CF: Re: Gameplay issues

["Mark Wedel" <mwedel@pyramid.com>]

>Before the dawn of time (actually, last Wednesday), Mark Wedel wrote:
>> Quite a while ago, Raphael.Quinet@eed.ericsson.se wrote:
>[...]
>> >- The new attack code will sometimes produce the same kind of
>> >  unfortunate side effects as the ones I tried to fix in my patch to
>> >  0.92.4: if your weapon is "improved" by getting some god's attack
>> >  type (e.g. weaponmagic and fear for God), it can become useless
>> >  against some monsters.
>[...]
>>  Acid spheres are immune to weapon magic and fear, so at least in that
>> regard, the program is running properly.  I don't think acid spheres
>> should be immune to weapon magic, but it stands now, the code is doing 
>the
>> right thing.
>
>Hmmm...  So this means that ORing the attack type with AT_FEAR and
>AT_WEAPONMAGIC also removes the default physical attack?  That could
>explain a few things.

 I would need to look at that closer.  But if you examine your weapon, what
attacktypes are listed are the attack types it does.  Thus, if it just
says fear and weaponmagic, that is all it is doing.  If it says physical
fear and weaponmagic, then it does all three.

 If the god blessing code is removing the base attacktype, this is then
a bug/feature of that code.

>>  I am guessing that the some mosnters are things like wyverns and drago
>ns?
>> Once again, if the attacktype is only fire, and the creature is immune 
>to fire,
>> the code is doing the right thing.
>
>The "Essence of Flame" is actually a modified "bracers" archetype, which
>should add the attack type "fire" as well as "physical" to your current
>attack type (I just checked, it adds "physical", not only "fire" as I
>wrote before).  Well, in some cases it doesn't seem to work properly.  I
>will try again to see exactly in which cases it gives unexpected results.
>
>Now we also could discuss about the fairness of this item, because adding
>AT_FIRE when you are already wielding a powerful weapon could be a bit
>unfair (it also adds Path_Denied frost, but that is not much).

 Yeah - anything that modifies the attacktype outside of the weapon can
make for some pretty powerful results (just thing if you also had bracers
that did cold, fear, weaponmagic, etc.  You could just have one great weapon
and get whatever attacktype you wanted by equiping different bracers.)

 Am I correct in thinking this is an item from one of the Kunji maps?  I
noticed after rebuilding the spoiler with the additional archetyps that
it seems that a lot of very powerful artifacts were added - things much
more powerful than existed before.

 What do other people thing about the balance on these maps?  I haven't
played them myself (character I am currently working on is not high enough
level.) 

>
>> Perhaps make sure all weapons attack with at least physical? (note, to 
>do this
>> in the code could be difficult, [...]
>
>Hmmm...  Right, it would be much better (even if it would be a pain)
>to change all archetypes for the weapons.  If I understand correctly,
>this would be the only way to get rid of the unfortunate side effect
>that a weapon without any special attack type stops working when some
>new attack type is added to it (because it doesn't default to the
>"physical" attack as it did before the improvement).  Am I right?

 I think so.  I did a quick look through the weapon arch directory, and
very few weapons actually have attacktype specified - this means that they
default to physical.

 Generally, I think it is better for things to be specified in the archetypes
than for the program to make various assumptions.  I will see about fixing
all of that up.

>As I wrote to Brian in a separate message, setting the value of the
>items to zero does not solve the problem.  Even if they cannot be used
>for making money, they can still be used for their "normal use".  For
>example, I can easily collect a few dozen potions of invulnerability
>by sacrificing a few silver coins, foods, and various useless items.
>Even if I cannot sell these potions, I can still use them.  That is
>why I suggested to Brian that the failure code for alchemy spell
>should only create cursed items that have a nominal value (when not
>cursed) which is less than the total value of the items that are in
>the cauldron, without setting their value to zero artificially.
>Otherwise, the items would always be too poweful (because one can
>remove the curse easily).  Note that this only applies to failed
>formulae: there should be no limit for the value of the items in a
>successful transformation.

 This makes sense.  I think brian already sent me the fix for this.


-- 
 --Mark