Originally Posted by
Exy
Maybe, in a more realistic world in which it was more than a substitute for six regular keys. But in Ancardia, thieves in particular have no real use for the thing, since they can quickly acquire sufficient skill at picking locks that it's of no benefit at all for them.
Just because the mechanisms of ADOM involve locked doors with a limited amount of keyhole shapes, doesn't mean this is the case of the continent Ancardia, of which the Dralakor Chain is just a small part. The PC is also not a very good example of the typical person, considering you're actually playing a hero and all. The average human thief would have attributes that would probably make you decide to reroll your character because you got shafted (the average attribute level for humans is 10 for every attribute). They don't gain experience levels quickly, because if they get in a fight they're pretty much screwed. Assorted keys and thieves picks might not be readily available to them.
Imagine your source of income would be dependent on your ability to break in somewhere and get back out without getting noticed. What would you rather use? A set of thieves picks which might break, which requires skill and time to use, and might fail, and only opens a door? Or a single key that guarantees your way in, bypasses all eventual traps (doubt that this would make a lot of difference since breaking and entering usually involves houses. Don't know if someone would trap their own front door if they weren't home alone), and locks the door(s) perfectly once you get out again, making it less likely to leave tracks?
Every thief would want the silver key for the convenience alone. Let alone people who do not actually have a lot of skill and simply do not have the courage to kill monsters/people/animals/anything, or have moral objections to doing so.
Originally Posted by
Exy
They're not, though. An arrow that magically causes you to have to stop and reload after one shot would be regarded as cursed, not legendary.
Auto-reload is a gameplay feature because not including this would greatly increase the tedium involved in using missile attacks. Necessary, but that doesn't mean it magically happens.
Originally Posted by
Exy
Things that suck from a gameplay perspective should probably either be retooled or eliminated. But you have to ignore how much these items actually suck in actual use in order to make up these stories about them. That makes the stories unconvincing.
The situations ADOM puts you in are in no way representative of how things go down in the rest of Ancardia, because we simply do not know. If I was an archer and had to kill something from a distance and would only have one shot at it, I would use true aim. This situation never happens in ADOM. I imagine a lot of assassination attempts don't have the liberty of virtually unlimited timeframe in which to achieve said assassination.
I remain unconvinced that it is necessary to change these items significantly, or even at all. They're believable as artifacts to me and several others in this thread.