Equipment Observations

[Egavactip]

Okay, so my character is now circa level 42 or so and traipsing around the mid-70s in terms of dungeon level (basically levels 75-76 at the moment). Here are my equipment observations so far, for what they are worth. I'm playing with randarts.

* Artifacts seem extremely rare, and also underpowered. So far I have only seen a few artifacts come my way--a shield, a weapon, some boots, and maybe one or two other things. I can't remember exactly, because out of all of them, only the shield was at all useful. Most of the others were inferior to other equipment I had. Overall, that has been very disappointing. You ID countless hard-won items garnered over many tough battles, and almost never come across an artifact, and when you do, it is no good!

* Weapons seem overpowered (for the most part; see below). My non-artifact weapon right now deals an average of 600+ damage per round normally, and 1300 per round against targets not resistance to acid. This is far greater than I ever had with any character ever in vanilla. I just got it recently, but my previous weapon was pretty awesome too. I was basically able to go from the late-40 levels down to the early 70 levels kicking ass left and right, killing uniques without a sweat (I think I killed Ungoliant in an unprepared sudden encounter, with no consumables other than a heal or two). It was only when I got to the 70s levels that I had to slow down, because my warrior character has some issues fighting the high-powered undead (see below).

* The exception to the above bit has to do with the tweaks in the system that seem to make some monsters virtually unkillable through weapons. I can kill Ungoliant without increasing my pulse, but I have yet to be able to kill a single Master Mystic. So far, I have had to abort every encounter, either teleporting them away or teleporting away myself. They heal faster than I can do them damage. I am not sure what the rationale is in making a non-unique harder to kill than many of the high-powered uniques.

* Resistance is a real problem. Early on in the game, I couldn't get any basic resistances for some time, but it wasn't a big deal, and eventually the tap was turned on, and I had all the basic resistances coming out the wazoo. However, the OTHER resistances come out extremely sparingly, and rarely in combinations. The result is that I am only in the 70-levels but already a huge chunk of my gear consists of swap-outs because I can't cover even many of the intermediate resistances with my basic gear (like confusion, light, dark, etc.). The "advanced" resistances? Forget it. Some I have not encountered any items for, while a few had resistance to some things like nexus but were totally useless otherwise. Unless I get gear with more multiple resistances soon, I'm going to be having a big problem in the 80s and 90s.

* Weapons are worth too much. I passed a million gold faster than I ever had before, because there were so many weapons that I could sell for 8k to 30k.

* Staves seem to get destroyed way too easily. If I find a new staff of speed or staff of healing, I have learned to use them as much as possible right away because they will survive on average about 2 trips into the dungeon. I rarely even get a chance to recharge them; they just don't last long.

* The rings of acid/flame/etc. are now overpowered whereas in Vanilla they seemed to be worthless. And they are also ubiquitous, and worth a ton of money, and show up far earlier than they did in Vanilla. There's got to be a happy medium.

That's my $.02.

[Derakon]

Okay, so my character is now circa level 42 or so and traipsing around the mid-70s in terms of dungeon level (basically levels 75-76 at the moment). Here are my equipment observations so far, for what they are worth. I'm playing with randarts.

I seem to recall Magnate saying that randarts aren't quite ready yet with the new combat system. Though I don't know that that explains non-weapon randarts being crappy.

* The exception to the above bit has to do with the tweaks in the system that seem to make some monsters virtually unkillable through weapons. I can kill Ungoliant without increasing my pulse, but I have yet to be able to kill a single Master Mystic. So far, I have had to abort every encounter, either teleporting them away or teleporting away myself. They heal faster than I can do them damage. I am not sure what the rationale is in making a non-unique harder to kill than many of the high-powered uniques.

Part of the goal of the addition of evasion/absorption to monsters is that not all characters should be equally good against all monsters. In particular, prowess characters are going to have a hard time killing evasive monsters, and finesse characters are going to have a hard time killing monsters with high absorption. Most uniques have gigantic HP pools instead of evasion or absorption.

* Resistance is a real problem. Early on in the game, I couldn't get any basic resistances for some time, but it wasn't a big deal, and eventually the tap was turned on, and I had all the basic resistances coming out the wazoo. However, the OTHER resistances come out extremely sparingly, and rarely in combinations... Unless I get gear with more multiple resistances soon, I'm going to be having a big problem in the 80s and 90s.

High resists have traditionally come predominantly from artifacts; if you don't have artifact armor then you won't get much in the way of high resists (the same is true for a lot of stat boosts). Fortunately, you don't need them. The game will be harder but it's by no means impossible.

* Weapons are worth too much. I passed a million gold faster than I ever had before, because there were so many weapons that I could sell for 8k to 30k.

A side-effect of the addition of the no-selling option is that fewer of the devs are paying attention to the sell value of items. Whoops!

* Staves seem to get destroyed way too easily. If I find a new staff of speed or staff of healing, I have learned to use them as much as possible right away because they will survive on average about 2 trips into the dungeon. I rarely even get a chance to recharge them; they just don't last long.

This hasn't changed in a fairly long time. Every time you get hit by an elemental attack, every item in your pack has a 1%, 2%, or 3% chance of being destroyed, depending on how much damage the attack did (after resists). I believe the breakpoints are at 33 and 66 damage.

* The rings of acid/flame/etc. are now overpowered whereas in Vanilla they seemed to be worthless. And they are also ubiquitous, and worth a ton of money, and show up far earlier than they did in Vanilla. There's got to be a happy medium.

I admit I haven't checked in on the elemental rings lately. What do they do that's so overpowered?

That's my $.02.

And thank you for them.

[Egavactip]

I admit I haven't checked in on the elemental rings lately. What do they do that's so overpowered?

They can HUGELY increase your damage. Like I noted, I've got a weapon that does 600 something damage normally and 1300 something damage against creatures with no resistance to acid. That's a gollywhopper.

[Magnate]

They can HUGELY increase your damage. Like I noted, I've got a weapon that does 600 something damage normally and 1300 something damage against creatures with no resistance to acid. That's a gollywhopper.

Maybe. The damage display is currently broken, so the figures may be misleading. But your basic point is a good one - the new combat system means that slays are much more powerful, because they multiply all damage (not just the base dice). This is why they've been toned down to start from +25% instead of +100% - this needs to be reflected on rings too. (I'm pretty sure I did tone the ring brands down a bit, but obviously not enough.)

[Magnate]

I seem to recall Magnate saying that randarts aren't quite ready yet with the new combat system. Though I don't know that that explains non-weapon randarts being crappy.

I suspect the problem is simply that by the time you're at dl75 most items are dropping with 4-5 affixes and a good number are dropping with the full 8, which means that the less rare randarts (which are the less powerful ones) will struggle to compete.

But yes, eventually randarts will also use the affix system, and will therefore usually compete favourably with non-artifacts.

A side-effect of the addition of the no-selling option is that fewer of the devs are paying attention to the sell value of items. Whoops!

Weapons selling for thousands isn't new - Defenders, Westernesse, Gondolin, HAs all sell for that amount in V too. Ok so you passed 1M gold quicker than usual - but since there's nothing really to spend it on, does it really matter? The economy's never really been balanced since Moria (and wasn't then either).

But if somebody codes up a balanced economy, I'm very happy to adjust the selling prices to work with it.

This hasn't changed in a fairly long time. Every time you get hit by an elemental attack, every item in your pack has a 1%, 2%, or 3% chance of being destroyed, depending on how much damage the attack did (after resists). I believe the breakpoints are at 33 and 66 damage.

In the grand scheme of things it's a relatively recent change - and the chances of staves being destroyed are *lower* than they were traditionally. I think it was changed in 3.3; certainly before v4.

Thanks also for the feedback. We have a pretty good understanding of the overpowered weapons problem, and as Derakon says, high resists being rare isn't a bad thing. (Some people think it is, simply because there's a standart endgame kit in V which covers most of them.) Neither is master mystics being very tough to kill for prowess fighters.

[Derakon]

In the grand scheme of things it's a relatively recent change - and the chances of staves being destroyed are *lower* than they were traditionally. I think it was changed in 3.3; certainly before v4.

The only change that was made to this system was that previously (IIRC before 3.2x), the damage used to determine chance of inventory destruction did not take into account your elemental resistances; from (again IIRC) 3.2x onwards they were. So if the damage is close to one of those breakpoints then resists will make it less likely that inventory will be destroyed.

And yes, that does mean that inventory destruction rates are lower now than they used to be, but it's still been, what, a couple of years since that change? It was the first patch I submitted when I got back into the community.

[Magnate]

The only change that was made to this system was that previously (IIRC before 3.2x), the damage used to determine chance of inventory destruction did not take into account your elemental resistances; from (again IIRC) 3.2x onwards they were. So if the damage is close to one of those breakpoints then resists will make it less likely that inventory will be destroyed.

And yes, that does mean that inventory destruction rates are lower now than they used to be, but it's still been, what, a couple of years since that change? It was the first patch I submitted when I got back into the community.

I'd forgotten it was you ;-). I remember d_m committing it though - and you're right that it went into 3.2.0 not 3.3.0, so it was indeed a couple of years ago (3.2.0 was released 18 months ago).

It was implemented with fantastic granularity - the chance of destruction is now calculated to 0.01% - but overall the chances of destruction are significantly lower than before if resists are involved (ISTR it takes double resist into account too).

So the OP's observation that stuff got regularly nuked is interesting, in that it's the first time since this change that anybody's complained about that happening. We've clearly reached the end of the period where people remember how bad it was before ;-)

[Egavactip]

Maybe. The damage display is currently broken, so the figures may be misleading. But your basic point is a good one - the new combat system means that slays are much more powerful, because they multiply all damage (not just the base dice). This is why they've been toned down to start from +25% instead of +100% - this needs to be reflected on rings too. (I'm pretty sure I did tone the ring brands down a bit, but obviously not enough.)

In this case the figures may not be 100% accurate, but they are clearly approximate, as I can tell how quickly it takes me to kill monsters. As I mentioned, I've been able to kill uniques with a few swipes.

And last night I got a new weapon that, against undeads, purportedly delivers 2300 points of damage, and something like 800-900 against normal creatures. Even if this is exaggerated, this is way overpowered (as I've found with actual use of the weapon).

[Egavactip]

Weapons selling for thousands isn't new - Defenders, Westernesse, Gondolin, HAs all sell for that amount in V too. Ok so you passed 1M gold quicker than usual - but since there's nothing really to spend it on, does it really matter? The economy's never really been balanced since Moria (and wasn't then either).

Leaving aside the larger issue (there needs to be more things to spend money on), this still matters. It makes, for example, the increase in the price of Rings of Speed largely irrelevant.

[Egavactip]

So the OP's observation that stuff got regularly nuked is interesting, in that it's the first time since this change that anybody's complained about that happening. We've clearly reached the end of the period where people remember how bad it was before ;-)

I haven't been playing all that long, so all I can say is that my staves have survived much more easily in vanilla than in v4. Am I a statistical fluke? I don't know, but I have to carry around 4 or 5 staves of teleportation if I want to be able reliably to have a chance to use one, and staves of heal, destruction, speed, etc., usually burn away before I can use them up (despite the low number of charges).

[Egavactip]

I just finished my v4 game. I figured I had killed all the other uniques, so I jumped down about 8 levels to kill Sauron and then Morgoth. It turns out I forgot two uniques and Morgoth brought them in. It didnt really matter; it was a quick battle. I am including a pic of the weapon I was using at the time. In the treasure, interestingly, I got a +16 ring of speed, which is the highest I've seen. Wish I had gotten that before winning the game.

[debo]

I just finished my v4 game. I figured I had killed all the other uniques, so I jumped down about 8 levels to kill Sauron and then Morgoth. It turns out I forgot two uniques and Morgoth brought them in. It didnt really matter; it was a quick battle. I am including a pic of the weapon I was using at the time. In the treasure, interestingly, I got a +16 ring of speed, which is the highest I've seen. Wish I had gotten that before winning the game.

OMG LOL @ the vs undead damage!

[Magnate]

OMG LOL @ the vs undead damage!

Oooooooooook. That is indeed quite badly wrong. The problem here is not the undead damage (it seems to have got the Slay Undead affix about four or five times!), but the base damage of ~1200 per round. If that was halved it would still be an awesome weapon against undead, but only a swap for it in the endgame.

This is the first weapon I've seen which gives so many blows at such high damage - it's because of the 25% balance. This reinforces the idea that the big damage-increasing affixes really need to decrease balance so that this doesn't happen (they currently increase weight, which had the same effect under the old system). I'd better get on with coding up the balance and heft affixes.

Thanks for posting it - it was worth a chuckle!

On your other post, I think you were just unlucky with your staves - the destruction code is still identical to V's, I think. Certainly nobody else has observed a difference in v4.

Update: I just checked the code - it is identical, except for the new acid and fire traps in v4. Were many of your lost staves from traps?

EDIT: Ok, I managed to fix a couple of things this morning. Chaos breath now drains 2% of your xp, not 5000xp (!!). So the baby drakes won't be quite so bad, but the endgame wyrms will be twice as bad (it used to be 5k + 1%).

I also sorted out affixes for balance and heft. So all the major dice affixes (Massive, Giant, Of Slicing/Chaos/Disruption) now significantly reduce balance. This means that the really huge megaweapons will probably give only one blow. Obviously the values can be tweaked, but let's see how they turn out now. The new version is 2372c43 and is available for Windows at the usual place. (The OSX version will be built next time an OSX buildslave connects.)