Chests of Evil balance discussion

Minor weighting would go unnoticed by the majority of players. Why have the devs jump through hoops for some effect that the RNG will make vanish? So you'd need to weight it pretty heavily to justify the extra work... but with heavy weighting, there would be issues with the split you proposed.

That said, your counter-counter-proposal to just have Inconsequentia carry no weight would probably solve most of it, at the cost of perhaps not being quite as flavorful as what you initially proposed.

 

I completely agree with bergstrom's suggestions. lutefisk artifacts are generally crap and should be improved, perhaps by removing the cap on the number of buffs you can gain from donating lutefisk.

Overall, it should be possible to get good stuff from more than simply evil chests. although there is a significant risk involved with opening an evil chest, the rewards for it are simply so great that it makes anything else you get seem worthless.

 

Just a little question : are the Dwarven Post Express from RotDG ? Because I never see them, I only get a Chest of Evil once every 5 floors or so.

 

Yep, they're from RotDG.

I imagine that without RotDG, the Evil Chests don't seem nearly as over-powered, either, since you not only see fewer, they also cap at +20 damage instead of +30. It's those last 10 points that make me seriously consider using one even if it doesn't match my weapon skill.

 

I'm on floor 9 with my current character, and have not noticed any downgrade to the CoE weapons. I'd guess "did not take". What was the nature of the nerf? Were they supposed to be weaker, or rarer?

 

I absolutely agree with r_b_bergstrom "three-pronged approach" to this issue. I think CoE weapons are OP early on, but in the late game they are the only hope of a melee oriented character. There is actually already a nerf to them, if you think about it this way: The CoE can ONLY grant weapons. So while you get great weapons, you are limited to vastly harder to find artifacts for the other slots (except amulet and if you're melee the imperial boilerplate armor). Can't rely on Krong, he kills as many good items as he helps create

To me, the much more important question is "how do we buff zoo/lutefisk (and to a smaller degree, inconsequentia/random floor) artifacts to make them more useful than museum bait, without overbalancing the game?

 

I think the nerf applied to non diggle godly members as my COE weapons did have a couple of debuffs on them and I only got 2 chests in the entire 10 floors on my non permadeath run (every other run Ive tried Ive not encountered one but havent got too far in permadeath.)

 

If the general consensus is that CoE weapons are too potent, make them more rare by allowing other items in CoE, and more monsters instead of items.

You simply cannot nerf something without half the people thinking it was a bad nerf. Period.

It matters none if it was required and you compensated with something else. A nerf pisses people off every time. Mostly because they are ignorant of the positives added to compensate, if any.

So my vote is more types of items in CoE, and more monsters mixed in too. (Perhaps multiple monsters at once from a CoE on deep levels? Otherwise what is so evil about it?)

 

Also, given the way CoEs currently work, putting more items into them would be even worse. +24 rings anyone? If more items were put into CoEs then they'd have to totally be reworked in function. I'd rather see RB Bergstrom's ideas for better artifacts from other sources implemented, personally.

 

QFT. I'd love to see Bergstrom's suggestions implemented.

 

I think that should be about it, sir. When speaking of artifact sources, CoE is heavily desired because one gets certain and large damage bonuses in addition to other stats. Krong is a toss-up, and can add to what one already has without needing to replace equipment. Uberchests can be good, but can also be bad.

Inconsequentia and zoo rewards tend to be rather bad, really; in my case, they usually end up as museum fodder because it's so often that they end up with just one or two bonus stats which usually is nothing compared to CoE weapons.

 

Yeah. Are you sure Inconsequentia's working right? It seems like she gives artifact quality of between 2 and 6 pretty consistently from floor to floor, instead of improving per floor.

 

^^ This.

 

Lone boss monsters are never dangerous for smart players. You can whittle them down with even the worst ranged items just by running away until they fall behind. There's really no excuse for dying to a monster you're knowingly summoning if you've got time to prepare. The only way to make CoE actually dangerous would be:

• Two boss monsters
• One boss monster + Small horde of normal monsters

It's also funny how CoE give you such a massively better artifact when half the Inconsequentia questions involve boss monsters being summoned.

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Personally I'd like the other artifact sources to be limited to certain item types, the same way CoE only give you weapons. Something like...

• Chest of Evil
  • Weapons
  • Focus on damage
• Lutefisk
  • Rings, Amulets
  • Focus on resistances
• Inconsequentia
  • Armour
  • Focus on secondary stats
• Uber Chests
  • All types
  • Focus on primary stats
• Random artifacts on the ground
  • All types
  • All stats

 

That was honestly what I was coming on here to say J-Factor. I was just going to say it in a less eloquent way.

Personally I would like Uberchests to focus specifically on chest, helm and legs.
I would like to see Inconsequentia focus on belts, boots, gloves and rings (in addition to lutefisk focusing on rings).

And instead of focusing on primary stats (which tend to be absolutely horrible in terms of payout), I'd rather see them all focus on all stats so that one venue isn't better than the others.

Also instead of massively nerfing CoE weapons, they probably just need to be weighted so that only a portion of the enchantment ends up being added damage. If they gave bonuses split among (for example) added damage, sagicity, critical chance, sneakiness and trap sight radius, I doubt they would be viewed as so drastically overpowered and game-altering. That being said, the rest of the rewards tend to feel over-weak so some kind of weighting system is needed imo to make the general item better.

I kind of like the idea of armor weighted toward a specific archetype: Warrior, Rogue and Wizard. While some armor would be useless or at least worth less than normal to you, it would guarantee that some items would be fantastic.