Rods of detect traps and stairs/doors

[Timo Pietilä]

Hello.

Playing 3.2.0 warrior I noticed that rods of detect traps and stairs/doors are now a lot rarer than they used to be. I get detect treasure (which is overpowered IMO) a lot more often.

Those two rods are quite essential warrior tools. If I can't find any before I start to stumble upon detection rods, then they are too rare. Considering that I'm not a diver, not finding any before closing 2000' is a bad sign.

Maybe those should be made a bit more common? Unless you plan to do that LoS door/trap detection that has been suggested before.

[Derakon]

They certainly should be. I've complained about this occasionally, but never actually taken any action on it. I suspect this is a side-effect of TMJ that wasn't noticed (unlike the decrease in consumables) because only warriors really care about these items.

Looking at object.txt, all three of the rods you mentioned have the same distribution: rarity 20, levels 8 to 80. Detection has rarity 30, levels 50 to 100; Magic Mapping has rarity 10, levels 65 to 100. I'd guess this should look more like:

Trap Detection: rarity 70, levels 8 to 80
Door/Stair Location: rarity 70, levels 8 to 80
Treasure Detection: rarity 30, levels 20 to 80
Detection: rarity 20, levels 30 to 100
Magic Mapping: rarity 20, levels 40 to 100

This is just a guess, though, and frankly I don't know what exactly "rarity" means here so these numbers could be way off.

[Mondkalb]

Rods of Mapping are also too rare imo. I played a warrior recently and found only one while it seems to rain rods of detection when you are deep enough.

[buzzkill]

Make things less common, not more common.

[Derakon]

Originally Posted by buzzkill

Make things less common, not more common.

Care to explain your stance? I can read it in any number of ways, e.g. "Make traps less common so the rarity of trap location rods isn't an issue", "make everything except trap location rods less common so they are relatively more common than they used to be", or "Ahh, screw warriors, nobody should ever play one."

[PowerDiver]

There used to be staves of trap location and of door/stair location, but they are gone now. Those used to be extra chances to make do until you got the rods.

[Pete Mack]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

There used to be staves of trap location and of door/stair location, but they are gone now. Those used to be extra chances to make do until you got the rods.

This is right. I sometimes carried them with rogue characters too, until the spell failure got down to something reasonable.

[fizzix]

Also the fact that dstairs and dtraps are split only hurts warriors since the spells are now merged in both spell classes.

I was thinking about this the other day and I think that doors should be removed from detection, and maybe placed in mapping instead. Also there should be some device that can be used to detect visible monsters.

detect object (rod/scroll/rogue spell)
detect magic objects (mage spell)
detect stairs and traps (rod/scroll/spell)
detect outer walls/stairs and doors? (priest/paladin/rod/scroll/staff)
detect evil (staff/priest/paladin)
detect visible monsters (spell/rod or staff)
detect invisible monsters (staff/scroll)
detect vis+invis monsters (mage/ranger/rogue)
detect everything (rod/priest/paladin)

mapping feels too rare, everything else feels ok. (my current warrior is on dlevel 35 or so with only -dstairs)

[Derakon]

My brain parses "Detect visible monsters" (with your eyeballs?) very differently from "Detect non-invisible monsters" (ohhhh).

However, I'm not convinced that monster detection in item form is necessary. One of the major aspects of playing a warrior/priest/paladin is that your creature detection is significantly weaker until you get access to Detection (which in my experience also adequately covers "detect both visible and invisible monsters"). This doesn't need to be changed.

Likewise, mapping has high utility, but that doesn't mean it has to be readily available.

[Mondkalb]

Of course there are always the staffs and scrolls of mapping/door detection etc.