ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Having come across many randarts with lovely properties but discarding them out of hand because their iron handaxe base makes them trivial compared to my non ego voratun mace makes me consider that weapon artifacts should either A: have a very high chance of increasing the base "power" of the weapon, pushing an iron sword into the steel or dwarven steel range for example or simply taking the next material category up for base stats. Iron behaving like steel stralite behaving like voratun etc.

It has got to the point where I dont even bother ID'ing a glowing iron weapon if I have a ego stralite one equipped because it simply can't compete.

Nw junk artifacts are a part of a roguelike gaems charm, every orange isn't and shouldn't be a game breaking weapon of unbeatable win but they should be at least be able to tie white weapons two material categories up.

What do you guys think

I think DarkGod said that in the next version randarts will be minimum level 2 material (steel, cured leather, etc). Won't fully solve the problem, but it should help.

Iron-tier orange weapons already can match vora-whatsit tier whites in terms of damage -- it just takes a sufficiently large amount of additional damage-on-hit. I've seen something like 60 total on the same object, thus far, which easily outdamages a basic dwarven-steel weapon.

S'far as the ID thing goes, though, it's pretty much always in your interest to collect and identify randarts, due simply to the amount they sell for. Since you (should be) are toting around the Scrying Orb, the actual ID process is refreshingly trivial.

Limiting them to steel+ might be interesting. I'd probably suggest just tilting the item generator so lower-tier materials are more likely to generate with particularly impressive bonuses. Either that, or equalize the range of abilities involved. I would say that selling randarts is a little too trivial (and common) at the moment. The things should be rather impressive...

Frumple wrote:Iron-tier orange weapons already can match vora-whatsit tier whites in terms of damage -- it just takes a sufficiently large amount of additional damage-on-hit. I've seen something like 60 total on the same object, thus far, which easily outdamages a basic dwarven-steel weapon.

Only in the early game, and only in the absence of really high combat stats (Str, Dex, or whatever is appropriate for the weapon type) and other base damage multipliers.

greycat wrote:

Frumple wrote:Iron-tier orange weapons already can match vora-whatsit tier whites in terms of damage -- it just takes a sufficiently large amount of additional damage-on-hit. I've seen something like 60 total on the same object, thus far, which easily outdamages a basic dwarven-steel weapon.

Only in the early game, and only in the absence of really high combat stats (Str, Dex, or whatever is appropriate for the weapon type) and other base damage multipliers.

Exactly, mid-late game once you have decent str/dex a significant amount of points in weapon mastery and a few points dumped into you favourite +% damage skills even +100 magical damage is dwarfed by the raw power gained from higher material tiers due to the way the multipliers stack in favour of weapon power.

Another alternative, way to handle artifact generation, might be to force artifacts to be generated as the standard material level for the dungeon so randarts in the far east are always voratun or stralite

I think they should be minimum lvl 3+, as you won't happen to find them too too immediately in the game, probably your second lvl2 dungeon you'll find one, instead of the shaws. That would also further help with the overall low power of them, and because they would be found later in the game, they would actually be competing with world artifacts and egos - so they wouldn't feel all that out of place replacing an empty/vanilla slot.

Actually, in my personal experience... all the mid to late-game randarts are borderline useless and uncapable of competing with good major egos (blue items). In the beginning I'd get all giddy wanting to find out if I could get that absurdly powerful randart, but it never happens... 90% of the time randarts are trash and when they're not they're just barely competitive with ego items.
I dare anyone to show me a randart capable of competing with a good double ego item actually.

There's a thread in the spoiler forum where people are posting some random artifacts. So far... nothing terribly impressive.

The boots and helms are the good ones at the mo, since they come with impressive on hit damage. Much better for melee-types than anything the egos offer.

Grey wrote:The boots and helms are the good ones at the mo, since they come with impressive on hit damage. Much better for melee-types than anything the egos offer.

In summary: Randarts are good, when there is nothing else terribly interesting in that slot.

That aside randart lights can be pretty cool I once had one +2 con +4 magic and some resists.

No extra light radius... though... which on a brass lamp...

kinda made me wanna rage

my vote would be that artifact lights should force at LEAST 1 extra light radius

You do know that there's a standard artifact light source with light radius 1, right?

Sirrocco wrote:You do know that there's a standard artifact light source with light radius 1, right?

of course, which returns infravision as a trade off and is intended for rogues and so on.

Standarts are not randarts however.

Point being that it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable to say something like "light radius +1 or other vision-based benefit, possibly tied to light radius reduction"

the issue here has more to do with the problems inherent in the heavily-tiered material system than with the way randarts are generated.
a double ego or randart weapon will almost never outcompete a basic weapon of one material level higher. i think the options are basically to either deal with it and accept that that is how it is, or to completely overhaul the way weapons and equipment work on a fundamental level.

teachu2die wrote:the issue here has more to do with the problems inherent in the heavily-tiered material system than with the way randarts are generated.
a double ego or randart weapon will almost never outcompete a basic weapon of one material level higher. i think the options are basically to either deal with it and accept that that is how it is, or to completely overhaul the way weapons and equipment work on a fundamental level.

You have a valid point. The tiered weapon system in itself wouldn't be so bad, if the tiers were more fixedly apparent, IE. you don't see voratun until the far east except for *very* rare occasions, and in the far east you would never see iron or steel. as it is, its not unusual to see the odd stralite, even voratun weapon on your first level of the trollshaws which kind of screws over every other weapon until you find ringil etc...