Noob looking for some clarifications

[ElectricWizard]

Hi there,

I'm pretty new to Angband and have a few questions regarding items and stats.

I'm basically looking for a breakdown on item attributes.

For example, I have a Scimitar of Slay Demon 4d2 (+8, +5).
Are the the bonuses applied when I attack a demon or always?

I see a ring of escaping <+4>. What does the +4 do here? Does escaping mean speed, and so the +4 means <+4 speed>

I've looked around a bit for clear info on this but either my keywords aren't specific enough, or everyone else gets it and I'm missing it somehow...

Thanks!

EDIT: Answered a few of my own questions

[Derakon]

If you 'I'nspect an item, you'll get a detailed breakdown of what its effects and abilities are. In the case of your Scimitar, the pluses (+8, +5) are always applied no matter what target you attack, but you will get additional damage if your target is a demon.

[ElectricWizard]

Originally Posted by Derakon

If you 'I'nspect an item, you'll get a detailed breakdown of what its effects and abilities are. In the case of your Scimitar, the pluses (+8, +5) are always applied no matter what target you attack, but you will get additional damage if your target is a demon.

Oh... great! That helps alot.

[dos350]

GL! No rage~~~

[Philip]

In fact, your damage against demons is just your normal damage multiplied according to the slay, inspecting it should clear it up as Derakon said.
And yes, the +4 on a ring of escaping means speed.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by ElectricWizard

I'm basically looking for a breakdown on item attributes.

For example, I have a Scimitar of Slay Demon 4d2 (+8, +5).
Are the the bonuses applied when I attack a demon or always?

Damage calculations for melee weapons goes like this:

Your character bonus to dam from STR + all your equipment bonuses to dam (except bows and arrows) including the weapon itself + damage dice multiplied by biggest applicable slay. Only the dice gets multiplied.

Light weapons and extra blows weapons might give you multiple blows so three blows/turn is roughly three times the damage if all blows hit the target. With new fractional blows system you don't use full turn if your opponent dies before you have used all your blows, so many blows against group of tiny monsters makes you "move" many times faster than usual. Six blows from warrior against some insect breeder basically allows you to hit six different monsters in single turn. Your STR and DEX and weapon weight affect the blows count, with very high STR and DEX even the heaviest weapons give multiple blows.

Bows are a different. With bows only bow and arrow bonuses are calculated for damage, no character bonuses apply. To-hit bonuses from other equipment except melee weapon and your character count.

Bow damage goes like this (arrow dice + arrow damage bonus + bow damage bonus) multiplied by bow multiplier + arrow slay multiplier. Unlike melee weapon multipliers in bows multiply entire damage. Slay and bow multipliers are added together before they multiply the damage. (at least this is what it should be, it used to be x3 bow * x3 slay = 9 but now it is x3 bow + x3 slay = 6).

If bow has multiple shot it doesn't mean that you shoot multiple arrows at once, instead you use less time to shoot one. Two extra shots means you use half a turn before getting another move, three that you use one third and so on.

In both cases if weapon has multiple slays only the biggest slay applies. For example weapon that has slay evil (x2), slay undead (x3) and kill dragon (x5) against dracolich which is evil undead dragon, only kill dragon slay applies, not all of them.

Note that if bow has a slay, it applies just like if it were in the arrow, still only the biggest slay applies, not bow slay + arrow slay.

Brands count as slays in all of this.

Brand is name to some elemental damage which applies if monster doesn't resist it, technically it is just a slay, but unlike slay it checks if monster doesn't have flag for resistance (like fire) instead of looking if monster has flag of being some type like dragon.

Hmmm...question to developers, how does vulnerabilities work in this? If monster, say an undead, is vulnerable to fire and is hit by a weapon that has both fire brand and kill undead which one applies? IIRC vulnerability doubles the brand damage so x3 * 2 is 6 and kill slay is 5, so I think fire should be the most powerful one, but I'm not entirely sure how code handles this.

[Timo Pietilä]

Originally Posted by ElectricWizard

I'm basically looking for a breakdown on item attributes.

For example, I have a Scimitar of Slay Demon 4d2 (+8, +5).

I see a ring of escaping <+4>.

[] means bonus to AC, () means bonus to hit and damage, <> means bonus to PVAL (power value). PVAL can be searching, stealth, infravision, digging, speed, any of the stats and so on. xdx is dice first is how many times you roll and second is how many sides is in the dice.

4d2 is then four rolls of d2 dice which means roughly 4*1.5 as average. 8d1 (great hammer) is always 8 which IMO is wrong, no weapon should hit perfectly every time, and 1d10 (trident) is flat distribution between 1 and 10 averaging at 5.5 but variance is great.