Even more thoughts on v4

[fizzix]

I like the mature dragons being at +5 speed though. It miiight just be possible that +10 would be even better for them.

Do you think speeding them up is preferable to adding more HP?

[Derakon]

Ninjas have 85 HP, which is pretty paltry. If you can't do 85 damage to it before it gets to you at dlevel 32, then you deserve to get your strength drained.

I was fighting orcs, thus stuck in melee range, and the ninja snuck in, as ninjas are wont to do. My max damage/round was only 50 and came from a single blow (massive emerald halberd), thus pretty unreliable damage.

Maybe this is an edge case, but I still don't think that ninjas were bad where they were.

I like the mature dragons being at +5 speed though. It miiight just be possible that +10 would be even better for them.

[fizzix]

* I don't think ninjas really need to be at +15 speed. They're dangerous enough at +10, with their dual drain-STR melee attacks. I got my STR drained all the way down to 12 in a couple of turns (for some reason I thought they moved at normal speed, so my guard was down).

Ninjas have 85 HP, which is pretty paltry. If you can't do 85 damage to it before it gets to you at dlevel 32, then you deserve to get your strength drained.

[Derakon]

Buzzkill: as of my previous character, it was worse. Uniques were, as a general rule, dropping items with really crappy affix combinations that weren't any better than what could have been found from chump monsters 1000' earlier. Of course, this was probably true for other monsters as well, but it's more noticeable when the monster you're fighting is hard to kill.

With the current version drops are vastly improved in general so it's harder to say.

Yeah, the game's swung too far back towards Monty Haul. Here's some of what my character's using right now (clvl37, dlvl53):

Keen Rapier of Extra Attacks (1d6) (+9,+16) <+2>
+2 attack speed
Slays animals
339 damage vs. animals, 313 otherwise.
Dropped by Scatha the Worm at 2100'

Light Crossbow of Extra Shots (x4) (+29,+13) <+1>
+1 shooting speed, shooting power
Found in a chest at 1550'.

Heavy Cloak of Aman [6,+9[ <+4,+1>
+4 stealth, +1 speed
rPoison
Dropped by a blue ooze at 2250'

Chaos Dragon Scale Caestus of Agility (+2,+4) [5,+2] <+2>
+2 DEX
rChaos/Disenchant
Featherfall
Found in a lesser vault at 2550'

And the real kicker:

Golden Crown of Lordliness [0,+0] <+2,+3,+1>
+2 WIS / +3 CHA / +1 light radius
rFire/Lite
pFear
Sustain STR/WIS/DEX/CON/CHA
Regeneration
Telepathy
Found on the floor at 2600'

That crown has 7 affixes: Telepathy, Resist Fire, Wisdom, Bodykeeping, Beauty, Golden, Light. It's better than pretty much any artifact I could hope for...which is good, because the only artifact I've found so far is the book I got for killing Uvatha (Ethereal Openings). Though the game thinks I've seen a couple of weapons.

Other notes:

* Ranged combat continues to be significantly better than melee. I think the issue is that ranged weapons have a much smaller pool of affixes to choose from, with a much higher percentage of useful affixes, compared to melee weapons. And all of the affixes for ammo are damage-oriented. So the weapon shop routinely stocks ammo with slays, found ammo often has multiple slays or brands, and launchers typically have high bonuses to-hit and to-dam. Meanwhile you find a lot of Forester's Blackrock Golden Pike (2d6) (+0,+0) and the like which are useless for actual combat.

In other words, the new affix system has created a new category of junk: items with plenty of affixes that are nonetheless useless for their theoretical purpose. Which just goes to highlight even more how important the humble plus is to the quality of items.

* On the plus side, for awhile there I was using a Bone Maul (4d4) (+4,+4), and then later a Massive Emerald Halberd (4d6) (+0,+0). I only got one blow with them apiece, but they were still my best damage options since I started with a whopping 16 STR.

* I don't think ninjas really need to be at +15 speed. They're dangerous enough at +10, with their dual drain-STR melee attacks. I got my STR drained all the way down to 12 in a couple of turns (for some reason I thought they moved at normal speed, so my guard was down).

* We might want to consider disallowing themes for items with bad affixes. At least, it feels really weird to find a Cheap Longbow of Lothlorien.

* I seem to be finding a lot of high-end consumables. My home has: 7 mushrooms of Vigor, 4 !*Healing*, 4 ?Banish, 2 ?MassBanish, 2 ?Destruction. I'm also finding a decent supply of !Healing, which are coming in handy. Meanwhile I'm scraping along on !Speed. I don't suppose it'd be possible to classify a small stack of !Speed (say, 3d2) as a "good" consumable?

* On that note, ?MassBanish is too cheap, costing only 3000AU from the Black Market. By comparison, !Healing costs 2400AU.

* I saw some Elvenkind body armor in the Black Market. While it had the basic 4 resists, its listed "Known properties" didn't include all four.

* I found a "Longsword of Slay Dragon" that also had +1 attack. IMO the extra attack is more significant than the dragonslayer, so its name was wrong.

* The prayer Cure Critical Wounds is strictly better than Neutralize Poison, at least for paladins. Both cost 15 mana, and CCW restores hitpoints in addition to curing poison (and cuts, stunning, and amnesia). CCW shows up 2 levels later, granted, but that's hardly relevant since you won't actually be casting either as a paladin until much later given the small mana pool.

* Themes are far more common now than they were in the version my dwarf warrior ran in. I've found many HAs, Defenders, and the like, and a couple of Lothlorien bows too. Nothing that's beaten my Crossbow of Buckland though.

* Add an entry in my "monsters to deal with quickly" list: shimmering vortices. Incredibly quick, 2x engulf to blind melee, erratic movement (so when you're blind you can't hit it), moderately powerful light breath, and of course they're shriekers. One nearly killed me before I wised up and used my staff of teleport.

(Of course, Crebain remain my least favorite enemy. They always seem to show up right when I enter the level, too, leaving me no time to find a safe way to tackle them)

EDIT:

* I just found a Heavy Crossbow (x6) +1 shooting speed. Would that be allowed as a randart? Ego item generation should rarely be more permissive than artifact generation IMO.

* When mimics get summoned, the player's character thinks they're items. He's not too bright. Also, "The Amethyst Ring of See Invisible {squelch} was really a monster!"

* More evidence that missile weapons are overpowered: Sling of Extra Shots (x3) (+31,+33). It got five Slaying affixes, and a Power affix, in addition to the Extra Shots and Extra Might.

[buzzkill]

* I agree with Derakon that unique drops generally suck, this is a problem.

I don't know, hasn't this always been the case (with the exception of Wormtounge) or has it gotten even worse. No one ever seemed all that concerned about it before.

[flechette]

Saw these posts about missed artifacts, and I see the same thing with my current priest. I've apparently missed two artifacts in a randart game. Shows their names and base dice, and all known runes, but not the full info. If I hadn't ID'd them, how could I have known their names?

[Malak Darkhunter]

I saw the same thing in my last game, knowledge screen showed The Lance of the Eorlingas, but I never found it, or saw it.

[Zyphyr]

* I've run into the artifacts appearing in knowledge problem that Derakon has hit as well. I'm obsessively checking the knowledge screen to try and troubleshoot this.

I am seeing it as well. In my current game I haven't actually seen any Artifacts (only on DL 26 so far), but I have Pauraegen in my knowledge screen.

[fizzix]

More thoughts.

* Damage on weapons seem about right, but other affixes are a bit too common. Damage and accuracy on bows are a bit too high as well.

* I agree with Derakon that unique drops generally suck, this is a problem.

* Certain affixes are too common. Specifically telepathy (two telepathy helms and an awesome telepathy weapon from a vault.) and slay evil. These should be rare. Acid brand and electricity brand should be rare as well.

* Getting through stat-gain is a pain. As this is essentially a requisite to gaining MB5, (which is a requisite for killing a good number of enemies) stat potions need to be more common. Some other solutions are possible. Currently, it's a real bear to progress further until you obtain the required number of !Con potions (I've found 1 so far, and 3 !toughness).

* I've run into the artifacts appearing in knowledge problem that Derakon has hit as well. I'm obsessively checking the knowledge screen to try and troubleshoot this.

Some ideas.

* I think the known runes and known properties should be relegated to a subscreen. The unknown runes should be, "this object has N unknown runes" to prevent the leaking of information.

* Identify should be rarer or only applicable to potions, wands, rods, staves and scrolls. All properties should be determined on sight. We need some sort of long-distance inspect.

[Nomad]

I think I'm going to have to agree with fizzix that the pendulum has probably swung back a little bit too far when it comes to affix availability. My current character is at 350' and already contemplating whether it wouldn't be more profitable to just give up on the whole Morgoth thing and go back to town to set up a business selling ego cloaks. (I have two cloaks of Shielding, one cloak of Stealth +3, and one cloak of Shielding and Stealth +2.)

[Nomad]

IIRC Beauty is also a standard affix ... but yes there are issues with obviousness.

Ah, true; in that case, I think it's probably just the fact that Beauty is made up of two runes and I only learned one of them, which wasn't enough to trigger an update to the Inspect info. So the fix for #1595 will probably fix this too.

[Magnate]

Rune-based ID still seems to be slightly buggy:

Currently, when you have multiple pieces of equipment with the same unknown rune, learning it on one doesn't update the ID info for the others. So, for instance, if both your weapon and some arrows in your quiver have the rune "feol" and you learn by using the weapon that "feol" = "silver", the arrows will continue to list "feol" as an unknown rune unless you drop them and pick them up again.

That's a good catch, thank you. Checking for ID of other items when you learn a rune on one is specific to rune-based ID, but shouldn't be hard to implement. Ticket #1595.

Also, when you learn an obvious stat boost by wielding an item, the associated rune fails to change from unknown to identified on the Inspect screen. (EDIT: actually, this doesn't seem to happen all the time: just found a weapon with the Strength affix that ID'd fine on wielding. I initially noticed the issue with a Cap of Beauty, so possibly the problem is to do with 'extra' runes that are added as part of a theme rather than as standard affixes?)

IIRC Beauty is also a standard affix ... but yes there are issues with obviousness. As I said in another thread, my view is that the whole concept of 'splendid' needs re-thinking, but I haven't got much further than that yet.

[Nomad]

Rune-based ID still seems to be slightly buggy:

Currently, when you have multiple pieces of equipment with the same unknown rune, learning it on one doesn't update the ID info for the others. So, for instance, if both your weapon and some arrows in your quiver have the rune "feol" and you learn by using the weapon that "feol" = "silver", the arrows will continue to list "feol" as an unknown rune unless you drop them and pick them up again.

Also, when you learn an obvious stat boost by wielding an item, the associated rune fails to change from unknown to identified on the Inspect screen. (EDIT: actually, this doesn't seem to happen all the time: just found a weapon with the Strength affix that ID'd fine on wielding. I initially noticed the issue with a Cap of Beauty, so possibly the problem is to do with 'extra' runes that are added as part of a theme rather than as standard affixes?)

[fizzix]

Buzzkill: AIUI item level is now disconnected from allocation, so you could indeed make Rods of Curing a level-1 item that nonetheless isn't generated until level 20 (or whatever). However, your failure rate is currently capped between 1% and 75% (that is, your chance of success is always between 25% at worst and 99% at best). Also, your device skill is temporarily modified by heavy stun, stun, bless, heroism, berserker, fear, confusion, amnesia, poison, and hallucination; all of these have multiplicative values (being confused has the worst impact, reducing device skill to 75% of what it otherwise would be). Given that, I suspect that even if you removed the 1% minimum failure rate you'd still end up with situations in which you couldn't reliably zap a Rod of Curing / use a Staff of Curing.

There was a suggestion a while back on the dev-channel to make potions fallible. You would have a fumble chance that would increase if afraid or confused. I didn't like this idea, and no one has implemented it yet. In this way, the rods could be made to be more reliable than a potion.

Personally, I like the idea of one-use items being failsafe. The drawback for the items is the availability.

[Derakon]

That'd be because Magnate made speed much more expensive after people complained that it was too easy to buy speed items. I'm not sure what the solution is here; perhaps Escaping and Teleport items should be considered "bad" items (due to the panic / random-teleport aspects) and thus unsalable? Is that even possible?

Buzzkill: AIUI item level is now disconnected from allocation, so you could indeed make Rods of Curing a level-1 item that nonetheless isn't generated until level 20 (or whatever). However, your failure rate is currently capped between 1% and 75% (that is, your chance of success is always between 25% at worst and 99% at best). Also, your device skill is temporarily modified by heavy stun, stun, bless, heroism, berserker, fear, confusion, amnesia, poison, and hallucination; all of these have multiplicative values (being confused has the worst impact, reducing device skill to 75% of what it otherwise would be). Given that, I suspect that even if you removed the 1% minimum failure rate you'd still end up with situations in which you couldn't reliably zap a Rod of Curing / use a Staff of Curing.