Cost of Crowning too high?

[Jeremiah]

There is nothing wrong with the way it is now. If you don't like the grind too bad live with it or skip the artifact. Some people actually like the grind, but a grind does not work unless there is a reward for it. So let the people who don't like to grind just go on, and for the people who like to grind they can spends hours sacing mobs.

If you want more artifacts without grinding at an altar just go on with the game, you are bound to find more. Pre-crowning is not essential for the game, this is something extra you can do if you want. I didn't even know what pre-crowning was before I beat the game for the 1st time. Since I did it with no spoilers, I would just get crowned first chance I got and went from there. I killed tons of toons before I even figured out what it meant to be doomed (I figured it was bad I just didn't appreciate how bad it was). When I first found the crown of science I would wear that thing everywhere and it taught me really fast what being doomed meant. My point being, that you can beat the game without all the little extras. Instead of fussing over an extra, like pre-crowing, just play the game and have fun.

[YourMum]

i'd like to see the level cap for post-crowns changed. it's not really viable unless you're going right out of your way (as opposed to an opportunistic detour) to make it happen. crowning raises the level bar, if you get to dwarftown that's another artifact (the Si). As mentioned the pyramid marks the point where pre and post-crownings become fairly difficult. There's a glut of guaranteed artitfacts around that stage of the game. Entering the gremlin cave and probably the griffyard crypt will generate 1 artifact apiece. Killing Keethrax gives another. You can generate 6 or 7 artifacts without much fuss by your early teens, more if you get the potion of literacy or you're lucky enough to get surges or random drops. at that stage you need to be level 26/29/32 for a post crown. most characters are post-tower and looking to close the gate or at least finish off the last 2 temples at those levels. you could drop the 8+ bit and just make the level cap artifact*3 (with a minimum level )and it would still take some planning and effort to get a post-crown. the piety itself is easy enough to get with improved income and higher level monsters to sac so i'd bump that up in response to amending the level cap.

EDIT: 3* is bullshit too. 8+2* maybe and just make the piety cost massive

[_Ln_]

i'd like to see the level cap for post-crowns changed. it's not really viable unless you're going right out of your way (as opposed to an opportunistic detour) to make it happen. crowning raises the level bar, if you get to dwarftown that's another artifact (the Si). As mentioned the pyramid marks the point where pre and post-crownings become fairly difficult. There's a glut of guaranteed artitfacts around that stage of the game. Entering the gremlin cave and probably the griffyard crypt will generate 1 artifact apiece. Killing Keethrax gives another. You can generate 6 or 7 artifacts without much fuss by your early teens, more if you get the potion of literacy or you're lucky enough to get surges or random drops. at that stage you need to be level 26/29/32 for a post crown. most characters are post-tower and looking to close the gate or at least finish off the last 2 temples at those levels. you could drop the 8+ bit and just make the level cap artifact*3 (with a minimum level )and it would still take some planning and effort to get a post-crown. the piety itself is easy enough to get with improved income and higher level monsters to sac so i'd bump that up in response to amending the level cap.

EDIT: 3* is bullshit too. 8+2* maybe and just make the piety cost massive

That will simply lead to converting Casino money to a bunch of new artifacts.
I'd be glad to have a free post-crown irrespective of the number of artifacts I already generated and if I skipped precrowns entirely. It would be nice if this option is available at the cost of some additional requirements (perhaps a random deity-given quest once you reach high enough piety level?).

In any case, it seems to me there should be a limit to a deity generosity (and possibly individual power). The fact that you can ask it for 14 artifacts (if you are hell-bent on it anyway) doesn't seem too realistic to me in a universe where a deity cannot even kill you if it desires so (talking divine bolt resisting here).


EDIT: I'm starting to question my own coherence here. From the game style and appreciation here I absolutely love precrowns, do it once every time and twice if I have an altar on PC:5 and I will be very disappointed to lose them. From the balance point of view the amount of buffs to artifacts (True Aim, Thunderstroke and silver key) as well as an increase in the number of artifacts available in the game (more surges of power, artifact room which I however yet to see with my own eyes and most importantly a greater vault available as soon as level 15 and cleanable with a single scroll of familiar summoning) precrowns need to be nerfed. From the overall game experience and feel the prayer system in ADOM makes zero sense at all and was always too overpowered. In summary, everything is complicated.

[YourMum]

In summary, everything is complicated.

Lol yeah!

Balancing it out to make post-crowns achievable to more routine players yet not abusible to grinder-monkeys seems like a fairly difficult task and probably not worth the effort.

[Qui]

That will simply lead to converting Casino money to a bunch of new artifacts.

But maybe that's more of a problem with the Casino? Personally, I'd love to see a use for money beyond the early-mid game. So that actually dragging those hundreds of thousands of gold coins (recovered from greater vaults, lesser dragon vaults, BDC) made any sense. Why not use it for post-crowning? Because Casino, that's why. Because of theoretically endless supply of gold.

[SirTheta]

I never gamble in the casino and I often have many hundreds of thousands of gold by the endgame - you'd have to do a very very large amount of rebalancing for the game itself (outside of casino) to really do anything about this.

[Qui]

Having many hundreds of thousands of gold by the endgame is my point exactly. There's just no way to spend it (apart from buying from Casino without gambling). So if for instance it was possible to use it for post-crowning, not much rebalancing would be needed, just adjusting the post-crowning cost. Only the Casino with unlimited free money is a problem here.

Sort of silly... You've beaten hordes of monsters to get to the treasure, and now... nothing to do with it :P.

[Blasphemous]

You gather treasure to sell or gold to spend on post crowns. So, why do you want to spend it on postcrowns? To get even more treasure so you can slay monsters more easily and faster to get even more treasure from them!
It's a kind of closed loop here guys. I think the system is fine as it is, in the current prerelease my initial experimenting shows that a maximum of 6 pre or post crowns are possible, even if no artifacts have been generated before.
I have no problems with precrowning and usually do so once per character, occasionally twice in the same circumstances as Ln.
I'm thinking about something else though.
I can agree to make precrowns more difficult to achieve but at a certain cost - they have to be actually useful artifacts versus crap.
Right now you're running on a high risk of getting some shit for all that effort, like I recently got Shezestriakis on my archer.
You can get the black tome as a mindcrafter! How retarded is that? You can't even read it and you already have guaranteed moon sickle to generate porc.
Any increase of difficulty in getting precrowned has to be tied to the increase of the quality of rewards.
Otherwise you're gonna grind for that one precrown twice as hard as now, only to get rewarded with black thumb or cat's... certain body part.
Kind of counterproductive from the gameplay point of view.
Precrowns have this nice quality of forcing you to organize your early game - you need to level up enough but not too much, you need to explore carefully but not too far, you need to postpone the pyramid and griffyard and thus come better prepared, later.
I think this is good and I would not want to see this mechanism changed.

If the only thing done is making the precrowns harder, I will simply cease to bother and will head for the greater vaults asap or crown properly as soon as I can.
The only thing you achieve then is making an optional element of the game so unattractive from the effort-reward perspective that most players will just ignore it.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

If the only thing done is making the precrowns harder, I will simply cease to bother and will head for the greater vaults asap or crown properly as soon as I can.
The only thing you achieve then is making an optional element of the game so unattractive from the effort-reward perspective that most players will just ignore it.

So you'll head to vaults where you will fight and face powerful monsters rather than stay in a corner pressing 'O'? sounds like a big improvement to me.

[melphen]

I don't try to more than one crowning of any kind these days. Pre-crowning can be tough because you have to find an altar you can use or convert to use pretty quick. I tend to wait until after the pyramid to get my lone crowning of the game so I don't get cold immunity. The times I have been pre-crowned in this version getting crowned later wasn't worth what it took to get there. One crowning of any kind it enough for my time.

What I would love to see is a better list of artifacts for the crowning. Make it harder if you need too but the system now normally sticks me with an artifact I just have no use for unless I adjust game play just to use it.