3.1(beta) TME

[PowerDiver]

I think 3.1 may still have the TMJ problem, defined as enough useless items
that squelch is necessary. However, it appears to have a new problem --
Too Many Egos.

There are a lot of changes, and they have impacted my playstyle, so I cannot
be accurate about the extent of the problem. Detection spells are now on the
order of a 100x50 rectangle [roughly 4 times the detection area of a standard
terminal], and that means I can use detect objects all of the time. Now that
objects are better, that makes it worth going out of my way to get more of
them. I spent a significant amount of time wearing two teleportation rings
for a combined +4 speed, which I'd guess breaks even for diving purposes
traveling further while faster. That meant I covered more area and got more
stuff. Pseudo is much faster, and fewer items to pseudo as well, so that has
meant no wasting any time at all for pseudo using not too many inventory
slots, for faster diving.

I'm down to 3000' at 217K turns. My goal at that turncount is 4350', and even
behind schedule I'd ususally be at 3800'. I am definitely diving slower this
game. In addition, I am covering more area, and with the speed boost I was
able to kill more, so perhaps it would be reasonable for me to have
accumulated twice as much useful stuff as usual at this depth.

Ever since I hit 2500', it has seemed crazy. I would guess that about half of
the weapons and armor are excellent. I am squelching good stuff, so maybe
from a TMJ viewpoint they should all be egos. However, the weapon and armor
drops are not nearly smaller enough to make up for the increase, so it seems
ridiculously excessive.

On my last trip, I picked up a lothlorien shortbow, elven cloak of the magi,
crown of might(+3), *slay evil* weapon with ESP, and some useless things like
*slay orc* or blessed or *slay evil* with uninteresting powers that I tossed.
That's not from some greater vault, just a normal 10K turn dive from 2700' to
3000'. Oh - probably also some gloves and/or boots of FA that would have
thrilled me to no end in a 3.0.9 game at this depth, but are so commonplace in
the stores this game that I can't even remember for sure.

There have been reports of not enough stat potions, but I saw plenty. I sold
my first one, didn't bother to get the second [that was guarded], because of
course both were !wisdom and I was playing a rogue. In addition, I picked up
5 useful stat potions and also !augmentation. I am doing far better than
usual for this depth, and maybe close to average stat boosts for the turncount.
[I don't count !charisma as a stat potion in the above paragraph.]

Gold drops have lessened, egos are way up, and there are useful egos in the
shops -- free action, resistance, launchers of might, gondolin weapons, and
presumably more that do not come to mind at the moment. This increased the
shopping aspects a whole lot in the early game, before things went completely
crazy at 2500'. I cannot be 100% sure about this, since I usually play my
patch with no selling, but this game was felt like shopping was an order of
magnitude worse than the two games I played of comp 62, V309 starting with
PDSM.

[NeoWizard]

I noticed the same thing too, starting at about DL20, I've had almost every drop being {excellent} to the point I'm starting to think about squelching everything except for Artifact.

[TJS]

Yes I think I agree that there seem to be slightly too many excellent items lying about all over the place.

Also perhaps another reason that they become junk is that once you have a good artefact item, then the egos in general are not as good and therefore pretty useless. And the ones that are useful aren't good enough to justify the time and effort in identifying all the rubbish ones first.

Is there an argument for having randomly generated egos that increase in value the deeper you find them?

ie they get more bonuses applied to them from a possible list such as:

Increased damage dice (eg. 8d4 for a dagger rather than 1d4)
Larger enchantments (up to +20, +20)
Each of the slays and brands (and you can get more than one on the same item - eg. a glaive for acid and slay evil)
Stat bonus
Multiple sustains
Increased AC

So the weapons don't get the special properties that artefacts do so much (such as see invisible, resist element or the activations), but they can do a lot of damage.