Equipment optimiser for frogcomposband characters
 

TLDR version

https://optimiser.riverwaterhill.com is a website that takes in a HTML character dump from frogcomposband and tries to figure out what combination of equipment your character should wear given a set of constraints set by you.

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Still interested? keep reading.

After uploading a HTML character dump, you can start defining constraints. There are currently 4 kinds of constraints:

1. Item inclusions - equipment slot and associated equipment that must be included in the solution. For instance, you can define that the Jewel of Judgement must be included because you like its utility of clairvoyance and recall.
2. Item exclusions - items matching a certain name to be excluded from consideration. For instance, monk characters should not be wearing heavy armour so you can specify 'Metal Brigandine', 'Bar Chain Mail' and the like to be excluded.
3. Slot constraints - number and type of slots available for a character. For instance, weapon == 0 but left_arm == 1 for an unarmed, shield-carrying monk. Or ring == 6 for a monster character like Beholder.
4. Attribute constraints - what attributes you would like the solution of equipment set to provide. For instance, you can specify that you would like to have at least speed 20, melee damage of +10 or above, telepathy, etc. from the equipment set. That is specified as Sp >= 20, Melee_Dmg >= 10, ~Tele >= 1.

Once you are done specifying the constraints, click on the 'Save' button and you will be presented with a listing of the constraints as well as a solution, if any. If the solution is not satisfactory, you can continue to add/remove/update the set of constraints. Sometimes the system will not be able to provide a solution and it will say "Status: infeasible". This happens when the available set of equipment is really not able to achieve the given set of constraints or when you have accidentally added contradicting constraints, e.g. St >= 4 and St <= 3.

See the attached screen capture for my monk character as an example.

This website is a work in progress so feel free to give feedback, comments, report bugs.

Hi Schatz!

I talked about if there is an automatic gear shuffling tool the other day on angband.live and today I see this! This is really cool.

But I have problem registering. It doesn't send confirmation mail to my mailbox. I checked the spambox and it was empty too. I use yahoo mail.

Sent you a private message with the contents of the email. The yahoo mail servers are blocking the mailgun server I was using for this app. Let me know if you did not receive the private message.

Just a heads up, the email says to click the link, but it sends an incomplete URL Easy enough to fix, just preface with an http, but...

://optimiser.riverwaterhill.com/accounts/activate/...

Thanks Schatz, and CyclopsSlayer! I register successfully.

Thanks for the bug report. Pushing a fix now.

Very cool. I plan to try it.
Question: In your example there appears to be one (and only one?) solution. This is probably where you want to end up, but how do you start? If you have a Home full of stuff and start with minimal attribute constrains, you may get a million combinations (literally) that meet your requirements. How is this reported? Later, as you are approaching "the best" kit, you may get a more reasonable number of solutions that meet you requirements (e.g. 3 solutions, or 10). Will it present all of these for the player of choose from?
Or possibly it attempts to do that for you, and presents it's estimate of the one best solution from among those that meet your minimal requirements?

Yes, that's what it does. It looks at all possible combinations that meet the minimal requirements. For each of these combinations, it naively does a sum of the attribute pluses and minuses of each equipment set and the equipment set with the highest sum is selected and presented as the solution.

That's usually not optimal at the start since the solution will favor equipment that gives the highest pluses and minuses, e.g. Rings of Archery, which might not be what you want. So you start adding more item exclusions and attribute constraints. For instance it was giving me too much stealth previously so I ended up specifying Sl <= 8 or increase other requirements like Sp until it gives you something that looks more reasonable.

Switching away from mailgun to AWS SES to send emails in order to resolve issues with sending email to yahoo.com email addresses.

Now waiting for AWS to respond to my request to move my account out from their sandbox. Meanwhile new account registration and password resets will not work. Will update here when the transition completes successfully.

Completed transition to new mail sending service. Account registration and reset account password email should work now.

I like it! It's not hard to figure out and it's very quick compared to manually scanning hundreds of wieldable items and testing combinations for "holes". My active character is CL50 but only at DL76 at this time. His home is a cluttered mess, but most of the attributes he wants in his kit are represented at least once. I expect the next 24 levels to yield even more artifacts (half randarts in this case) with even longer strings of abilities and bonuses attached to them. This is the part of the game where I usually get bogged down and spend as much time optimizing gear as I do exploring the dungeon.

I wanted to force @ to use a melee weapon 2-handed. I set Left Hand = 0 and this seems to have worked in that shields were no longer showing up in the mix. But I'm not sure whether the advantages of wielding 2-handed are being applied when selecting "the best" of those combinations that meet the minimal requirements. Am I doing this right?

Related question: Can I set it to only consider dual wielding combos (a melee weapon in each hand)?

Yes, that's precisely why I wrote this tool. It's meant for late stage of the game when there's just too many items in the Home inventory to go through to pick out the stuff to fit what I want. By the way, you can also look at the list of items the parser generated from the character dump file to look at items with a particular attribute, e.g. the list of all equipment with Sp attribute.

The solver is not aware of such things as what bonus you get with pure 2-handed wielding vs 1-hand and shield. That said, that's what I would do to get 2-handed wielding.

For dual wielding, set weapon == 2 and left_hand == 0. Alternatively you can just remove the left_hand slot constraint altogether leaving only weapon == 2. Let me know if that doesn't work for you.

yesterday it was working fine for me but today it keeps saying infeasible no matter what even if im just trying to do 1 pip of acid for my constraints

I think maybe you should be able to delete character from the character list instead of the character page itself because my char just server error (500) so Im not able to delete it or add it again to try to figure out whats wrong

Even on a new acct it tell me the char already exists and to update it

I just had a look at the html dump file. The reason it says infeasible is two-fold:

1. There is a slot constraint of light == 1 but the parser was somehow ignoring the non-randart Feanorian lamp that the character is carrying and there are no other light items in your inventory or Home inventory.

2. The attribute constraint of Ac == 1 is the only attribute constraint that was set. For some reason that I don't currently understand, the solver requires that at least one of the attribute constraint to be '>=' or '<='. If all the attribute constraints are '==' in nature, the solver will fail. I am catching the failure now and added a message as follows:

Status: infeasible - please specify at least one Attribute Constraint as ">=" or "<=".
If all the Attribute Constraints are "==", the solver will fail to find a solution.

Just pushed the fix. Thanks for reporting the bug!

Added to the todo list.

Can you put this up into a public repo?

We spoke about this a little before on angband live, I have more time to spare now and can take a closer look. If it makes it onto the site as an integrated feature I'll be sure to credit you somewhere visible.

I've been using it again the past 2 days and all seems to be working fine :) but I think I've found another bug, for some reason the weapon The Cutlass 'Mandible' (2d9) (+13,+6) {|CaV/U} won't show up in Optimiser

other than that it's been working great again & thank you so much for taking the time to make this it is amazing

I will have to do quite a fair bit of cleanup (removing aws secret keys and the like) before I am able to put this up on a public repo. Unfortunately, due to personal reasons I don't have the time to look into this for now. Will add to the todo list.

Bug should be fixed now.

How to quickly update an existing character?
 

Periodically I would like to re-optimize an existing character. I've been uploading the new HTML dump file and starting all over each time. The tedious and time consuming part is adding all the attribute constraints one at a time before I can start optimization. Is there a way to do one of the following?

1. Have all the attributes open by default (with a neutral value), or as a menu option (e.g."expand all attributes")

2. Apply the existing set of open attributes from the last incarnation of a character to the updated copy of the same character (same file name). Maybe as a saved preference file?

Thanks again for this useful tool.

You should not need to create a new character. Click on the link to the existing character and then click on the edit button at the bottom. You should then be able to upload the new HTML dump file for that character. Optimisation will then happen for the new HTML dump file.

Optmizer not parsing some attributes corerectly
 

Thanks for that helpful hint Schatz. I actually figured it out a few minutes after I posted my question, but I thought others might benefit from hearing the answer. I think my initial confusion was thinking a had to upload the new save file onto the server first, then open it, then optimize. I took me a while to notice the update button allows you to upload a new save file (in addition to allowing you to update your optimizing parameters). It's all good now.

But I have noticed a failure of the program to properly parse the attributes of some items. For example I have this weapon:
The Broad Axe of Lokar (2d7) (+25,+21) (+4) {StInCnSr|V/XU/*o(St}
The optimizer is recognizing Vampiric brand and *Slay Demon* but is not recognizing the Slay Evil or the Slay Orc.
Here's another example:
The Lochaber Axe of Fiona (3d9) (+16,+16) (+1) {WiSlSr;LvBs/XL/*p}
The optimizer sees *Slay Undead* but not Slay Evil or Slay People.

As you might imagine, missing some weapons with Slay Evil is going to have mess up endgame optimization quite a bit.

It's not just Randarts that are affected:
a Lochaber Axe of Gondolin (3d9) (+18,+15) {Dk;FaSiLu/DoTU}
Is not recognized as having slay Dragon, Orc, or Undead (strangely, it is seeing the Slay Troll attribute for some reason), which greatly underestimates its value and can eliminate it from consideration is /D (for example is a required attribute.

Can this be fixed by telling the program that:
Slay Troll = /T or /T? or /?T or /??T or /???T or ...

Also, some of the Elemental Brands are not even being looked for:
|E and |P
(but |A, |F, and |Co are available for selection as attributes, and show up in the table)

Hmm...
I backed out one step and went into the list of items again. The "of Gondolin" weapons are properly showing all four slays now (/DoTU), but the two Randart examples above are still broken.

Character 41 gives 500 error
 

Every attempt I make to access character #41 gives a 500 error. I was using it fine for quite a while before this happened.

Another oddity: the Optimiser is only counting Nenya as 1Wm (and is perhaps undercounting it in other ways too, since it never picks Nenya unless forced). See character 43. Had the same behavior with character 41 (the one that ran into the recurring server error).

Also, the first dump I uploaded that had the Dagger of Amun did not lead to that item being added to the item list. I tried putting it in my home and re-uploading, and then it was visible to the Optimiser.

Security errors
 

Big fan of optimiser, however the website has been throwing up errors for a few days. Says there’s expired certificates etc. Any chance this could be fixed?

Although the optimiser is correctly respecting my restraints for *Fi>=1 and *Co>=1 (and thus using Nenya and Narya), the attribute list at the bottom shows *Fi and *Co as 0.

Character 48 (a Beholder).

Apologies for the late response. Hopefully better late than never.

This should be fixed now.

Fixed as well. |E and |P should now be looked for in items and available as selection as attributes.

Character 41 had an exclusion that has an empty value. This somehow matched everything so the solver barfed when it was given 0 items to solve for.

When this happens, I have added a message in the Solution text box below about the possibility of item exclusions excluding everything.

Have also made it such that one should not be able to create an empty valued exclusion entry.

Hopefully this resolves similar issues in the future.

The optimiser counts *Fi, *Co, *El, *Ac, etc. as different attributes from their respective Fi, Co, El, Ac attributes. Hence if you wear one *Fi item and have no other items worn that gives Fi, the attributes table will simply show:

Does that make sense? Or do you prefer if I present the attributes table as follows?

The app did not take into account the (+2) or (+3) values for Wm. This should be fixed now.

I'm unable to replicate this. If this happens again for some other character, please can you keep a copy of the offending HTML dump file and send it to me? Thanks!

Parsing bug?
 

In my character's pack, I have:

a Ring of Combat (+16,+14) {Fe}
The Ring of the Future King (+11,+8) (+2) {St;Di;Si(St}

but the Optimizer recommends I use
a Ring of Combat (+16,+14) {St;Di;Si(St}
which appears to be some weird combination of the two that doesn't actually exist.

I'm excited about this optimizer! Thanks for making it :)

This is what I'm seeing in the Solution box for your character:

I don't see this:

Please can you confirm that you are still seeing the wrong entry?

Thanks for fixing the issues I was having, especially missing the /* tag on some items. This is a handy tool and we are grateful for your effort and for sharing it with us.

I kept a copy of the offending character dump, and it still results in the error. I can send it to you if that would help. What's the best way to do that?

Thanks for your hard work!

Please send the HTML dump to optimiser@riverwaterhill.com and I will take a look. Thanks!

Thanks for sending me the offending HTML dump.

The problem here is that within the Inventory section of the HTML dump, similar items of the same "coloring" is wrapped in a single <font> tag.

For instance,

and

This is different from the other sections where each item is wrapped within its own font tag.

The parser in Optimiser had assumed that the two rings are one item and hence the strange combined attribute item you see in your character earlier.

I have done a workaround by treating the Inventory section separately so it should work properly now for your character.

Hopefully this doesn't break something else.

By the way, this might explain the problem that Bostock had earlier:

I'm suspecting that the dagger was in the inventory when he did the HTML dump. If it is worn or placed in home, it then "shows up" in the Optimiser.

Thanks, schatz. I love your Optimizer.


Idea, in case you're looking for them: allow us to assign weights to various stats for use in the Optimizer's maximization calculations. For example, we might tell the optimizer to value +dam more than +AC by assigning a weight of 1.0 to +dam but a weight of 0.4 to +AC.

Keep up the good work!

I have a cloak with Aura of Shards and the Optimizer is counting it as both [Sh and Sh.

Sorry to pester; I love this Optimizer:)

Probably another case of the same error I reported last: gloves of slaying with the Slay Living flag get counted as having Levitation by the Optimizer (they both use Lv in their inscriptions). I think with the way the inscriptions are set up it should be possible to always determine the intention of an ambiguous string like Sh or Lv by detecting certain tag-like characters ([ and /)in the string before them.

Have a good one and thanks again!

Fixed.

I'm glad it's of some use. :D

Fixed.

Very much appreciate the bug reports. I should have written a parser for the attributes string rather than doing string comparisons. A bit too late now - something to keep in mind should I find more time on my hands.

It's interpreting this:
hands: a Set of Spiked Gauntlets of the Giant (-4,+7) [4,+10] (+3) {StCn;-In(St}
as having -3 INT and -3 STR, with +3 CON.
(should be -3 INT, with +3 STR and +3 CON)

Should be fixed now. I really should work on a proper parser. Thanks!

The optimizer doesn't seem to recognize the Platinum Yendorian Express Card as a shield.

False positives from randart/reforge names
 

Two examples:
hands: The Set of Leather Gloves of Scorpio [1,+12] {PoSo;Fa Cammithrim}
light: The Stone 'Fire Marble' (+4) {StWiCn;Dk Stone of Life}

The optimizer thinks the gloves provide rChaos (Ca) because "Cammithrim"

The optimizer thinks the light provide rLight (Li) because "Stone of Life"

Is there a way to get it to ignore the artifact's ancestor's name?

why do I need an account to use the optimizer site? seems odd

edit: nevermind it's to persist characters

good site, thanks

request: I don't see Lore being a selectable attribute? "Id" on autoinscribe. present on helms of knowledge, dragon armors of lore, and maybe other things

key feature for my character.

another feature request --

it would be nice to have it show what equipment is strictly worse than other gear you already own (ignoring weight), so I can quickly filter for stuff to sell.

like, if I have a MHDSM I will never need a soft leather elvenkind armor with poison resist.

or if I have a cloak that has fire and cold resist, I will never need one that only has fire resist (ignoring secondary bonuses like stealth)

The Optimiser thinks this: "Mom's Loving Modular Sniper Crossbow (x5.05) (+48,+44)" is a melee weapon, not a shooter.

I signed up and didn't receive a verification email. I can't login with the username/password I used either.

Feature request: filtering by weight. For a certain characters, more than a certain weight for various armor pieces is absolutely disqualifying.

Finally found some time to look at the optimizer code. Fixed.

An item's ancestor name is now removed before parsing for item attributes.

Somehow missed the "Id" attribute. Added.

Fixed - it should now classify shooters correctly.

This should be something easy to add, but unfortunately the HTML character dumps currently does not contain item weights.

Can you try with an email address from a different domain? Or look for the verification email in your spam folder? I think the riverwaterhill.com domain has very low traffic and so may not get through to some email providers.

Good to see you back here after nearly a year Schatz. Thank you for your continued support of the Optimizer. I use it all the time.

Optimiser finds zero items for html dump
 

Hi,
Thanks for you labors! Unfortunately I get no joy from using it. It seems to not be parsing my html file at all. My user name is "Zabutor" on there, and I'm happy to send my html dump or it can be found on live:
https://angband.live/Zabutor/frogcomposband/salmiak/Zabutor-l43-psion.html