Purple items buff, levelable nerf.

[Variaz]

Here's the current 0.4 situation:

---
So, you just beat a difficult elite monster, and it drops a suit of armor. And so you pick up that nice plate armor, hoping it will give you tons of bonus to your Defense skill, only to find this:

+2 to Blunt skill.
+1 to Polearm skill.
+6 to Martial Arts.
+3 to Infra-vision.
It increases your light radius by 1.

And so, you now have a PLATE giving you bonus to MARTIAL ARTS, and to the ever-useful Infra-vision, the best bonus in the game by far! </sarcasm>

But none of this matters, since it's BLUE! Starting with AC bonus of 75, as you level it up, you can easily expect this plate to get a godly AC of thousands or higher, and with enough Defense skill, you can easily get over 10 million AC. Oh, and that 12d10 swords? You can be sure that it will do insane damages at level 45 or so, reaching a level that Crafters could only ever dream of.
---


And so with this in mind, as of 0.5, I have changed the way magic items are generated, and toned down levelables. The purpose is to make purples better, while making blues less godly, and therefore allow an easier gear replacement, and make the game more balanced.

When a magic item is rolled, it picks it's bonus amongst a set of "archetypes", that suits particular character builds, and which also makes sense for a specific type of items to have. For example, shields focus on Constitution, Defense, Magic Defense and resistances, while boots focus more on speed and Agility bonus. Most of the time, one stat and one skill are chosen, sometimes two stats or two skills, and points are spread between them.

The bonus themselves are now bigger too. A pool of bonus points is determined based on the level of the magic item(usually based on dungeon level if it's a found item, or on an average between the monster's level and depth if it's dropped by a monster) and the quality of the item(steel now produces better magic items than bronze, for example). After that, it is spread between the chosen stats and skills, as if they were tweak points.

So for example, a steel weapon(depth 20) found at level 20, would have like 20 tweak points spread randomly, and you could get a sword like:

+10 to Strength
+10 to Swords

Or maybe +12 to Strength, +8 to Sword(or +8 to Str, +12 to Swords), or even +15/+5, depending on how the points were spread. Much better than the +1 to charisma and +2 to Infravision of the current 0.4, wouldn't you say? And that applies to all kind of items. For those who liked the total randomness, there is a "Random" archetype, but even it is now better, in that it will not place two specialized weapon skills or two specialized ranged skills on the same item anymore.

With these buffs to purples, however, comes a nerf to the blue levelable items. The nerf targets the increases to the base values of the items upon leveling. More specifically: they don't increase anymore. This applies to base weapon damages, base AC and base ranged multipliers. To_d and to_h still increase, but much more slowly. I know this may seem like a drastic move(and not saying I'm not open to changing if it turns out to be too much), but here's a couple reasons for this:

- Due to scaling, the leveled items became WAAAY too strong. The strongest armors could reach over 20k+ base AC with +37k to_a bonus. Add to this the fact that to_a is actually very good in 0.5(unlike 0.4) and this gets overpowered. And strong weapons could later scale to insane levels that left Monks, Crafters and Casters far behind in the shadow.

Just how overpowered it was? If I say it give about 11 000 000+ AC, would you say it's overpowered? (Remember, the whole point of 0.5 is to get rid of these ridiculously high numbers)

- It was never needed. A non-magical blue steel long sword did 9d10 damages, which is pretty good. With a basic enhancement to damages, and many attacks per rounds, they do more than enough damages. No need to scale to 170d170.

- This is going to make balancing much easier. Let's take the Monk for example. At 500 Martial Arts skill, you will do 13d15 damages with your fists. At that level, magic one-handed weapons will probably do similar damages. A Monk with a good glove will probably do similar base damages than a magic two-handed weapon. Fair enough. It will be similar with Crafters, who will be a much more viable alternative, without having to compete with insane scaling.

- This will make it easier to switch gear and start leveling a new piece of equipment. Without a huge loss in terms of damages or protection, it will be easier to switch to a lower level item and start leveling it for long-terms benefits.


With that said, tweak points are unchanged. You still gain 2 tweak points per levels, and are still important to build powerful characters and take on powerful foes. So definitely still look for blues, they are better than purples, but just not ridiculously so.

The big winners here are red and green items. With their innately high values, and no real way for regular items to match their power, they will be significantly better. The dilemma whether or not to use a red item will be even harder to decide. And you will rejoice when you find a rare green item, and with the smarter item generation, it will most likely be useful to you, avoiding the dreadful scenario of having to trash a green for crappy stats.

[sekira]

excellent, and as a plus, this completely fixes my issue with how weapons increased base damages when they level... by removing the issue, heh. I think this change was important to avoid crazy high values, which was the whole point of 0.5 anyway.

I do think that the way crafting increases base item stats should be carefully looked at though. Before, crafting was not a rediculous choice (at least it was viable up to level 40 or so, the scope of 0.4) Its true that at much higher levels, blues left crafted items in the dust, but crafted items were viable in that you could carefully choose a set of bonuses at will work for any given situation. You could perfectly specialize any tactic that you chose and change it with only a quick step into town. The boosts to base items stats were comparable to blues at least up to level 30 or so, and the perfect customization allowed made up for the shortcomings after that. A real attempt to keep crafting bonuses comparable to the bonuses given by an item's "magic rank" for that level should be made.

Of course, not having played 0.5, I don't know that they aren't comparable, it could be that all is balanced already, and I don't have to worry. I'm just saying that it is something to be careful about/take a look at/etc. Especially since crafters now get 10 skill points per level to increase their one uber skill instead of 5.

[Variaz]

Crafting hasn't been looked at yet, and some tweaking will definitely be needed.

[sekira]

On a side note, these changes should make some abilities and feats much more useful, though most of them aren't implemented in 0.5 alpha yet...

Diviner's Divine Items ability
Rogue's Thievery ability

Divine items might not change much, but Thievery, because it affects base item stats more, might be more valuable now.

Mining Skill's Treasure Finding Feat

Because Higher Mining skill purportedly lets you find rarer items (increases depth?) then you can stay ahead of the curve so to speak (since blues don't let you do that anymore in terms of base item stats) Plus, you can find LOTS of items with this ability, you can really item scum for nice stuff if you are patient.

Paladin's Shining Armor, Blessed Weapon, and Blade of Purity abilities

Now, these three might really be awesome, because they let you directly increase base item stats, and it isn't random, it is directly proportional to the number of AP you spend in the abilities.

Marksman's Improve Ranged Weapon ability

Since one of the more powerful effects of a leveling ranged weapon was its increase to its power/multiplier every level, then anything else that does this to ranged weapons is pretty amazing now that blues don't do it anymore.

And of course, Conjuring items might become more viable, assuming that the conjuration skill still increases conjured item duration like it used to, and increased ammos like it used to (for conjuring a big nasty assault rifle and ammo of course...)

I could be missing some abilities or whatnot, and I haven't even mentioned the flow yet... like most of the above, it isn't in the alpha, and I suspect it might be changed quite a bit when it is... Or maybe not, who knows? I guess it didn't have the capacity to get 300d300 weapons or a million base AC like the base stats increases from leveling did, so maybe it will be more valuable than before but not overpowered in the end... Only time (and V) will tell.

[Gando]

Here is my feeling on items:

Magic Normals - tend to be underpowered stats wise and magic wise. A buff seems in order.
Blues - tend to be overpowered, nerfing the stats makes sense as well as changing the bonus pool.
Crafted (Oranges) - tend to be overpowered at low levels and just down right junk past a certain level even maximizing the crafting bonuses. This is partially offset by the sheer cheapness of making items over having to buy them. Crafting could use some overhaulling.
Yellows (Artifact Uniques) - tend to be terrible except for a few exceptional items that show up at low levels and are useful until mid game (level 20 or so). The rest could use some boosting and I think there should be a lot more Uniques.
Greens (Nonartifact Uniques) - impossible to get. You have to achieve levels that are insanely hard to get to to even have a chance of seeing one. These could be nerfed a bit and made a lot more accessible.
Purple (flow items) - Not really achievable past level 10 base items. After that the flow monsters are too powerful at the end levels and the boss monster tends to be unkillable mostly because of teleporting but also just shear toughness. I have no idea how this will change in .5 but it seems to me unlikely to be better for the players. Could use some tweaking of the flow code imho.
Spirit Items (Soul Stones + Items) - These items vary quite a bit in power based on the power level of the Unique monster or Nonunique monster the soul is dropped from. This could use a bit of balancing out. Currently it is probably better to get Mature Dragon souls and make them levelable via scroll than to use Unique Boss souls.

In my humble opinion Divination works as advertised and does not need tweaking if Blues are being nerfed a little. I don't think much of thievery so I will have to see how that works in the new system as soon as this combat testing alpha is done and we have a full gamut of classes again.

Class augmented items like Blade of Purity, Shining Light (armor) and Blessed weapon seem strictly worse than normal magic items (even unboosted) unless you invest more points in those abilities than is smart. (The augmented items do not make up for a loss of versatility in other areas.)

Mining is rather bad. One of the reasons is the < bug where you make a < when digging 50% of the time and then fall through it onto the false level. At the very least there needs to be a Yes or No prompt on those staircases. The items dropped tend to be low level items nonmagical or magical (aka junk) until a certain skill point and then you randomly get blues. This might need some tuning. Though if item generation has changed maybe it will fix this as well.

Conjured items are a joke.

[Gando]

I have no particular feeling one way or the other about reds as I never use them. They do seem powerful but wearing even one in a decent leveled dungeon is asking for repeated deaths.

[random]

The main problem with Crafted items (as well as Enchantment and Alchemy, really,) at least for me, is that they're only really helpful at low-to-mid levels. In order for them to be worthwhile doing, say, level 55 dungeons, you have to invest so much in the various skills that you're pretty much incompetent in everything except making magic items...and they're not powerful enough to compensate for that. By that time, I'm generally rich and strong enough to just jump down, find those powerful rings and amulets and everything, and buy scrolls of Magic Item and Instant Leveling to create items every bit as good as anything I could have created myself with the right skills. Sure, I don't the same sense of "achievement," but at least I have a higher survival rate against Boss Bone Lord Snipers and Planar Phantoms.

[nichg]

I like the archetypes, but I almost think it should go further. Maybe you could have a set of special abilities such that any magic item can only have one of them (greens can have two or more, reds get their own set?), that can't be bought with tweak points. Sort of like resistances are right now. Certain ones would only be available at sufficient rank, etc...

One feeling I get with magic items right now is, during any dungeon run you get a glut of them, and comparing them with your current stuff for replacement potential becomes a bit of a chore. It feels a bit like you're better off collecting a bunch of normal items of high depth and using Scroll of Magic Item/Scroll of Item Leveling on the appropriate base object to bias the archetype and get something good.

If the randomly generated items were even more specialized, but also better in their specialization, then you could eyeball things more readily but you'd also have to choose between a set of items with useful 'unique' enchantments. Of course, some of these would be appropriate for artifact-style things.

For example:

- A flag that lets you detect when nightmares spawn on a level
- A weapon flag that causes it to counter-attack with some percentage, or buffs counter-attacks from class abilities.
- A weapon flag that gives you an auto-attack when things approach your tile
- (Difficult to implement) A item flag that occasionally causes dungeon walls to form and melt in unoccupied places two tiles from you, returning to their natural state when you move.
- An item flag that forces teleporters to approach from one square away
- An item flag that gives you a special defense check against breath attacks
- (Difficult to implement): An item flag that gives you a premonition whenever the RNG predicts that inaction would cause you to die in the next update cycle.
- An item flag that causes you to roll twice and take the better result on all dice rolled.
- A weapon flag that temporarily reduces the MDef of creatures you hit
- An item flag that 'learns' resistance to the last element you were hit with, but forgets when hit with a new element (also good for bosses)
- An item flag that increases the rate of XP gain but always comes associated with some sort of penalty (good for red items?). Maybe a weapon flag, associated with a percentage reduction on damage dealt?
- An (intermediate) weapon flag that lets you toggle to elemental damage, but every strike consumes a percentage of your max mana.
- A weapon flag that allows it to ignore certain defenses, paired with a percentage reduction on damage dealt.
- A weapon flag that causes it to knock enemies back one tile if there is an open space
- An item flag that blocks summoning within a certain distance of the player
- A weapon flag that causes melee attacks to release a small-radius burst of damage occasionally.
- Item flags that repel certain types of monsters (automatically makes that type flee if their level is below the power rating).
- A weapon or item flag that turns summoned monsters against their master.

[Variaz]

Though the abilities you mention below are a good idea(though maybe more reserved for artifacts), I don't think it would do much to fix the problem you have with the current randomization.

What you seem to point out is that you get a lot of items, but it can be difficult to get the archetype that you want, and you're just better off using the scrolls on a high depth item, and then abort and start over until you get something you like. This is true I guess... but that's the price to pay to have randomization of items. There are some items that you will not like.

In fact, adding random abilities may make choosing items harder, not easier. Because let's say you're a pure melee build with a focus on strength, and you find a sword that hits over a radius. Sounds awesome, however, it's stats bonus is wisdom, not strength. So now you have to choose between giving up strength in favor of radius, or use a weapon with strength but no abilities. That will only make choosing more difficult.

Also, I do not actually want to overspecialize magic items, because I do not want to limit the game only to the "standard" builds. Strength is always desirable for a bonus on melee weapons, but what if your particular build is a non-standard str/wis build, and you actually have a use for the wisdom sword mentioned above? Non-standard builds should also have gear that helps them, and that's why all items, no matter their type, can get the "random" archetype.

[nichg]

I don't think choosing items is hard, particularly. I think that its tedious. Basically, the archetypes aren't distinct enough either in how they're identified by the interface or by what they do.

So, here's a concrete example. I named each of the archetypes you have defined in the code, and had Portralis add that name to the beginning of each magic item. Now I find things like a Lithe Katana (what you call Dex Fighter), a Resilient Shield (helps with resistances), a Celeritous Amulet (Speed item). This makes it easier to immediately pick out 'oh, I want to look carefully at this subset of the stuff I pick up, and sell the rest'.

However, for a lot of the archetypes this isn't quite enough. It's easy for me to know that a Resilient (adds resistances) item will be special and worth seeking out, since there aren't any other ways of getting resistances easily. Similarly with Celeritous items at lower levels (before levelables show up). On the other hand, look at some random items generated from a couple of the archetypes:

Elemental Lord items: This will have some bonus to Str and/or Int and/or the weapon skill and/or Elements, if I remember correctly. At high levels, that will be distinct as a particular kind of allocation, but at low levels its just another +1 Str, +1 Int item. In fact, the more distinct thing I look for at low levels is what the extra 'random bonuses' the item gets are: telepathy, immunity to conditions, and the sustains.

So what I'm getting at is, I think it might be more interesting to have the archetypes be more extreme. It means you'll replace less often, but it makes the actual process of play less tedious with respect to determining if you should replace.

As far as overspecializing, I can see that point. I'd say the way to handle that is, leave the randomness in what stats are boosted (within reason), but still give each archetype something unique about it. At the high end, you can always customize stats with Levelables or Crafted items, which is kind of their strong point right now.

[Variaz]

Jun 23, 2011 19:13:50 GMT -5 nichg said:

So what I'm getting at is, I think it might be more interesting to have the archetypes be more extreme. It means you'll replace less often, but it makes the actual process of play less tedious with respect to determining if you should replace.

As far as overspecializing, I can see that point. I'd say the way to handle that is, leave the randomness in what stats are boosted (within reason), but still give each archetype something unique about it. At the high end, you can always customize stats with Levelables or Crafted items, which is kind of their strong point right now.

My problem with making archetypes "more extreme" is that it then forces characters in one direction. Let's say you find a sword "Elemental Fury", with the following bonus:

+Str
+Int
+Swords
+Elemental

And some more unique ones:
+Resist your chosen element.
+Radius of your elemental spells of chosen element.
Elemental damage type of your chosen element.

Well, that's one great Elemental Lord sword, with a very powerful archetype... but what if you're really having a problem with Magic Defense, and you would have loved to get it as a natural bonus on your sword, instead of a Swords bonus?

Or you're playing a Rogue/Elemental Lord hybrid, and you'd prefer Dex over Strength?

What about a Defender/Elemental Lord hybrid? You don't really want Elemental, and you'd prefer Defense?

Or you're playing a zulgor, and are immune to your chosen element, which will always be chaos. Maybe Darkness resistance would have been more helpful?

You're a Dark Lord, but you're fighting undeads... what you need is a Light weapon, not a weapon that will turn out to be Dark!

As you can see, there are many possibilities. And while Str/Int/Weapon skill/Elemental may be the "standard" elemental lord, that doesn't mean everybody will want to play it that way. There's always a way you can tweak your character to be different from the "standard" build, and what I'm afraid of is that by making the archetypes more extreme, we also push them in one direction, and prevents them from being of interest for more unique builds.

Yes, you can customize their bonus with levelable items... but ultimately, what makes one item better than the other is it's starting bonus. All levelables gains bonus at the same rate. Two level 100 items will both have 200 bonus points to allocate. What makes them different is the bonus they started with. So if your item started with +50 int, you will never be able to get more than 200 Con out of this item, whereas if it had started with +50 Con, you'd have 250 Con out of this item.

That's why the random archetype is important, and that's why even two items of the same archetype can produce two different results. The game allows multiple builds, and there should be items for everyone. It would indeed be nice to have powerful archetypes for everyone... but since there's endless possible character builds, it's not humanly possible to make endless archetypes, so randomness is the best solution.

[nichg]

You could however make them more extreme but still random in their nature. For instance, instead of the resistance items having 33% of their points spent into a resistance, 33% of their points spent in MDef, and 33% of their points spent wherever, you could have them have 100% of their points spent in a resistance. That way, its more of an extreme choice (do I go for a resistance item but loose out on some minor buffs I could use, or do I go for a strong buff item?), while the actual element the item resists (or whatever) is still random.

As an example, a weapon that helps you wield it even if you don't specialize in it, the Skillful archetype, would have 100% of its points spent in its own weapon skill.

In any event, I don't really think the point allocation is the big deal - I generally just grab something around my level that has points spent roughly on something I could use and keep that item for 15 dungeon levels or so, selling everything else to buy Item Leveling scrolls or whatever. That basically means that everything I'm getting between then and the next major upgrade pretty much is going to be converted to cash without a second glance. On the other hand, when I get an artifact I always seriously consider it compared to my current gear because while it might have lower stats, it is likely to have something hard to replicate with eventual item levels (+% life, useful resists, etc).

Or to put it another way, I think its more interesting to choose between +10 Str and +10 Fighting than between +6 Str/+4 Fighting and +4 Str/+6 Fighting.

[Variaz]

I do need to comment on the first point:

Jun 24, 2011 0:12:42 GMT -5 nichg said:

You could however make them more extreme but still random in their nature. For instance, instead of the resistance items having 33% of their points spent into a resistance, 33% of their points spent in MDef, and 33% of their points spent wherever, you could have them have 100% of their points spent in a resistance. That way, its more of an extreme choice (do I go for a resistance item but loose out on some minor buffs I could use, or do I go for a strong buff item?), while the actual element the item resists (or whatever) is still random.

This particular one is there because I seriously do not want 100% resistance available on random items. Why? Because then you can possibly have a different resistance on all the 14 items you can wield, and therefore get 14 different immunities. Now THAT's gamebreaking! This makes you nearly invincible to any enemies that isn't a Nightmare.

[nichg]

Thats a fair point. I guess you could cap it at 33% or something and it'd still be interesting - if someone really wanted to be immune to a particular thing they could wear multiple items against it, but they couldn't be immune to everything (I'd imagine that celestial/demon characters would often do this for their vulnerability in particular). And if you exclude the big one (Physical) then it becomes more difficult to get broad immunity. I suppose the danger then is you could get a situation where superior resistances are mandatory for play beyond a certain point.