All four rings of power found before 5000'

[BlueFish]

Maybe I just got lucky. It's the most recent "official" build, 3.3.2 I believe. Winner, with the One Ring and all three other Rings of Power (the two best of the four wielded - the second best (Vilya?) only for its damage and speed, as everything else seemed redundant with The One Ring). Resisted everything but sound. Used Ringil but never found cubragol or great boots of speed, and had 29 natural speed, which meant that hasted and gorged got me 29 speed too, making the fight with Morgoth a bit dicey. But the RNG allowed me to win, and I retired in the doorway of my home. Not an impressive win, but a fun one.

Sort of sad that the One Ring has such a nasty disadvantage - aggravation. I was playing a rogue, so it destroyed the role playing of the sneaky guy. But by the time I found it I was pretty unstoppable, and the aggravation didn't outweigh the four immunities. I sort of had to try it on, you know. That whole aggravation thing isn't canonical at all, it's really just a bit of mean-spiritedness on the part of the game. Wanting to punish the player for finding the most rare thing in the game. I see no reason for that. It should be a great find, and it should be stealthy. It's a ring of invisibility, and it was taken off many times in the books. I think this should be changed.

There's no way to take it off after putting it on? Is that the case?

I want to try Ironman, but I have a really stupid question about it. What exactly is it? I know the basics (no going up), but what are the birth options which qualify one for "ironman"? Just the "restrict stairs/recall" thing?

[Derakon]

Congrats on your win! The Rings of Power are more common than they used to be, that's for sure, though the One Ring's still pretty rare.

The One Ring instantly got Sauron's attention when worn and brought his wraiths down on Frodo. I believe that's what the aggravation is meant to emulate. Unfortunately there's no way to do "stealthy against mundane targets, aggravating against magical ones."

Yes, permanently cursed items cannot be removed once worn, in Vanilla. Variants may treat this differently (I believe FA simply prevents you from dropping them, for example).

The classical Ironman is just the recall/stairs provision, yes. You can make the game even harder with the other restriction options, but just not being able to go up or return to town is more than enough for most players.

[PowerDiver]

Originally Posted by BlueFish

Maybe I just got lucky. It's the most recent "official" build, 3.3.2 I believe.

The game has been nerfed beyond recognition. Placing many restrictions on myself, diving as fast as possible, I cannot make even an ironman human game in 3.3 challenging. If you care about replay quality, do what I do, which is to play 3.0. 3.0.9b is available at rephial.

[LostTemplar]

play 3.0. 3.0.9b

Good old angband.

[Fendell Orcbane]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

The game has been nerfed beyond recognition. Placing many restrictions on myself, diving as fast as possible, I cannot make even an ironman human game in 3.3 challenging. If you care about replay quality, do what I do, which is to play 3.0. 3.0.9b is available at rephial.

You could also give Sil a try....
I think Sil is just as hard if not harder than an ironman game.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

The game has been nerfed beyond recognition. Placing many restrictions on myself, diving as fast as possible, I cannot make even an ironman human game in 3.3 challenging. If you care about replay quality, do what I do, which is to play 3.0. 3.0.9b is available at rephial.

So, what would need to be done to get 3.3 to a form where you would play it again? I know there are object rarity issues, and price issues, but what else?

There have been a lot of advances (in UI and code modernisation, if nothing else) from 3.0.9 to 3.3 - I don't see why we couldn't just toughen things up again and everyone be happy. Especially given that a lot of energy is going into v4, which is so completely different that it has to be balanced without reference to 3.x anyway.

[PowerWyrm]

Hmm what makes 3.3 easy compared to 3.0? The gameplay didn't change that much no?

[Starhawk]

Originally Posted by PowerDiver

The game has been nerfed beyond recognition. Placing many restrictions on myself, diving as fast as possible, I cannot make even an ironman human game in 3.3 challenging. If you care about replay quality, do what I do, which is to play 3.0. 3.0.9b is available at rephial.

Complain, complain, complain. I'm still trying for my first human winner.

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by PowerWyrm

Hmm what makes 3.3 easy compared to 3.0? The gameplay didn't change that much no?

Lots of little things changed, and they added up to a significantly easier game (3.2.0 was easiest, apparently 3.3.x is a little harder but not much). Some stuff got cheaper to buy (speed). Some stuff got better (ego DSM etc.). Some instadeaths got fixed (summoning scrolls). Those, along with many others, were all intentional, if not properly balanced as a complete set of changes (they all happened at different times).

Then there were some unintended changes as well. Artifacts are much more common in 3.3.x than in 3.0.x, but nobody really knows why. (We think we might have addressed this in 3.4). This seems to apply particularly to the special artifacts (rings, amulets, lights). High-end ego items seem to appear too early too often. High-end consumables seem to be a bit too common.

If you search the forum for "making the game harder", you'll find five or six long discussion threads on fundamental changes to the mechanics, almost none of which was ever implemented (though detection is a bit fuzzier now) - part of the reason for the v4 fork was to try some of this stuff without risking breakage to V. But it seems to me that the basic problem with 3.3.x is that it's still just too generous with loot. If we halved all the drops it would certainly be more challenging (though it might be less enjoyable, I don't know).

[buzzkill]

Originally Posted by Magnate

But it seems to me that the basic problem with 3.3.x is that it's still just too generous with loot. If we halved all the drops it would certainly be more challenging (though it might be less enjoyable, I don't know).

Half is a nice starting point. Play a little Steamband and get fresh feel for limited drops/limited items. One of my favorite things about Steam is that finding most anything is exciting.