[BMA] Important changes to items tonight

[Berendol]

These changes have already taken effect.<br><br>Expanded and reformatted summary:<br><br>06-04-2003:<br>[ lib/game/k_info.txt ]<br><br><br>DSM price updates:<br>DSM's are a whole heck of a lot cheaper now. They are too common to be that expensive.. especially after I've been seeing people find 2, 3, 4 DSM's on a dive to 1500', and seeing them in 7 quite often. New prices:<br>12k Black (was 15k)<br>12k White (was 20k)<br>12k Red (was 50k)<br>40k Green (was 80k)<br>70k Multi-Hued (was 150k)<br>9k Shining (was 50k)<br>40k Law (was 70k) - should I change this back?<br>10k Bronze (was 30k) - maybe this is too cheap<br>15k Gold (was 35k) - maybe this is too cheap<br>I should change Blue DSM tomorrow... oops.<br><br><br>Item changes:<br>Dracolisk, Crystal, Mighty Green DSM's made rarer.<br>Elven Gloves distributed better, easier to find deeper.<br>Shadow Cloaks easier to find. Added +2 Stealth to them.<br>Notes made difficult to find in the dungeon. They're only supposed to be in the store, and I think rarity 64 @ 50' will help that.<br>Changed all instances of "Armour" to "Armor".<br>Staves of Perception distributed better.<br>Scrolls of *Identify* distributed better.<br>Quarterstaves distributed better. More rare at shallow depths.<br><br><br>Price increases:<br>Potions of Experience price increased to 60k from 25k.<br>Potions of Enlightenment price increased to 2k from 800.<br>Scrolls of *Destruction* price increased to 3k from 250, and now distributed in more locations in the dungeon.<br>Scrolls of Mass Genocide price increased to 4k from 1k.<br>Staves of *Destruction* price increased to 5k from 2.5k<br><br><br>Update to Dracolisk Scale Mail to reflect 3.0.3 Dracolisks:<br>Hi Resist change. Resist Nexus instead of Resist Nether.<br>Color change. Light Red instead of Light Green.<br>I consider this a bugfix.. sorry to everyone who had them.<br><br><br>New base item kinds:<br><br>Headgear:<br>Desert Helm [5] - resist fire<br>Ice Helm [5] - resist cold<br>Miner's Helm [7] - light & searching +1<br>Forest Helm [6] - res conf, searching +1<br>Guard's Helm [8] - SI<br>Royal Crown [4] - CHR +3, sust chr<br>Mage's Hat [3] - FA, sust int<br>Clergy Hat [3] - FA, sust wis<br><br>Cloaks:<br>Black Mage's Cape [2] - aggravate, res disen, int +1<br>White Mage's Cape [2] - HL, int & infra +1 (harder to find)<br><br>[hr]<br>So... where am I going with all the price increases and decreases and stuff? I'm trying to balance the game better for regular non-cheesing players. Easily findable base item kinds should not be a large source of money; rather excellents should be the real expensive items! Scumming vaults for DSM's is a big money maker for some players. I'm trying to make it more of a challenge to make the money you'll need for good items, and the way I did this was reduce DSM prices and increase *Destro* and Enlightenment pot prices. Now you'll have to ration them carefully until you have enough money to do that, at which point you'll probably have good gear anyways because you found it without cheesing. By creating new items that aren't generated in stores, I also made it worth your time to dive and find items. They're base types, which means they can be excellents... which means happy hour @ around 2000 ft. is gonna be a lot of fun.<br><br>Cheese is fun sometimes, but satisfaction comes from fruitful, legitimate work. I'm trying to make my server a satisfying experience. Let me know how I'm doing!

[Maegdae]

I'd change the law back.. 2 high resists, and important ones at that is simply much too powerful for 40k.  Bronze and gold are too close in price to the lows.. I'd almost think 30k/35k would be correct prices.  Tis' a high resist

Otherwise, these changes seem excellent to me.  The dsms seem to be well balanced in play.  I'll be forced to heavily ration enlighten/destro now.. no more using 5 each per dive (  Both the dsm and item price changes were very badly needed.

These item types are very well done.  They seem to add more flavor to the game.  I think the mage capes are the best

Perhaps some warrior type items too?  I.e. stuff that makes you meaner but a whole lot stupider and a complete fool!  

Stats are actually quite unfair, really.  True balancing would require all warriors to slam their heads against the wall a few times before playing, to reduce thinking ability....

[Berendol]

Yup, you read my mind. I was drawing up some plans while I was waiting for the cross-campus bus today, and I've got some cool stuff for specific classes in the works. No details until they're ready! Flavor keeps people playing.. who wants to play a boring game? Not me! I must admit I've been fondly recalling SNES RPG's like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy et al when I've been working on item kinds, and remembering how they had great item systems.

I was in the bookstore reading through their lovely section of books on game design, in my never ending quest for a decent MMORPG / MUD programming book that covers coding (a) networking and (b) RPG subsystems without (c) Microsoft products. I saw this sub-chapter in one book on feature creep, and cowboy coding, and I thought, hmm... MAngband can be a textbook example of that... and ToME is worse... anyways, there are a lot of 'dead' or useless items in the game and a few that look to be less-tested spur-of-the-moment additions. I could use all the help you guys can give me with eliminating those item types. Especially when it comes to my own work... let me know if I have made items that are redundant or unbalancing.

Yeah... Help wanted! Let's get rid of useless items!

[herbert2]

That's great to have changes and adjustments on the server, and you informed players of that...
But, I find your version very enjoyable, lost of new stuff, monsters, wilderness, .... That I would be happy to reach some high level and meet the high v3.0.3 monsters.
So if you reset the server too often we will never see big vaults, high ego items and scary new monsters, nor live long enough to go to the top of the mountain grab some monsters eggs
Is it possible that you make a "pseudo"-stable version with the new monsters and wilderness, and then a "dev"-version to try out all the monster combat, towns in the wild, etc...

I know it more work, but it's just a proposal as we start to meet more and more players on the RIT server...

Herbert ^_^

[Berendol]

I wish I had another computer to do run a 2nd server for developing that kind of ideas. Unfortunately I don't, and the server doesn't compile on Windows yet because it's not anywhere near my main focus. I could make a modified server that runs on a different port, but it wouldn't show up in the metaserver list *and* you'd need a modified client to connect to it. I really think the metaserver should give you port numbers, but eh..

Anyways the money you get at birth is my way of giving players a quick start on a server that might reset any time I need it to. I shouldn't add more ways right now because the game becomes an utter cheese-fest after a point. It takes about a week of playing a couple hours a day to get a level 30 character on my server, and a bunch of players have already done that several times.

Maybe I could have RNG give a few players the requirements for playtesting the depths, like the EXP and items required to play there, in exchange for info and bug reports. They'd have to start new characters, and those would be barred from all PvP, rescues, and trading - perhaps through a 'never drop or throw' flag, a no-PvP flag, and a removal of resurrection capabilities of their life scrolls. It would be easy to give someone weapons and armor, and potions of augmentation and experience, then level them up in town.. but then they would miss important stages of manually leveling up a character, and they'd still have to find their way down to the necessary depths.

[SpaceHunter]

SWEET! thats all i can really say, awesome new items, u make the game way more fun and uhhhhm Crimson? here is a perfect example to you >>> Berendol! crimson should be more like u [Berendol] anyways great job and keep it up

[Berendol]

Do you understand the concept of screen names and handles? That's so REAL NAMES are kept ANONYMOUS. I think you need to go look that word up. Anyways I have edited your post to remove my name... don't let it happen again.

Crimson is staying true to the old-school Angband and I respect him for that. When I saw that he wanted to stick to Vanilla, I started working on my own variant when I had time. Don't ask him to put in features or items from my game, because you'll only annoy him - he's got his design clearly laid out, and informed readers will already know this.