Attention casters: dungeon books are now artifacts

[Magnate]

So don't throw them away, because they won't turn up again!

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

If you see more than one of a kind, please report a bug. If you kill Morgoth without finding one of them, please let us know which, and tell us your turn count and how quickly you dived through the second half of the dungeon.

They will not be randomised in randart games. To do this, we've implemented a new flag at the end of the W: line in artifact.txt. This has a nice side effect: if you have any favourite artifacts, just add ":no" to the end of their W: lines and they will be preserved in randart games ...

[Storm-Sky]

I hope those books are indestructible......

[Magnate]

I hope those books are indestructible......

When did you last destroy an artifact??

[Storm-Sky]

When did you last destroy an artifact??

Well wasn't for sure if it was implemented the same as other artifacts, usually spellbooks are vulnerable to fire.

[Derakon]

The dungeon spellbooks have always been indestructible though. Only town spellbooks can be burned.

[Tobias]

Does this mean, that they won't show up in the BM anymore? I feel like I usually get books 5-7 from the BM before I find them in the dungeon.

Also, I have been waiting for something like the no line for some time.

[Therem Harth]

This sounds like a cool change, on the condition that it be possible to actually win with only the first four books. I don't mean to win easily mind, finding dungeon books should definitely be an "Oh cool!" moment... But as others here have pointed out, the (elemental) offensive spells in the first four books stop being useful pretty early on, whereas e.g. Orb of Draining is useful for most of the game.

(Several of the elemental spells are also wickedly inefficient. Fire Bolt for instance costs significantly more mana than Magic Missile, and does only a bit more damage IIRC; which is especially annoying because Magic Missile is unresistable damage, and Fire Bolt is not. When running mages I generally stick with Magic Missile as a ranged damage source for quite a while.)

[Derakon]

This sounds like a cool change, on the condition that it be possible to actually win with only the first four books. I don't mean to win easily mind, finding dungeon books should definitely be an "Oh cool!" moment... But as others here have pointed out, the (elemental) offensive spells in the first four books stop being useful pretty early on, whereas e.g. Orb of Draining is useful for most of the game.

I don't see how "dungeon spellbooks are now artifacts" corresponds at all to "game should be winnable without dungeon spellbooks". Just because they're artifacts doesn't mean you won't find them. How many games do you play where you don't find the Phial?

[Therem Harth]

Well, in 3.3.0 so far I've found precisely zero artifacts... Then again I've haven't been playing much lately due to real life. So point taken.

OTOH isn't there a "no artifacts" mode?

[Magnate]

Well, in 3.3.0 so far I've found precisely zero artifacts... Then again I've haven't been playing much lately due to real life. So point taken.

OTOH isn't there a "no artifacts" mode?

There is, and I guess this just got a lot harder for casters ;-)

Your point about good and bad spells is kind of orthogonal though. There have been lots of threads about improving spell lists - MarbleDice went through and adjusted the mana costs into a more sensible progression, but there hasn't been any major overhaul of the actual spell lists for a long while. v4 is definitely the place to try that out - if anyone wants to reorganise the spellbooks and submit a pull request, that would be great. (I think if you search old threads there are several people who have more or less done that in posts - but nobody's actually done it by editing spells.txt and p_class.txt yet.)

EDIT: I just picked up a pull request from Nomad - apparently there's a problem with tiles for the artifact spellbooks. I don't understand why this would be, since they didn't change their tvals or svals - but I am pretty ignorant about tiles, so I'll take Nomad's word for it.

[Nomad]

EDIT: I just picked up a pull request from Nomad - apparently there's a problem with tiles for the artifact spellbooks. I don't understand why this would be, since they didn't change their tvals or svals - but I am pretty ignorant about tiles, so I'll take Nomad's word for it.

Sorted now. See updated pull request.

[PowerWyrm]

So don't throw them away, because they won't turn up again!

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

If you see more than one of a kind, please report a bug. If you kill Morgoth without finding one of them, please let us know which, and tell us your turn count and how quickly you dived through the second half of the dungeon.

They will not be randomised in randart games. To do this, we've implemented a new flag at the end of the W: line in artifact.txt. This has a nice side effect: if you have any favourite artifacts, just add ":no" to the end of their W: lines and they will be preserved in randart games ...

Oh dear... how am I supposed to implement that in my MP variant? First caster that finds those books will make any other caster unable to cast anything but the spells in the first four books... I guess I'll have to allow randart books then.

[PowerWyrm]

Does this mean, that they won't show up in the BM anymore? I feel like I usually get books 5-7 from the BM before I find them in the dungeon.

Also, I have been waiting for something like the no line for some time.

Means exactly that... Casters will have to dive for their books.

[Starhawk]

Oh dear... how am I supposed to implement that in my MP variant? First caster that finds those books will make any other caster unable to cast anything but the spells in the first four books... I guess I'll have to allow randart books then.

Randart books with random spell selections would make me soooooo happy.

Especially if we could then add new spells to the game and actually end up with choices to make when <G>aining.

[Magnate]

Randart books with random spell selections would make me soooooo happy.

Especially if we could then add new spells to the game and actually end up with choices to make when <G>aining.

Well it's definitely the sort of thing we're willing to test in v4. All we need is a pull request with the new spells and the mechanism for randomising the books ....