Thoughts on artifacts...

[mr_ocnitsa]

Was wondering what other folks thought about artifacts...While some are in the sweet spot or even overpowered, some feel a bit under powered considering normal equipment and I was wondering if in an imaginary world where the game was updated and such changes were made if folks believed there were some that could do with updated stats or if you think the game is balanced enough or too much in players' favor that to do so would make it too easy. While I've never won the game, I know for some of you it is "easy." Some artifacts like Black Thumb or Soaker seem like they could do with an upgrade. What do you think?

[JellySlayer]

Meh, I kind of like that some artifacts are junk--ADOM isn't meant to be fair. If nothing else it discourages people from scumming for precrowns, which I consider a positive.

[Silfir]

What is this "balance" of which you speak?

If you ask me, random artifacts itself don't really factor into overall winning chances nearly as much as people might think they do. ADOM is hard because it's easy to (knowingly or unknowingly) make a mistake. It doesn't really get any harder to make mistakes even if you do have a kickass artifact on hand. One one hand, some artifacts do make you more powerful, so they will objectively improve your range of options to deal with obstacles; on the other hand, they can also promote overconfidence, and there are a lot of options in ADOM already. The difficulty is getting to grips with all of them.

The overall effect of artifacts on game difficulty is so minor that I think flavour aspects should absolutely take precedence. And I have to agree with JellySlayer, flavor-wise I like that artifacts are not all the same in terms of goodness and badness. They should be interesting, flavorful! Even if the silver key is objectively pretty worthless, it's a friggin' key that opens all doors! What is more magical and arcane than that? The Black Tome of Alsophocus provides infinite arcane knowledge. The abilities of the artifacts should match their names, and let you imagine stories behind their creation. Kinslayer slays humanoids and autocurses; what kind of dark history would such a blade have? Imagine whoever wielded it, the carnage that occured as the blade refused to leave his hands, how many of his kin - family? tribe? - he must have slain with it for the blade become known as the "Kin slayer"? Does it need to have a bucketful of extra intrinsics to "compete" with Executor? If you ask me, both artifacts let you think equally well about the stories behind them. If there are artifacts that need to be fixed, it's bland, uninteresting ones - and I have real trouble thinking of any. Well, Perion's mithril plate mail could do well with some kind of ingame mention of who the fuck Perion is, and the sword of Nonnak suffers from the fact that Nonnak is just some dude you just beat, who apparently didn't think it was powerful enough to actually use it for combat. (It is also described as just "strange". Well, how is it strange, Thomas? does it have a Hello Kitty etched in its hilt or something? Tell us

[Grey]

I think in a theoretical world where the game gets some updates then a few useless crowning gifts should be revised a little, if only to avoid that really bitter sense of disappointment when you get a really crap gift from your god. Not everything should be Vanquisher of course, but they should all have at least some possible use. Precrowns should still have a chance to be poor of course.

[nathrakh]

I think they're perfectly fine right now. Disappointment is part of roguelikes, deal with it.

[zasvid]

I'm never disappointed by crownings, artifacts in ADOM are friggin' cool and I'll go out of my way to use them even snubbing better, but more mundane alternatives (like weapons of devastation etc.). Out of all possible crowning gifts I think that there is one that has a high chance of being an utter, useless disappointment and one that is totally irredeemable. The former is Shezestriakis, because its autocursing nature disables your ability to switch rings and that's something you need to do a lot, so to use those gauntlets, you really need repeatable remove curse (preferably as a spell, though a really large stack of scrolls of uncursing would do too - either way, you're at the whim of the RNG). The latter case is Justifier for Priests, because it's an awful, awful trap.

[Molach]

I agree. 'Balance' is arguable useless in a one-player game, and besides since almost anyone get get the best ones anyway, it doesn't matter too much (vanquisher might be sole exception). Races and classes certainly arent balanced, and ways you can scum certainly ensures that those who do face a significantly easier game than those who don't... if all were ~same 'level', it would just be boring. The 'up' you get from finding a great one is one thing to keep looking forward to each game.

-M

[Maul]

The latter case is Justifier for Priests, because it's an awful, awful trap.

Huh?...................

[nathrakh]

Huh?...................

Because it's possibly the best weapon in the game (if you're Paladin) but apparently deals half damage of what it's supposed to for priests.

[Silfir]

As far as I remember, Justifier doubles damage for paladins (quadruple damage with crits, no other melee weapon goes above double damage) and halves it for everyone else, which means priests since its crowning-exclusive (without the fix). You have to hit a critical just to do its normal damage with it.