New items

Discussions about the proposed new items in MAngband.
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Warrior
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Re: New items

Post by Warrior » Sun 03.05.2009, 13:12

Agor wrote:Warrior, I think I'm in looove <3
I'm happy for you, now comment on the stuff!
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schroeder
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Re: New items

Post by schroeder » Sun 03.05.2009, 23:43

On the topic of the timeless lamps... having those would just make me...sad. Well, unless they added resist time to angband. If it existed in angband, then I'd be ok with it.

Nice catch on the black mace thing though! Thats a real nice connection.

With the Dunharrow/Dimholt though, I'd think that it should also apply to rusty chain mail, not just filthy rags. It'd make enough sense for it to be on either one, imo.

One thing which I just noticed though, is how a decent number of these items don't have full resist base. This makes it so that the base resist parts which they have are only really for show, since your always gonna end up just having a full source of base resist from somewhere.
Anything worth being done, is worth being overdone.
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Warrior
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Re: New items

Post by Warrior » Mon 04.05.2009, 03:48

Another good comment Schroeder, many valid points.

One *could* argue that since we're realtime and timehounds are worse for us than they are in vanilla... etc - but then again, we've got the no hounds on stairs fix so I guess it's not really that much of a problem anymore. It was a really sweet idea but, well... I may run a poll on this.

Yes, I was very exited to read about the Balrog weapons - two obvious types of weapons that are not in Angband.
I guess, depending on how you imagine balrogs, (they're much discussed in Tolkien circles) - how large were they? Did they have wings? etc... I'm thinking these weapons were pretty huge so it would take a real strong person to wield them. One could argue that they should be cursed and should aggravate but we'll see. I don't wanna go there for base items really. They obviously did the job for the balrogs anyway :)

Again I agree about the Dun/Dim, (Dundim :) ) - though perhaps maybe a rusty chain mail would be too heavy for their incorporal (spelling.. - it's 5.30 in the morning) bodies.

When it comes to the exact build of these items there's still a way to go, I'm not done with them, by far. Figuring out the puzzle, including the lows is a long process. For example, a missing base resist may be a very powerful balancing feature - do you really want that +5 con and those highs? Well, it's gonna cost you res electricity... You better find another item for that.
Since we can't put negative onto something positive (Can't do a +2 int and -2 str) in one item, well, I'm doing it for one or two items possibly... by creating a new base item with negative stats (but some other useful abilities) and an ego with positive stats that only ever appears on this new negative base item - but since we *generally* can't combine positive and negative stats in one item we typically end up with aggravation if we want to balance things out a little. Thats why I'm using lacking lows (and highs to some extent) in these new items.
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PowerWyrm
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Re: New items

Post by PowerWyrm » Mon 04.05.2009, 11:28

Plus, considering that we are Multiplayer Angband and not really as much a "variant" (in my personal opinion at least) I think using random artifacts would take us too far away from vanilla.
Err... your vanilla source code must be really outdated. Vanilla has had random artifacts for ages now (as far as I can tell, the first version to have random artifacts was 2.9.0 back in... 2000!). The "randomizer" used for random artifacts is also used to randomize character names and scrolls. Very nice feature...

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Warrior
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Re: New items

Post by Warrior » Mon 04.05.2009, 15:12

I haven't really played Angband since 97-98 so thats probably why... :)

[edit] But alright. That was embarrassing.
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schroeder
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Re: New items

Post by schroeder » Mon 04.05.2009, 16:53

PowerWyrm wrote:
Plus, considering that we are Multiplayer Angband and not really as much a "variant" (in my personal opinion at least) I think using random artifacts would take us too far away from vanilla.
Err... your vanilla source code must be really outdated. Vanilla has had random artifacts for ages now (as far as I can tell, the first version to have random artifacts was 2.9.0 back in... 2000!). The "randomizer" used for random artifacts is also used to randomize character names and scrolls. Very nice feature...
But angband's arts are still either all random, or all standard. I understood what warrior meant when he said that that random arts would take us too far away from angband. He meant adding extra, random arts, or so I would assume. As to the option of actually choosing to have all of our arts randomized...I would consider that to be too dangerous and chaotic. People no longer know what to look for. The arts may not be good enough. People shall descend into madness. Bare naked warriors shall crucially punch to death helpless, scrawny cats!... Oh wait, that already happens! Never mind.
But in all seriousness, the main server should stick with the normal art system. The main server is for the standard game, with default settings, imo.
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Ace
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Re: New items

Post by Ace » Mon 04.05.2009, 21:59

i dont know if it fits but to add more variations maybe you also want to add different levels of "quality" into an item... Code wise you would probably just add another base-item.

So robes could be there in different colors [same attributes, or maybe charisma bonusses]
all types of armor could be either fine, shiney, runed, rare, old, cheap... etc [modified stats or same depends]
...

I would also like to see items which give great bonuses but also great disadvantages....

For example items that boosts your strength but cost you wisdom... combinations could be "rolled"
(just read in warriors post that the above is... impossible - is this something that is not wanted or just require more code development?)

Ashi
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Re: New items

Post by Ashi » Tue 05.05.2009, 21:44

I know this latest batch is mainly for weapons and armour, but there are some amulets that have become somewhat useless with the recent items from Vanilla.

The Amulet of Terken with ESP doesn't seem to be any different from an amulet of ESP... maybe we could add something to the terkens to make them extra valuable when you finally get one with ESP? (I have no idea what to add, though.)

The Amulets of Speed are now pretty much useless compared to Amulets of Trickery... a good solution would be to let them have a higher speed bonus (I think some others have asked for this as well?)

And Amulets of the Moon have never really been sought after... I suppose their advantage is in the slaying bonus, but since Amulets of Weaponmastery make them obsolete, maybe we should let them have a bigger slaying bonus.

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Re: New items

Post by Emulord » Wed 06.05.2009, 05:30

I dont think the weaker amulets should be buffed to compensate the fact that there is a better version. Just base depths / rarities/ cost should be tweaked to give them their proper place in the game.


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PowerWyrm
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Re: New items

Post by PowerWyrm » Wed 06.05.2009, 11:52

There's something I don't get at all...
It seems that people are reluctant to add random artifacts, which are a basic feature from Angband... but have nothing against adding tons of exotic amulets, weapons, armor and ego items to fill the lack of random artifacts. Seems totally silly to me...

To Ashi:
I agree that Amulets of Terken, of the Moon and of Speed are somewhat obsolete now. However, they can be useful at some point in the game:
- Amulets of Terken: base depth 40 (Amulets of ESP have a base depth of 60), and give FA and SI (Amulets of ESP don't, which forces you to get them from other items)
- Amulets of the Moon: base depth 40 (Amulets of Weaponmastery have a base depth of 70!), and give SI
- Amulets of Speed: base depth 30 (Amulets of Trickery have a base depth of 70!)

To Emulord:
Those amulets should not be buffed. They are weaker because they are found at a shallower depth. The only thing that should be changed are the rarities to match their better counterpart:
- Amulets of ESP: 60/8; Amulets of Terken: 40/8:60/4 (should be 30/8:60/4)
- Amulets of Weaponmastery: 70/8; Amulets of the Moon: 40/8:60/4 (should be 35/8:70/4)
- Amulets of Trickery : 70/8; Amulets of Speed: 30/16 (should be 35/8:70/4)

Ashi
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Re: New items

Post by Ashi » Wed 06.05.2009, 17:31

Yeah the old amulets are good if you can find them in the dungeon with a low level character. That makes them great for Ironman but no so much on the normal server where people buy a lot of gear from the shops or players. The problem is that they are really expensive (making them out of reach of low level characters who can use them) or have low bonuses compared to other expensive amulets (making them useless to high level characters).

Random artifacts are really the best way to go since (I assume) that they can solve every equipment problem, and wouldn't be so common as to be horribly broken. The problem is the "legendary" status of artifacts goes away pretty quickly and I'm sure a lot of people would miss it. That's why I'd settle for an ego type which does mostly random stuff rather than have a glut of artifacts piling up everywhere. And then there is the whole thing about RAMPANT CHAOS, which I happen to like, but some people do not so we need to be aware of that.

Either way, we've already proven that the game is winnable in its current state, so we can only be helped and not hurt by whatever new things get added (no matter how wacky they may be). So I will be looking forward to the new additions as the effects should be pretty interesting.

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Flambard
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Re: New items

Post by Flambard » Wed 06.05.2009, 18:14

I don't have anything to say about amulets, but re: random artifcats - In Angband, you play throu the game, and you find say 5 random artifacts. Here, you'll find 5, your next character will find 5, and pretty soon the server will be crowded with them.

serina
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Re: New items

Post by serina » Wed 06.05.2009, 21:00

Only 5 artifacts per character in Angband?

None of my characters who won Angband have ever found less artifacts than enough to fill the house. Even my latest priest that I won with playing only 1 weekend had space problems with the 2 pages inventory of the house.

Naturally some of them are standard like the boomerangs here, but "Cubragol" and "Celegorm/Anarion" have been standards also.

The only thing that's hard to find is the uber arts. But you usually find 1-3 of those anyway, so enough to get by :)

ZAL

nubnub
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Re: New items

Post by nubnub » Sun 10.05.2009, 22:26

I really like the proposed new ego items, especially the black mace.

That said, I agree with Powerwyrm that it's sort of strange how people are opposed to random arts but like adding more exotic ego items. I can understand that it would detract from the mystique of artifacts, though.

What about random ego items? They could be random non artifacts with random artifact-reminiscent names, like "a Saber of Cirith Ungol (1d7) (+3,+1)" and stuff like that. It would provide for a more interesting early game (as it stands now, you're unlikely to find an artifact or an interesting excellent until later on), where even low level players could find things that were worthy of discussion. Of course, they wouldn't necessarily have to be that great. That saber could just be +1 to strength and +1 to light radius, or something.

There could even be some more humorous names and effects thrown in there. Like "a Filthy Rag of 50ft" that activates for stat shuffling and randomly drains one stat to 6, or something like that. That might be a bad example.

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Re: New items

Post by Emulord » Thu 04.06.2009, 22:16

I just thought of a Dracolich Scale mail. Less AC and lighter than most of the other DSMs, but has resist nether and a pretty good Nether ball activation. Since nether is a common resistance hole, this would help fill the gap at the cost of a bit of AC.

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