ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Could totally be observation bias, but it seems like daggers are just incredibly rare. I'm always buying daggers for my rogues; the Assassin Lord's guaranteed dagger drops are often a godsend. Artifact daggers actually seem pretty easy to find, by comparison, given the number of dagger-wielding enemies in the game (who are forced to drop any artifact equipment they hold, if you are unaware).

I think it could be because daggers have the same "rarity" as any other weapon. Since all one-handed weapons and all two-handed weapons are roughly interchangeable, (I'm sure there's some min-max'er who would disagree) and can at least satisfy the same skill requirements, these types of weapons are three times as easy to find. BASE_KNIFE should have a rarity of 2 or 3 to make them more available, since generally nothing else falls into that category.

Alternatively, add two new small weapons, taking the current one-handed and two-handed weapons a model. "Knives" would have lower crit chance but greater damage; "Needles" would have a higher crit chance but a lower base damage. Or similar. I think these would be mundane enough to fit into the standard loot table. "Needle" is sort of an awkward weapon name, but it avoids cultural connotations (and one can imagine its operation readily enough).

Again, this could be observation bias. The item spawning code is a little beyond me.

I have noticed a general lack of daggers too. I try to pick up everything for selling, and usually i have 1 dagger per 2 or 3 one handed weapons.

Currently daggers, 1-handed axes, 1-handed maces, and 1-handed swords all have a rarity of "5".

So the observation that you see 1/3 as many daggers as the other 3 1-handed weapons grouped together is correct.

Of course, Rogues and Shadowblades are not the only classes with demanding weapon requirements.

To the Archer class, bow and slings are not interchangeable with each other, and thus also the have the 1/3 less odds compared to the 1-handed weapon grouping. Mages and alchemists are in only slightly better shape because staves have a rarity "4", although thats still not as common as the 1-handed weapons all grouped together. Cursed also care about axes, but only at the artifact/randart level.

Its probably more pronounced for Rogues and Shadowblades because I'm guessing the majority are looking for 2 daggers, although I don't know if that is true in your case. One option for that is to pump strength some and use a 1-handed weapon in the primary hand, and a single dagger in their off hand, although such a build would be less optimal from a min/max point of view.

By the end game, I tend to find I've found multiple excellent weapons of every type (except Exotic weapons). I toss weapons of near similar quality to my purple end game weapons all the time. Of course, I tend to run through every dungeon and burn through all my Fortress energy. I can see where it might matter early game, but as you point out, you can buy from the shops so you have a bit of minimum guarantee in dagger quality from them.

So long post short, I can see it being a problem early game, but late game I think everything is common enough except for exotic weapons. If you do change dagger rarity, you should also look at bows, slings, staves, exotic weapons, and possibly axes at the same time.

And that's great and all, except that rogues struggle enough with early game as-is. I have trouble believing this is "by design." Using a one-handed weapon early game is viable for a while, true. But it doesn't really address the core issue.

Increasing sling/bow drops would seem in order, though there are so few egos that it wouldn't really make much of a difference.

Cursed no longer have this problem. I imagine the change came about partly for the same reasons, though they still had it only half as bad as rogues (1/3 chance each of finding a one- or two-handed axe; 1/3 chance of finding a single dagger).

Exotic weapons... There's what, two of them? And they are artifacts? That whole notion needs to be rethought.

I suppose staves could be a little more common, though artifact staves are numerous and staff-users aren't equipment driven (possible exception of alchemists). It is difficult to find a staff with a useful damage type bonus.

bricks wrote:And that's great and all, except that rogues struggle enough with early game as-is. I have trouble believing this is "by design." Using a one-handed weapon early game is viable for a while, true. But it doesn't really address the core issue.

That iron weapons suck? I jest... somewhat.

Dagger shops are pretty common (Derth, northern elftown, zig, last hope, gates, iirc), though. They tend to keep my dagger users on top of things if the drop table isn't being co-operative.

The only real way I could see of fixing the potential problem here would be to have your class influence drop, though to a small degree. Dagger users (rogue metaclass, primarily) would have rarity adjusted so it's 50/50 daggers/everything-else-one-handed, ferex, instead of as-is, two-handed rarity being left alone. Other classes could have similar adjustments; slight increase for 1-handers, daggers, and staves compared to 2-handers and shields for TW, bump for cursed and axes, junk like that. Some classes (fighters, ABs, reavers, etc) probably would be left alone. Pretty sure that sort of thing is frowned upon, though.

As for just decreasing dagger rarity, well. More daggers for dagger users also means more daggers for everyone not using them. Be kinda' annoying to have daggers join longbows and slings as the-thing-I-most-hate-seeing-as-a-randart (because damnit, my class doesn't use that weapon!). Bloody things seem inordinately common as a randart target, bleh.

bricks wrote:Exotic weapons... There's what, two of them? And they are artifacts? That whole notion needs to be rethought.

Tridents, m'good fellow. They've got their own material tier names and everything. They're basically the daggers of two-handed weapons. Nagas and yaerchs drop 'em occasionally.

In any case, it's support for a later feature, I think, or possibly a catchall for neat-stuff like, well, tridents, that doesn't involve having half a dozen hidden weapon mastery talents.

bricks wrote:I suppose staves could be a little more common, though artifact staves are numerous and staff-users aren't equipment driven (possible exception of alchemists). It is difficult to find a staff with a useful damage type bonus.

Staves are a freaking plague. Bloody things are everywhere. Though that's partially due to the number of staff using classes and how often the randomly classed uniques like to be said classes.

Same goes for bows and slings, honestly. Until we get more launcher egos, having the bloody things as common as they are is mostly just annoying. "Oh, another thaloren longbow of great speed. Joy." *transmog*

Note that you can get daggers (and bows) pretty easily from adventurer parties, if you're daring enough to take them on.

Aquillion wrote:Note that you can get daggers (and bows) pretty easily from adventurer parties, if you're daring enough to take them on.

There are almost always slime daggers for sale in Derth (rare), magic haters town, and Last Hope. I usually go there as soon I have 25$ to spend.
Theese are enough for a long time.
The Assassin Lord might provide a few, but in my experience The Maze very often drops a good dagger or two as well.
And of course, wilderness encounters.

Later on, there might drop a white stratelite dagger in some parts as Dreadfell...

Tom

Maybe "daggers" could be broken down into three catagories like one and two handed weapons are each with slightly different damage/crit profiles. Say, "Kukri," "stiletto," and "Bowie Knife" or whatever there are lots of varieties of short bladed weapons out there.

SerPounce wrote:Maybe "daggers" could be broken down into three catagories like one and two handed weapons are each with slightly different damage/crit profiles. Say, "Kukri," "stiletto," and "Bowie Knife" or whatever there are lots of varieties of short bladed weapons out there.

We don't need more of the same thing, hell, we were just talking about getting rid of most of the items we have already.

Final Master wrote:We don't need more of the same thing, hell, we were just talking about getting rid of most of the items we have already.

I truly don't understand this argument. Is every piece of equipment supposed to be useful? That's just not feasible in the current setup, and far removed from the current game philosophy. Taken to extremes, this mindset is just going to make every playthrough that much more monotonous. If loot is truly just too spread out, the game philosophy does need to change. Yes, I know, lots of loot is worthless to a specific class, but I'm trying to address the fact that there are a few classes which seem to encounter more useless weapons than any other.

Tom wrote:

Aquillion wrote:Note that you can get daggers (and bows) pretty easily from adventurer parties, if you're daring enough to take them on.

There are almost always slime daggers for sale in Derth (rare), magic haters town, and Last Hope. I usually go there as soon I have 25$ to spend.
Theese are enough for a long time.
The Assassin Lord might provide a few, but in my experience The Maze very often drops a good dagger or two as well.
And of course, wilderness encounters.

Later on, there might drop a white stratelite dagger in some parts as Dreadfell...

Tom

Yeah, these are really the only ways I seem to get daggers. The Maze tends to drop tons of artifact daggers due to huge volume of "thief" enemies and the loot table opening up to tier 3 materials, which I think is where the four or five artifact daggers in that level range sit. It just feels wrong. If other classes worked this way, it'd make more sense.