GC and Phial of Forgetit
issueid=3306 08-26-2014 12:08 AM
Junior Member
Number of reported issues by Small Bombs: 3
GC and Phial of Forgetit
This stuff is no good

Gremlin Cave is a pointless place. It used to have a use, which was scumming, but that got removed so now there's no justification for it to exist. It might contain Phial of Caladriel, but this doesn't count as a reason to exist because that is also a pointless item. The light it creates sucks and blows simultaneously and ordinary light sources are so incredibly plentiful anyway. The blindness effect might maybe come in handy once in a blue moon, but there'll likely be something much better you could do under any circumstance where you might wanna throw it. Phial is incredibly crappy for an artifact item.

I'd think the simplest solution would be making the Phial returning if thrown. At least then it would be just a silly gimmick item instead of an annoying and dumb one. This is a really lazy solution that took me about 10 seconds to think of, so there's probably much better ways to go about it. Such as remaking it into an item that's actually useful. Of course, that'd mean Gremlin Cave needs to be changed as well because it's a silly place unfit to house something that's actually useful.

If it were up to me, I'd change the Phial into an item that acts as an infinite torch when *held in a hand* and then (U)sing it would attempt to turn or destroy nearby undead/demons, for a relatively low power cost. If we're gonna have a such a blatant Tolkien ripoff thingy, we might as well be faithful in ripping it off. Then make GC harder, spawn gremlins at higher level, disable all light sources except torches and Phial, give it high corruption, maybe even add a second cave level where Phial is actually located. Or make it a single maze level, a maze will probably be way worse than a cave level.

I get that this would be a low priority issue, current silly and pointless place containing the silly and pointless item are deserving of each other and it's not really hurting anything else in the game, but the sheer pointlessness of these two things annoy me. I hope I'm not the only one.
Issue Details
Issue Number 3306
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Suggested
Priority Unknown
Suggested Version ADOM r51
Implemented Version (none)
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 1
Votes against this feature 13
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




08-26-2014 12:48 AM
Eol Eol is offline
Junior Member
I think phial is quite useful item as it is. Good ratling fodder for those who attempts ultra, useful flashbang for the others. I don't know if it was nerfed in 1.2.0 and later, but in days of v1.1.1 phial was very useful vs Cat Lord and Nuurg. And, let's face it, gremlin cave is not a dangerous place for any expereinced player, except some cases of really bad luck with trap generation. Most of my games I went there with a scroll of item detection and and an amulet of light and had no troubles at all.

08-26-2014 01:18 AM
Ancient Member
Phial is already awesome, there's no need to make it better (though it would be nice if it was counted as ammunition).
Gremlin cave already sucks, there's no need to make it worse.

08-26-2014 03:24 AM
Ancient Member
The phial is an infinitely reusable potion of blindness for humanoids (which is greatly powerful), and nice to train Concentration if you're not a spellcaster. Also, to my knowledge most people scummed in the Dwarven Graveyard or WDC instead of the Gremlin Cave, because they gave much better loot with zero corruption.

08-26-2014 03:39 PM
Ancient Member
I agree with 0% of this RFE.

08-26-2014 04:56 PM
Ancient Member
Gremlin cave also has a guaranteed climbing set.

08-28-2014 03:08 PM
Senior Member
I use the phial regularly, for both it's light source, and especially it's blindness. If it returned when thrown it would be every bit as ridiculously overpowered as the new returning artifact missiles.

08-28-2014 03:43 PM
Junior Member
It would certainly be better to new players if there was any indication that throwing it would cause blindness and not break it; otherwise, it's a useful and not overpowered artifact.

08-28-2014 08:40 PM
Ancient Member
I never knew it caused blindness, so I never tried throwing it - but I don't think I'd have ever thought it would break. I knew it was an artifact and that's the one fact about artifact that I think every player figures out - they are indestructible.

So I blame not knowing it caused blindness on my own lack of experimentation. That assumes, however, that you get a reasonable message when you throw it at a non-humanoid (so you can figure out that the problem is that the target isn't humanoid)

08-28-2014 09:04 PM
Ancient Member
Well, if you use slings, potions will show up as optional throwing materials. Sooner or later you're going to get curious to see what it does.

For thematic purposes, given its origin, the phial should also blind spiders, IMHO.

08-29-2014 12:21 AM
Ancient Member
First of all, the phial should let you select the amount of PP to use for the purpose of lighting the area, instead of using up all of them.
If a single power point was just one random tile adjacent to the character and 100 was an equivalent of Wi:48 ball spells in terms of range, this would make the potion somewhat situationally useful.
Otherwise I agree with the OP - this is a useless artifact only handy for an occasional ultra as ratling fodder. Not exactly how I'd imagine such a thing to be useful.
It's blinding ability is useless ultimately as from personal experience blindness doesn't provide enough of an advantage to the PC to validate the artifact's usefulness.
It's unneeded, as ACW is easily disabled to a degree with near-guaranteed potion of cure corruption and everything else is not worth the "throw & pick up & equip" effort included since you have a million other, simpler ways of dealing with stuff.
I'd say it shouldn't return when thrown but acting as everburning torch when wielded or put into tool slot would be nice.
Also, having it equipped should act as hate aura against spiders only. It would be one nice way to deal with the elven summoners.
Otherwise I can't think of any other way to make this worth my time as I've ignored this artifact for the past ~10 games and I've experienced no difference versus actually getting and using it.
I'm voting yes on this.

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