Ah, my mistake. I thought RoS was native in the sixties - probably because that's when they start showing up in chests and vaults. The problem was the uniques, not the general mobs (well, apart from the plasma and hell hounds that did for me in the end :mad:). As a HT warrior with no fire immunity I had no reliable tele other options (7 rods, fail rate of 17%).

Any how, he's dead and gone but his son, Ran Dunt XVI, is on the way down to level 60 to find that sodding cloak his Daddy missed!

P.S. Thanks for the advice

Tele Other won't help with Plasma hounds, no matter what... And Tele other isn't really an escape; it's a highly effective evasion technique.
Also: no matter how many rods you have, you should still carry wands of Tele other. The fail rate is much lower.

Couldn't agree more, Pete. I was talking about tele other with respect to avoiding the uniques I couldn't fight due to having no speed (rather than the hounds that killed me while I was hunting for speed). I usually do carry wands and rods of TA, but I think I had dropped the wands to carry some extra consumables back to the stockpile I always build in my home, and almost never use (one winner, twice died to Mr M, maybe a hundred attempts in the last two years that never got that far). Needless to say, having dropped them they disappeared from the dungeon thereafter...

I would happily use a spear 1d6 +10 speed with at least three classes. Mages, rangers, priests don't have to, but can use the weapon slot as a statstick. Mages might be better off doing so, what with Morgy's max damage being melee. A warrior I would briefly consider just shooting stuff with, with a rogue I would probably use it for a long time and not kill stuff much. A paladin, that would be worse. I would discard it as soon as I had +10 speed from somewhere else. Similarly with the warrior, unless I have a high to_dam and extra might or shots bow/crossbow. Then I'd wait for +20 speed or an excellent weapon.
As far as helms go, I probably would use ESP over speed if I already had +10, but ESP always seems to appear on at least two or three randart slots, and then there are cloaks of Magi and such. A helm of serenity would be tempting if I lacked one or two of the things it gives, in such a case I would probably use one.

Thing with that weapon is that it allows you to use a huge variety of things other than speed, RoDam instead of RoS for example. +10 speed over zero speed is also +100% increase in damage. +20 speed over +10 is 50% more damage and +30 speed over +20 speed is 30% more damage (approx).

It also allows you to move same amount as that damage before monsters get turn and can wake up, so it also helps stealth same amount. Speed trumps (almost) everything else until you hit +30 or so (+20 for those that have easy access to haste).

For classes that do not have access to easy haste that weapon would be rather obvious choice at least until you find something a lot better while still at speed that is manageable.

For armor that is not boots speed is huge bonus. That is why DSM of Speed got removed from game. Everybody ended up using one if they found one. +10 in cloak is better than any normal artifact set armor except Feanor. I would probably use that over Bladeturner-equal cloak in endgame (that is unless I have +30 speed from other obvious choices, like Ringil & Feanor & Nenya & Vilya, and even then it is still tempting)

This. This is why rating speed is so hard. The value of speed is nonlinear, and its precisely type of nonlinearity is slot-dependent.

Indeed. And because of this, I think that (despite, I'm afraid, all the work you've put into it) designing randarts by overall object power is doomed to failure. I think the O-style micromanagement by slot is a better approach.

Having said that, though, V randarts still work pretty well. And it's possible that you could add per-slot restrictions/modifications that might improve things.

Here's me, sitting on the fence again.

Object power is OK, however it should then be translated into object rarity, using some function, which should depend on slot. Gaussian definitely should work. Simply compute means and sigmas for standard artifacts (for every slot) and use the same values for randart distributions. Remove 'based on' stuff.

I don't see why the approaches can't be combined. Overall object power has many uses other than randarts, and seems a sensible approximation as long as we accept that it can never be perfect. But "micromanagement by slot" sounds like it would lead to some improvements.

I did implement per-slot ratings/restrictions/mods, but I can no longer remember what made it into V, what's in v4 and what's only possible in Pyrel. Pyrel is definitely the most advanced/flexible system, and Pyrel's randarts will I hope combine the best of both approaches.

This is possibly the best randart I've found so far: