Making them 750 movement while blessed would probably still make them very valuable. It is a little distressing that an artifact that would be great in any other slot like Boots of Divine Messenger is considered fairly poor simply because 7lbs are too much better.

Might be worth thinking about making them rarer and only one pair per wish as well.

I'd nerf them to only work in the wilderness.

750 blessed, 900 uncursed, 1500 cursed, behavior in the wilderness unchanged sounds okay.

But we're not going to hit magical items with the nerfstick just because they're better than some artifacts, right? They're all still destructible, and they do still need to feel magical.

I'm not sure that there's many other items in the game that are clearly better than every artifact (and every other item) in its class.

I wouldn't say the seven leagues are clearly better than the boots of the divine messenger. They have paralyzation and death ray resistance and teleport control. If you already have all those intrinsics, sure, they suck donkey. If you have none you probably can't afford not to wear them, movement speed or not. I suspect the boots of the divine messenger would be used more often if players actually got them more often, and if they weren't used to getting the intrinsics on them through another source. Also, you can't always make use of the mobility, and once I realize that I can't, I swap the seven leagues for any kind of armor, especially the boots of the divine messenger. Same if item destruction looms on the horizon; the biggest bane of plain magical items compared to artifacts. (To use seven leagues in the tower, you need a ring of ice; and in the Air Temple, you might as well forget about it.)

I wouldn't exactly mind the change, either - 700 movement is still really, really powerful. Another possible nerf direction though: Seven leagues rely on their blessed nature to be useful. If you make cursing powers more ubiquitous, their value should diminish by quite a bit. On the other hand, that would hit a lot of other items, too...

Another option that might help to make them feel more balanced without "nerfing" them too much could be to give them a direct downside. For instance, they could be +cursed, or they could have negatives in terms of DV and PV, or they could force defensive tactics.

I don't know if it can be implemented, but simply having it so that they're not much use in battle scenarios would be enough to balance it, and the obvious way to do that is to make it so that they only reduce movement costs when there are no hostile beings in sight. The logic is that they're designed for long distance walking, and make you move faster for that, but when there's a foe nearby, you've got to be prepared for attack, and that slows you down.

Could simultaneously provide a new use for potions of blindness, for example, wherein the PC could down a potion of blindness in order to enable indefinite use of the movement cost reduction.

Essentially, they're still very valuable, but when you're expecting a fight, you're better off wearing something that will actually be of use.

If you reduce them to just the wilderness bonus, you've just turned them into a crap item. Even with the new 180+ day behavior, you'd barely need them at all. Their usefulness in battle is quite intentional. The intention is to bring them down slightly so players don't have to feel guilty for using the boots of the divine messenger instead (I know I already don't).

How about reducing the 7 league boots but then having a more powerful artifact version that has the full power the boots have now?

I'm voting against since the item is pretty rare as it is and is wholly subject to equipment destruction, and let's not forget that equipment destruction just got a lot more interesting in 1.2.0. One thing I could see myself agreeing with is limiting wishes for seven league boots to one pair. The fact that certain rare non artifact (and thus destructible) items are potentially more powerful than certain artifacts is in my opinion a good game design choice.

I don't think the equipment destruction change will have any effect on 7lbs unless they're sitting in your inventory. Worn items always functioned properly, AFAIK.

They're not that rare when you consider wishes. Many people consider 7LBs to be their primary wish item because they can make such a huge tactical advantage in battle. Don't get me wrong, I love them and want them to stay in the game, but at a reduced effect. Having an artifact that would give the "full" bonus would be cool though.

While we're at it, boost Survival so it affects wilderness travel speed in a big way. Then nerf the 7LB to be less efficient.

Wilderness travel speed was never the broken aspect of 7LBs though.

How about making 7LB an artifact, then it can't be wished for and not every game would have it. You could even create a quest around it?

B/U/C will obviously not change energy cost and DV,PV both 0 and no intrinsics. You'll have to change the Bard Heir gift.

I have tuned them down slightly. And you no longer receive more than one from a wish.

You know, while being an artifact isn't necessary (and hopefully TB's modification is enough to rebalance them), there's one thing I think would be cool.

A set of mutually exclusive quests, where each one provides you with one of a set of useful (but destructible) items, like the 7LB. For instance, other quests from the set could net you an amulet of teleport control, an amulet of life saving, a phase dagger, a ring of ice, a pair of thick gauntlets, or a giant boar skull.

By having them be mutually exclusive, the PC is forced to choose which of the items is most important to them, and this may mean trying to find the other items naturally, first. The actual quests could be fairly mundane - no complex sequences of events... but the exclusivity means that the choice is the important part.

There's not gonna be any items left worth wishing for if you restrict these to 1-per-wish as well! Wishes are starting to feel somewhat worthleess in adom. I'd much rather find a suffixed eternium item to a ring of djinni summoning these days, and there's only a few things worth wishing for. It's getting hard to justify wishing for anything other than writing sets or potions of exchange, and nerfing the wishes people tend to use makes the problem worse, not better.

I agree that 7lbs should be toned down, but they shouldn't be restricted to one per wish, because this alters wished-for SLBs from 'basically all-game whenever needed' to 'until a fire/lightning creature burns them'.

On average I find 2 pairs of 7LBs during a game. I've never(oops, once in the BDC) had a pair destroyed. Usually the 1st one is during the early to early midgame. I would never spend a wish on some. Wishes are extremely rare, maybe 1 in 3 games. Hence, in my opinion the old wishing behaviour for them was fine.

If there's a Fire Dragon or Fire Vortex, I equip a Ring of Ice or take them off. If there's an Acid Vortex, Lightning Vortex, Black Dragon, Blue Dragon, Chaos Lizard, or Lightning Lizard, I take them off. If I'm going into the Fire or Air Temples, I take them off. if I'm going into the BDC, I don't bring them unless I have a spare pair (which I often do, though I rarely if ever wish for 7LBs). If they get destroyed, it's usually your fault. It was ridiculous that you'd get multiple pairs from a wish anyway.