A resounding fuck yes.

I'd like to see, rather than just surges of power (and random drops and vaults, etc), a few other ways that random artifacts can show up, so that surges of power aren't made significantly more frequent (making sure that almost all games (say, 95%) will see at least one should be sufficient), but things get mixed up a bit more.

For instance, I'd like to see a version of the surge of power, perhaps restricted to DL above some number, where a room (say, 5x5) is generated with a named guardian in the middle standing on an artifact, and then appropriate "lesser" beings surrounding the guardian. There could be a 50% chance that the room is like a royal treasury, being separated from the rest of the map, so that it's not trivial to obtain the artifact.

There could also be a small chance of a level having an extra staircase on it, leading to a level filled with monsters of a certain type, with an artifact on it. In this case, while there might be a named guardian, it wouldn't be of any more powerful than any other monster of its type... or it would be more powerful, but only due to being one of the crowdfund monsters (that is, its level would still be normal for monsters of its type).

Basically, I don't want it just to be more surges of power, because that wouldn't help to mix up the gameplay.

Yes and yes.

Each surge of power features a potentially deadly random artifact guardian. That mixes up gameplay plenty. All by changing what is likely one line of code. Not everything needs a complicated solution.

Isn't it their rarity that makes surges of power so special?

Though the same could be said of greater vaults, and I voted to have a guaranteed one...

I think surges of power could be made somewhat more likely and retain their specialness. Nothing says the sweet spot has been reached just yet.

With the bug that only made a part of the artifacts available fixed, and dozens of new artifacts added or to be added, it just seems appropriate to make them more accessible. Having to fight an artifact guardian instead of farming stomafillia for an hour seems like a good trade to me.

Would definitely be nice to see these become less rare. Something like 3 or 4 times the current rate.

Whilst Aielyn's suggestion is a bit overwrought (you seem to have a knack for that, Aielyn!) it would be nice to see the surge guardians spiced up slightly. Say give the guardians an entourage of lesser creatures of the same type. So they would be named and extra powerful, but they'd be surrounded by up to 8 of the same creature type but unnamed and of base power/level. Could lead to some weird and interesting situations.

Well, now that Diablo III turned out to be crap, ADOM 1.2.0 is just going to have to pick up the slack! All we need now is a new name generator for the uniques. The current one doesn't create silly enough names.

Maybe switch out the surge of power guardians for some of the beefed up boss monsters from the resurrection campaign.

Yeah, I'm rather hoping that the new player-designed bosses will take up the old role of surge of power guardians. Or at least swap them in 50% of the time.

Maybe just keep "Poon, the cave tiger"

This is very interesting, but I'd be interesting to know if it is feasible. Surges of power occur when an artifact would have been generated on the floor, right? Don't items have the same chance of being an item drop and spawning on the floor? If so, it seems like this would mean that you'd start seeing a lot more artifacts drop from monster, too.

Well none of us know for sure except Thomas, who I'm certain would be able to find an appropriate implementation.

Doesn't it randomly pick the names from a finite list? That's what it does for greater wyrms IIRC, and those names are pretty hilarious. I suppose he could always ask the Internet for silly names :p

Unless something that rivals "Treehead Woodfist" is in the ADOM pool right now, it definitely needs work :)

I compelete agree and support slightly increasing the odds for a random artifact generation with a guardian. More fun, more excitement and won't make the game too easy by any stretch..

It's not really possible to directly increase the frequency for surges of power as those occur when a randomly generated item on the floor of a newly created dungeon map turns out to be an artifact. As a lot more artifacts get added to the next releases we automatically should see more surges as the likelihood for artifact generation increases.

But I have added a special room similar to treasuries in order to offer a new challenge with an artifact reward.

I'm gonna love this

That confirms the whispers I've heard :) And the room thingy sounds exciting!