"Great" drops replaced by "good" drops in vaults: bug or feature?

[PowerWyrm]

Since r612, all "great" spots in vaults (marked as "8" in vault.txt) now only generate "good" drops instead of "great" drops. Since I didn't find this documented anywhere, I was wondering if it was a new feature to lower the number of excellents items generated or simply a bug...

[Napsterbater]

r612? Which version was that? I think I remember reading that there aren't any more great drops, period.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Napsterbater

r612? Which version was that? I think I remember reading that there aren't any more great drops, period.

That refers to svn revision 612, which is just prior to 3.0.8 I think. I wasn't around much then, so I have no idea whether this change was intentional or not.

[Napsterbater]

I tried doing an svn update -r 612 on my code base just for giggles, but it wouldn't compile.

[PowerWyrm]

The change is still present in the trunk, so there's a good chance that it's present since 3.1.0 or so.

I think I remember reading that there aren't any more great drops, period.

That would explain the change... although in the current source code, the DROP_GREAT flag still exists and some uniques still have great drops.

[Speusippus]

Wait. No more great drops? Does this explain why when I kill uniques, I'm just getting like [+3, +3] items, no ego or artifact items?

Why was it decided that there should be no great drops? What does this mean exactly--that artifacts only appear as randomly generated items on the dungeon floor?

[Napsterbater]

Originally Posted by Speusippus

Wait. No more great drops? Does this explain why when I kill uniques, I'm just getting like [+3, +3] items, no ego or artifact items?

Why was it decided that there should be no great drops? What does this mean exactly--that artifacts only appear as randomly generated items on the dungeon floor?

I'm quoting from memory here from old mailing list threads, but They decided to remap the DROP_GREAT so that all such drops only DROP_GOOD instead. You can certainly still find artifacts on the floor. What DROP_GOOD and DROP_GREAT are are shortcuts in the item generation code. Every time something drops, they roll a d100 and if it's above a certain cutoff, it's a GOOD, and if it passes another d100 cutoff, it's a GREAT item. GOOD and GREAT themselves are codes for how deep the generated item is compared to the current level. GOOD is several levels deeper, and GREAT is much much deeper. Monsters that DROP_GOOD bypass the first cutoff. Monsters that DROP_GREAT used to pass the second cutoff too, but now they just DROP_GOOD, even if they have DROP_GREAT in the monster.txt because DROP_GREAT is remapped to DROP_GOOD at the code level.

Yes, this does explain why you kill Nar and only get a Hard Leather armor +3. Wait to kill him until you're much deeper and you'll get a much better drop.

[Derakon]

So why was this changed, anyway? Most of the uniques with DROP_GREAT are significantly harder than other uniques at their depth -- in particular, Wormtongue was an excellent risk/reward tradeoff, since he could generally easily kill you, but if you managed to kill him instead he had decent odds of dropping a genuinely useful item. Are uniques with DROP_GREAT being nerfed to account for their worsened drops?

[Napsterbater]

Originally Posted by Derakon

So why was this changed, anyway? Most of the uniques with DROP_GREAT are significantly harder than other uniques at their depth -- in particular, Wormtongue was an excellent risk/reward tradeoff, since he could generally easily kill you, but if you managed to kill him instead he had decent odds of dropping a genuinely useful item. Are uniques with DROP_GREAT being nerfed to account for their worsened drops?

Wormtongue's not that hard to kill with a decent launcher, because he likes to run around and pick up the arrows you shoot at him. Just sit still and keep pinging him with whatever you have. But you should ignore him until you're below 1000' because his drop isn't really worth anything until then.

[Speusippus]

Wait, ok.

So if I understand correctly, if a unique typically shows up on level X, I should wait until I find that unique on level X+Y for some large Y before I kill that unique. Correct?

Corollary to this: If two uniques A and B are generated on level X, and A is typically generated on X, and B is typically generated on level X-Y for some large Y, then I should kill B and leave A alone for now. Do I have this right?