Attention casters: dungeon books are now artifacts

[Magnate]

The main goal of making spellbooks into artifacts is to eliminate the issue of junk spellbooks (i.e. every copy of a book after the first). But to do this the first book you find needs to be impossible to lose by accident. Indestructible is easy, un-stealable and unique are harder as they're currently only true of artifacts.

I have to say that I find the "kill this unique and you will get this book assuming you don't already have it" to be a bit weird. I'm all for themed drops but that seems a bit heavyhanded to me. Better to have e.g. liches be prone to dropping spellbooks in general.

That's a good idea - we can do that already. Fizzix is keen to ensure that the artifact books are pretty much guaranteed to drop in a normal (i.e. non-speed-diving) game, and this could be a good way to improve the stats. It doesn't solve the problem of no_artifact games though. To do that, we'd need to split artifacts into two types - those which can drop in no_art games and those which can't. That's no different to the switch which says whether or not they can be randomised, so I wouldn't have any problem with it.

Interesting that the consensus seems to be against quest drops.

[Derakon]

The main goal of making spellbooks into artifacts is to eliminate the issue of junk spellbooks (i.e. every copy of a book after the first). But to do this the first book you find needs to be impossible to lose by accident. Indestructible is easy, un-stealable and unique are harder as they're currently only true of artifacts.

I have to say that I find the "kill this unique and you will get this book assuming you don't already have it" to be a bit weird. I'm all for themed drops but that seems a bit heavyhanded to me. Better to have e.g. liches be prone to dropping spellbooks in general.

[Nomad]

It seems to me that spellbooks were made artifacts in order to take advantage of a few side effects, notably in the object allocation procedure.

Since then, they have been wrapped up in a whole bunch of special cases, to the point where maybe it would have been better just to special case their generation in the first place?

Maybe create a "one off" flag that allows you to specify a given object shouldn't be generated more than once per game? Or, more complicated but more versatile, allow you to specify a variable maximum number per game. You could then conceivably use it to limit super-powered consumables like Potions of Life or the more powerful rods and staves. (Not that I'm suggesting this is necessarily something that needs to be done, but it might be useful to have that capability.)

[kaypy]

It seems to me that spellbooks were made artifacts in order to take advantage of a few side effects, notably in the object allocation procedure.

Since then, they have been wrapped up in a whole bunch of special cases, to the point where maybe it would have been better just to special case their generation in the first place?

[buzzkill]

I kind of feel this is turning more diablo-like and not angband, when you have guarenteed drops.

I had the same knee-jerk reaction. It almost forces players to have spoilerish knowledge in order to get a fair shake. However, I suppose that if you're playing no artifacts, you know what you're getting into. I still have a feeling that there's a better solution out there somewhere (like pseudo-artifacts).

[Storm-Sky]

I kind of feel this is turning more diablo-like and not angband, when you have guarenteed drops.

[Xaxyx]

Should we be concerned about the corner case wherein:

- The game is no-artifact
- The player kills [Unique Monster #3]
- [Unique Book #3] drops
- Something Bad™ happens and the player is forced to leave the level (or, better still, teleported off of the level against his will) before managing to snatch the book from the floor?

[Magnate]

A more general solution could be to add a flag to the artifact list that indicates that the item in question is allowed to drop even in no-artifact games. If you thought there was a possibility that a similar issue might pop up in the future, it would keep from having to write a special case for it all over again.

Great minds think alike - I would have done exactly that, and may still do so one day - but for the time being we've implemented fizzix's idea. There are now ten uniques who are guaranteed to drop the ten artifact spellbooks, whether or not you're playing with no_artifacts. (They own one each, so it's the same every game.) People can look up which ones in monster.txt - but you don't have to ...

EDIT: In normal artifact games, they can also drop randomly. If this happens before you kill the relevant unique, s/he will not drop it again.

[Max Stats]

Please rest assured that we'll find a solution to this - there was never any intention to nerf no-artifact play. I'm happy to make sure they drop even in no-artifact games. (This is orthogonal to fizzix's idea of having them dropped by specific uniques - if that works out, it can apply to no-artifact games too.)

A more general solution could be to add a flag to the artifact list that indicates that the item in question is allowed to drop even in no-artifact games. If you thought there was a possibility that a similar issue might pop up in the future, it would keep from having to write a special case for it all over again.

[PowerWyrm]

I really like what was done in ToME. One spell, one book. Multiple spells, one tome. Usually when playing a mage, I cast half of the spells only once (just for learning them), and most of other spells are only useful during one part of the game (early game, late game). This system allows to carry copies of books for spells you actually use. All spells are available during the whole game, but you can only casts the ones you have the mana/int/wis/level for, no need to restrict the castings to books you can find only deep in the dungeon. Later in the game, you can find tomes to decrease the number of spellbooks you need to carry. These can be made artifacts...

[Nomad]

Please rest assured that we'll find a solution to this - there was never any intention to nerf no-artifact play. I'm happy to make sure they drop even in no-artifact games. (This is orthogonal to fizzix's idea of having them dropped by specific uniques - if that works out, it can apply to no-artifact games too.)

How about keeping both artefact and non-artefact versions of the books, but only the artefact versions are element proof? So you can still find plenty of ordinary copies of MB5 (second printing? ) but only one special copy that's guaranteed to survive if you get fireballed.

[Magnate]

As a long time "no-artifacts" player, and a somewhat more recent "no-egos" player, I think this idea needs work. I don't mind the idea of making the books more rare or in some way harder to get, but removing them entirely from a no-artifacts game seems to me to make it nearly impossible to play a mage, since the first four books only have elemental magic, which is useless against many powerful opponents (except for magic missile, which also isn't useful against powerful opponents). A no-artifacts mage is just a bad archer or a lousy rogue. And no-egos seems to be basically impossible. It may not be quite so big a disaster for a priest, but losing the PB6 prayers sort of guts the whole reason to play a priest rather than a paladin.

I freely admit I'm being self serving here, but I don't want to see my personal play style be pushed out. I'd much prefer one of: no change, or: have the dungeon books put into some sort of special category so that they are still generated even with birth-no-artifacts, or: have them be dropped by specific unique(s) (like a quest reward, but without introducing full-blown quests into v4); I like fizzix's suggestion of having two uniques for each book.

Please rest assured that we'll find a solution to this - there was never any intention to nerf no-artifact play. I'm happy to make sure they drop even in no-artifact games. (This is orthogonal to fizzix's idea of having them dropped by specific uniques - if that works out, it can apply to no-artifact games too.)

[bron]

As of ff29e63, the top five books in each realm are artifacts.

As a long time "no-artifacts" player, and a somewhat more recent "no-egos" player, I think this idea needs work. I don't mind the idea of making the books more rare or in some way harder to get, but removing them entirely from a no-artifacts game seems to me to make it nearly impossible to play a mage, since the first four books only have elemental magic, which is useless against many powerful opponents (except for magic missile, which also isn't useful against powerful opponents). A no-artifacts mage is just a bad archer or a lousy rogue. And no-egos seems to be basically impossible. It may not be quite so big a disaster for a priest, but losing the PB6 prayers sort of guts the whole reason to play a priest rather than a paladin.

I freely admit I'm being self serving here, but I don't want to see my personal play style be pushed out. I'd much prefer one of: no change, or: have the dungeon books put into some sort of special category so that they are still generated even with birth-no-artifacts, or: have them be dropped by specific unique(s) (like a quest reward, but without introducing full-blown quests into v4); I like fizzix's suggestion of having two uniques for each book.

[fizzix]

one not-quite-so-well-thought-out idea I had was to make dungeon books be set drops by uniques. So that each book was guaranteed to be carried by one appropriate unique each game (but possibly could also be found through random generation?). An easier version would be to pick two uniques for each book and guarantee that each drops at MB# or PB# unless both have already been found.

Of course we need some candidate uniques.
MB5 - Kavlax, Castamir, Draebor (?)
PB5 - Lorgan, Mim, Adunaphel

MB6 - Gorlim, Eol, Shelob
PB6 - Moria, Ar-Pharazon, Ren

MB7 - Saruman, Mouth of Sauron, Hoarmurath
PB7 - Radagast, Fundin, Osse

MB8 - Glaurung, Feagwath, Ungoliant
PB8 - Khamul, Witch-King, Maeglin

MB9 - Vecna, Ancalagon, Charcaroth
PB9 - Lungorthin, Gothmog, Huan

The idea being that at the beginning of the game it's decided that, say, Vecna has MB9 (you don't know whether it's Vecna, Ancalagon or Charcaroth). By killing all three you are guaranteed to get MB9. However, you could also find it lying on the ground before offing them...

[Magnate]

Running stats on dungeon books gives the obvious impression that they're unfairly rare.

You currently have only a 23% chance of having MB5 created at some point if you clear dlevels 1-100. there's only a 6% chance for MB9.

These can be raised a bit by changing the allocation lines in artifact.txt, but using the allocation value for the most common allocation possible only brings MB5 up to 45%. Considering that in the past you had a 99.99% chance of finding MB5 before dlevel 60 and a 93% chance of MB9 before dlevel 100, I think something drastic needs to change in artifact allocation for these to work.

A mage without MB5 is not really fun to play.

I'm going to try and verify these statistics over the next couple of days. Previously my stats said that MB9 was generated 2.2 times per game (= clearing levels 1-100 once each), while fizzix's said 0.9 times, so I expect to get different results ...