#3132 Ideas to make randarts more attractive
I think weapon and armour randarts should be made more attractive, especially in the endgame. Why? Because most melee characters that survive to the endgame have enough scrolls to enchance weapon and armour of choice to +9 (or close to that) and hardly any randart can compete with that. For a randart weapon to be viable, it has to be the right kind (the one that player trained), of good enough type and with good enough bonuses. And without unpleasant surprises like +MUT. All that, and overall be better than the +9 weapon. It just feels disappointing a bit in the late game, to find all these randarts that are basically crap. All the potential excitement that can be derived for searching for an awesome weapon is gone, because chances for one are minimal.
Some ideas to fix that:
-Nerf weapon enchancing. Maybe limit to +7. Or make going all the way to +9 harder. Same with armour.
-Add new possible properties to randart weapons. For example: torment resistance, permanent Regen, permanent Rmsl or Dmsl, +Cons, +ResCorr, etc. Any or all amulet/ring effects could be added. Of course some of these would be quite strong, or even overpowered, but those should be extremely rare. So rare that finding even one in a game could be considered lucky. A chance to find one of those could make players pick up randarts even if they already have exec axe +9. Same goes for body armour, there has to be chance for something special enough to outweight +9 GDA/RoR.
-More chance for randarts to have better base types. Perhaps based on current depth. Because a randart sabre on D:5 might be an awesome find, but on D:25 for example or at a branch end it's just a disappointing piece of junk.
Qui
There are some improvements in trunk:
a) randart weapons will now always have a brand -- that is a big step
b) less chance to have only one randart property
Apart from this, there is no reason to have randarts compete with self-made weapons. In particular, I am wary to boost them too much. We don't want to produce too many endgame quality weapons early on. Ideas for new brands are welcome, see one of the many FRs dedicated to that :O
Reducing changes for high Enchantments: could be done, but I think having to blow a lot of EW scrolls is a good choice/investment. Note that randarts can have enchantments beyond 9 already.
Better randarts with depth (on average): now this could be interesting. Opinions?
1. I'm not very happy with the idea of randart weapons being defined by defensive powers, as they get used in situations where damage output is unimportant - swap weapons to run. If we want to see randart weapons used more, there should be new randart powers, useful directly in melee. Some of the ideas from the melee skills/techniques FRs could go well here; for instance Cleave.
2. In order to keep the amount of interesting randarts constant, I fully agree that they should scale better with depth. Actually, I would support making the entire object system much more dependant on depth; a dagger of freezing is just as much of a wasted item as a randart dagger, if it shows up late enough.
3. Nitpick, but as sabres are currently the best short blade a randart sabre is far from wasted on a character with shortblade specialization.
dploog:
Yes, I know that randarts can go beyond +9. But how often does it happen? (on a weapon that is correct kind and good enough base type, etc) On the other hand, gathering scrolls to pump up a weapon of choice to +9 is a no-brainer. It's just something that melee chars do. A powerful weapon guaranteed and for not much effort too. I don't want to generate "endgame quality" weapons early on too, and I am of an opinion that's what happens now, when one finds a nice weapon and a few scrolls early on.
sorear:
1. I see your point. These defensive powers could possibly go on randart body armour, which I think also needs a bit help (not at least plate = don't pick it up) and one cannot change them on the run.
2. I agree.
3. Yes, sorry, I confused weapon types. A falchion would be a better example.
Qui
I agree with sorear comment about defensive qualities, right now it seems that mages get the most benefit of randart weapons because it doesnt matter what the +/- are if you are not even going to whack something with it.
I almost NEVER find a good randart weapon to wield playing a fighter class, unless trog gifts it to me. I find myself saying wow, if I dident need to actually attack with this weapon, it would be very useful! I would like to see more randart weapons that fighters will use! I am against nerfing the +9 enchant on vanilla braded weapons because those can be the best option in certain instances, and to get that high you will have been hording scrolls all game anyway. -Pigvomit
I'm in favour of limiting maximum enchantment to +7 (and getting rid of the enchantment chance).
Randarts would be interesting in the endgame if scrolls of enchantment III could be used on them (perhaps giving +0+1 or +1+0 and with only a chance of working). This would make them stronger in the endgame but not affect the early game at all. I'd also favor limiting the max enchantment of non-arts to +7.
SM
jpeg: do you mean that ?EW should work without chance to fail? I am absolutely against that. The basic idea is to provide a choice to players: if they want to enchant some weapon to the max, they have to blow a lot of scrolls. If they don't, they can enchant more weapons, or also ammunition.
I also believe that the discussion about enchantment limits is besides the point. I'd leave things as they are, or perhaps reduce to 8 for consistency with armour enchantments.
I agree with jpeg ( I suggested the same thing a long time back). Another option, to me, would be to remove the random chance, but not make scrolls always give +1. Ie. it takes 2 scrolls to enchant each step beyond 5. The reason I thought this was a good idea was because it provides more opportunity for use of other weapons. Not only enchantment of weapon brands other than speed/ vorpal (draining, freezing, etc), but also randarts. And also because people would no longer feel like they had to stockpile every scroll until they find THAT weapon.
Giving players the choice to blow every single scroll on a single weapon is interesting from a developer perspective, but I don't think it is fun, and maybe I'm wrong, but I think most people end up taking that approach - the not fun approach, because it's the in-the-end best approach.
2c.
Megane