[BUG] You can no longer get more than one RoDS via dipping, no matter how many rings you dip.
issueid=3400 11-04-2014 06:22 PM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by Blasphemous: 110
[BUG] You can no longer get more than one RoDS via dipping, no matter how many rings you dip.

This is related to the implementation of this:

http://www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=2964

I consider this a bug. Now you can only EVER get a single ring of djinni summoning per character by dipping rings into potions of exchange.
I just tested this with 10000 rings dipped - only one RoDS has been generated.
This change is too harsh in my opinion.

The general consensus was that polymorphing each ring of a dipped stack separately was an effective and sufficient means of disabling any wish engines using this method. I know from personal experience that it was enough.
Restricting this mechanism further to only one polymorphed RoDS per game is a very harsh change and I think it needlessly affects those players that collect huge amounts of loot for later dipping, such as a ring-specializing merchant I'm playing who is now unable to use that single class advantage related to rings.
If you were very lucky, it was possible to get 3-4 RoDS during the normal gameplay, using some of the potions of exchange randomly found (they are rare) but now even that is not possible.


Dear Creator, none of the players requested a feature as hardcore as this. In fact, the general agreement was that no further changes were needed:
Quote Originally Posted by adom-admin
Thanks for the feedback. I have added ad additional adjustment that just will prevent you from repeatedly creating wishing items by dipping. Thus a normal player can have the excitement and fun of generating such items once, but wish farmers are out of luck.
This additional adjustment ruined an exciting part of the game where there is a chance to get 2 or 3 more wishes by dipping stacks of rings.
With the advent of new dungeons, new locations, the extra loot is basically going to be thrown away or sold, whereas before at least rings could be reused.
Now you can sell or throw away all the useless rings you've been collecting from the beginning, once you get your first polymorphed RoDS; it's the only one you will ever get.
Please understand that simply implementing polymorphy per ring rather than per stack as in older versions, was enough to eliminate wish engines.
The above addition is unnecessary and harmful to gameplay. Perhaps a middle ground is the right solution - a limit of 5 RoDS from dipping instead of 1?

Of course I don't know if the rest of the community shares my conviction but I'm sure that at least some people do, if the thread I linked is any indication.
Issue Details
Issue Number 3400
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category Windows 7
Status Unconfirmed
Priority 3
Affected Version ADOM r52
Fixed Version (none)
Milestone (none)
Users able to reproduce bug 16
Users unable to reproduce bug 7
Assigned Users adom-admin
Tags (none)




11-07-2014 04:13 AM
Senior Member
End of the game, holy shit, 5 RoDS!
Funnily enough, I had so many from random drops alone in my last YAVP. But that's off topic.

As far as 'arbitrary limits' go, wishing items have somewhat of a different approach to them. To be fair, isn't Wand of Wishing incapability of being recharged by potions, scrolls or class powers kinda 'unintuitive' in itself? An unspoiled player [that somehow learned all the charging tricks] that found a WoWi (0 charges) would most likely try them all - booze, potions of mana, scrolls, powers - and resign. I see the current behaviour of RoDS in a similar light - they manage to dip out one RoDS, try two, three more times and see it going nowhere and they drop the topic. New thing learned and both situations allow for one, most necessary use.

From the lore standpoint of what a RoDS actually is [a djinni trapped inside an object], said potion of exchange process creates another djinni on its own! Or, if we follow the logic of ot shuffling already existing things [like character stats], it just shuffles the rings from different parts of the world around?

11-07-2014 05:27 AM
Ancient Member
That's a crappy comparison since you know recharging WoWis won't work pretty much the first time you try it. You dip it in booze, it refuses to soak it up like the other wands, you deduce "yeah, this ain't gonna work." It's disappointing, but you can understand why it's happening and move on instantly. It would be madly powerful, wouldn't it?

Not being able to get RoDS from dips ever once you already got one is not intuitive, because it's too easily confused with simply having bad luck. There is no moment of realization, as with WoWi, in which you realize that you're engaging in something futile. It's also unnecessary, re: making PoEx 1-per-wish.

The game doesn't explain where any of the items or monsters (that being the other major use of the item) that the PoEx pulls out comes from because it doesn't have to. It's magic.



Getting lucky once should not prevent you from getting lucky again. That's what it boils down to. The game doesn't restrict random drops from monsters based on what other drops came before, except for artifacts. Nowhere in the game does it happen. Find one RoDS, you can find another RoDS dropped by the very next creature. Same for WoWis. That's how the loot lottery works. That's how the game appeals to a gambler's sensibilities; that's where it gets parts of its fun factor from. Or, at least, that's how it should work. For PoExes, now it doesn't.

11-07-2014 09:44 AM
Ancient Member
My mention of the tower was perhaps uncalled for. I had two games before R48 where I managed to get respectively 2 and 3 rods from dipping.
One game had a ring shop, the other had a potion shop. I bought lots of rings in the first, many of which stacked and in the second found ~5 potions of exchange that I used with rings I already had.
This resulted in those RoDS before the tower, which indeed make it much easier.

But that doesn't happen all the time, it's not what I focused on in my original post.
Normally I don't even get one rods before the tower and that was even BEFORE this fix but after the polymorphy change.
It was just my chance that this in those two games that happened.
I don't see how that can be used as argument against my proposition, it was all within the scope of luck.

03-11-2015 07:52 PM
Ancient Member
I think in ones zeal to thwart exploitation devs can overlook destroying the fun of legitimate play as well.

The reason the change is bad because being randomly blessed by the RNG is a thrill. There's a reason it's called the random number generator and not the fixed number dictator. In the end, all this nerf did was remove my going "Oh, neat." when I discover a potion of exchange, and "Oh, cool!" if and when they land me a RODS (or PoGA if I choose to dip potions instead).

I think knowing that there is -no chance- is what kills the excitement; better would be the chance of one generating is a certain fraction (say, 80%) of previous (accumulative)? This would discourage scumming as your own success defeats you in the long run, whilst not ruling out the possibility of good fortune. I think such an idea would work well with scrolls/potions of ed as well.

It shouldn't be overlooked that it's not wishes but wish engines that are ridiculous. Wishes in reasonable rarity are fun and exciting to get, and being able to exert some minor control over obtaining them just gives me another outlet to compensate for when the rng fails to give me a much-needed item (I think this is one major sticking point of the game; I won't call it a flaw, but it's quite possible to get into a rut where there's few things left to tackle but also not enough resources to proceed without significant risks). It's the RNG wildcard. Which would you rather do (or as the game dev, see other players doing): spending a well-chosen wish, or farming monsters for a few hours? What if it went on into days?

Game changers? Things that alter your playstyle or plans for a certain ending? Sure, you can wish for those. Things that outright break the experience? At worst, only for a time and mainly in the early game. As great as wishes are, let's still not over-rate them.



Quote Originally Posted by Blasphemous
I'm sorry to say this but I think you're wrong on virtually all accounts here.

1) In a game as complex as adom, there will always be scummy techniques, no matter how hard you try to eliminate them. Without making the game linear and strategic drops fixed, there WILL BE scumming, period.
2) You need to define "boring", "exciting" and "enjoyment". I always say that each of those game aspects depends on the player and trying to find a common denominator for all of them is both wrong and impossible. It's a waste of effort. There is NO single definition for each of those 3 factors.
3) I don't mind herbs being weakened, as that makes potions of potential stats useful, with potions of potential toughness now a valid wish, that's a good thing. The fact is however that I spend as much time now as I ever did before on farming, more perhaps if I have gardening.
Why? Because I like it. It has tangible benefits. You don't like it - don't do it. But don't try to tell me what is boring or exciting to me, because you have no idea about that beyond the scope of your own characters. Don't apply your standards of enjoyment to other people's style of playing.
4) Define "challenging" and "interesting". I don't think having a panicking ancient chaos wyrm bolt you twice in a single turn and bring you from 190 HP to -20 is a "challenge" or an "exciting" feature. So, I will grind to have means that will protect me from that arbitrarily unfair death.
5) I only tried gremlin bombing once and that was it for me, it felt too much effort was put into establishing a gremlin contraption to generate loot. If there were players that did it and liked the process/effects - that's fine by me, let them do it. Nobody forced me to do it and I didn't mind when others did. It was changed though so what can I say? People seemed to recognize right away it was borderline cheating behavior, just like dipping 19 rings and getting 19 wishes. So the ring dipping has been changed to prevent that exploit.

But why the hell did it need any further changes? Why suddenly one dipped RoDS per character? I can't comprehend the idea behind this, it has no benefits, doesn't improve the game, it increases tedium, it encourages grinding.
I actually agree with both of you, in a way, except I don't agree with the conclusion that the current state is a good thing.

My form of fun largely consists of weighing my options. I think my enjoyment of an RPG is grounded in the ebb and flow of power, and figuring out how to work with what you have. Too much power can become boring and too little can become frustrating. It's about finding the sweet spot and never keeping it in one place.

I know some people tolerate grinding and some people actually enjoy it. I'm a little of both. I'll do something distasteful just to get the reward, without really enjoying it, but in short bursts grinding and scumming can be fun, particularly if it was a happy accident of me pursuing some other goal. If the game gives me another 'push' to not perform these distasteful tasks for too long, so much the better, but it should be subtle.

In the end I believe the game should be the 'dungeon master' and try and exert some control over my experience. One should be able to operate within the eco-system to maximize one's success-- one should be able to strive for victory with all their resourcefulness-- and trust the game to not allow it to get boring while doing that, i.e. not put the burden on me to micromanage my fun levels by refraining from doing something that, in the aftermath, I realise wasn't all that much fun.

An ideal RPG, for me, is one that nudges me into what I consider the most fun way to play, without outright forcing it (and this hard rule of 1 wish-ring is definitely forcing it).

03-16-2015 02:28 PM
Senior Member
Just to have my 2 cents in this conversation: I am also of the opinion that a good balance here would be to keep the current mechanic of getting random rings out of a dip but to allow one RoDS per dip instead of only once per game.

03-19-2015 02:23 AM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by CheatMan
Just to have my 2 cents in this conversation: I am also of the opinion that a good balance here would be to keep the current mechanic of getting random rings out of a dip but to allow one RoDS per dip instead of only once per game.
Bumping to say +1 to this idea.

03-19-2015 10:11 AM
Ancient Member
Please guys, if you request a feature or change of rules, don't call it a bug fix. You can call this a lot of things, but it sure is not a bug.

That aside, I am in favor of this feature request.

Having a remote possibility in the game of starting a wish engine was never a problem, so it didn't need a fix. It always has been possible (and still is possible) to get an infinite amount of wishes (that's called archmage). However, it requires an excessive amount of work and it is in no way practical. It is as much work and as practical as building a space elevator from newspapers, when all you need is a ladder.

Starting a ring wish engine was even worse, even before the latest further nerf. Maybe it was still possible in theory, but it required so much work that you might as well go grind the ID for a few weeks. Preventing even such a remote theoretical possibility, at the cost of the fun possibility of gaining two wishes from ring dipping once in a blue moon, really wasn't needed.

06-22-2015 02:29 PM
Ancient Member
I'd like to refresh this with some extra information.
It appears that the same restriction has been applied to wands of wishing.
Once you get one wand of wishing by dipping wands into poex on DL15, you can never get another one this way.
Not that anybody would have enough potions to get the wand in the first place, thanks to the broad range of other possible wands that dilute the possibility.
In my last attempt, I got the wand after 89 dips.
Then I dipped wands 900+ more times (yes, I had around a thousand poex, it was an archmage) and never got it again.

08-03-2015 09:38 PM
Senior Member
Registered just for this issue. I liked the change for each ring to dip individually a lot, but this change bothered me a lot. I had an extremely enjoyable game recently (prerelease 23) which relied on this feature that was removed, and while it may be a somewhat obscure case, I think it helps showcase why the ability to get more wishes is a good thing.

My character was N- with an amulet of order on working my way down to D50 for ultra ending. I had previously dipped for a wish to get my amulet of life saving. By the time I cleared D50, I was level 49 and I realized my amulet of order wasn't doing anything, and I soon found out about how level impacts alignment changes. A scroll of balance revealed I was about 20 stones away from N=, and since I was trapped at D50 I had no way of changing my alignment. In my entire ultra run game, I had gathered about 7 stacks of 4-7 rings, and 8 potions of exchange. On the 6th dip, I got another wish, and wished for, as far as I could tell the only solution to my problem, a greater black unicorn, which gave me just enough to set me back to N= to enter the gate. It was really exciting trying to figure out that solution, and very fulfilling that it actually worked.

Like I said, kind of a rare example, but if I was playing a later prerelease that character would have been forced to close the gate and exit the chain. It encouraged some really rare problem solving and showed that there's always new challenges to overcome with clever ways to overcome them.

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