MAngband

Hey there!

No new player, but probably a newbie problem.

Did it happen to you yet that Smaegol drops....nothing?

Bug? Karma? hmmmm... or maybe he dropped the invisible orb of everlasting invulnerability......

I believe the only two guaranteed drops in the game are Morgoth's hammer and crown. And I was going to say it happens to me all the time (There's also an issue with partying / killing someone twice). Your screen-shot does look a bit suspicious tho.

Well I was not partying on the same level with anyone, but I was invited into a party.
Iam also not entirely sure on how it worked.

No worries, I was just suspecting a bug, glitch or issue here. From a playing perspective its no problem really.

Let me know what I can do to help :)

There could be a few reasons why Smeagol didn't drop anything:
- the level was static, you already killed Smeagol (uniques only drop items the firs ttime they are killed)
- Smeagol dropped a few coins and you autopicked the cash
- the routine that makes the drop failed to generate an item (happens easily when trying to generate egos or arts)
- Smeagol picked up stuff offscreen and failed to drop what he picked up

Thank you for highlighting some points :)

Static - I left the game and came back, but I was alone on that level. So it was just static because of me.
Cash - It would have shown in the left "logscreen" rows like "picked up xx gold"
Routine failed - maybe, but isn't this a glitch then if the routine does not return items?
picked up stuff offscreen - Also possible I assume, but whats the reason of "failed drops"? Smaegol was killed at the spot where I stand in the screenshot above, no blocking spaces or anything. So there would have been enough room to drop.

Again this is not to whine about anything, just trying to pinpoint a possible bug in this drop routine.

PS another reason could be that I "melted" the drops with the nartharc activation. But also here there should have been a logmessage.

Well as I said it's easy for the item generation routine to fail with DROP_GREAT monsters. There is a loop with a finite number of tries, and to get an ego you must have a proper base item and a proper ego modifier... and pass all rarity rolls. In PWMAngband, for example, the routine returns a boolean value saying if the item could be generated or not. If the routine fails, the game core tries again to generate an item, up to three times. I've made tests, and I've never seen the routine fail more than three times in a row, so you should get your drop in almost all cases. In MAngband, the code doesn't ensure that you get a drop.

The case with Smeagol is in the monster list I believe... A drop isn't guaranteed. Seen it before, but I also read the spoilers. Especially for increadibly dangerous monsters such as Smeagol:

He may carry an exceptional
object or treasure.

"MAY" being the clue I focus on. I haven't looked at the code tho, because I'm not skilled in "the matrix"...

F:DROP_90 | DROP_GOOD | DROP_GREAT

When Smeagol is killed for the first time by a player (as in your case) he tries to drop 90% of the time, the other 10% of the time he doesn't drop. When he drops, his drop is first forced to be a 'good' drop and then forced to be a 'great' drop. We take this two step approach because the odds of a drop being 'great' right up front are low enough that we'd fail pretty consistently. The odds are pretty good that a drop can be converted to 'good' without failing, and once converted to 'good' the odds are pretty good that it can be converted to 'great'. There is a slim chance that either the conversion to 'good' or the conversion to 'great' will fail and in that case the drop would fail as well. I don't know what the real odds are, since a lot is based on the depth you kill him, but I'd guess it's close to one chance in nine that the drop will fail. Note that when he does drop there's a 1:8 chance he'll drop cash instead of an item too...

The case with Smeagol is in the monster list I believe... A drop isn't guaranteed. Seen it before, but I also read the spoilers. Especially for increadibly dangerous monsters such as Smeagol:

Billsey wrote:F:DROP_90 | DROP_GOOD | DROP_GREAT

When Smeagol is killed for the first time by a player (as in your case) he tries to drop 90% of the time, the other 10% of the time he doesn't drop. When he drops, his drop is first forced to be a 'good' drop and then forced to be a 'great' drop. We take this two step approach because the odds of a drop being 'great' right up front are low enough that we'd fail pretty consistently. The odds are pretty good that a drop can be converted to 'good' without failing, and once converted to 'good' the odds are pretty good that it can be converted to 'great'. There is a slim chance that either the conversion to 'good' or the conversion to 'great' will fail and in that case the drop would fail as well. I don't know what the real odds are, since a lot is based on the depth you kill him, but I'd guess it's close to one chance in nine that the drop will fail. Note that when he does drop there's a 1:8 chance he'll drop cash instead of an item too...

The chance of cash drop is 50% (from recent source code). But yeah, I forgot about the DROP_90, which means that a drop is not guaranteed.