Making magic items, was Re: Acid & Drain Re: [CF-Devel] DB's wish list

[Mark Wedel]

Tim Rightnour wrote:

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      up to +5 is free, you can enchant with 0 risk.  After that the chances go up
     
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      exponentially.  It's very difficult to get a +10 weapon, or beyond, but its
     
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      possible with some luck.  I don't remember the exact formula.. but it never
     
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      becomes 0.
     
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      I wonder though.. If I have a pile of two longswords, and improve weapon them,
     
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      does it only enchant one, or both?
     
     
 Right now, the enchantment scrolls will only enchant one - it will break the
item into two groups - one of one (which is the one it enchants), and the others
which it just doesn't modify.

 Note the exact enchantment scheme is open to how we want to do it.  Currently,
armor (main armor, not shields and helms and the like) and weapons can get
randomly generated up to +4, and the rest of the armor pieces (boots, cloaks,
etc) can get generated up to +2.  That is why I suggested some of the lower
limits.

 the addition of things like cloaks and boots have basically given players 4 ac
points that are easy to get.  If you get up to +5 for 0 risk, you would quickly
have characters with -30 AC's.

 As I think about this, the more complicated I can make it, but at the same
time, more general purpose.

 Currently, when items are generated, there is some chance of them being
magical, and the server is hard coded what these should be (eg, +2 for most
things), and other adjustments it makes.  It would be nice to make this more
general, so that using enchantment scrolls would result in the same thing.

 Given this, I could see using the following scheme, which would
replace/supplement the current item improvement scheme:

 Add a 'max_enchantment' value to objects - this would represent the maximum
number of enchantments that happen at zero risk.  This then would also get used
to remove the hardcoding of how good items get enchanted when randomly made -
this would determine it.  Note that this also opens new possibilities - a shield
that is +2 but has a max of 2 enchantments may be less the player than a non
magical shield that has a max of 5 enchantments.

 Add 'number_enchantments' - this represents the number of times the item has
been enchanted.  This is necessary because currently, enchanted items made
randomly way less - if you just used the magic field, a player could enchant
something, have the weight lowered, get it corroded, enchant again, and have a
very light weight item.  Alternative, some for of unenchant logic could be added
(eg, if something loses some of its magic, it becomes heavier, but that seems a
little odd).

 Add 'min_level' - this has been suggested before, and not directly related, but
enchanting items may increase its minimum level.  It would be even cooler if you
could specify relevant experience category (or overall) that minimum level
corresponds with, so for example really good god given items might require some
amount of wisdom levels to use.

 One nice thing about doing the above is that now all items would use that same
potential logic, which removes some of the ugliness of the item improvement code
which overloads some fields with various values.

 Various thoughts on how this works:
Randomly made objects would just use the max_enchantments as a basis of how much
the item has been enchanted, and number_enchantments and level get updated as
appropriate - no big difference there.

 For player made items, the player could perhaps commision a specially made
object that has a high number of max_enchantments (basically, going to the armor
shop for example and dropping a whole bunch of diamonds on the alter, which
determines that items max enchantment value).  A player would only be allowed to
wear two custom enchanted items at the same time (eg, armor + shield, weapon +
armor, etc).  This would help out the classes and religions some that can not
use weapons as they could have their second good thing be something they could
actually wear (maybe even a ring)

 Player could add attacktypes and resistances to their items.  An attacktype may
count as 2 or 3 enchantments.  Resistances would generally count as one, with
maybe 15% for each one, but it would use the PR scheme, so the first would get
you to 15, second to 28, third to 39, etc, thus it would be impossible to make
something with 100% resistance, and even getting very high would basically mean
you put all that effort into that one protection.

 In any case, this is just a broad idea I decided to put out.  The numbers are
mostly for example purposes and not really thought out that much.