Boxes of Evil are the most helpful thing in the game, no question. But what I don't understand is how the level/quality of the enchantments on the items, and for that matter the items themselves, are determined. I ask because it's obvious that the contents of the boxes gets better the deeper you go. So is the quality of the contents based simply on the dungeon level that the box is in or is it based on your level or something else entirely?
Basically, the deeper in the dungeon you are, the better the lewt that spawns. An Evil Chest just takes a typical piece of equipment (and by this I really mean, a weapon) for the floor you're on and slaps a crazy powerful damage buff onto it (again, getting more powerful the deeper you go.) So Dungeon Floor is the deciding factor. You level, you skills, you whatever have no impact on what's in the chest. The only time you, personally, are important in the Evil Chest equations is when you have to survive whatever freakish elder being you accidentally unleash in your greedy quest for awesome weapons.
Seems to be something like: (Dungeon Floor ± 1) × [Random Stat] (Dungeon Floor × 2) × ( or or ) So on Floor 5 you generally get 4-6 random stats plus a guaranteed 10 or 10 or 10.
How do you find chests of evil so useful? I mean, I usually have zero or one of them per level. Half of those would countain monsters. That gives me something like 3 evil weapons during the whole game. There are five weapon classes and I only have one weapon skill, therefore the chance of finding a relevant weapon from the chest of evil has 50% chance in the whole game. Why bother? Or are there massively more chests of evil in RoDG? Something like 5x would make it.
On my last run I found a really nice axe that was an upgrade from one of the evil chests. I was reluctant to open them since one ended my game the previous run. This time I had bolts of doubt in case things went wrong.
Dwarven Express posts give three chests. And I find one every couple levels. So that adds up to a lot of evil chests in any given play through.
You no longer need the relevant weapon skill to wield a weapon, you just get bonuses when you do, so you can use any Evil Chest weapon you find if you want. Also, I suffer from the same problem you've mentioned, I find them only every once in a while. It's been suggested that playing with No Time To Grind on can contribute to this (it can also cut down on the number of shops, other items, shrines and Zoos that you find.) However, shrewd gameplay on my part can still usually see me down to level 9-12 even as a melee build. Heck, I've killed Dredmor with weapons I got from Brax. They had the added perk of being incorruptible, unlike Evil Chest goods.
Check out this thread if you're wondering why Evil Chests are so good. Also, I'm pretty sure you need to be wielding a sword to get the bonuses from the sword skills, and the same goes for all the others except shield skills.
I'm not sure about the first half of the equation, that seems more generous than I've experienced. I think it may be a normal (non-negative) Kronging, or maybe the equation you're proposing but with some sort of limit on the number of randoms 'cause I don't recall getting 12+ randoms in the lowest levels. The second half is correct though, other than that it also sometimes does . Off the top of my head, I remember a Dwarven Express Post on level 10 or 11 not too terribly long ago that gave me two Lirpas with +22 each and what I believe was only a couple points of other bonuses.
Those numbers came from looking at an image I made awhile ago to compare Evil Chests with smithing. Hard to make accurate guesses since I didn't bother going very deep.
Great image. Hard to argue with that. Either my memory is faulty, or the random number generator just likes you more than me.
