

like i said previously, the case is that a randart such as:

1. big dice
2. big to-dam
3. one or two useful slay / brand
4. either speed, blows, or some class-oriented stats.

does not actually have a very high power value. vanilla artis have additional features which, while useful, are not fundamental (i.e. slay orc, INT/WIS, activate for something silly like CLW, see invisible, resist base, etc) and raise the power level.

ideally what you would want to find is a mace of distruption, +2 blows, slay evil. that's it. adding +spd or maybe a couple points STR is cool, but you can get those from other gear, and an arti like this does very well in its role (pure damage dealer) while costing very little in power level.

that quarterstaff really needs slay evil, shame it's not there, but hey. or acid brand.

and you really just need the game to roll one such artifact, and you are set.

at one point i knew in my game there was a Bladeturner-based armor, which has +7 search, +7 dex, +7 speed, plus all the usual goodies, but i also know that it's very unlikely that i will find a power 700+ artifact, unless i grow old clearing greater vaults.

[Nick]

The latest build on the nightlies page has the following changes to randarts:

• They're now written to a special data file in the user/archive directory, which is activated when the appropriate character is being played
• The option to keep the previous randarts has been removed, because the same effect can be had by copying the relevant randart_whatever file from the user/archive directory to artifact.txt in the user directory
• Lights, rings and amulets are now more random; one each of the standard types is no longer guaranteed. For the artifact lights, though, if you do find a Phial, Star or Arkenstone it will have the standard activation
• There is a hard cap of +6 on modifiers other than speed
• Some randarts (typically about two, aside from those based on Mormegil and Camlost) will have curses

Please let me know how these are playing - I'm interested in hearing everybody's opinions.

[Nomad]

Bug in the latest nightly - if I open the knowledge menu and try to access object knowledge I get the following "Assertion failed!" message:

File: ui-knowledge.c, Line 1742

Expression: i < z_info->a_max

Only happens in randart games, not standart.

[Nick]

Bug in the latest nightly - if I open the knowledge menu and try to access object knowledge I get the following "Assertion failed!" message:

File: ui-knowledge.c, Line 1742

Expression: i < z_info->a_max

Only happens in randart games, not standart.

Can confirm - that should be an easy fix.

[Estie]

The latest build on the nightlies page has the following changes to randarts:

• They're now written to a special data file in the user/archive directory, which is activated when the appropriate character is being played
• The option to keep the previous randarts has been removed, because the same effect can be had by copying the relevant randart_whatever file from the user/archive directory to artifact.txt in the user directory
• Lights, rings and amulets are now more random; one each of the standard types is no longer guaranteed. For the artifact lights, though, if you do find a Phial, Star or Arkenstone it will have the standard activation
• There is a hard cap of +6 on modifiers other than speed
• Some randarts (typically about two, aside from those based on Mormegil and Camlost) will have curses

Please let me know how these are playing - I'm interested in hearing everybody's opinions.

How exactly do i keep randarts ?
I made a randart character, died, and want to play again with the same set.
I get the birth option to create a new set or not. If i pick "not", it creates with the standarts. If I pick a new set, it does that, so I copy the old randart_whatever.txt file from the archive folder to the user folder. When trying to open the character after a break, i got the error "cannot open randart.txt", so I renamed the whatever-file to simply read randart.txt. Trying to load now, I get the error message "cannot find artifact Runth".
I assume that is because I created a new set, then copied the old file and the game is still trying to use the old one ?

Anyway: I have the randart_whatever file, can I somehow start a new character with that set ?

[Nick]

How exactly do i keep randarts ?

You need to

1. Copy the randart set you want to artifact.txt (not randart.txt) in your user folder
2. Start a game with randarts set to no

This works because the game is set up to use datafiles in the user folder in preference to the standard ones in the gamedata folder.