Issues on current master

[Derakon]

Giving Paur* brands would indeed turn them into endgame equipment, but that can be taken account of by making them deeper and rarer. It then becomes a choice of branding your weapon versus getting the flat +8/+10 per blow vs everything plus stats from the other top tier gloves.

Making them deeper and rarer then means that the only early/mid-game artifact gloves will be Cammithrim.

Minor bonuses like "+5 vs. ogres" are not going to matter. Your going to use that exactly when you have no other option for the glove slot. Free action, universal damage boost and stats are all better.

So tweak the numbers until they are potentially worth using. The point is to have an alternative to the current "puts a multiplicative brand on your weapon" and "gives you flat bonus damage per blow against everything" off-weapon combat boosts.

Hell, we could make Cambeleg be "+8 damage vs. evil" and the Paur* gauntlets be "+12 fire/frost/etc. damage". There's lots of room to play with different approaches.

There has been the tendency to give items a little bit of everything, which removes choice in the gear assembling process. You just pick "the next upgrade", like in an mmo, instead of making hard choices between, say, str or dex of an amount that matters noticably.

I don't disagree with this, but I think it's been mostly a problem with the early-game artifacts (thancs and paurs), which got boosted to make them more "competitive" with midgame arts. Which mostly just meant that if you found an early game artifact early, then you got a free ride to the midgame.

[Nick]

I still think taking the ring of escaping out of artifact generation is the best option, or, indeed, taking it out of the game completely.

I don't think that will be a problem if all types of rings are allowed, rather than just Speed and Escaping.

And thanks, PowerWyrm, for that excellent analysis - I was starting to think that the power limits might be at least part of the problem, but that makes it really clear. I now have plenty to think about.

[Estie]

The problem with the ring of escaping is that it defies the rules for artifacts. A ring with "no melee" property gets assigned power -90 (or whatever), but if you add (+10,+10), (+2 attacks) to it, the power is still -90 and decreasing that value doesnt fix the issue. It´s not a matter of flawed statistical assumptions.

I still think taking the ring of escaping out of artifact generation is the best option, or, indeed, taking it out of the game completely.

[PowerWyrm]

There are clearly a few issues still with randarts - rings being based on =Escaping much more often than expected, for example. I need to go away and think carefully about my statistical assumptions...

Ok I generated a game with randarts, suicided and generated randart.log to have a look at randart generation for rings. And I see two issues:

1) The base item chosen depends on the power of the tval. If that power is too high, this happens:

Creating Light
********** Evaluating for base item power ********
Artifact index is 34
the Band 'Aewenna' <+1>
jewelry power is 4, power is 4
2 for searching skill, power is 6
3 for light, power is 9
3 for ignore acid, power is 12
1 for ignore electricity, power is 13
3 for ignore fire, power is 16
1 for ignore cold, power is 17
6 for light resistance, power is 23
FINAL POWER IS 23
Base item power 23
Power too low!

Creating Speed
********** Evaluating for base item power ********
Artifact index is 34
the Band 'Aewenna' <+4>
jewelry power is 4, power is 4
80 for speed, power is 84
3 for ignore acid, power is 87
1 for ignore electricity, power is 88
3 for ignore fire, power is 91
1 for ignore cold, power is 92
FINAL POWER IS 92
Base item power 92

Basically the code tries to pick up a sval with the highest "base power" possible. Looking at the rings, the best choices are rings of speed and then... rings of escaping. No wonder why you get a lot of these...

2) Base power is sometimes miscalculated. Look at this:

Creating Free Action
********** Evaluating for base item power ********
Artifact index is 34
the Ring 'Aewenna'
jewelry power is 4, power is 4
12 for see invisible, power is 16
3 for ignore acid, power is 19
1 for ignore electricity, power is 20
3 for ignore fire, power is 23
1 for ignore cold, power is 24
FINAL POWER IS 24
Base item power 24

See invisible on a ring of free action???

My guess is that the problem with rings of escaping comes from both issues:

Creating Escaping
********** Evaluating for base item power ********
Artifact index is 50
the Ring 'Halith' <+4>
jewelry power is 4, power is 4
80 for speed, power is 84
-9 for impaired mana recovery, power is 75
3 for ignore acid, power is 78
1 for ignore electricity, power is 79
3 for ignore fire, power is 82
1 for ignore cold, power is 83
FINAL POWER IS 83

You get +80 from the speed bonus, and -9 from some impaired mana recovery that isn't on the ring. Here you should get a big penalty due to the AFRAID property (currently -20, should probably gets buffed up) instead.

And yes, FREE_ACT is SEE_INVIS + 1 and AFRAID is IMPAIR_MANA + 1, so there's an off-by-one error somewhere in the power calculation for object properties.

[Estie]

That being said, it could be worth experimenting with having gear that gives a flat damage bonus per blow against specific kinds of targets. Like "+5 vs. ogres", that kind of thing. The problem with our current set of slays/brands is that they have varying impact depending on what kind of weapon you have, so even a nominally-early-game pair of gloves might be endgame-quality equipment if it has the right slay. But you could have a pair of gloves of +2 Fire Damage that would be useful early while still tapering off properly in the late game.

Giving Paur* brands would indeed turn them into endgame equipment, but that can be taken account of by making them deeper and rarer. It then becomes a choice of branding your weapon versus getting the flat +8/+10 per blow vs everything plus stats from the other top tier gloves.
Minor bonuses like "+5 vs. ogres" are not going to matter. Your going to use that exactly when you have no other option for the glove slot. Free action, universal damage boost and stats are all better. I dont think trying to wiggle in more small properties before free action is a good idea. I commonly get my first pair of gloves with some kind of property by the first or second towntrip.

There has been the tendency to give items a little bit of everything, which removes choice in the gear assembling process. You just pick "the next upgrade", like in an mmo, instead of making hard choices between, say, str or dex of an amount that matters noticably.

Getting power upgrades in Angband is the best thing, but increasing the amount of times you get upgrades doesnt improve the experience, for the same reason that the lowest scoring type of football is the most popular football.

[Gwarl]

Well that's why I suggested using 'weak' brands for off-weapon brands, i.e. only doubling the base damage rather than tripling it.

[Derakon]

That being said, it could be worth experimenting with having gear that gives a flat damage bonus per blow against specific kinds of targets. Like "+5 vs. ogres", that kind of thing. The problem with our current set of slays/brands is that they have varying impact depending on what kind of weapon you have, so even a nominally-early-game pair of gloves might be endgame-quality equipment if it has the right slay. But you could have a pair of gloves of +2 Fire Damage that would be useful early while still tapering off properly in the late game.

[Pete Mack]

Gwarl--as Derakon says, off-weapon brands are highly problematic. The trouble is particularly acute with the very common Glaive of Pain, which does big damage already, and MASSIVE damage with any kind of slay or brand. But the issue isn't limited to that. Things like Eorlingas and Claris become more flexible when they work against most animals, and weapons of Gondolin become much more powerful.

[Estie]

OK, that's the second of those recently. Do you remember what you were doing at the time?

I think I was killing monsters that dropped items on an already stacked floor. Whether that has to do anything with the error I have no idea though.

[Derakon]

In fact I think keeping the weak versions of elemental brands to off-weapon brands (and launchers) might be a good idea. Nothing quite like finding a really cool artifact only to learn that it's branded with 'weak' acid.

One thing we learned a few years ago that off-weapon combat bonuses are very tricky to balance. There was a period when the elemental rings (e.g. Ring of Acid) gave weapon brands and were top-tier gear accordingly.

[Gwarl]

I have a feeling that ultimately the standard artifacts might need looking at. Now that we have things like off weapon brands/slays, it might be suitable to give weak fire to paurhach, for instance, and working in the new curses to replace the drawbacks of items with negative stats/modifiers (i.e. the helm of Gorlim could have the siren curse, the crown of Beruthiel could have hallucination curse, Doomcaller could get demon summon curse).

In fact I think keeping the weak versions of elemental brands to off-weapon brands (and launchers) might be a good idea. Nothing quite like finding a really cool artifact only to learn that it's branded with 'weak' acid.

[Nick]

I was looking at the new randart algorithm and I think I undestand why you don't get any good randarts anymore. Basically the new algorithm picks a tval that's close in power to the standard artifact from which the randart is generated.

The randarts are not based on individual standard artifacts any more; they're just set to a power chosen at random to be the sort of power you might get from the artifacts of that tval.

There are clearly a few issues still with randarts - rings being based on =Escaping much more often than expected, for example. I need to go away and think carefully about my statistical assumptions...

[Nick]

Assertion failed!

Program: ...
File: obj-pile.c
Line: 73

Expression: obj -> prev == prev

OK, that's the second of those recently. Do you remember what you were doing at the time?

[Estie]

the Ring 'Baldil' <+4, +5, +6, +9, +1>
Dropped by Eöl, the Dark Elf at 3650 feet (level 73)

+4 intelligence.
+5 dexterity.
+6 constitution.
+9 speed.
+1 light.
Provides resistance to cold, light, nexus.
Cannot be harmed by lightning.
Speeds regeneration. Prevents paralysis. Makes you afraid of
melee, and worse at shooting and casting spells.
Radius 1 light.

When activated, it grants fire resistance for d20+20 turns and
creates a fire ball of damage 80.
Takes 243 to 297 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 91.9%


Finding one of these almost every game ....

Edit: and another one in the same game

the Band 'Lothras' <+2, +3, +6, +1>
Dropped by a ghoul at 4900 feet (level 98)

+2 strength.
+3 wisdom.
+6 constitution.
+3 searching skill.
+3 infravision.
+6 speed.
+1 light.
Provides resistance to acid, lightning, fire, cold, poison, light,
dark, sound, nexus, chaos.
Provides protection from blindness.
Cannot be harmed by lightning.
Sustains intelligence, wisdom.
Slows your metabolism. Prevents paralysis. Makes you afraid of
melee, and worse at shooting and casting spells.
Radius 1 light.

When activated, it attempts to magically enhance a weapon's to-dam
bonus..
Takes 475 to 696 turns to recharge at your current speed.
Your chance of success is 90.2%

[Estie]

Assertion failed!

Program: ...
File: obj-pile.c
Line: 73

Expression: obj -> prev == prev