Smithing improvements/tweaks
issueid=2807 04-11-2014 11:39 PM
Member
Number of reported issues by Setremedes: 4
Smithing improvements/tweaks
Make smithing investments/rewards scale in a more friendly fashion

All right, so this is several suggestions at once, for which I apologize, but they're all relatively small ideas (not going to comment on codeability for obvious reasons) related to the same feature of the game - smithing. I feel like smithing should be of more benefit in the midgame and of comparatively lesser benefit in the lategame (except to weaponsmiths), helping characters get mediocre/generic items (orcish helmets, iron boots) into better shape instead of improving their already powerful items (phase daggers, eternium, wicked -foo- of penetration). I also feel like weaponsmiths should get more benefit out of smithing in general - as is, their advantages, while nice, aren't anywhere near as obvious and powerful as wizards' advantages with magic for example, even in an activity that's obviously of more limited benefit than casting spells. Here are some ideas:

1. Make pickaxes smithable. Currently, repairing pickaxes is possible for Glod but not a player (even a weaponsmith player), which makes no sense. Of course, currently pickaxe stats don't affect their break rate, which leads us to...
2. Make pickaxes and hammers more useful for mining/smithing as their stats improve. Currently, it's common practice to corrode one's pickaxe so that Glod doesn't charge as much to repair it. Wouldn't it make more sense for a pickaxe in better shape to have a lower chance of breaking, and a hammer in better shape to be more useful for smithing with?
3. Make smithing difficulty scale with material. Iron, I feel, should be easier to work with than it currently is, and adamantium and eternium should be harder. The current success rate feels about right for mithril.
4. Make smithing difficulty scale with item value (instead of, or in addition to, suggestion 1). Improving a dagger should be significantly easier than improving a phase dagger with identical stats, or a prefixed/suffixed dagger.
5. Give ingots a chance to be retained after a failed use. Perhaps transform a failed-use ingot into a "misshapen ingot" of the same weight, which can be smithed back into a functional ingot (with destruction on a failed attempt at this)? Maybe this one should be weaponsmith-exclusive, or only occur on a near-miss Smithing roll?
6. More available anvils - through a higher drop rate or just an additional guaranteed one that doesn't require the killing of a nonhostile NPC. Perhaps add one to the Mystic's reward that also includes potions of training, or the Puppy Cave?
7. Make the hammer of the gods usable for smithing (or perhaps even grant benefits).

And here, grouped for convenience, are the set of possibilities to make weaponsmiths more powerful at, well, weaponsmithing:

1. Reduce/eliminate any penalties added by the above suggestions for weaponsmiths.biggest advantage is that they have easy access to an anvil! Some ideas for making this happen:
2. Give weaponsmiths a chance to add prefixes/suffixes to items when smithing them, or a separate ability to attempt this at the cost of (for example) a wand or power points. In this example, you could even scale the odds of success with the number of charges in the wand/max PP of the player. Perhaps this could replace the incredibly underwhelming level 25 class power (automatically identify metallic item materials)?
3. Replace the current level 50 class power (reveal damage for un-IDed weapons) with something a little more robust - automatically identifying (including prefixes, suffixes, etc - everything but B/U/C status, like on a non-Casino shop floor) metallic items, or letting them smith up items well beyond the normal limits, perhaps?
4. Train weaponsmiths in the Mining skill, to better acquire the raw materials for their trade.
5. Allow weaponsmiths to create items at the cost of their weight in ingots (perhaps as a replacement for the level 12 class power, with that optionally becoming a hidden class feature like monk hunger?). So iron boots could be created with a successful Smithing check and 6 iron ingots, or eternium boots could be created with a successful smithing check and 7 eternium ingots. This would probably be a lot of work to add, but it would be really cool. Your weaponsmith's been using axes and he can't find a good higher metal axe? Let him make his own!
6. Provide some additional interaction between weaponsmith PCs and Glod/Kherab. Perhaps Kherab sees the PC as competition and attacks on sight if lawful, treats them normally (perhaps with unique dialog) if neutral, and regards them favorably and perhaps provides some help (eternium warhammer?) if chaotic? Perhaps Glod isn't willing to let a rival smith use his anvil at any price, or will request that a weaponsmith PC fill "special orders" for him (-foo- with at least -blah- stats) in exchange for gold?
Issue Details
Issue Number 2807
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category All
Status Suggested
Priority Unknown
Suggested Version ADOM 1.2.0 pre 20
Implemented Version (none)
Milestone (none)
Votes for this feature 6
Votes against this feature 0
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




04-12-2014 03:14 AM
Member
Er, sorry, meant to tag this as an RFE, not a bug. If someone could fix that, that'd be awesome.

04-12-2014 04:01 PM
Ancient Member
I agree with virtually all suggestions except those involving extra quests for weaponsmiths.
I don't think this is a good appropriation of resources to just make quests for one class.
Other than this, what keeps me from playing weaponsmiths is their set of class powers that are so much below mediocre.
I understand mediocrity of class powers if the character is otherwise well suited for the game (take rangers and their amazing skillset), but if a character's class powers are so oriented towards non-combat abilities, I think they should be great instead of what we have now.

I'd love to see weaponsmiths' lvl 50 class power changed so that they can improve artifacts (to a lesser degree than normal items but still).

Also, the inability to repair pickaxes always baffled me until I realized something: a pick axe is made of metal and wood, just like many weapons like polearms and axes.
How exactly can a blessed pickaxe even break in the first place when weapons with even uncursed status do not?
I mean swinging that axe with wooden handle or a spear at a heavily armored monster (not to say a moloch which is virtually a wall of eternium) must be equal to hitting a rock with a pickaxe in terms of uhm... blunt trauma to the weapon itself.
So how is it that weapons, as long as not rusted, do not break *at all* when used as intended while pickaxes do?
Personally, I'd advocate for complete removal of breaking pickaxes since it doesn't make sense given that other similar items do not break in similar circumstances, but of course this suggestion would be downvoted immediately and I'd be eaten alive by the supporters of status quo.

On the other hand, when you think about it, a *wooden* handle that must undoubtedly be the weaker part of the pickaxe, is the actual thing that gets broken, so I'd suggest that all characters with woodcraft skill should be able to repair a broken pickaxe.
However, how exactly Glod the smith can repair it in the first place and a weaponsmith PC cannot, eludes me so I think it should be simplified so that weaponsmiths can do that too. After all, a *weapon*smith is different from a normal smith; they are schooled in creating and repairing weapons and those inevitably contain parts made of other materials, notably wood. Makes perfect sense to allow weaponsmiths to repair pickaxes just like any other broken weapon.

I agree with the ideas regarding materials, ores, ingots etc. - more differences in difficulty between working on iron compared to eternium but also more rewards for being successful at that.
I never understood how the ingots magically disappeared after a failed attempt to improve items.
There should not be a chance to retain them; they should be retained automatically every time you fail to improve an item.
Instead of the current behavior, make it so that improving above certain threshold requires increasingly higher smithing skill and higher PC level. That way it scales somewhat similarly to necromancy when you play a necromancer.
I like the idea of misshapen ingot, it should completely replace disappearing ingots after failure, at least for weaponsmiths, not necessarily for other classes with smithing skill.
I can't imagine how an advanced weaponsmith can actually fail to improve an item so badly that the entire ingot is lost; I understand other classes with smithing skill but a weaponsmith? Definitely no.

04-13-2014 06:12 AM
Ancient Member
1. Make pickaxes smithable. Currently, repairing pickaxes is possible for Glod but not a player (even a weaponsmith player), which makes no sense. Of course, currently pickaxe stats don't affect their break rate, which leads us to...
I suspect this is intentional. Otherwise you can just use one pickaxe forever at no cost... I do agree that it makes sense that a pickaxe with better stats should be more durable than one that's been corroded by a jelly.

3. Make smithing difficulty scale with material. Iron, I feel, should be easier to work with than it currently is, and adamantium and eternium should be harder. The current success rate feels about right for mithril.
I think this already is the case?

6. More available anvils - through a higher drop rate or just an additional guaranteed one that doesn't require the killing of a nonhostile NPC. Perhaps add one to the Mystic's reward that also includes potions of training, or the Puppy Cave?
There's already two available in game... Maybe a slightly higher drop rate, I guess, but you only need one.

2. Give weaponsmiths a chance to add prefixes/suffixes to items when smithing them, or a separate ability to attempt this at the cost of (for example) a wand or power points. In this example, you could even scale the odds of success with the number of charges in the wand/max PP of the player. Perhaps this could replace the incredibly underwhelming level 25 class power (automatically identify metallic item materials)?
This is a very powerful ability that might be tricky to balance. But no reason it couldn't work.

4. Train weaponsmiths in the Mining skill, to better acquire the raw materials for their trade.
Not really necessary, IMHO. One of the best benefits of weaponsmiths is that they don't need to mine!

5. Allow weaponsmiths to create items at the cost of their weight in ingots (perhaps as a replacement for the level 12 class power, with that optionally becoming a hidden class feature like monk hunger?). So iron boots could be created with a successful Smithing check and 6 iron ingots, or eternium boots could be created with a successful smithing check and 7 eternium ingots. This would probably be a lot of work to add, but it would be really cool. Your weaponsmith's been using axes and he can't find a good higher metal axe? Let him make his own!
If you like smithing, level 12 power is already pretty good. Allowing the player to get an unlimited supply of eternium items at level 12 seems a bit problematic to me though. Maybe making higher metal items requires you to be at a higher level? Or maybe you can only make items you've already seen (like writing scrolls)?

6. Provide some additional interaction between weaponsmith PCs and Glod/Kherab. Perhaps Kherab sees the PC as competition and attacks on sight if lawful, treats them normally (perhaps with unique dialog) if neutral, and regards them favorably and perhaps provides some help (eternium warhammer?) if chaotic? Perhaps Glod isn't willing to let a rival smith use his anvil at any price, or will request that a weaponsmith PC fill "special orders" for him (-foo- with at least -blah- stats) in exchange for gold?
I agree about Blasphemous that class-specific quests are maybe not the best use of resources, but I think a bit of class specific behaviour (ala Druid giving different rewards to his class) is probably fine.

01-16-2015 04:39 PM
Senior Member
I'd add "If you are paying Glod to use his Smithy, he should provide you with the free use of his anvil".

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