As a melee player myself, one of the common issues it seems us fist pounders experience is that our abilities and our defences don't scale, if we are fighting things that can do all kinds of nasty damage outside of the mundane, our armour is as useful as a wet paper towel, and about half as absorbent to boot. So! What about floating the following as a concept : Currently armour absorption handles mundane damage types at a 1:1 ratio, which is all fine and well, how about in addition to this, it gives one point of "absorb everything" every 4 or 5 points. With a fairly hefty set of armour (even assuming an unarmed build and double shields), I believe the rough roof for armour absorption is around 30-35. Assuming it's every 4 points. This would mean melee players would be able to soak 7-8 points of "any" form of damage before taking serious pain from the non standard set. This doesn't count normal resistances which are tossed in on top. The math is a bit napkin, but the idea feels like a good one, it would certainly allow melee to close in to fighting distance without being obliterated by say octo bolt spam? (this would also usefully rein in the hard hitters from floor 7 onwards who can 2-3 shot someone wearing plate as well, thinking about it).
Some further fiddling with the math leads me to think 4:1 is the ideal ratio, and that the "absorb everything" should also include mundane as well (in effect, every 4 points gets you a freebie extra point against mundane, plus all other types of damage). This does mean early game, blacksmiths who manage to get to tier 4 and load up with a brigandine, runed iron shield and runed helmet thingie will have a quite serious advantage (it'll make them almost unkillable until floor 4-5), but then to be fair floors 1 and 2 are really the idiot/build sanity test anyways. As a more common example, a well decked melee player may have by floor 6 : Brigandine (6), Historically Inaccurate Viking Helm (2), Runed Iron Skjoldr (4), Steel Reinforced Boots (2), Heavy Leather Gloves (0), Leather belt (1), Rubber pants (0), And possibly a +absorb ring or amulet, so let's say (1) for that. This gives us a working level of 16 "base" damage absorption. If we factor in 4:1 for this, the net result is : 20 points absorb vs. mundane sources, and 4 points of "non mundane" absorption. Most projectiles and nasty spells hit for between 5 and 7 of a various damage type (octo missiles spring to mind), so at this point they're reduced from utterly dangerous to slightly painful. As most people will by this stage also have a smattering of specialised resistances on top, this will put them in a decent place to be able to attack the rest of the dungeon.
I have a character on floor 6 who has embossed plate, two heroic bronze aspises, a knight's helm, winged aluminum boots, and no belt pants or gloves (he's an old character). He's in the thirties. I think your estimate is a little low.
Keep in mind, FC, that older characters don't have to find their own recipes -- your chance of getting the recipe for Embossed Plate by floor 6 isn't all that great.
It's not low in light of the new crafting system. You can't circumvent the recipe element now, which means you're strictly tied to what you find in the new dungeon each time. Heroic bronze Aspi is also a drop recipe, as is the knight's helm. So yes, whilst your situation is extreme, it's also extremely rare. I did say that the roof was around 30-35 no?
So far with all the additional items and even with some pretty optimised usage of blacksmithing, getting past 25 ish absorption seems like a genuine pain in the ass. I'm pretty happy backing the 4:1 ratio, 'accourse, I don't know the technical feasibility/difficulty of such a solution, or if it creates any other issues that I haven't figured out yet.
