Randarts question

[fizzix]

I'm not sure if this should go here or the development section...

I recently finished another randarts game. I really enjoy playing with randarts, since I've gotten bored of finding the same old stuff each game. Also, with randarts, you never know what the difficult resist will be.

Anyway, I was noticing in the past game that I was not really finding any sustains on artifacts. After the game I generated the spoiler and found that my lack of sustaining artifacts was not surprising.

Here is each sustain by frequency:
STR: 2
INT: 3
WIS: 2
DEX: 3
CON: 8
CHR: 10

Total: 28

Furthermore, there were very few items with multiple sustains. Only four had 2 sustains, and the rest had only 1.

If we compare this to standarts we see the following breakdown:
STR: 6
INT: 5
WIS: 4
DEX: 7
CON:10
CHR: 2

Total: 34

More items have multiple sustains. 7 have one sustain, 3 have two, 6 have three and 1 sustains all (anarion)

(both sets exclude the one ring)

I'm not sure that this is a problem per se. It certainly made the game different for me, and forced me to wield or carry an amulet of sustenance the whole game, including during the final battle. So that's good in a sense, because the reason I'm playing with randarts is to get a different game. I'm just not sure if this is a desired effect or not.

I have not noticed this in other randart games.

[Matthias]

Originally Posted by fizzix

Anyway, I was noticing in the past game that I was not really finding any sustains on artifacts. After the game I generated the spoiler and found that my lack of sustaining artifacts was not surprising.

Here is each sustain by frequency:
STR: 2
INT: 3
WIS: 2
DEX: 3
CON: 8
CHR: 10

Total: 28

Furthermore, there were very few items with multiple sustains. Only four had 2 sustains, and the rest had only 1.

That's 24 randarts with sustains

If we compare this to standarts we see the following breakdown:
STR: 6
INT: 5
WIS: 4
DEX: 7
CON:10
CHR: 2

Total: 34

More items have multiple sustains. 7 have one sustain, 3 have two, 6 have three and 1 sustains all (anarion)

That's Anarion and 16 Arts with sustains

(both sets exclude the one ring)

I'm not sure that this is a problem per se. It certainly made the game different for me, and forced me to wield or carry an amulet of sustenance the whole game, including during the final battle. So that's good in a sense, because the reason I'm playing with randarts is to get a different game. I'm just not sure if this is a desired effect or not.

I have not noticed this in other randart games.

So if you ignore Anarion as the obvious specially crafted sustain Artifact, your randart set has more items with sustains, and the same total number over all. I think the main difference is that they come in packs less often. If you value sustains highly, an item with only one sustain will still be useless, while one of those truearts with three sustains might be usefull
For me as a player this looks ok. As you said this is the kind of thing that makes playing with randart intresting. It's not like you got 28 robes or something.

I think I would have used an amu of trickery (if available) instead of sustenance. You can fight Morgy without sustains without a problem, while the endgame is scary without res poison

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Matthias

So if you ignore Anarion as the obvious specially crafted sustain Artifact, your randart set has more items with sustains, and the same total number over all. I think the main difference is that they come in packs less often. If you value sustains highly, an item with only one sustain will still be useless, while one of those truearts with three sustains might be usefull
For me as a player this looks ok. As you said this is the kind of thing that makes playing with randart intresting. It's not like you got 28 robes or something.

Fizzix would also need to print the randart spoiler over several dozen games and analyse the stats - that should show a convergence between the number of sustains in the standard set and the number in a randart set.

It is true that multiple sustains occur less often though - I'll make a note to address that.

[fizzix]

Originally Posted by Magnate

Fizzix would also need to print the randart spoiler over several dozen games and analyse the stats - that should show a convergence between the number of sustains in the standard set and the number in a randart set.

It is true that multiple sustains occur less often though - I'll make a note to address that.

I wasn't pointing out a bug, just an observation. The main observation, like you pointed out, is that the items with multiple sustains seem less. I'm not sure if this is true over a large set. It was really hard for me to calculate that from looking at the code. I could look at a large set, and writing a code to generate standart spoilers and analyze them for sustains is actually in my abilities, so I could do that if it is desired.

The other observation is that it seems from the code that the sustains are all treated as equally valuable. Whereas, in the standarts STR, DEX and CON are treated as the most valuable. INT and WIS are significantly less common, and CHR rarely comes up at all. I'm not sure that it's a good idea to mimic these frequencies though. It may not be desirable.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by fizzix

I wasn't pointing out a bug, just an observation. The main observation, like you pointed out, is that the items with multiple sustains seem less. I'm not sure if this is true over a large set. It was really hard for me to calculate that from looking at the code. I could look at a large set, and writing a code to generate standart spoilers and analyze them for sustains is actually in my abilities, so I could do that if it is desired.

The other observation is that it seems from the code that the sustains are all treated as equally valuable. Whereas, in the standarts STR, DEX and CON are treated as the most valuable. INT and WIS are significantly less common, and CHR rarely comes up at all. I'm not sure that it's a good idea to mimic these frequencies though. It may not be desirable.

You are right that the code does not track the frequency of individual sustains, only the total number of sustains in artifact.txt. It does value them differently, but ironically this results in the less valuable ones occurring more often (because they're less likely to overpower a randart and trigger a reset). I'll make a note of this too.

Some python code to generate and analyse multiple spoiler sets would be most welcome. (Or any scripting language of your choice, as long as it comes as part of a standard Linux install.) So far I've been doing it by hand - checking each set of changes by generating a couple of dozen spoilers manually and using grep | wc to see if things are about right. Getting more scientific than this would be helpful for fine-tuning balance.