Just a quick question: I haven't seen any Lutefisk statues since level 9 (now on 13), when normally there's 2-3 per level! Is this intentional, or just another random luck streak? I didn't find a Lutefisk cube until level 11, so I have about 2000 fish ready to tribute...
I am unsure of the statues. However I replied to inform you to only ever donate exactly 500 lutefisk at a time. That gets you the best rewards. (You may already know that from other threads here or even the Wiki. But I figured I should tell you anyway.)
I appreciate the note! I did in fact know that, I had my 2500 carefully split into 5 stacks awaiting tribute. Unfortunately, I never saw another statue through killing Dredmore on 15, so it all went to waste Oh well, I'll know for next time!
In that case, any artifacts you'd get would likely be based on low-leveled items, which isn't very helpful for advanced characters. Regarding the Lutefisk Statues, all I can say is that they definitely do exist on lower DLs. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen a floor without any of those statues on TTG, so their disappearance doesn't seem intentional to me.
I once had a game with normal floor sizes where no stores spawned for three levels. Lutefisk God rooms are typically larger than stores, which apparently gives them lower odds of spawning (RF Bergstrom proposed this theory about rooms in general the devs confirmed it.) Thus, the LFG not spawning for you is probably a case of extreme RNG misbehavior. The odds of it happening increase if there are more rooms total, so if you're playing any of our mods that add rooms, that may have contributed as well.
In other words, the chances of you getting the altar are lower if you have Interior Dredmorating or Roguish Renovation (or both). Now that gives us the question if it wouldn't be better for these mods to add one altar or so, to decrease the chance of such silliness happening.
Particularly an alter in a small room, like Inconsequentia and Krong have, so it has a better chance of being one of those "filler" rooms.
The main game features a maximum of 2 lutefisk statues per floor, broken out as follows: There's one that can appear on floors 0 to 3, one that can appear on floors 0 to 9, one that can appear on floors 4 to 15, and one that can appear on floors 10 to 15. However, they are not as evenly distributed as that might appear. In particular, the one that spawns only on floors 10 to 15 is unlikely to come up very often. It has only a single door, and takes up more room than the others because it has a hidden room. So it can only appear when the game is generating a door to the north, and only at the end of an "arm" of the dungeon (not in the middle of a chain of rooms), and only if the space available for a room is large enough to accommodate it (including the hidden portion). In short, it appears rarely, even without any room mods. End result: The overall frequency of lutefisk rooms on floors 10 to 15 of the main game is about 60% to 70% the frequency of lutefisk rooms on the earlier floors. I assume that's an intentional design decision, having to do with the lack of need for money on those floors and how that drives you to fisk everything that isn't immediately usable. Basically, most builds are going to have at least twice as much fiskable material on the last several floors, so they want the altars to be a somewhat rare thing you look forward to as a reward. Since it seems intentional, I've tried to respect it when modding. There's no way to increase the odds of getting a lutefiskstatue room (even just shifting those odds back to pre-mod levels) without introducing the possibility of getting 3 on one floor. I've got a couple of lutefiskstatue rooms in Interior Dredmorating, but I put them in larger rooms so they wouldn't show up that often. It's pretty easy to spam lutefisk, via lockpicks or spores, perhaps supplemented with grated food or cheaply-made bolts. So I didn't want to do anything that would add significant risk of putting a consistent third lutefisk statue per floor. What you really _don't_ want is to create situations where the optimal strategy is one of tedium, spacebarring around for timers to run down so that you can cast lucky pick or spore farmer for the umpteenth time. The higher the number of lutefisk statues in the dungeon, the stronger the encouragement is to engage in the less fun behavior. The beta solves the spore-fisk-spam, so it's a lesser issue if you've got that going. Consider it on my to-do list: I'll revisit the frequency of the altars again once 1.0.10 is out of beta, and I'm working on the next update for ID.
To be fair, if someone really wants to waste a ton of turns getting 500 lutefisk and using it on three statues for a total of 1500, that's punishment enough. The reward was worth it when all you needed was 100 lutefisk, but forcing the player to collect 500 is just mean and whoever though it was a good idea should be made to eat Lutefisk. They really need reduce the requirement for the best item from 500 to 300, and just reduce the Lutefisk statue spawn rate. I mean, I'm sorry, but it's not worth 500 lutefisk, ever. You can't get anything close to an uberchest level item, even with 500 lutefisk. I know, I've tried. I never came close. An uberchest on floor 12 can generate a weapon that makes an evil chest on the same floor weapon look weak. However, a lutefisk statue, even on floor 15, at 500 lutefisk, will never ever, ever give you an item close to even 1/25th as powerful as an uberchest reward from floor 5. Even Inconquencia statues give bad rewards on the later stages. Those are only useful for XP saccing via Archaeology. TL;Dr, Lutefisk statue needs a serious buff to make it worth 500 lutefisk. Like, Uberchest level.
Wow, forgot about this thread for a few days and it exploded with knowledge! Thanks for the great responses! Sounds like I had a couple rare and strange streaks that game - the lack of statues and the string of bad Kronging (6 in a row on the same item!) I also got a Time Lord Scarf from a fountain on, I think, level 5 so that balanced it out quite well! I have not yet played with any mods (I don't have a clue how to even install one!), so that did not play a role. And finally, I have to agree with David about the quality of some of the rewards. Lutefisk statue and zoo clearing rewards seemed pretty pathetic compared to Uberchest, store, or even random-spawn-on-the-floor items sometimes. Evil Chests have the best in my experience and that should remain the case. Uberchest second, which also works. Quests have the third best, but I think maxed lutefisk rewards should top or at least match those.
