The Grand Master Enchanter

[Susramanian]

The Grand Master Enchanter

This is a guy who hangs out in Angolwen who will basically craft custom randomized artifacts for you. What he is able to create depends on what you give him. However, he doesn't need help with materials. What he needs help with is...

1) examples upon which to model his creations

2) life force with which to infuse his creations

3) gold to fund his experiments

Number 1 means that this guy has a very limited selection of powers he can infuse items with, and only learns more when you give him artifacts you find. Giving him Ringil, for example, might allow him to create items with frost brands and frost resists, or activatible frost blasts. Giving him the Phial of Galadriel might teach him how to work with light in a similar manner.

For number 2, this guy gives you an Orb of Life Force Mastery that you keep for the rest of the game. When you activate it, it becomes receptive to powerful life forces for ten turns. If you kill a unique within those ten turns, a portion of their life force is caught in the Orb. Filling the Orb requires three such kills. (It's like those traps in Ghostbusters!) When it's full, you bring it back to the enchanter.

How artifacts are made

To get an artifact made, you need to have provided the enchanter with at least one artifact, you need to have a full Orb of Life Force Mastery on you, and you need to have the gold. When you have all that, you go through a dialog where you specify what you're interested in (I'd like a large two-handed axe with extra fire and sharpness, please), you sign the waiver that says you won't sue the guy if your fiery axe turns out to be a cursed axe of freezing, and then he cranks the thing out. You get the item, lose the gold, and your Orb is now empty. You're free to repeat the process as many times as you want, limited only by gold and unique life forces.

As for what powers the item ends up with, that is determined by what you requested, what sort of life forces you were lugging around in that orb, and the whims of the RNG. If you had the life forces of low-level uniques, you're not going to get much of an artifact. If you've got the Blue Wizards and the Corrupted Balrog in there, you're going to get something nice. The most powerful influence, of course, is the RNG. Really, your requests are just going to weigh things in favor of certain abilities. The only thing not subject to the RNG's whims is the item type; you're not going to accidentally end up with a broadsword if you request a suit of leather armor.

In short, the game generates a random artifact on the spot with its level range determined by the uniques in the Orb and its abilities weighted towards the player's choices, but limited to a subset of all the abilities on artifacts that the player has turned in.

The interface for specifying the item could be as simple as a dialog with the enchanter. Eg,

What would you like the item's central focus to be?
[Frost]
[Fire]<---
[Light]
[Strength]
[Shield Techniques]
[Never mind]

Which of these would you like as secondary powers?
[Frost]
[Light]
[Strength]<---
[Shield Techniques]
[I'm done picking powers]

Which of these would you like as secondary powers?
[Frost]
[Light]
[Shield Techniques]
[I'm done picking powers]<---

This could get cumbersome, obviously, but I assume that designing a brand new interface for this one quest is probably out of the question. Dialog will work. We're not spending points or anything complicated like that.

Disjointed thoughts

-Qualities strongly associated with the life forces in the Orb should have increased chances of making it into the artifact. Stuff the orb with Bill, the Minotaur, and Warmaster Gnarg, and the artifact will lean heavily towards strength and other warriorish qualities.

-Since the cap on the number of artifacts created by the enchanter is determined by the number of uniques in the game, the number of 'charges' the orb needs is a rather important number. I didn't give the matter much thought when I picked three. This number is a good first place to look when it's time to take a careful look at game balance.

-Most of the complexities of this quest are tied up in the generation of random artifacts. It probably shouldn't be considered until randarts are implemented and working well.

-The artifacts should probably not involve the selection of a material, such as mithril or elven-silk. Normal artifacts don't have a material, right? The quality of the artifact is determined solely by the quality of the life forces the player brings back in the Orb. The enchanter has all sorts of raw materials lying around in his workshop. We assume he'll pick the appropriate stuff. Their cost is included with his fee. I don't want this to work like the ring-creation mechanic already in the game.

-This will be much more interesting once there are lots of random world uniques. You might run into a unique fire dragon, for example, and decide that you don't want to kill him now because you want to save him for when you're putting together a fire-themed artifact later. Picking which uniques you soul-suck with that Orb should be very important.

[Shoob]

Like something else I am working on in T4, why not do it like the 'G' screen. where different choices are made in different tiers... then you could also add power ranges and make it more costly, but have a higher chance of a better value in that option if you raise it up some.

i.e. if you raise str up to 3 the str bonus added will be a 2d3, if you choose 5 in fire resistance it would be a 20-33 range. and so on...