Even more thoughts on v4

[Derakon]

Not only can I not speak for the person who designed the new pits, I can't even remember who it was off the top of my head - but ISTR that this is precisely the kind of variety that they intended.

Well, they were wrong. Look at the other dragon pit types and you'll see a clear and consistent ordering: baby, young, mature, ancient, great wyrm. Frost dragons are the only ones that also have this undead variant, and that's pretty much solely because whoever made the dracolich thought "dead things are cold, so it should breathe frost". It's not a part of the natural lifecycle of a frost dragon, so it shouldn't be in frost dragon pits.

On a related note, are you finding DSM common?? It should be significantly rarer than the corresponding resist affix, for the low elements.

I hardly pay attention to either of them at this stage, but dragon scale armor is certainly common enough that I don't really consider them to be noteworthy. It should be more special.

[flechette]

It was a nice change of pace to come across an 'eye' pit earlier.

[Nomad]

Small Inspect screen oversight: I'm wielding a Golden dagger which is 'dazzling' my light-sensitive enemies and presumably doing x2 damage, but Inspecting it only shows the base rate of damage/round, not whatever I'm doing against creatures vulnerable to light.

[Derakon]

It was a nice change of pace to come across an 'eye' pit earlier.

Oh yes, that was amusing.

*opens door*
*95 floating eyeballs stare at him*
"Uh, sorry, wrong address."
*closes door*

[Derakon]

Tonight's update! Getting a bit frustrated here, probably because I've not found any "oh wow this is awesome" equipment since around about 2000' or so. I've made a few incremental upgrades, sure, and my speed has more or less maintained parity with the monsters I'm fighting, but it's been a long time since I felt like I could take on anything I wanted to. The game's just not very fun any more.

* Lack of stat boosts to STR/DEX is increasingly obviously a problem for my combat prowess. I'm only at 18/180 STR, 18/120 DEX, having +3/+2 from equipment, respectively. This is seriously limiting my damage since I'm not able to achieve anywhere near max blows with weapons. Ordinarily my gear would have numerous artifacts which would provide stat boosts in addition to the other abilities they have; I'm not getting that. Similarly my CON is at a mere 18/170; while I still have lots of hitpoints on an absolute scale (943HP) because I'm a high-level dwarf warrior, I should have about 150 more than I do. The only slack in my gear is my ring and amulet slots, currently devote to Speed+10, Damage+14, and ESP (I'm at unhasted +20 speed).

* I found my second artifact weapon, Dalastir. It's a 2d8+18 battle axe with Slay Undead. That's it. According to the spoiler it's based on Celebrimbor and has a power rating of 122. I don't know that that's necessarily equitable, but it's hard to say. My previous artifact weapon, Nionwe, was based on Wormtongue; I also find that a bit suspect. I've found two artifacts that were based on weapons: my helm (best artifact I've found) and that joker body armor (powerful but aggravating) earlier. They were based on Belthrondig and Gondricam, respectively. So I'm wondering if something in the power calculations for armor vs. weapons is skewed here, since ordinarily I'd rather have Wormtongue than Gondricam (which is an awesome defender weapon but a pretty poor weapon weapon), but the only useful randarts I've found have both been based on weapons. Or maybe I'm just terminally unlucky.

* Now at 13 artifacts in the knowledge list, of which only 6 have actually been identified. This is definitely getting worse when deeper in the dungeon.

* I see no feasible way to extract the juicy items out of graveyards once drujs start showing up. Unless you want players to use Banish on those things. Similarly with zoos and quylthulgs, I guess, though I haven't considered even going close to a zoo in ages.

* Item finds at this depth (4750') are consistently disappointing. The vast majority of items found are junk with only one or two terrible affixes, and I'm routinely finding items with no to-hit/dam bonuses at all. I know this has been tweaked in the next version, though. The only good drops I've gotten from uniques lately have been consumables, which is just sad. The few artifacts I've found have been similarly disappointing.

* Speaking of which, I now have way more !*Healing* and !Life than I do !Healing. Much of this has to do with the fact that I'm actually using my !Healing while the others get stashed for later, but it's still weird.

* For the same reason I argue against dracoliches in frost dragon pits, dracolisks should stay out of fire dragon pits.

* I feel like the Ainu uniques are significantly more dangerous than the Angel uniques used to be, though I can't really pin that down specifically. If they came from NPP, bear in mind that that variant assumes that you have more or less limitless healing (in the former of store services that sell you top-tier healing potions). When I fought Radagast, I burned through my entire stock of healing potions, which IIRC was somewhere around the order of 30 CCW, 6 Healing, and 2 Life. He kept tossing 150-200HP manabolts, ice bolts, and water bolts at me, and his melee was no slouch either. I've made an abortive attempt to fight Ossë, but when I knocked off only 3 stars before having to drink 2 Healing potions (my entire stock, since fights keep using them up), I knew it was a doomed attempt.

I tried to check out a previous version of Angband so I could compare stats, but I cannot for the life of me get git to behave itself. It may well work just fine if you've memorized its horribly badly-named commands and know what its incredibly obtuse error messages mean, but I don't. </pro_Mercurial_rant>

* For what it's worth, I don't have smart spellcasters on. I do have "monsters learn from their mistakes", but that shouldn't have a significant impact on the Ainu uniques since the vast majority of their spells are painful anyway and that option shouldn't affect their casting frequency.

* Found weapon:

Massive Great Hammer of *Slay Dragon* (12d5) (+0,+0) <+2>
This item's known properties are: of Disruption, of Slay Dragon, Massive, of Slay Giant, Dragonbane

3.3 blows/round
650 damage/round vs. undead / giants, 1009 vs. dragons, 290 vs. others

It weighs in at 89 pounds. Cripes. That's just barely less than Grond weighs. Is it really worth taking a continual -3 speed penalty from burden just to have this as a swap weapon?

EDIT:

* Recharge times on rods lie. A Rod of Mapping claims recharge time of 340 turns at +24 speed, but actual time is between 450 and 500 turns.

* It seems to be really hard to hit targets with ranged attacks. I have +55 to-hit for shooting, and +12 to-hit ammo, and I still miss a Great Wyrm of Many Colors (AC: 120) more often than not.

* I've now found Mordenkainen's Escapes twice. So the whole "dungeon spellbooks are artifacts" thing isn't working quite correctly, assuming it's intended that you're only supposed to find them once (and not that they're just not supposed to get generated again if you already have one).

* Burned 3 !Healing and one zap of -Healing, took Carcharoth down 2 stars. Fled, rested up, he's fully healed too. This isn't necessarily unreasonable, just evidence that you really have to be able to deal more than ~350 damage/round to take down endgame uniques. Or be willing to spend rare consumables.

[Malak Darkhunter]

Playing standart game were derakon is playing randarts, so far found the dagger narthanc on level 9 and the gauntlets paurnach on level 19, on a side note have killed several uniques such as Ulfast that dropped nothing, best has been a cutlas+0+0 of slay orc from Lugdush.

On level 15 found a rod of detection, way out of depth I would think, normaly I find those at MUCH deeper level.Also found was a wand of annihaltion on level 18

Levels 1-8 were pretty dead, with mostly basic and magical weapons availiable.

[Magnate]

Tonight's update! Getting a bit frustrated here, probably because I've not found any "oh wow this is awesome" equipment since around about 2000' or so. I've made a few incremental upgrades, sure, and my speed has more or less maintained parity with the monsters I'm fighting, but it's been a long time since I felt like I could take on anything I wanted to. The game's just not very fun any more.

* Lack of stat boosts to STR/DEX is increasingly obviously a problem for my combat prowess. I'm only at 18/180 STR, 18/120 DEX, having +3/+2 from equipment, respectively. This is seriously limiting my damage since I'm not able to achieve anywhere near max blows with weapons. Ordinarily my gear would have numerous artifacts which would provide stat boosts in addition to the other abilities they have; I'm not getting that. Similarly my CON is at a mere 18/170; while I still have lots of hitpoints on an absolute scale (943HP) because I'm a high-level dwarf warrior, I should have about 150 more than I do. The only slack in my gear is my ring and amulet slots, currently devote to Speed+10, Damage+14, and ESP (I'm at unhasted +20 speed).

* Item finds at this depth (4750') are consistently disappointing. The vast majority of items found are junk with only one or two terrible affixes, and I'm routinely finding items with no to-hit/dam bonuses at all. I know this has been tweaked in the next version, though. The only good drops I've gotten from uniques lately have been consumables, which is just sad. The few artifacts I've found have been similarly disappointing.

Well, you're the first person to post any detailed reports of the late game, so we don't know how much of this is just bad luck. Certainly when I dive to 4750' and create a whole bunch of good items in debug mode, 90% of them are interesting.

I think part of the problem may be that the new system places a lot more emphasis on whether drops are "good" or "great" than the old one did. In the old system, any item could become a high-end ego, and good/great just increased the chances a bit - but good/great were almost irrelevant, because so many normal drops became egos.

In the new system items without good/great are limited to 6 affixes at endgame depths - I know that's quite a lot, and plenty of chance for a theme, but it means that lots of items will only have 3 or 4, and might be junk.

Unfortunately the stats generator doesn't tell me which items were generated from good/great drops and which weren't. But it's definitely something I'm thinking about.

* I found my second artifact weapon, Dalastir. It's a 2d8+18 battle axe with Slay Undead. That's it. According to the spoiler it's based on Celebrimbor and has a power rating of 122. I don't know that that's necessarily equitable, but it's hard to say. My previous artifact weapon, Nionwe, was based on Wormtongue; I also find that a bit suspect. I've found two artifacts that were based on weapons: my helm (best artifact I've found) and that joker body armor (powerful but aggravating) earlier. They were based on Belthrondig and Gondricam, respectively. So I'm wondering if something in the power calculations for armor vs. weapons is skewed here, since ordinarily I'd rather have Wormtongue than Gondricam (which is an awesome defender weapon but a pretty poor weapon weapon), but the only useful randarts I've found have both been based on weapons. Or maybe I'm just terminally unlucky.

Between the underwhelming randarts and the crummy egos you're certainly having a tough game. But I wonder if you're expecting a bit much of the randart generator. It can never match the design of niche items like Gondricam - and Celebrimbor is pants! And the one based on Belthronding was fine, you just got unlucky that it got aggravate (and we haven't 'fixed' aggravation yet, so it's still an endgame-or-junk property).

All that said, it's always been difficult to equate the utility of weapons with that of armour pieces. I've not given up (since that's the basis of the entire obj-power system), but it's imperfect. Weapons that don't optimise for damage are going to appear to have much less utility than correspondingly-endowed armour pieces - hence you'd rather have Wormtongue over Gondricam. But by almost any power system, Gondricam is going to come out with a higher rating. (Perhaps one tweak to try is to reduce the value of AC on weapons.)

* Now at 13 artifacts in the knowledge list, of which only 6 have actually been identified. This is definitely getting worse when deeper in the dungeon.

Have you noticed any consistency in when these additional artifacts appear in the knowledge? Do they have anything in common, which the ones you've actually found don't have?

* I see no feasible way to extract the juicy items out of graveyards once drujs start showing up. Unless you want players to use Banish on those things.

Did Banish suddenly become frowned upon? I mean, before they had items in, nobody except a masochist would ever have bothered clearing a graveyard. Using a Banish to gain a chance at the items seems reasonable ...?

* I tried to check out a previous version of Angband so I could compare stats, but I cannot for the life of me get git to behave itself. It may well work just fine if you've memorized its horribly badly-named commands and know what its incredibly obtuse error messages mean, but I don't.

I'll be the first to admit that git is complicated, but this is one of the more simple tasks: git checkout v3.0.8 (or whatever later version you choose - don't forget the v). Since previous versions are done with tags rather than branches, you'll then probably want to create a branch from that detached head state: git checkout -b 3.0.8.

* Found weapon:

Massive Great Hammer of *Slay Dragon* (12d5) (+0,+0) <+2>
This item's known properties are: of Disruption, of Slay Dragon, Massive, of Slay Giant, Dragonbane

3.3 blows/round
650 damage/round vs. undead / giants, 1009 vs. dragons, 290 vs. others

It weighs in at 89 pounds. Cripes. That's just barely less than Grond weighs. Is it really worth taking a continual -3 speed penalty from burden just to have this as a swap weapon?

Welcome to the wonderful world of percentages. Of Disruption adds something like 225% to weight (which gets you from a Mace to a MoD in V), and Massive adds another 50% or so, for a total of 337% - and great hammers are heavy in the first place. But the really annoying thing about this is not the weight (the damage per round figures are well-balanced for that), but the fact that it has no plusses from five affixes. I'm starting to think that weapons with more than a certain number of affixes should be guaranteed to get make/material/quality affixes so they get some.

* Recharge times on rods lie. A Rod of Mapping claims recharge time of 340 turns at +24 speed, but actual time is between 450 and 500 turns.

This doesn't surprise me. I tried to fix this a while back by making recharge times independent of speed, but it's much harder than it seemed. (I know that's orthogonal to showing the correct value - just sayin'.)

* I've now found Mordenkainen's Escapes twice. So the whole "dungeon spellbooks are artifacts" thing isn't working quite correctly, assuming it's intended that you're only supposed to find them once (and not that they're just not supposed to get generated again if you already have one).

ARGH! I tested this very carefully. There's no way this should be happening, as it should have been marked 'created' when you got the first copy. I wonder if it's related to the bogus artifacts appearing on your knowledge menu.

Lots of food for thought - thanks again for the detailed post.

[myshkin]

But the really annoying thing about this is not the weight (the damage per round figures are well-balanced for that), but the fact that it has no plusses from five affixes. I'm starting to think that weapons with more than a certain number of affixes should be guaranteed to get make/material/quality affixes so they get some.

I'd expect a number of the affixes (certainly of Disruption, and I'd lean towards Slay Foo as well) to come automatically with +to-hit/to-dam. Whether that means giving more affixes C: lines with positive to-hit/to-dam, or forcing some affixes to pull in others that have to-hit/to-dam bonuses, I'm not sure. I currently prefer the former.

[kaypy]

* I've now found Mordenkainen's Escapes twice. So the whole "dungeon spellbooks are artifacts" thing isn't working quite correctly, assuming it's intended that you're only supposed to find them once (and not that they're just not supposed to get generated again if you already have one).

Is this the warrior mentioned on the other thread? If so, I'm guessing you didn't pick up the spellbooks? If you merely saw them I don't think they would get de-preserved...

[fizzix]

re pits: It *is* possible to remove everything from graveyards and zoos without banishing the "Q"s or "s"s. It's a huge pain though, and I've only bothered once or twice. I wouldn't be opposed to removing "NEVER_MOVE" monsters from pits and nests. I've been arguing that "Q"s shouldn't be in pits forever. Dracolisks/lichs are now deeper than great wyrms so they will get the top spot in dragon pits. We could remove them altogether, but I'm ok with them there. Dragon pits are very lucrative and require *some* extra danger.

re bad items deep: This is probably the biggest rebalancing need. There's been some improvement in recent versions, but it almost definitely still needs a lot of work. The underwhelming randarts is a separate problem. In recent versions randarts are worse and rarer than regular standarts, so you're playing a challenge version whether you knew it beforehand or not.

[Timo Pietilä]

re pits: It *is* possible to remove everything from graveyards and zoos without banishing the "Q"s or "s"s. It's a huge pain though, and I've only bothered once or twice.

With high enough level priest with res_disenchant those become quite manageable. OoD works well in trick-shots to clear whatever is left in the graveyard, and protections & dispels & healings works wonders against graveyard denizens. Only thing I'm really concerned are Black Reavers, they open those things up so that *everything* comes after you. You need to be very careful with luring them out in manageable numbers.

If you can do that many of those high-level undeads have very good drops, so it might be risk worth taking.

[Nomad]

re pits: It *is* possible to remove everything from graveyards and zoos without banishing the "Q"s or "s"s. It's a huge pain though, and I've only bothered once or twice.

I still have 'fond' memories of that time I manually removed seven nexus Qs from a nest with Teleport Other. Trek across level towards pit, step into doorway of pit, get insta-teleported to a random corner, repeat...

re bad items deep: This is probably the biggest rebalancing need. There's been some improvement in recent versions, but it almost definitely still needs a lot of work.

I think we really need to take a detailed look at the T: lines in ego_item.txt and redefine the levels at which affixes are considered great/good/average. For instance, base four resists are great at levels 1 to 25, good from 26 to 100. I really think there's a point pre-100 where they ought to be considered only average. Similarly, things like FA and Regen on weapons are 'great' all the way through, as are basic slays other than orcs and trolls.

I'd say the issue is that the affix levels are currently set at an absolute value for that affix ("how useful is this property to have at this depth?") when it should be more of a relative value ("how useful is this property considering the likelihood you already have a source of it and/or the better options available for the slot at this depth?"). Which is obviously a lot harder to judge, but definitely a more realistic estimate of whether a player will really consider a weapon with FA on it 'great' at dlevel 99.

[Derakon]

Magnate:
* I'm used to playing randarts; I've been doing so since 3.1.2 or so. These randarts are definitely worse than the ones I'm used to using, though it may simply be that all of the good randarts just aren't getting generated for some reason.

* It sounds like we may need a supercharge mechanic for affixes. Being limited to 6 affixes unless the item gets guaranteed-good is pretty limiting. Oh, and regarding themes: I hardly ever see the more complicated ones (Holy Avenger, Gondolin, etc.). I've seen, I think, 1 HA, 1 Defender, and 2 Gondolins all game.

* Unfound-but-lost artifacts: Gwildais, Earniont, Elegrin, Mataldand, Sindi, Kelth, Natar, Iluin, Daire, Careglin. All weapons, generation chance ranging from 20 to 99, power rating from 177 to 401. I can't say anything more about them because the artifact spoiler is broken.

* Regarding graveyards and banish: it's more that I doubt most characters will carry a source of Banish with them, so the items in graveyards should be considered inaccessible to all but mages/priests. If I happen to stumble across a source of Banish on the level then I'll certainly use it to my advantage.


Kaypy: you're right, I didn't bother actually picking the books up. So maybe that's why they got re-generated.

[Magnate]

I'd expect a number of the affixes (certainly of Disruption, and I'd lean towards Slay Foo as well) to come automatically with +to-hit/to-dam. Whether that means giving more affixes C: lines with positive to-hit/to-dam, or forcing some affixes to pull in others that have to-hit/to-dam bonuses, I'm not sure. I currently prefer the former.

Great minds think alike - I had exactly this thought on the train this morning after posting.

[Magnate]

I think we really need to take a detailed look at the T: lines in ego_item.txt and redefine the levels at which affixes are considered great/good/average. For instance, base four resists are great at levels 1 to 25, good from 26 to 100. I really think there's a point pre-100 where they ought to be considered only average. Similarly, things like FA and Regen on weapons are 'great' all the way through, as are basic slays other than orcs and trolls.

I'd say the issue is that the affix levels are currently set at an absolute value for that affix ("how useful is this property to have at this depth?") when it should be more of a relative value ("how useful is this property considering the likelihood you already have a source of it and/or the better options available for the slot at this depth?"). Which is obviously a lot harder to judge, but definitely a more realistic estimate of whether a player will really consider a weapon with FA on it 'great' at dlevel 99.

Please feel free to tear ego_item.txt apart and re-make it with finer gradations of when something becomes good or merely average instead of great or uber - the only limit is EGO_TVALS_MAX and I'm happy to increase that if it's necessary to improve balance. I'm not sure how you could implement your second paragraph other than by thinking slightly differently about the gradations, but again please feel free to do so.