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A little while ago I completed a character that went through the endgame, and got a comment from HugoVirtuoso asking whether I would get a wild mace of disruption for damage display. I don't plan to do that, but it did get me thinking about what the best way of getting wild weapons is, and what the upper limit on damage is. Everyone I've seen on the ladder has bought theirs from a shop in either heaven or hell, but the type of shop isn't specified in the character dump.
There are three options available to us:
Having already written some code to automate the shuffling of shops for wild weapons, I decided to tweak it and record some data. I'll include more detailed findings below, but
tl;dr Get around 30 million gold, go to the deepest level of hell that you can, and shuffle the temple. You should be almost guaranteed to get a wild weapon with damage dice 1d40 or greater.
I strongly recommend automating this process. Having done it manually before, there's nothing worse than shuffling the shop for half an hour only to have the perfect weapon appear, and then be shuffled away before your fingers catch up with your brain. I wrote a thread here detailing how to do so. Anyway, let's get to the interesting stuff.
Methodology
I created a Human Warrior with the Ordinary personality and used debug mode to level him up to 50, give him maxed out charisma, and max out his fame. I chose Black Marketeer as the demigod mutation. The charisma, fame and mutation were to make shuffling the shops as cheap as possible; ordinary shops can be shuffled for a minimum of 5000 gold, and the black market can be shuffled for a minimum of 20,000, or 10,000 for Burglary Rogues or characters with Black Marketeer.
I reset hell 696 until a dungeon town appeared, then gave myself the maximum amount of gold (999,999,999) and starting recording data. With the maximum amount of gold you can shuffle an ordinary shop 199,999 times, so I did an extra manual shuffle to get a nice round number of 200,000. For the black market I did the process twice in order to get the same number of shuffles as I had for the temple and weapon smith.
I then repeated this process with the same setup but using the Lucky personality.
When recording the data I tracked how many shuffles had been performed, the number of sides of the weapon dice (e.g. 1d24 would be recorded as 24), and the text output from the game for each weapon. I'll include the data I used on this post so people can do their own analysis if they want (included as two .zip files due to forum filesize limits). After the data had been collected I got the diff between shuffles (i.e. how many shuffles occur between high damage side weapons appearing), took the mean and standard deviation of that data, and used it to calculate how many shuffles would be required to be 99.7% confident in getting a weapon. This only works if the frequency of high side weapons appearing is normally distributed, but if that is true, then the mean + 3*standard deviation should cover approximately 99.7% of the distribution.
Some notes here: As far as I can tell, only your character level, the dungeon level, and whether you are Lucky or not affect the contents of the shops. Black Marketeer, max fame and max charisma should only affect the prices of items in the shop and how much it costs to shuffle the inventory.
Temple
I've included a plot of the counts of damage sides to show their relative frequencies. Note the logarithmic y-scale.
A total of 1974 wild weapons appeared across the 200,000 shuffles (2160 for Lucky data). By far the most common were 21 and 28 side weapons, from wild two-handed flails and great hammers respectively. There were very few in the 30 to 39 range, and a reasonably large amount of 40 or greater weapons from wild and artefact maces of disruption. Artefact weapons regularly came with the ability to stun, or to cause earthquakes.
Just for fun, the highest number of sides + damage mod weapon ever seen was in the Lucky temple set:
Results for Ordinary personality
Results for Lucky personality
Weapon Smith
A total of 2000 wild weapons appeared across the 200,000 shuffles (2231 for Lucky data). By far the most common were 20, 24 and 27 side weapons, from wild espadons, executioner's swords and lochaber axes respectively. Lots more in the 30 to 39 range compared to the temple, but fewer in the 40 or higher range. Most of the 40 side weapons were wild heavy lances. Artefact weapons regularly came with sharpness or *sharpness*.
The highest number of sides + damage mod weapon seen here was in the Lucky set:
This might actually be better than the mace of disruption artefact as it would gain dice from riding.
Results for Ordinary personality
Results for Lucky personality
Black Market
A total of 758 wild weapons appeared across the 200,000 shuffles (801 for Lucky data). There was a much more uniform spread of damage sides, but the overall number of weapons is so much lower than the temple and weapon smith that it is never worthwhile to shuffle the black market, even for Burglary rogues or characters with Black Marketeer. The exception would be if you are shuffling the black market for something else that no other shop stocks, and getting wild weapons is a happy side effect.
The highest number of sides + damage mod weapon seen here was in the Lucky set:
Results for Ordinary personality (assuming 20,000 gold per shuffle)
Results for Lucky personality (assuming 20,000 gold per shuffle)
Conclusion
If you want to reliably get something good enough to get you through the post-serpent game, shuffling the weapon smith or the temple with a few million gold should be enough to get you by. For d40 or better weapons the temple is by far the best bet, and will cost you just under 30 million, less if you have the Lucky personality. In terms of the theoretical best weapon, I think it would be an artefact 1d56 mace of disruption with stunning and kill evil on it, but then again an artefact 1d50 heavy lance with *sharpness* and kill evil would probably outperform the mace while riding. I haven't bothered to look into the theoretical best damage very deeply - someone else is more than welcome to theorise. Thanks for reading
There are three options available to us:
- The Temple
- The Weapon Smith
- The Black Market
Having already written some code to automate the shuffling of shops for wild weapons, I decided to tweak it and record some data. I'll include more detailed findings below, but
tl;dr Get around 30 million gold, go to the deepest level of hell that you can, and shuffle the temple. You should be almost guaranteed to get a wild weapon with damage dice 1d40 or greater.
I strongly recommend automating this process. Having done it manually before, there's nothing worse than shuffling the shop for half an hour only to have the perfect weapon appear, and then be shuffled away before your fingers catch up with your brain. I wrote a thread here detailing how to do so. Anyway, let's get to the interesting stuff.
Methodology
I created a Human Warrior with the Ordinary personality and used debug mode to level him up to 50, give him maxed out charisma, and max out his fame. I chose Black Marketeer as the demigod mutation. The charisma, fame and mutation were to make shuffling the shops as cheap as possible; ordinary shops can be shuffled for a minimum of 5000 gold, and the black market can be shuffled for a minimum of 20,000, or 10,000 for Burglary Rogues or characters with Black Marketeer.
I reset hell 696 until a dungeon town appeared, then gave myself the maximum amount of gold (999,999,999) and starting recording data. With the maximum amount of gold you can shuffle an ordinary shop 199,999 times, so I did an extra manual shuffle to get a nice round number of 200,000. For the black market I did the process twice in order to get the same number of shuffles as I had for the temple and weapon smith.
I then repeated this process with the same setup but using the Lucky personality.
When recording the data I tracked how many shuffles had been performed, the number of sides of the weapon dice (e.g. 1d24 would be recorded as 24), and the text output from the game for each weapon. I'll include the data I used on this post so people can do their own analysis if they want (included as two .zip files due to forum filesize limits). After the data had been collected I got the diff between shuffles (i.e. how many shuffles occur between high damage side weapons appearing), took the mean and standard deviation of that data, and used it to calculate how many shuffles would be required to be 99.7% confident in getting a weapon. This only works if the frequency of high side weapons appearing is normally distributed, but if that is true, then the mean + 3*standard deviation should cover approximately 99.7% of the distribution.
Some notes here: As far as I can tell, only your character level, the dungeon level, and whether you are Lucky or not affect the contents of the shops. Black Marketeer, max fame and max charisma should only affect the prices of items in the shop and how much it costs to shuffle the inventory.
Temple
I've included a plot of the counts of damage sides to show their relative frequencies. Note the logarithmic y-scale.
A total of 1974 wild weapons appeared across the 200,000 shuffles (2160 for Lucky data). By far the most common were 21 and 28 side weapons, from wild two-handed flails and great hammers respectively. There were very few in the 30 to 39 range, and a reasonably large amount of 40 or greater weapons from wild and artefact maces of disruption. Artefact weapons regularly came with the ability to stun, or to cause earthquakes.
Just for fun, the highest number of sides + damage mod weapon ever seen was in the Lucky temple set:
Code:
n) \ The Mace of Disruption of Thuringwethil (1d56) (+27,+23) {|V/L} 74900
Code:
Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 20 sides Mean: 101.26 Standard deviation: 103.58 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 412.01 Gold: 2.06 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 30 sides Mean: 1315.03 Standard deviation: 1144.16 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 4747.49 Gold: 23.74 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 40 sides Mean: 1635.29 Standard deviation: 1399.09 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 5832.56 Gold: 29.16 M
Code:
Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 20 sides Mean: 92.55 Standard deviation: 90.03 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 362.64 Gold: 1.81 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 30 sides Mean: 1000.67 Standard deviation: 1023.64 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 4071.59 Gold: 20.36 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 40 sides Mean: 1252.41 Standard deviation: 1262.98 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 5041.34 Gold: 25.21 M
A total of 2000 wild weapons appeared across the 200,000 shuffles (2231 for Lucky data). By far the most common were 20, 24 and 27 side weapons, from wild espadons, executioner's swords and lochaber axes respectively. Lots more in the 30 to 39 range compared to the temple, but fewer in the 40 or higher range. Most of the 40 side weapons were wild heavy lances. Artefact weapons regularly came with sharpness or *sharpness*.
The highest number of sides + damage mod weapon seen here was in the Lucky set:
Code:
l) / The Heavy Lance 'Dead Ent' (1d50) (+27,+23) (+2) {CnSl} 50400
Results for Ordinary personality
Code:
Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 20 sides Mean: 99.99 Standard deviation: 101.42 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 404.24 Gold: 2.02 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 30 sides Mean: 1184.45 Standard deviation: 1273.98 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 5006.39 Gold: 25.03 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 40 sides Mean: 4457.61 Standard deviation: 5306.21 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 20376.23 Gold: 101.88 M
Code:
Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 20 sides Mean: 89.62 Standard deviation: 89.08 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 356.85 Gold: 1.78 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 30 sides Mean: 975.32 Standard deviation: 1019.04 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 4032.45 Gold: 20.16 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 40 sides Mean: 4069.69 Standard deviation: 5161.24 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 19553.41 Gold: 97.77 M
Black Market
A total of 758 wild weapons appeared across the 200,000 shuffles (801 for Lucky data). There was a much more uniform spread of damage sides, but the overall number of weapons is so much lower than the temple and weapon smith that it is never worthwhile to shuffle the black market, even for Burglary rogues or characters with Black Marketeer. The exception would be if you are shuffling the black market for something else that no other shop stocks, and getting wild weapons is a happy side effect.
The highest number of sides + damage mod weapon seen here was in the Lucky set:
Code:
q) / The Heavy Lance of Ulath (1d50) (+26,+22) [+7] (+2) {StSrIf(St} 52200
Code:
Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 20 sides Mean: 262.72 Standard deviation: 248.99 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 1009.71 Gold: 20.19 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 30 sides Mean: 1327.62 Standard deviation: 1361.85 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 5413.16 Gold: 108.26 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 40 sides Mean: 3111.61 Standard deviation: 2937.65 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 11924.56 Gold: 238.49 M
Code:
Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 20 sides Mean: 249.5 Standard deviation: 230.76 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 941.78 Gold: 18.84 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 30 sides Mean: 1099.84 Standard deviation: 1062.65 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 4287.78 Gold: 85.76 M Shuffles for a weapon with greater or equal than 40 sides Mean: 2516.19 Standard deviation: 2358.63 99.7% certainty in: Shuffles: 9592.09 Gold: 191.84 M
If you want to reliably get something good enough to get you through the post-serpent game, shuffling the weapon smith or the temple with a few million gold should be enough to get you by. For d40 or better weapons the temple is by far the best bet, and will cost you just under 30 million, less if you have the Lucky personality. In terms of the theoretical best weapon, I think it would be an artefact 1d56 mace of disruption with stunning and kill evil on it, but then again an artefact 1d50 heavy lance with *sharpness* and kill evil would probably outperform the mace while riding. I haven't bothered to look into the theoretical best damage very deeply - someone else is more than welcome to theorise. Thanks for reading
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