Even more thoughts on v4

[sethos]

monsters picking up artifacts? go for it! as long as the artifact doesn't disappear, I think that's awesome. My biggest question would be: what if said monster is Destructed/Banished/Polymorphed(into something that can't carry items).

Last thought - perhaps they should be limited to only unidentified artifacts - I've had a few levels where I had to ditch a few artifacts in a corner to finish looting a vault, and it WOULD suck to actually lose an artifact. Just losing a shot at one doesn't bother me nearly as much.

[kaypy]

I think this is because they have EASY_KNOW (they're the only artifacts that do). This means that you learn them from afar, rather than on pickup like other artifacts. So they're preserved because you haven't picked them up, yet still known. This should be a simple matter of removing EASY_KNOW, but I don't know if that will have other consequences. I'll try it and see. It will mean that they drop as simply "Book of High Magic/Prayer" and you won't know which it is until you pick it up.

Does this mean that instead of having to pick up a book in order to depreserve it, you will instead "merely" need to pick up the book in order to identify it in order to depreserve it? This... doesn't sound like much of an improvement.

Maybe something could be done along the lines of "If an artifact is generated and squelched, it is also depreserved".

[Nomad]

A minimum "something worthwhile" feeling for artefacts sounds perfect to me. At levels low enough for weak artefacts to make a big difference I would probably stick around to check out that feeling, and by depths where they're common enough to be useless I would just skip it immediately.

And I approve of monsters being able to pick up artefacts. Maybe it's just my melee-happy playstyle, but if you can't get the treasure without killing something nasty to pick it up... well, isn't that working as designed? Forcing the player to jump through hoops to get the rewards is a good thing.

How about making only monsters with a native depth deeper than the artfact able to pick them up? Or only allow uniques to do it.

[Derakon]

Because in thread after thread after thread people said they really hated being told that a level was superb and then finding nothing better than slay orc weapons even after clearing the level.

And instead, now they complain that the item feeling didn't match the loot they found.

[buzzkill]

I'm happy to revert the "monsters can't carry stuff which hurts them" change too - it seems to have more downsides than up. But it bugs me that they can't pick up artifacts. I suppose I daren't change that because people will complain about vault loot getting picked up by something they can't kill.

First off, let them complain. It doesn't mean that you're wrong. It just means that one of you is wrong. Probably the other guy.

Second, what if monsters could pick up artifacts every once in a while. Make them pass a saving throw or something so that a top tier unique would only have about a 5% chance of picking one up, and a top tier non-unique about 1%. Assuming being locked in a vault they would be walking back and forth a lot while locked in the vault, this would give them a small chance to grab one (and also limit it to one artifact per monster). It would also encourage greedy players to be a bit more aggressive in their approach to vaults. Maybe give a ominous message such as "You feel a great disturbance in the force." as an indication that an artifact has been snagged by something, and your life just got a little harder (plus it's probably gonna be covered in goo by the time you recover it).

Aside, maybe monsters shouldn't move around so much in a 'sealed' vault. Awake but unmoving until the vault is 'cracked' means less trampling and picking up of stuff in general. What does monster movement within a sealed vault add to the game? (aside from that it's fun to watch is you have telepathy, and who doesn't nowadays).

[Magnate]

If you value false positives then IMO you should go back to a combined monster+item level feeling. That's the best way to create uncertainty because you don't know if the level is superb because Bladeturner's there, or because the Tarrasque is.

Why'd we move away from combined level feelings in the first place, anyway? I don't remember.

Because in thread after thread after thread people said they really hated being told that a level was superb and then finding nothing better than slay orc weapons even after clearing the level.

You can't please all the people all the time. Minimum feelings for artifacts are easy to implement so that'll do for an interim fix until someone codes up all that best-item-per-slot stuff.

I'm happy to revert the "monsters can't carry stuff which hurts them" change too - it seems to have more downsides than up. But it bugs me that they can't pick up artifacts. I suppose I daren't change that because people will complain about vault loot getting picked up by something they can't kill.

[sethos]

on feelings, I do think that setting up a minimum feeling for artifacts is a good solution- but I'd be open to anyone having a better idea.

On drops, I don't see why an orc wouldn't carry a slay orc weapon - maybe that's why he's the captain, after all. .

honestly, limiting drops just makes hunting some things even less useful: hunt greater undead? better already have that nice weapon ready, cuz you ain't gettin one along the way. I don't think that it should work like that. Would smog really smash every sword that slays dragons in his horde, or just push them to the bottom of the pile to keep them from being used, while still keeping his treasure, content in the fact that he's nigh unstoppable?

I think that the latter scenario is more likely, and a good starting argument for why drops should not be limited by "can this hurt me? oh, better not carry it then.", since most items are only going to be pried out of their cold dead fingers anyways, what do they care?

[LostTemplar]

Problem, having two !Aug is better than one !Aug.

I missed it, in FA consumables dont contribute to feelings so I assumed vanilla has the same.

[Derakon]

If you value false positives then IMO you should go back to a combined monster+item level feeling. That's the best way to create uncertainty because you don't know if the level is superb because Bladeturner's there, or because the Tarrasque is.

Why'd we move away from combined level feelings in the first place, anyway? I don't remember.

[fizzix]

Again the same "exponent thing" here. Having 1000 +15 +15 weapons on the level is definitely worth less then having one +20 +20, so get rid of summary level feellings, just best object + strongest monster, maybe some credit for vaults due to being special and fun.

Problem, having two !Aug is better than one !Aug. So you need to account for consumables differently. Of course you can categorize based on slot, so you get best weapon + best armor + best shield + ... + sum of all consumables. However, really I don't particularly care about the accuracy in this case. I think artifacts should provide more to the level feeling for flavor reasons alone. Regardless of how good they actually are.

I also like the idea of "there may be something worthwhile here" meaning that there may not. False positives are good here.

[bio_hazard]

Again the same "exponent thing" here. Having 1000 +15 +15 weapons on the level is definitely worth less then having one +20 +20, so get rid of summary level feellings, just best object + strongest monster, maybe some credit for vaults due to being special and fun.

Maybe sum the best over a few broad categories (e.g. armor, weapon, consumable)

[LostTemplar]

Again the same "exponent thing" here. Having 1000 +15 +15 weapons on the level is definitely worth less then having one +20 +20, so get rid of summary level feellings, just best object + strongest monster, maybe some credit for vaults due to being special and fun.

[Derakon]

Drat, I must have missed this discussion. Anyway, I think this is a horrible idea. I would've preferred there be no restriction on whether monsters can pick up slay or branded weapons either. After all, there was no problem with the player picking up Nazgul and Morgul weapons when those existed.

I'm also fine with monsters dropping items that can slay them; it seems preferable to the negation especially if that leads to suppression of desirable items. As Fizzix notes, you're effectively eliminating the Slay Evil affix from the late game with this.

If logical consistency then requires monsters also to be able to pick up weapons that slay them, oh well. Of course, they still won't be able to pick up artifacts, so the whole "how did the monster pick that item up in the first place?" issue doesn't go away entirely.

[bio_hazard]

By how many feelings? This is easy enough to do, but are you saying you want "special" feelings in non-preserve mode? That's the only way to ensure that really weak artifacts produce a noticeable feeling at deeper levels. The alternative is simply to increase the feeling by two or three notches if there are any artifacts on the level, but a single weak artifact could still end up with a feeling of "aren't many treasures" or "not much interesting". If people really don't like that, I don't see any other solution but to make all artifacts give special feelings - which IMO is a bit pointless in preserve mode.

EDIT: I guess there is another alternative: we simply say that if there's an artifact on the level, the feeling cannot be less than "there may be something worthwhile here". How about that?

Can we just set a minimum "There may be something worthwhile" or whatever that message is?

[fizzix]

@fizzix: that's correct, evil monsters cannot drop slay evil weapons. Monsters without IM_FOO cannot drop BRAND_FOO weapons either. There was a lot of debate about this, and I thought it wouldn't do any harm to reduce the occurrence of those things.

Drat, I must have missed this discussion. Anyway, I think this is a horrible idea. I would've preferred there be no restriction on whether monsters can pick up slay or branded weapons either. After all, there was no problem with the player picking up Nazgul and Morgul weapons when those existed.

How many endgame uniques can drop slay evil weapons? You have Huan, Tarrasque, the Angels, Fundin. I don't know who else, but it's a pretty short list of monsters that are some of the hardest to kill in the game.

On a less argumentative note, I'd be fine with setting a minimum feeling for a level with an artifact. Something worthwhile could be good enough, or something good. The other option would be to actually make the power levels be more dependent on where they appear. A +15, +15 lance is pretty useless on dlevel 10 when you can't wield it properly and it slows you, but Thengel is a pretty awesome find.

One way to account for that is to penalize heavy things at low levels, so that plate mail is not that strong, but robes of resistance are worth a lot. There might be better solutions, I'll think a bit.