The reason that it's indeed one of the most powerful guaranteed artifacts speaks against this change, particularly the lvl 26 suggestion. The problem I see is that people would opt for using RCT instead of any other weapon for virtually all midgames, rendering a lot of other weapons quite useless. With all the new weapons included since 1.1.1, I would say that to be a shame. RCT is extremely powerful still in the endgame, especially given that it's a returning missile also. I might vote for lvl 30 if there is some other requirement imposed, such as possessing the air orb.

Slightly off-topic: I also think that priority 2 is quite a bit too high - it's been usually used for serious bugs and game-breakers, but not fatal crashes or the most serious ones (which then would be prio 1). This is after all a flavour change of a detail in-game and I'd suggest a priority setting of 5-6. Please consider changing it. :)

There's no doubt the RCT is a potent endgame weapon. But the issue becomes more apparent when you consider the typical scenarios of receiving it.

Scenario 1: You aren't building for two-handed weapons (thus having no weapon marks in the skill) and receive the RCT as usual at level 36 while being somewhere between the Mana temple and D:50—because that's how long it takes to level to 36 unless you clean up every late-game location and/or grind and/or hit a threat room full of enemies that you need a weapon at least as powerful as the trident to kill for XP. Equipping the RCT in place of your (most certainly pretty strong) one-hander causes you to lose a chunk of DV and PV while you still cannot reasonably guarantee a kill in 1–2 hits against a balore or a similarly dangerous monster because of poor accuracy and high damage variance of the trident. A hard sell. Might work out if you're sufficiently tanky but is a liability otherwise.

Scenario 2: You're building for two-handers and receive the RCT as usual at level 36, once again in deep endgame. For some reason you haven't retrieved a much superior and guaranteed axe of the minotaur emperor (such as due to poor planning/RNG or whatever ingame time constraints), didn't receive a good endgame two-hander via crowning/precrowning, also failed to find a murderous/wicked/penetration/devastation two-hander made out of a higher metal by the time you hit 36, but have managed to locate a source of water breathing and/or means of controllable teleportation in time before the deep CoC dive. How often does this happen?

Scenario 3: You're building for the RCT. You would obviously choose to receive it at level 16 by picking Raven and just coast through the rest of the game with it. This also works for speedruns.

Scenario 4: You aren't melee, aren't Raven, and thus the trident is at best a stat stick to you. Would it outperform a weapon + shield or a decent staff this way? Highly unlikely, considering cold immunity and water breathing are mainly useful before the Water temple and you can get the immunity from the guaranteed ancient mummy wrapping already. Besides, a ranged weapon user who could use the Dx but has already lived to 36 doesn't need the trident, unless...

...Scenario 5: You happen to be a non-Raven ranged weapon user specializing in thrown spears. So why, again, have you not picked Raven?

Scenario 6: You aren't melee but are Raven, and can use the trident as a stat stick or a thrown weapon. Good for you, I suppose.

Of these base scenarios, which I'm reasonably sure encompass the vast majority of possible cases, the only ones where receiving the RCT significantly earlier (at 26–30) would make a noticeable difference are 2, 5, and maybe 1. Even then, consciously ending up in 5 suggests picking "fate decide" at character creation and ending up with a character who can still use the trident effectively even if receiving it later, or going for a flavor-based role-play build, which only happens with a relatively minor part of the populace who look for extra challenge and aren't particularly disturbed by balance issues to begin with. Somewhat similarly with 2: playing a character specializing in two-handers (thus a tanky melee type) who has the time to level up to 36 before D:50 but not retrieve the axe is just purposefully making things harder for yourself. Yes, the Maze is a chore and, at the least, requires means of remote mapping to pass through. But when the reward is the second most powerful artifact weapon in the game and a ton of other goodies useful for almost any character that makes the rest of the game a breeze, it's a bargain.

Thus it doesn't feel to me that receiving the RCT earlier than level 36 as a non-Raven would actually disrupt balance in any meaningful way. If it did, more characters would play non-caster Ravens to get the trident early. This doesn't happen. Lowering the threshold to level 28–30 appears totally reasonable; possessing the Water orb is a sensible, but not necessary requirement because it's already the easiest one to get (when was the last time you didn't have it by level 30? I usually get it at around 16–24 depending on the order of doing dungeons). In fact, I find the existence of the minotaur axe in its current state is a much more serious offender to balance, considering how much easier it is to get it compared to any other weapon of at least comparable level of power (TotRR, Needle + Sting, Foeslammer, Grod, Silence of the Dead, double-damage-affix higher-metal weapons). Slightly nerfing it to, say, (+10, 4d18+12) down from (+12, 4d20+16) wouldn't hurt its status as the most powerful weapon one could get by level ~30 at all, but at least it would make rare and extreme endgame artifacts and ultra-rare ego weapons look less bad in comparison. Right now if you get the axe, there's virtually no chance you'd get anything better until you've ascended.

There's also another option to consider: making crits themselves less powerful: 1.5x damage by default (vs. the current 2x), moving further increases to crit damage multiplier to a talent branch. This would make balancing slaying weapons much easier in general, especially with regards to ammunition.

Isn't the RCT an ACW slayer? Having it easily available for the ToEF would make that boss fight a lot more straightforward.

RCT is a polearm, not two-handed, so you most certainly have a skill around 9-10 at least when you get it. No need to build separately. There's a nice DV boost already by that weapon skill, a few points given by the weapon itself and Dx+12 gives even more. The minotaur axe wrecks your DV, so that's much more of a tradeoff.

I also suggested the air orb as a requirement, not water. :)

I am not sure having a powerful artifact built essentially for one starsign is a great idea... For char who pushes forward fast... lv36 is happening somewhere around d50 if ever.

How about delivering trident once char gets x amount of levels after qualifying for it or being y level whichever number is smaller? (let's lv36 flat or 16 levels after solving the quest -- the problem ofcourse is that quest is solved via tp rather easily, but, well, disabling tp in water dragon cave is not a bad idea... tp brings nothing but abuse in there.)

A quick summary: My words exactly, RCT is currently powerful for one starsign only. The quest for getting RCT is relatively easy and not nearly as tedious and time-consuming compared to the quest for getting axe of minotaur emperor. RCT is a pole arm so almost every character has got training for it if playing wisely, as pole arms have really nice bonuses for DV. Thus RCT is likely a better weapon of choice than AoME, likely a second-best two-handed artifact weapon. A level 30 character is likely not yet in D:50, a level 36 character is about to be there unless doing a lot of optional quests. My point: if there is a quest, there should be reward for the quest that is likely delivered before you're already closing the gate. Level 30 seems more appropriate than level 36. For those who want the weapon early should know to choose their starsign to make the game easier for them, but all players should truly benefit from the weapon.

Perhaps the water dragon caves should be made much harder, and the water dragon should directly give you the reward.

I'm a bit opposed to this, but if I still imagine... the cave should then be a real dungeon of high depth, and there should be much more aquatic monsters of high difficulty. Much more work than changing the level of the character that receives the trident. I've found Shyssiryxius as a level 13 trollish healer and it was easy to kill those sharks and eels that came into my way. I think the current concept is kind of unique and intriguing. A nice suggestion anyway :)

I guess I should've clarified a bit, by make it more challenging perhaps banning all magic and items and increasing the monster gen would be enough. It'd make sense to ban magic because it's pretty hard to cast a spell with water in your mouth! And using scrolls is pretty ridiculous as they'd all be wiped out the second you reach into you backpack. As for wands, maybe I could see those being able to work, but drinking potion should be banned for obvious reasons. All this should be enough to increase the level required to visit the caves. No source of healing except herbs, no teleport, no spells, and difficult monsters should present a difficult enough challenge to earn you a free (really good) artifact in my opinion.

Sounds otherwise nice, but I think potions are completely possible to be drunk underwater. They are sealed containers, and while there might happen a slight dilution when you uncap it, you can cover it with your hand until it reaches your mouth.

Not sure about this since divers can talk to each other underwater - it's understanding the speech that's hard, because water distorts the sound travelling through it. In ADOM spells don't seem to be dependent on exact tone of voice or delivery anyway, since you can cast spells in the library while still respecting the silence. I assume the wizard whispers the spell and that counts.

Personally I think the quest works fine as it is, although I'm not totally opposed to the earlier delivery.

You can speak with the water dragon, so how come you can't use spells then? This idea would require code and testing that these ideas actually work in practice. I still think the behaviour should be simply changed to deliver the trident in level 30, that doesn't require any coding or testing whatsoever, just changing a constant 36 to 30 in the code and recompiling. I also don't think these ideas made the cave hard enough to warrant an immediate present.