Attention casters: dungeon books are now artifacts

[Thraalbee]

Thanks for the feedback - it's ...
It looks like the artifact spellbooks are less hassle for priests than for magi - try a mage and let us know what you think about having to get the first one off Kavlax!

I just finished off Kavlax with a mage. Did not feel up to the fight until quite a lot of playing and being pLvl 38. Too few hp and weak kit before now. Never played mage much before so I can't say if this is slow, very slow or normal. The fight was on dLvl 51 which is a bit later than I'd expected. Also I had hovered for a while around dlvl 35 but did not advance much so I quit that after a while.

Did not have much problems at all with Kavlax. Good supply of !rHeat, !rCold and !CCW and also, I had digged out a long straight corridor far from any room so that phase door would keep me in sight with Kavlax. Did not want melee. Only one scare when haste self timed out and being at speed 0. Surivived that though. Only attack I used was magic missile.

Before Kavlax I did not have too much problems. I did get to below 10 hp 2-3 times though and once I got drained from pLvl 17 to 1! Almost had to change my pants . Did not find !restore_life so I had to go back to dLvl 1 and hunt with less than 10 hp once again. Fun but scary. Never understood what got me, some invisible ghost i guess. ?Teleported away and then recalled immediately.

Dump: http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=12866

[Thraalbee]

Junk was not a problem in general. Only once did I seriously miss a Mass Identify spell - after clearing a steady stream of A's from a huge room previously filled with them. I had to move around a huge area while fighting to avoid drop overflow. In the end, a really big area was filled a 5-6 items deep layer of mostly junk.

The kit was updated continuously every now and then in small increments. The big jumps were getting Caspanion, the first headgear with +wis and rStun and ESP of course. Weaponwise Aiglos on dlvl 28 which was my main weapon for a long time until a Holy Avenger on dlvl 72 and then finally a massive non-artifact morningstar on dlvl 99. The powerdragon mail was only used in the final big fights. Before that, a few ego mails with some extra damage and con bonus until I found Caspanion on dlvl 70.

Might not get much effetive play time until later next week, but next I will try out playing a mage.

[Magnate]

Thanks for the feedback - it's good to see some dumps without any glaringly over- or under-powered kit. Good that artifacts are sufficiently rare - did you find you had to wade through loads of junk egos at any point? How often did you swap/upgrade kit during the game? I notice that only two of your final kit were found before dl94 (plus one that was bought from a store), which IMO is a good sign.

It looks like the artifact spellbooks are less hassle for priests than for magi - try a mage and let us know what you think about having to get the first one off Kavlax!

[Thraalbee]

AAR first v4 winner

My priest found the books nicely distributed during the game. The first from start, the last together with ?Kelek on dlvl 99. Vecna was hugging both of them until permanently retired.

   2003973   2500'   30   Found the Book of High Prayer [Ethereal Openings]
   2780569   3100'   40   Found the Book of High Prayer [Holy Infusions]
   4270678   3800'   48   Found the Book of High Prayer [Purifications and
Healing]
   4353906   3950'   49   Found the Book of High Prayer [Godly Insights]
   4778759   4950'   50   Found the Book of High Prayer [Wrath of God]

I appreciate the noticeably fewer artifact drops, at least fewer until dlvl 99. Played a long game and still did NOT find a single artifact light source, amulet or ring until after killing Morgoth when "Carlammas showed up.
Although I brought Eonwe and Gothmog along as swaps for immunity in distance fighting, i did not use any artifact at all in the latter part of the game. Not for show, but just because I did not have artifacts that beat the ego items.

Overall I really like the new version. The new weapons are possibly a bit more powerful than a priest needs, but not way off.

http://angband.oook.cz/ladder-show.php?id=12757

[Magnate]

Playing a Priest in V4 from Feb 12.

Having the books as artifacts is a great change! Adds to the experience. Makes me challenge tough Uniques earlier than I usually would to get the higher books. The joy of a hard kill followed by a new book is a new great little victory in mid game. And after clearing some 75 levels I just found the second last one which I find is fine. It took a while, but Priests are easy even without all the books.

Just one thing - in the item list, artifact books are not listed as artifacts (i.e. displayed on top in purple) until they have been identified. Considering the tremendous amount of loot generated by e.g. the Balrog of Moria and his escort it seems fair to display the books as artifacts directly to help the player a bit. Especially since the game immediately lists them as Tome of High Magick or Book of High Prayer which does reveal that these are artifacts.

/Mathias

Thanks for this - that's a good spot about the item list bug. Opened as ticket #1631.

[Thraalbee]

Positive feedback on dungeon books

Playing a Priest in V4 from Feb 12.

Having the books as artifacts is a great change! Adds to the experience. Makes me challenge tough Uniques earlier than I usually would to get the higher books. The joy of a hard kill followed by a new book is a new great little victory in mid game. And after clearing some 75 levels I just found the second last one which I find is fine. It took a while, but Priests are easy even without all the books.

Just one thing - in the item list, artifact books are not listed as artifacts (i.e. displayed on top in purple) until they have been identified. Considering the tremendous amount of loot generated by e.g. the Balrog of Moria and his escort it seems fair to display the books as artifacts directly to help the player a bit. Especially since the game immediately lists them as Tome of High Magick or Book of High Prayer which does reveal that these are artifacts.

/Mathias

[Magnate]

And of course, things get a bit screwy when you introduce randarts, because the thematic link is lost.

Although it would be easy to prevent specific artifact drops from happening with randarts, I find the idea of "ooh I wonder what Fundin's thingummy turned into this time" quite amusing.

[Derakon]

Personally I feel like it's less special when an artifact is specifically boosted when dropped by a specific monster. Even if it's not guaranteed, it becomes "Oh hey, Fundin's ball and chain. Never saw that coming. Yawn."

In contrast I'm all for drop profiles by base item type -- e.g. liches dropping jewelry and spellbooks more often, orcs tending to favor the heavier weapons and armor, etc, and I doubt I'd mind if similar profiles were applied to uniques.

And of course, things get a bit screwy when you introduce randarts, because the thematic link is lost.

[Magnate]

My original conception was to have a set of unique monsters that could drop the book. Let's say there are 5 unique monsters that could drop Raal's. Killing one of the monsters would give a 1/(N + 1) chance of getting Raal's where N is the number of monsters that can drop Raal's that are still alive.

An alternative way is to give a set chance for each monster to drop the book and make it automatically drop if the monster is killed.

Both of these are hard to code, but here's an option that might be possible, and helpful in other ways as well.

Allow monsters to get drop flags that accept a percentage chance for dropping.
So you can have 4 uniques with a 50% chance of dropping Raal's and 1 monster with a 100% chance. You could then do something like give Sauron a 4% chance of dropping the one ring. Fundin a 30% chance of dropping his ball and change. Gothmog a 70% chance of dropping his whip and so on.

Yep - takk thought of all this years ago with the ideas for "drop profiles" (http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/600). They're one of many superb ideas that haven't been fully implemented yet. We've got further than with most others though - at least we can specify specific artifacts for a monster to drop. We *can* specify the %chance for specified items, but not for specified artifacts (because it was initially implemented only to deal with the Morgoth case). But it should be pretty simple to extend the current functionality to implement fizzix's idea, adding a % check for specified artifact drops.

[fizzix]

The biggest problem I noticed with artifact spellbooks the last time I was playing v4 (which was, admittedly awhile ago) is that with the current dearth of artifacts in general, artifact spellbooks almost entirely drop from their associated monsters. Last I checked, Kavlax has a lock on Raal's Tome, which is a bit of a showstopper for mages.

My original conception was to have a set of unique monsters that could drop the book. Let's say there are 5 unique monsters that could drop Raal's. Killing one of the monsters would give a 1/(N + 1) chance of getting Raal's where N is the number of monsters that can drop Raal's that are still alive.

An alternative way is to give a set chance for each monster to drop the book and make it automatically drop if the monster is killed.

Both of these are hard to code, but here's an option that might be possible, and helpful in other ways as well.

Allow monsters to get drop flags that accept a percentage chance for dropping.
So you can have 4 uniques with a 50% chance of dropping Raal's and 1 monster with a 100% chance. You could then do something like give Sauron a 4% chance of dropping the one ring. Fundin a 30% chance of dropping his ball and change. Gothmog a 70% chance of dropping his whip and so on.

[Derakon]

The biggest problem I noticed with artifact spellbooks the last time I was playing v4 (which was, admittedly awhile ago) is that with the current dearth of artifacts in general, artifact spellbooks almost entirely drop from their associated monsters. Last I checked, Kavlax has a lock on Raal's Tome, which is a bit of a showstopper for mages.

[Lord Tom]

Apparently the idea of making the dungeon books artifacts is fairly settled, but I have a few thoughts having just won with a mage in 3.3.2...

I still play with selling, so it's nice to have extra dungeon books -- they're high-value items that don't use an extra inventory slot.

There may be considerations of which I'm not aware, but making the books artifacts seems to be a bit of a square peg in a round hole, particularly given they'll still show up in no-artifacts mode and it's desirable that every reasonably-paced game will encounter them.

If what's wanted is an item that:
1. only 1 exists at a time
2. can't be stolen
3. can't be destroyed

I'd suggest new object flags as a better way to accomplish this (UNIQUE, NO_STEAL, etc). That would lay the groundwork for possible future functionality rather than creating a very odd special case.

[Magnate]

In the latest V4 version I managed to get 2 of the same book dropped.

I think the sequence was - got one as a random drop, but didn't have a chance to pick up or identify. Killed Kavlax a few turns later after and got another (I guess as a special drop). On identification they turned out to be the same.

Regards,
Jonathan

Yes, this is a deliberate error. The alternative is a small but unacceptable chance of a book being generated, not found, and then not dropped by its designated holder.

[meJustmeNotyou]

Vanilla, or v4? They aren't the same game. In Vanilla, dungeon books are not artifacts, so you can find more than one copy of each one, and while they're immune to the basic four elements, things like chaos or mana storms can still destroy them. In v4, they're artifacts and are thus completely indestructible, but you can only ever find a given book once.

I've never played V4 Derakon... i was reading the top of this thread and someone mentioned burning books... they didn't really mention after (that i read) anything about what you just told me... so yeah... i wrote this thinking maybe artifact books might be able to be mana balled etc as vanilla books could be (if the code wasn't changed)... sorry (bye)

[jevansau]

In the latest V4 version I managed to get 2 of the same book dropped.

I think the sequence was - got one as a random drop, but didn't have a chance to pick up or identify. Killed Kavlax a few turns later after and got another (I guess as a special drop). On identification they turned out to be the same.

Regards,
Jonathan