were pickpockets nerfed too much?

[gosos]

does anyone think that pickpockets was nerfed too much? I got mine up to 91 and I fail a lot. I can finally get through but about 80-90% of the time I get nothing. I have also noticed that in some cases it seems harder to pickpocket. Not sure if this is a change. It seems to happen when I am surrounded. This may have always been the case and I am just noticing it now.

I have noticed that dungeons/locations are harder to do pickpocket. I fail constantly on the 2nd level of the dwarven graveyard, but my success rate against similar undead is much higher on the first level. I can fail 15 times in a row with a pickpocket in the 80s-90s here and not fail against the same mobs elsewhere. is this a 1.2 change?

[grobblewobble]

Imo it was nerfed in a wrong way. The idea was to make pickpockets more interesting, which means it should be situationally useful instead of all the time.

But what happened was an all-round big nerf. That doesn't help at all to make it more interesting. A better way imo would be to make pickpockets harder when the monster has noticed you, but easier when it doesn't notice you.

[anon123]

were pickpockets nerfed too much?

Yes, I'm afraid.

[sytar6]

Should have just left pickpockets like it was. I do a good share of pickpocketing, but the rewards have never been enough for me to do it all the time. The best thing I tended to get from pickpockets was water.

[BenMathiesen]

I think the success rate is higher if you haven't attacked the creature yet, and also higher if the creature is neutral. I've only noticed a big nerf doing it in the middle of combat.

Hard to be sure, I haven't collected stats or anything--that's just my impression.

[Stingray1]

I think the success rate is higher if you haven't attacked the creature yet, and also higher if the creature is neutral. I've only noticed a big nerf doing it in the middle of combat.

Hard to be sure, I haven't collected stats or anything--that's just my impression.

Which does make sense in a way. I know by now that sense doesn't matter to some though. Have nice day.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

I think it does make sense, but the problem is that the Yergius quest is now too tedious, especially if you don't really want to be a pickpocketer.

I think that quest should be nerfed, or an alternative given (stealing the mythical artifact X from character Y... maybe stealing anything from the water dragon lair).

[gosos]

I think it should be more successful based on class. Thieves, assassins should get bonuses. If your stealth is high that should help. Same with Invisible.

I really do think your success rate is partially based on where you are. Try pickpocketing in the 2nd level of dwarven graveyard even at 100. the failure rate is higher thannormal.

[mike3]

I think it does make sense, but the problem is that the Yergius quest is now too tedious, especially if you don't really want to be a pickpocketer.

I think that quest should be nerfed, or an alternative given (stealing the mythical artifact X from character Y... maybe stealing anything from the water dragon lair).

However, taking from the water dragon is only something high-level PCs should do, no? So this would still leave the skills inaccessible to lower-level PCs unless the player can put up with the extreme tedium. But tedious quests are not fun. Perhaps some challenging, but still doable by a lower-level PC, new quest should be added.

[JellySlayer]

I think that quest should be nerfed, or an alternative given (stealing the mythical artifact X from character Y... maybe stealing anything from the water dragon lair).

Really, the answer is already there. You can already complete it by robbing shops. Just make it that stealing a single item from any shop is good enough.

[Stingray1]

The thing is, that membership to the thief guild should not be an easy accomplishment. The problem is that pickpocketing isn't "difficult", but tedious to train.

I think if ways were implemented to make characters with a low mark in this skill succeed easier, the problem might be solved.

These suggested 'ways' as I mentioned in the RFE are: better success while the PC is unnoticed(invisibility, passes a stealth check), pickpocketing a neutral(does not care about you) 'monster', dexterity.

Gnomes, merchants, thieves and assassins are good pick pocketers. That is part of their training during apprenticeship.
Magicians are good at casting spells.
Fighters are good at fighting,etc.

Any character who only starts his training in the Drakalor chain is not going to be great at it from word go.

I know you guys want a Strong and tough archmage that can also be sneaky, but that's not the way it should be.

Imagine we start requesting that our Trollish Barbarians be adept at learning Acid Ball(exaggerating for effect) at lvl 1.

Edit2 - Jellyslayer's suggestion sounds fair too. If I was the head of the thief guild, I would definitely accept a character that stole from a shopkeeper.

Although I think some players are shooting for pickpocketing to have easier yields, not necessarily membership.

[JellySlayer]

I think the success rate is higher if you haven't attacked the creature yet, and also higher if the creature is neutral. I've only noticed a big nerf doing it in the middle of combat.

Hard to be sure, I haven't collected stats or anything--that's just my impression.

This does appear to be true. I rolled a couple thieves and tried pickpocketing around Terinyo. With <40 skill, success rate is around 50 percent and chance to anger the NPC is pretty low. Aspiring pickpockets might consider plying their trade in Terinyo or DT. It doesn't always seem to trigger the alarm even if you fail badly...

[Stingray1]

Holeinthewall might also be considered, at least there is no alarm.

[mike3]

The thing is, that membership to the thief guild should not be an easy accomplishment.

How high a level do you think the PC should have to be to gain membership? (As some of the feats suggested here -- robbing shops, robbing the water dragon -- require a fairly high level to pull off.)

[JellySlayer]

Robbing shops can be accomplished with zero risk at level 1. You just need a potion of invisibility and a bit of luck (stealth helps too).

[Stingray1]

How high a level do you think the PC should have to be to gain membership? (As some of the feats suggested here -- robbing shops, robbing the water dragon -- require a fairly high level to pull off.)

Edit - I did not mean it should be difficult either, that's why I wrote the sentence after the one you quoted. To clarify, I meant, it should require some work.

Whenever he has stolen enough items, this can be from lvl 1. It may be plausible to request that the required items be reduced somewhat, it does feel somewhat excessive. Most skill acquisitions require some work. The easiest one to get is probably Pick Pocketing. It allows you to acquire another 4 skills. Edit - 5 skills in total and they can be trained with gold. Asking for easy access to this is what I was referring to. But, as I said, there are two sides to this. Players who want to get those additional skills with less effort and players who want more items easier from Pick Pocketing.

[Stingray1]

I started a new mist elf CK last night. Acquired Pickpocketing and tried with the skill at 1/100 in the Bandit village. Not successful at such a low lvl. Tried 2 children in Terinyo, the 1st got angry on the 1st attempt, the second also and the alarm went off. So, maybe the class does make different or 1/100 is just too damn low.

The character is xl 8 now and has the skill at 44. Success is about 2 attempt on 'does not care about you' monsters and really sucks with hostile monsters. I'll see if I can reach DT tonight and try there. I'm descending slow due to challenge though, so be patient.

[anon123]

Based on what JellySlayer and you have posted, I get the impression Pick Pockets is now useless if you don't role-play a stealthy thief. Most monsters in the game will be hostile, and proving a to be successful pickpocket is a prerequisite to getting the Stealth skill if you don't start with it.

Please let us know if you at least observe better items getting stolen, or something to that effect. I just gave up in frustration when tackling my first post-pr7 vault required 10 attempts per orc at skill level 40 to yield the same loot as usual.

[gosos]

problem with making thieves guild really hard is that detect traps is almost essential as the game goes on. the high trap areas are too dangerous without it. you wont get enough wands to cover it and I think there is a spell to detect traps, but its not real common.

pickpockets isnt useless i get some items off of it when i use it, but its annoying. its 3 keys to do it and i fail alot even at 100 pickpockets. id like to find a way to reduce the annoyance (part of it is to cut down on the number of keys you have to hit). you cna replace lots of failures with if you succeed or fail your your DV goes down when using it.

[JellySlayer]

Detect traps isn't essential. That's a Guidebook-propagated myth. Alertness and/or high Dx/Pe (Sixth Sense helps a surprising amount as well) will mean you'll avoid most traps anyway. Except for ceiling traps in the Temples, most other traps are pretty harmless by midgame so you can just walk through them if you want.

[Stingray1]

This is a difficult aspect to [BALANCE], as it has 2 desires. Access to guild and greed. I did use the skill a lot directly after p7 was released and as I've said, am happy with the change.

But, that's me and I'm not the only person to consider. I can tell you this however, if a player is persistent enough to get it to 100, I think he/she deserves to succeed on almost every attempt.

I'll document the items stolen.

[Stingray1]

This is a difficult aspect to [BALANCE], as it has 2 desires. Access to guild and greed. I did use the skill a lot directly after p7 was released and as I've said, am happy with the change.

But, that's me and I'm not the only person to consider. I can tell you this however, if a player is persistent enough to get it to 100, I think he/she deserves to succeed on almost every attempt.

I'll document the items stolen.

In the mid 40s success averages about 4 attempts on normal hostiles. The failure rate on tension room and vault monsters are extremely high, I give up on those monsters.

Sidenote - Andor gave me =Fire:cool: and boots which the PC cannot even carry.:( They probably don't contain the essence anyway.

Edit - Success rate seems to be very close to 100&#37; in DT with skill in 40s.

Edit2 - If a monster spawns on a vault tile it counts as a vault monster wrt success rate. Sidenote - I think it also affects item drop chance.

[asdf]

Detect traps isn't essential. That's a Guidebook-propagated myth. Alertness and/or high Dx/Pe (Sixth Sense helps a surprising amount as well) will mean you'll avoid most traps anyway. Except for ceiling traps in the Temples, most other traps are pretty harmless by midgame so you can just walk through them if you want.
Suddenly a stream of acid pours down from the ceiling! Your blessed girdle of greed [+0, +0] is destroyed! Your uncursed amulet of free action is destroyed! Your blessed helm of water breathing [+7, +5] is destroyed! You uncursed fencing gloves of fidelity [+3, +1] {Ch+6} are destroyed!
54 alertness/27 dex.

If you managed to ate giant slug corpse - that might be different for you:P

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Yeah, not essential, i.e. you can win without it. But lacking it does make heavily trapped areas way more difficult. I don't typically die to traps except in the very early game, but heavy equipment loss as in the example by the previous poster is relatively common.

I definitely think that Detect Traps is important enough that the way to get it shouldn't be through massive tedious grinding. Making the player choose between extreme boredom and playing with a rather serious handicap is not right.

[JellySlayer]

Suddenly a stream of acid pours down from the ceiling! Your blessed girdle of greed [+0, +0] is destroyed! Your uncursed amulet of free action is destroyed! Your blessed helm of water breathing [+7, +5] is destroyed! You uncursed fencing gloves of fidelity [+3, +1] {Ch+6} are destroyed!
54 alertness/27 dex.

If you managed to ate giant slug corpse - that might be different for you:P

Most PCs can get acid and fire resistance quite early in the game, which mitigate the effect of trap damage significantly. And if you lose a bunch of gear, well, it happens. Most gear is replaceable. There's very few items in your inventory that are likely to lead to a crisis if you lost them unexpectedly. I rarely bother with detect traps anymore... except for the Mana Temple, the trap density in other areas isn't so big of a deal that I miss not having it (and in the MT, I'd prefer to use the wand).

[grobblewobble]

Suddenly a stream of acid pours down from the ceiling! Your blessed girdle of greed [+0, +0] is destroyed! Your uncursed amulet of free action is destroyed! Your blessed helm of water breathing [+7, +5] is destroyed! You uncursed fencing gloves of fidelity [+3, +1] {Ch+6} are destroyed!

- heavily trapped areas: go in without any vulnerable items on you first, set off as many traps as you like, go back, heal, equip items (if you need them). Zero need for the skill to detect the traps without any risk of the above happening.

- random traps in other areas: detect traps doesn't help to prevent the above, unless you apply it before every move..

Detect traps is completely useless, except in the very early game maybe.

[asdf]

- heavily trapped areas: go in without any vulnerable items on you first, set off as many traps as you like, go back, heal, equip items (if you need them). Zero need for the skill to detect the traps without any risk of the above happening.

Detect traps is completely useless, except in the very early game maybe.
You forgot trapped doors, and while they are not required - rewards from Darkforge/Pyramid/Minotaur Maze greatly helps your character. Especially Maze with its +14 St/+12 To/+12 Pe/-2 Wi/+6 everything else/best melee weapon in the game/random artifact/4 PoCC reward. Doing Maze without Detect Traps... 1 char out of 100 perhaps could do it, but why do you want to do it, when you have guaranteed skill that will immensely help you there?

And you advice to heavily trapped areas... are you seriously drop your whole inventory + some items you wear near you (monsters could block you/pick up smth/kill you without those items) or on another level (every time?...) when you encounter row of traps/trapped area without wand of trap detection? Or would you rather get guaranteed skill and complete them without any hassle with traps?

[JellySlayer]

You forgot trapped doors, and while they are not required - rewards from Darkforge/Pyramid/Minotaur Maze greatly helps your character.

Pyramid and Darkforge do not have enough traps to be worried about. I just run through them. For the Maze... detect traps doesn't help much unless you are searching or applying it, so it's probably not all that useful in the Maze. Anyway, the Maze it's pretty safe just to leave 95 percent of your inventory at the entrance and just walk through the traps. Or, better yet, just use scroll of magic mapping and teleport and you shouldn't have that many trap problems..

Trapped doors can be opened with keys, which are readily available. Or just carry a couple pickaxes and dig around if you're feeling paranoid.


And you advice to heavily trapped areas... are you seriously drop your whole inventory + some items you wear near you (monsters could block you/pick up smth/kill you without those items) or on another level (every time?...) when you encounter row of traps/trapped area without wand of trap detection? Or would you rather get guaranteed skill and complete them without any hassle with traps?

This is really only necessary for the Mana Temple and the Maze. It's minimal hassle. You can certainly do this for the Pyramid or the Griffyard if you'd like I suppose.

[Stingray1]

I conclude, it is still a fair test of perseverance for a character to become a member of the thieves guild. If he plays normally and pick-pocket the easier pick-pocketable monsters (s)he should be eligible around lvl 10-13 depending on R/C.

Pump it a bit during leveling, only start practicing in the 30s and quit after ~5 tries. The success rate is good in the 40s, so most normal(not generated in tension/threat rooms, vaults, special levels) monsters will be picked in 5 or fewer tries.

I haven't noticed any increase in the quality/quantity of items.

Sidenote - Acid Blood is awesome in the Animated Forest, just go totally naked.

[sytar6]

I can't help but be somewhat perplexed by all the things Jellyslayer finds to be readily available. Acid resistance? It's very easy to kill an entire mound of ants and not get a corpse. Fire resistance as an intrinsic is a total crapshoot, especially in the early game. Just use a scroll of magic mapping and teleport... game before last I had to go through the ToEF without any SoMM because none dropped all game. In the lightning vortex thread I'm told that lightning resistance is easy to acquire from the Druid's cave. Don't know how many lightning lizards I've seen there, but I'm usually not up to killing them when I'm at that level and I suspect you'd have to herd a caravan of cats before you found one that dropped a corpse. Maybe around the time that you go beyond the Dwarven Portal keys are readily available, but even then I find myself having to kick down doors.

Not that I'm not firmly in the detect traps camp for anything other than the early game. The equipment damage can be extremely severe, but that's why I tend to always carry back-ups of every item which can be destroyed. Any valuable items like Spellbooks/PoCC/SoRC/PoGA/Scroll of Defense etc I keep stashed away in a door'd off corner in DT above Waldenbrook in the early game and later in the Ogre village heading to the mid-early game. If I'm playing an especially delicate character I might pop in to holeinthewall at level 1, train with Yergius, train the skill after I get to level 4~, and complete the quest around level 6-7~. It can be really helpful in early game survival when you don't have duplicates of each item. For the most part, I don't really bother with detect traps anymore. I'm playing an Assassin now (yay for not having to do the quest), and it's saved a bunch of his equipment, so it's useful, but hardly necessary. I'd have to admit it's a pretty significant handicap to play without it though, since you're almost definitely going to have some depressing times with those rune-trap doors.

[Stingray1]

Items are overrated. :p

[grobblewobble]

And you advice to heavily trapped areas... are you seriously drop your whole inventory + some items you wear near you (monsters could block you/pick up smth/kill you without those items) or on another level (every time?...) when you encounter row of traps/trapped area without wand of trap detection? Or would you rather get guaranteed skill and complete them without any hassle with traps?
Pyramid: I make a stash in the barbarian glade. Not the whole inventory goes in the stash. Iron helmets are not easily destroyed and even if it happens, not a big deal. Higher metal items and artifacts are safe, a big pile of cooked lizards will never get destroyed whole. After I "detected" the traps, I will maybe make a quick trip back to the glade to get important items like healing potions back.

Or some games I don't even bother, like Jellyslayer. But if you have anything important, like SoCR, you can leave them behind no problem.

Griffyard: same as pyramid, but the stash goes on the upper level.

Maze: I won't go there unless I have enough magic mapping + teleport to do it the painless way in any case.

Mana temple: it is very rare not to have a wand of trap detection at this point.

Door traps: this is why detect traps is of some use in the early game. Later on you have keys. Besides, after detecting a door trap you still need to set it off, so you still have the hassle of making a temporary stash if you want to avoid item destruction.

All in all, I find it way more hassle to get the skill than it ever saves me.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Hardcore players reach a point where they tend to find almost every skill/talent overrated, redundant or irrelevant. Detect Traps? Huh, who cares about item destruction, you can win the game without items. Courage? Huh, irrelevant, good players never get surrounded (tell that to my last victim of being sandwiched between two summoners in the Big Room). Detect Item Status? Who needs that, you can always carry stuff to an altar (but then they'll tell you that girdles of carrying are irrelevant and that good players play unburdened). TH? There are already more than enough items. Etc.

And yes, you can probably win the game naked, without non-orb items and killing everyone with acid spit while eating food from the ground. But in practice most players get into undesirable situations for one reason or other (maybe bad luck, maybe suboptimal play) and all those skills, like items, increase survivavility.

And yes, you probably can't point out a single game where you can say "I died from not having Detect Traps" or "I died from not having TH", but all of those things have an influence on overall risk. A trap can blow up your girdle of carrying, not having TH can make you run out of water or ID scrolls and miss on a good item, etc.

Most players are not perfect and every game has a lot of points of risk. That's why no player wins the game in 100&#37; of the tries. Minimizing risks is important.

[_Ln_]

IMHO - Detect Traps *is* overrated - I'm telling you from game experience perspective. Since Pick Pockets were nerfed, I haven't tried to enter the thieves guild a single time and have 2 or more wins and one guy killed by Sharad Waador. Is it so hard to zap a wand of trap detection in the Mana temple/Darkforge/Pyramid? Mind you, I've played a lot of Mist Elves, so I know all about the traps there is. I've done Maze 3 times without Magic Mapping and Detect Traps, 2 times of 3 without teleport spell and once without teleport control. All I've lost was 7lb which I forgot to unequip. And all three times I had to explore practically all of 4th, 5th and 6th levels because I'm that lucky.

And I don't ever stash items except in the following cases:
1. Khelly's scrolls on D:1
2. Everything before ToEF if I don't have rings of ice. If I have rings of ice, I go with all my equipment (except scrolls above).
3. Everything outside of the Air Temple.

I also happily jump in the Rift with thousands of stones in my backpack.

I completely agree with Jelly that the importance of Detect Traps is Guidebook propaganda - because I've followed this advice religiously until the prereleases. There is a lot of stuff there that results in "bad" (overly paranoid) habits.

And seriously, learn not to hang onto items - they are given by RNG and taken by RNG.

[grobblewobble]

And yes, you can probably win the game naked, without non-orb items and killing everyone with acid spit while eating food from the ground. But in practice most players get into undesirable situations for one reason or other (maybe bad luck, maybe suboptimal play) and all those skills, like items, increase survivavility.

And yes, you probably can't point out a single game where you can say "I died from not having Detect Traps" or "I died from not having TH"
That's different. Treasure hunter is much more useful than detect traps. I'm not saying here that items are not important, but that the detect traps skill makes very little difference in your ability to protect them. Stash your vulnerable items, discover the traps, go back and pick up the items, then come back to fight Rehetep. Voila, detected the traps without the skill. You don't need to be a hardcore player for that. If you just follow this simple tactic, the skill is nearly irrelevant - every trap you set off, you would probably also have set off if you'd have had the detect traps skill.

Of course if you start the game with the skill you might as well use it. But the time when you get the most out of it is early on, when a trap door trap can kill you. By the time you can finally pick up the skill from Yergius (and you trained it to a good value too), it is no longer going to help. This got even worse now that pickpockets has been nerfed. So, back on topic, yes, I think the nerf to pickpockets was a bit much and especially made the Yergius quest very unattractive.

[gosos]

what about corruption traps? you guys keep saying that corruption isnt a problem? i saw one guy won the game in 93 days. i have a level 22 gnome/wizard at day 100 that is pre-TOeFF. in 1.2 i triple in corruption by day 180.

the wiki/guide says the minotaur maze probably isnt worth doing. it sounds like a big hassle just to move around?

[JellySlayer]

I can't help but be somewhat perplexed by all the things Jellyslayer finds to be readily available. Acid resistance? It's very easy to kill an entire mound of ants and not get a corpse.

There's decent chance of getting a corpse from an ant hive. Probably 50&#37; without food preservation, near 100% with it above 90. If you miss it, well, the rings are fairly common and low DL.


Fire resistance as an intrinsic is a total crapshoot, especially in the early game. In the lightning vortex thread I'm told that lightning resistance is easy to acquire from the Druid's cave.

Both of these can be acquired by wearing the black torc. It's a very, very nice artifact and desperately underrated. You can keep it on until around the Griffyard, then swap torc for ankh and put on the elemental gauntlets to maintain your resistances. Cold resistance is actually the most difficult one to acquire in the early game. Fortunately, ice vortices are slow and can be eluded fairly easily.


Just use a scroll of magic mapping and teleport... game before last I had to go through the ToEF without any SoMM because none dropped all game.

There are a large pile of scroll of magic mapping in BugCave. If you're strong enough to do the Maze, you should be strong enough to consider the Bug Temple as well. Most of the time, I just skip the Maze, because I don't feel that it is worth the effort to complete it. The biggest hazard in the Maze, as far as I'm concerned, is not the traps, but the minotaurs. Most of the minotaurs are pretty tough to kill and can do some serious damage; it's hard to recover HP in the Maze because the average monster that you will face is quite high DL--on D:45, you'll can see stronger monsters, but a large portion of the ones you see will be weaklings. In the Maze, the weakest monster is somewhat non-trivial, and most of the others can do at least a passable amount of damage. Minotaur mages and living walls are both very dangerous and somewhat common. The Maze is, IMHO, for the most part a trap. Characters who are strong enough to think about the Maze don't need the rewards. But it's a great place to slaughter would-be winners who aren't quite strong enough for it.


Don't know how many lightning lizards I've seen there, but I'm usually not up to killing them when I'm at that level and I suspect you'd have to herd a caravan of cats before you found one that dropped a corpse. Maybe around the time that you go beyond the Dwarven Portal keys are readily available, but even then I find myself having to kick down doors.

You can buy keys from Shriek. For the same price as it would cost you to buy detect traps, you can buy a full set of keys and probably some duplicates (depends on race and gender, IIRC, but you should always play female anyway).


Not that I'm not firmly in the detect traps camp for anything other than the early game.

Unless you kill Kranach, you probably can't get detect traps in the early game, and it won't be trained to a useful level until the midgame.



And yes, you can probably win the game naked, without non-orb items and killing everyone with acid spit while eating food from the ground. But in practice most players get into undesirable situations for one reason or other (maybe bad luck, maybe suboptimal play) and all those skills, like items, increase survivavility.

Here's the thing. Some items increase survivability. Most of your items probably don't. Most players that I've seen travel around with lots and lots and lots of items in their packs "just in case". The thing is, "just in case" never comes up, or, if your inventory bloat is sufficiently bad, you don't even know what tools you have available. For a lot of players, if they lost half their backpack, it probably wouldn't significant affect their chances of winning. Now, if you lose several pieces of worn equipment all at once and don't have easy access to backups, yeah, you could be in trouble. I don't try to play unburdened to make the game harder; I play unburdened because it makes the game easier--my character is faster, consumes less food, and I know exactly what is in my pack.


what about corruption traps? you guys keep saying that corruption isnt a problem? i saw one guy won the game in 93 days. i have a level 22 gnome/wizard at day 100 that is pre-TOeFF. in 1.2 i triple in corruption by day 180.

the wiki/guide says the minotaur maze probably isnt worth doing. it sounds like a big hassle just to move around?

Corruption traps don't add that much corruption to your total. You need to be hit maybe 20-30 times before you get one actual corruption, and I don't believe that the strength of the traps increases with dungeon depth. The big corruption danger arises almost exclusively from how much time you spend in areas below D:35 or so.

The Maze is very tedious and challenging to complete. The rewards in pre-releases make it much more attractive, but, historically, most players skip it.

[sytar6]

Hardcore players reach a point where they tend to find almost every skill/talent overrated, redundant or irrelevant.

I wager this is particularly true of Jellyslayer. Judging from his latest Steel Man challenge, he probably regards dungeons and towns as overrated too :P


Both of these can be acquired by wearing the black torc. It's a very, very nice artifact and desperately underrated.

I'd be pretty concerned about walking around cursed, but your signature hints that you might not see it as too big a deal.

I actually tried to play a doomed monk a while back. What a disaster that was. Dunno how you do it.

[asdf]

I'd be pretty concerned about walking around cursed, but your signature hints that you might not see it as too big a deal.
You should avoid undeads because of heavy stat drain (both Graveyards), paralyzing monsters (for obvious reasons) and be careful around trapped areas. Lucky/Fate Smiles from altars are _strongly_ recommended. In one game i went probably ~50&#37; of the game with Executor + Black Torc without major consequences.

Basically, rule is - if monster have a special attack - he will land it on you sooner that you expected, therefore you should have high enough DV, so only armor-penetrating critical hits (which are a lot more common too) would trigger them.

[JellySlayer]

I wager this is particularly true of Jellyslayer. Judging from his latest Steel Man challenge, he probably regards dungeons and towns as overrated too :P

Not true at all. There are many things that I think are underrated, and other things are rated correctly. In fact, just above this post, I noted that I consider the black torc to be quite underrated. Something overrated is something that is perceived as more useful than it actually is--not something that is unnecessary or worthless. There are a number of things in ADOM that fall into both categories (and, IMHO, most of them are the Guidebook's fault). The evaluation of most things is pretty reasonable--there's no disagreement about the value of [+0,+0] hats, Woodcrafting, potions of extra healing, etc.

I'm not saying detect traps is worthless. I'm saying that it is not nearly as good as people think it is, and not having it is much less of a problem than people seem to think it is. While inventory destruction from traps can be severe if you're magnificently unlucky, on the average, it's a pretty minor problem in the grand scheme of things.

[edit]

I'd be pretty concerned about walking around cursed, but your signature hints that you might not see it as too big a deal.

I think the benefits of the torc quite significantly outweigh the effects of cursing. It's actually the autocursing that is the more noticeably annoying feature of the black torc, since you usually want to swap amulets briefly (eg. light, free action) at least once or twice before you get the ankh, and scroll of uncursing and holy water are still at a bit of a premium at that stage in the game.


I actually tried to play a doomed monk a while back. What a disaster that was. Dunno how you do it.

I die a lot. If you really want to try doomed and get somewhere, play a powerhouse character with ranged attacks: Wizard or Archer are probably the easiest. Doomed wizard is probably about as difficult as winning with an undoomed thief, I'd say (granted, I've never won with a doomed wizard, but that's because I've been trying to do them with very stupid restrictions--eg. no armor). I've been meaning to write a doomed strategy guide.

[sytar6]

>Doomed wizard is probably about as difficult as winning with an undoomed thief, I'd say

I managed to do an ultra with a thief a few weeks after my first normal win, but my attempts at playing a doomed wizard never went anywhere.

Perhaps I'll take a shot at doing a doomed archer after I finish the game I'm currently on. Maybe I can manage it now. I'd like to see the doomed strategy guide!

[Silfir]

Thieves guild requirements should be eased, definitely, but the thieves guild itself could be made more interesting. Perhaps being a member (or leader) of the thieves guild should turn random master thieves into non-hostile NPCs, asking for hefty sums of money in exchange for a "mystery item" that would turn out to be junk, magical items or artifacts, or junk artifacts, provided they're trading with non-lawfuls.

I can't remember the last time I bothered to learn Detect Traps. I do bother learning Stealth, usually.

[Stingray1]

I tested difficulty with 2 separate characters and found that without much effort it is at a reasonable level. Picking the odd neutral monster is not tedious at all.

[asdf]

After playing on 1.1.1 again, i'd certanly agree that Pick Pockets are nerfed too much.

What do you think of another possible rework -
Pickpockets would have 20...70&#37; chance of success for ordinary character without stealth/invis depending on depending on skill level on DL 1
You could try to pickpocket only once (Thiefs are exception)
Everyone expect Thiefs and to lesser degree Gnomes/Assasins - are considered Trolls of pickpocketing (compared to spellcaster Trolls). It means that success rate would quickly drop with danger level, Thiefs would maintain stable success rate, Gnomes/Assasins inbetween.

For normal character there would be ~50% chance from beginning of learning to ~DL:20 (skills increase would offset level penalty), and almost zero chance at DL:40-45 (without invisibility)
For Gnomes/Assassins - ~70% chance & DL:20, ~40% chance & DL:40
Thiefs would start from 50%, but would make it to ~80-90% at DL:20 and above.

[Stingray1]

I did suggest something to that effect in the appropriate RFE, hence I think it's a good idea.

Edit - Well, not the limited attempts per monster part.

My current Hurtling CK only picked a little in Holeinthewall, arena, DT and whenever random neutrals were encountered. As success is on 1st attempt most of the time it is not tedious at all. Had to scum for maybe 5 monsters in Holeinthewall.

So, I think reducing the requirement by 3-5 items would be fine.