The "New" Ranger: Impressions

[wobbly]

Originally Posted by mrfy

Again, my experience is total opposite with Create Arrows. I'm currently level 50 dungeoning on L68. Using it on a staff of Cure Light Wounds gave 26 Arrows (+7,+7), Light gave 30 Mithril Arrows (+3,+5), Detect Invisible gave 25 Arrows of Venom (+8,+7), Sleep Monsters gave 27 Mithril Arrows (+6,+5), Starlight gave 28 Mithril Arrows of Slay Demon (+11,+11), Teleportation gave 31 Mithril Arrows (+5,+2), Teleportation gave 22 Mithril Arrows of Slay Undead (+4,+15), Speed gave 30 Mithril Arrows of Holy Might (+10,+15), and *Destruction* gave 26 Arrows of Venom (+8,+10).

Originally Posted by Egavactip

The one staff of speed I destroyed gave me, you guessed it, +0, +0 arrows.

My experience is character level matters much more then staff quality and using multiple trash staves at high clvl is almost guaranteed to give something at least ok.

So took a look at the code:

anything below depth 25 is actually identical. So Cure light wounds, light, detect invisible, sleep monster, starlight, teleportation ... these all may as well of been staves of darkness. Identical. Just same as arrows from the floor of depth = clvl.

Staff of speed is depth 40. If you roll greater then 25 on 1d40 you'd get guaranteed "good" drop. Apart from that its still an arrow drop from depth = clvl.

Staff of destruction is depth 50. If you roll greater then 25 on 1d50 you'd get a guaranteed "good". You'd need greater then 50 on 1d50 for a guaranteed "great". It's actually still too shallow to really matter, you'd possibly get better results from 2 trash staves.

Honestly staff quality isn't doing a whole lot unless you sacrifice a lvl 70 staff: healing, banishment, power, holiness, magi

[gglibertine]

Originally Posted by archolewa

Small nit, but Paladins and Blackguards both have 3 books. Otherwise, yeah I agree with everything you've said.

Ah, that's right -- I'd forgotten about Paladins. I tried Blackguard a couple of times and it didn't suit my play style so I haven't played one again, and hadn't discovered the third book.

[Egavactip]

I'm surprised no one responded to the Decoy issue I mentioned upstream.

[Selkie]

Originally Posted by Egavactip

I'm surprised no one responded to the Decoy issue I mentioned upstream.

It's been covered previously. I killed Sauron in nearly the exact same manner once. It felt very cheap.

I've not had too much success with decoy, unless I can get some randart with +2 moves. Mostly enemies have a ranged spell or breath and just destroy it at a distance

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Egavactip

I'm surprised no one responded to the Decoy issue I mentioned upstream.

backwardEric has had a look at it, without finding anything conclusive.

The correct behaviour is for Morgoth to think the decoy is the player until either he destroys it, or the actual player attacks him.

[Egavactip]

Originally Posted by Nick

backwardEric has had a look at it, without finding anything conclusive.

The correct behaviour is for Morgoth to think the decoy is the player until either he destroys it, or the actual player attacks him.

That obviously did not happen at all in my case. Whereas in every previous use of the spell Decoy, it was destroyed immediately by the monster, in this case for whatever reason Morgoth could not get rid of it, nor could he ignore it, and I just sat there shooting a million arrows at him til he croaked.