Enchantments... How do they work? This is going to be (hopefully) an indepth article on exactly how they function. Note, all the details listed here are gleaned directly from the game code. Enchantments: There are 82 different "types" that can be modified by an item, ranging from damage, damage resistance, primary statistics, secondary statistics, etc. Any item can have one or more modifiers, and they can be a positive or negative number. You may have an item that has +1 voltaic damage, +1 slashing resistance, +1 visual radius and +1 dodge chance. You may have another item that has -10 crushing resistance. Only items that can be worn in the character cutout can be enchanted (with one noteable exception). Gaining Enchantments: When enchantments are being assigned to an item, they are selected individually at random. More specifically, a number is generated from 0 to 81. If the number corresponds to a primary statistic, that statistic increases (or decreases) by one, removing one from the total number of modifiers being assigned. If, however, the number corresponds to something other than a primary statistic, then there are three subsequent 50% chance rolls (equivalent to 3 coin tosses) of the modifier increasing. This means there is a 1/6 chance of the numbered statistic not being used, a 1/3 chance of it gaining +/-1, a 1/3 chance of it gaining +/-2, and a 1/6 chance of it gaining +/-3, assuming there are sufficient modifiers available. Once the roll has been dealt with, should there be more modifiers to distribute, another random roll is made to select a new statistic. Positive Enchantments: Whenever an item receives a positive enchantment, it will either gain new modifiers, or increases the power of one of the modifiers it already has, or both. The amount of new or increased modifiers that the item gains is determined by what is causing the item to gain the enchantment. Negative Enchantments: The reverse of the positive enchantment, a negative enchantment will decrease modifiers on an item. It's important to note that an item that already has a positive enchantment on it may appear to become unenchanted when it receives a negative one if the specific "type" affected is cancelled out. For example, if an item has +2 toxic resistance, and it receives a negative enchantment that gives it -2 toxic resistance, it will appear to have no toxic resistance at all. The item is still considered enchanted, however, and should it be modified via something like the "This Translation is Wrong!" skill, it will still be considered to have a negative enchantment. Also for negative enchantments, you may not have a negative damage value. If an item does not do damage of a specific type, any negative enchantment for that type of damage is eliminated when the enchantment is placed. For example, if an axe does 6 slashing damage, if it gains a negative enchantment that causes -2 slashing damage, that is acceptable, and the axe will now do 4 slashing damage. However, if the axe gains a negative enchantment that causes -2 piercing damage, that enchantment will not apply, as the axe does not deal piercing damage. The axe would still be considered to have a negative enchantment on it, should it later be re-enchanted, or gain a new one. 1) Altars of Krong. When you put an item on an article of Krong, you have a 5/7 (roughly 71.5%) chance of getting a positive enchantment, and a 2/7 (roughly 28.5%) chance of getting a negative one. This is independent of the item, the item quality, or any enchantments the item may already have. If a positive enchantment is rolled, all normal and enchanted items will gain 1-2 new modifiers following the above rules. The only exception to the previous rule is items that are considered of the "artifact" class, but have not been enchanted. This includes such items as the Staff of Moravic, or The Wizard's Sleeve (the noteable exception mentioned previously, as this item cannot actually be equipped). These artifacts will gain a much higher number of enchantments - their "artifact quality", as defined in the itemsDB.xml file - on their first enchantment. Subsequent uses on an altar will gain them the same 1-2 enchantments other items get. If a negative enchantment is rolled, all items gain 2-4 new modifiers. 2) UberChest/Chest of Evil Chests of Evil have a 50% chance of containing a weapon. If they do, the number of enchantments on the item will be 2 + (dungeon level - 1). So on dungeon level 4, for example, the item would have 2 + (4 - 1) = 5 modifiers. The item in an UberChest will be similar, but 1 + (dungeon level - 1) instead. 3) Random Items This includes the items on the isolated "islands", items for sale by Brax, etc. As with the UberChest, they will have 1 + (dungeon level - 1) modifiers. 4) Quest Rewards Quest rewards are similar to the Chest of Evil, 2 + (dungeon level - 1). 5) Lutefisk Statue The item from the Lutefisk Statue will have 1 + (# Lutefisk used / 25) enchantments, where the # Lutefisk used is capped at 100 (giving a maximum of 5 modifiers). The dungeon level of the statue does not appear to have any bearing on the number of enchantments received. 6) This Translation is Wrong! Using this skill does not add or remove enchantments, but it will modify the enchantments that already exist. The number of positive enchantments will be used to determine how many positive enchantments to grant, and the number of negative will be used to determine the number of negative enchantments. 7) Corruption Some monsters and traps can corrupt weapons. I'm unsure of the number of negative modifiers gained from corruption.
What about crafted Emerald Amulets? They always seem to have rather mediocre bonuses in my experience but I haven't played Smithing to very deep in the dungeon yet.
I rarely play with smithing, so that's not something I've been able to check out yet. It's likely they might use the 1 + (dungeon level - 1) formula, as that seems to be the most common.
What are you using to go into the code, btw? Also are you sure that This Translation is all Wrong doesn't flip positive/negative enchantment values? I could swear I've seen it do that, but then that's probably just an artifact of the other effects (negatives disappearing, positives getting larger, etc)
There are two bugs with TTIAW - one where it's not correctly counting the number of negative enchantments, and one where it's not erasing the positive damage enchantments when re-rolling. The combination of these two bugs probably accounts for what you are seeing when you use the skill.
The patch notes for 1.0.5 says: - NERF: This Translation Is All Wrong! now enacts a Terrible Price. Anyone know what that is? 2nd question: with 1.0.5, is it possible to get Smithing/Alchemy/Tinkerer from an altar of Krong?
The "Terrible Price" is supposed to be a chance to get more curses upon rerolling with TTIAW. No, you can't get crafting skills from Krong anymore.
I thought it was just a chance to lose one of the magic enchantments. Say you have +2-Voltaic, +1-caddishness, and +1-resist-piercing (I call that a +4 enchantment). If you re-roll with translation all wrong, you have a pretty good chance to get a different set of enchantments that equal +4 (i.e. +2-fire-resist, +2-nimble -1-HP, +1-mana-regen). But in the new patch, you also have a chance of only getting a +3 out of the reroll (i.e. +2-crit, +1-existential). I hope that wasn't too confusing, but it makes sense to me. Not to mention you almost always lose the "does this on contact" type enchantments.
One thing i noticed. Chest of evil seems to have way way way better items then uberchests. That formula up there looks suspect. Ive never got anything amazing out of uberchests and lutefisk. But i consistently get ridiculously overenchanted stuff from evil chests. I would find things with +18 of one elemental damage along with 5 other misc bonuses from chest of evil. Uberchests gives u something that like 1 or 2 positive kong anvil rolls would give. oh I guess that formula just shows you how many enchantments it can have. But the values to individual enchants are what separates the evil chests i guess
Well the reason for that is that there's an actual risk of dying from chests of evil, if you are not prepared to deal with a boss mob. Plus they are much rarer. They actually should have better items I can't say if they are too good or not -- I don't think I've ever seen a +18 elemental bonus from one. Maybe you are just incredibly lucky? (Someone has to be).
I've found great items in Uberchests. Chests of Evil do seem to drop much, much better items, though.
Problem being that unless the monster has (and uses!) ranged attacks, most characters are able to play keepaway and plink away with their own ranged attacks. Sure, if it hit you, it'd kill you, so why let it hit you?
Fair enough but for the first 3/4 floors a melee character usually won't have enough bolts, and mages mana. Later on it's more trivial though.
Most of my deaths are either from making dumb mistakes, and the more deadly the situation (like a boss mob from an evil chest), the less forgiving the game is of those mistakes. So just because you CAN play keep-away, doesn't actually mean that you are going to live. My biggest, most frequent mistake, it seems, is attacking when I should be running away. Coming up a close second is probably forgetting that the best way of getting out of trouble is to use stealth instead of a random teleport or eating food or even healing (comes from a tendency to act without thinking).
