Restricting and diversifying drops

[Susramanian]

In my proposal for eliminating stat requirements for equipment, I stated the need for tighter control over level ranges where weapons drop. With no strength requirement, a mithril weapon dropping in the Trollshaws is game-breaking. Edge then rightly pointed out that these restrictions would break vaults. Discussing it in IRC, Mushroomhermit suggested that weapons of a given material scale with level, so an iron weapon found in the High Peak will be vastly better than an iron weapon found in the Trollshaws. Similarly, a mithril weapon found in the Trollshaws will be much worse than an endgame mithril weapon, but still better than that iron weapon.

I'd like to modify Mushroomhermit's idea a bit. Let's still tightly restrict the ranges in which a given material can drop, but make weapons vary much more in quality in that range. We'll justify this by adding multiple designs of a given weapon type. For example, take the one-handed blunt weapon type. Make a number of weapon designs within that type: cudgel, mace, flail, warhammer, and flanged mace (in ascending order of power). For the first ten levels or so of the game, you'll only be seeing iron and the occasional steel weapon, but you'll be able to upgrade appreciably without even seeing additional materials, say from a cudgel to a flanged mace.

The best weapon design of one material will actually be better than the weaker weapon designs of the next material. For example, a steel flanged mace would be better than a dwarven steel cudgel and a dwarven steel mace. Here's a sample table of average physical powers for weapons of the various materials. Note that galvorn and mithril have been replaced with voratun and stralite, respectively. (If you have cooler sounding names, let's hear them! This was the best we could come up with on IRC on short notice.)

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Weapon                       Average physical power

Iron cudgel                  5
Iron mace                    8
Iron flail                   11
Iron warhammer               14
Iron flanged mace            18

Steel cudgel                 13
Steel mace                   16
Steel flail                  19
Steel warhammer              22
Steel flanged mace           26

Dwarven steel cudgel         21
Dwarven steel mace           24
Dwarven steel flail          27
Dwarven steel warhammer      30
Dwarven steel flanged mace   34

Voratun cudgel               29
Voratun mace                 32
Voratun flail                35
Voratun warhammer            38
Voratun flanged mace         42

Stralite cudgel              37
Stralite mace                40
Stralite flail               43
Stralite warhammer           46
Stralite flanged mace        50

In the above table, iron weapons vary from 5 to 18 average power. Currently they vary only from 6 to 9. In the above table, Stralite (mithril replacement) weapons vary from 37 to 50. Currently they vary from only from 43 to 48. By overlapping the power ranges of the materials, we manage to expand the range of each material without expanding the overall range of weapon power. With this system, we can disallow too-high materials while still allowing the player to have fun upgrading weapons within a given material type.

Another problem I'd like to solve is the problem of homogeneous gear materials in the endgame. Clearing out a pride at level 48 results in a dungeon carpeted in mithril. Let's see some more variation! To this end I propose several special materials on par with stralite that have a level range somewhat beyond it, and thus show up more rarely. Some special materials are rarer than others. These materials have special properties and restrictions. For anybody wanting to suggest new special materials, try to give it a mechanic that justifies a whole new material rather than just an ego. A special fire-resistant metal is not very interesting, for example.

Here's what I have so far for special endgame materials:

Mithril
Lower encumbrance on all equipment. Lower fatigue on armor. Higher attack and higher crit on weapons. Never used for blunt weapons.

Adamantite
Higher encumbrance on all equipment. Higher armor values and fatigue on armor. Higher APR and physical power on weapons.

Etherealite
Massless, but all magic and stuff. Zero encumbrance on all equipment. Zero armor value and defense value on armor. Zero physical power on weapons. Etherealite equipment is always generated with double egos, and all ego properties are boosted by 100%. Etherealite melee weapons always have one of the melee_project egos for a prefix. They do no physical damage, but still deal their melee_project damage, which is boosted by 100% like all other ego properties. Doubled resists on Etherealite body armor could be super unbalancing, so we'll probably need to do something about that. Etherealite could be included in non-metal lists of special materials, too. Etherealite mage staff? Cool. Etherealite bows might be weird, though.

Lifeiron
A metal that miraculously learns. A lifeiron weapon is a sort of lite version of the sentient weapons described here. It has a talent tree and gains levels and talent points like the wielder. The player can spend the talent points as he sees fit. Possible talent tree:

Lifeiron weapon (mastery 1.00)
Improved attack 0/10
Improved APR 0/10
Improved crit 0/5
Improved ego 0/5

As with sentient items in the linked post, Lifeiron weapons have a maximum level. You won't be able to max all of their talents, so lifeiron weapons should end up looking different for different characters. Lifeiron armor would work in a similar fashion. Should be fun!

Obviously I've neglected things like nonmetals and nonmaces, but the ideas are applicable everywhere. Let's hear some similar ideas for bows and staves and slings and daggers! And how about some special woods and fabrics to go with the special metals above?

[Lailoken]

I really like this idea!

Some material Ideas:
crystal - heavier and more fatigue, but acts as a magical battery of some sort.
demon skin - alternate leather material
petrified wood, ghostwood - similar to adamantite and mithril.

Coming up with 5 sling variants might be tough. Sling-shot, sling, and staff sling are all I can think of. Another sling variant is the kestros, but it throws a different kind of ammunition (darts). Maybe 3 is enough for slings, since material mostly just affects range anyways (doesn't it?)

[Vee]

In SVN Material affects the quality of the standard (unlimmited) ammunition.
rough leather -> iron shots
cured leather -> steel shots
etc.

Same for Bows and wood types.

[Sirrocco]

...I'm thinking that coming up with 5 kinds of arrows/bullets is going to be more trouble than it's worth - and not only because I feel like slingers should be using slings, rather than silly things like slingshots (which require rubber, let's recall) and staff slings (which are odd and awkward). Possibly just make this be the case for melee weapons?

[Susramanian]

...I'm thinking that coming up with 5 kinds of arrows/bullets is going to be more trouble than it's worth - and not only because I feel like slingers should be using slings, rather than silly things like slingshots (which require rubber, let's recall) and staff slings (which are odd and awkward). Possibly just make this be the case for melee weapons?

Sure. Or we can just break non-melee weapons up into however many appropriate designs we can think of. I went with five for melee weapons for no reason other than symmetry.

[Susramanian]

By order of the Darkgod, this thread is to be bumped for renewed discussion. I suppose I should clarify something: I'm not proposing that we clutter up loot tables with five times as many item subtypes. I'm proposing that once a subtype is chosen for a piece of dropped loot and the power determined, the item be given a flavor ("cudgel" or "flanged mace") based on its power, with the higher power ratings being quite rare. This, in addition to the interesting new material types, would keep loot very interesting even in the extreme endgame.

[lukep]

Sounds pretty good, but what I would want from weapon variants is different base damages, instead of physical power. Example:

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Cudgel (+70% Strength, +20% Cunning)
Mace (+100% Strength)
Flail (+80% Strength, +30% Dexterity)
Warhammer (+90% Strength, +30% Constitution)
Flanged Mace (+120% Strength)

I know that this isn't what's being proposed, but I am not sure about using new names to show the relative power of items within a given material level.

Also, an idea for Magicsteel (needs better name) weapons, their damage calls for "magicsteel" damage, instead of physical, they would have power similar to Stralite, and their base damage would be (+25% Magic, +25% Willpower, +25% Cunning). Magicsteel damage would be one of ice, blinding acid, dazing lightning, burning fire, slime, diseased blight, life leeching arcane, or confusing mind damage, chosen randomly for each attack.