[crossfire] Jeweler skill

[Mark Wedel]

Robin Redeker wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 11:06:27PM -0800, Mark Wedel wrote:
>>   My personal thoughts would be something like this:
>>
>>   Some combination of ingredients allows you to attempt to improve a ring.  Some 
>> of the ingredients should be rare, as otherwise you'll just have pile of 
>> powerful rings.
> 
> Yes, that should really not be the case... But that should also be
> prevented with the code that checks the success chance (with
>       item_power).  Also: Low level chars shouldn't have enough money to
> make _really_ powerful rings.  Eg. rings like Elrond should only be able
> to make with a success chance of 100% around level 80 of jewelery and
> really really a lot of money.

  Yes - powerful rings should require high level of the skill.

> 
> I don't like the idea with _rare_ ingredients, as this makes the current
> jeweler skill completly unused. How hard it is to make a ring should
> IMHO only limited by the jeweler level.

  I don't know if I really agree with that we are talking magical objects here. 
  If all the player wants to do is make ring of adornments, sure, normal items 
should be all that needed.

  One thought is sort of a hybrid approach - for lower power rings, don't need 
very rare objects (just like scrolls up to 15%).  However, if you want to make 
rings of a certain power, then rare and hard to find items are required.

> 
> That the jeweler doesn't only gain exp by his skill should be limited by
> the fact that he needs lots of money to work. And thus he has to go out
> and search money. And money isn't that easy to gather (or at least is
>       shoud not be very easy).

  From what I've gathered on the mailing list, large amounts of money isn't that 
hard to get at some point.

  But more important here is really balance.  If jeweler and the related skills 
are the best way to make powerful objects, what will happen is players will have 
multiple characters - their adventurer, and their jeweler who never leaves town 
- the adventurer provides all the money that the jeweler needs (granted, you 
could do this is in one character, but if the jeweler never leaves town, don't 
have to worry about him dying).

  But the real point is figure that in not too long a time, there will be high 
level jewelers, armorers, etc, about.  And if they can make suprerior items than 
what is out there, they will do so.

> 
> One other thing i want to take care of, is that stuff a jeweler produces
> propably shouldn't be more worth than the ingredients (i guess this is
>       obvious). So that the jeweler can't make money only with jewelery.

  that wouldn't be hard to do.

> 
> I want to make the jeweler skill also usable by low level chars, who
> aren't able to get for example a gaelotroll's liver to for example raise
> the acid resistancy. He should be able to go with the potion he found
> and some big gems.

  the idea of different combinations for different powers I mention above might 
work.  Low level jewelers can make low power rings with easy to find 
ingredients, high level objects require hard to find stuff.

  My real point here is don't really on scarcity of money as a controller 
factor, as that won't work - right now, at a relatively low level, you just 
start accumulating huge piles of money because there is nothing to spend it on.



>>   Each time you increase the object, the item_power goes up (maybe give 5% 
>> resistance improvement, with a cap at 50% or 75%?)
>>
>>   Success chance should probably be based on current item power, or what you are 
>> enchanting it to.
> 
> Yes, i wanted to use the calc_item_power function in common/item.c to
> recalc the item_power of the resulting ring. And then something like
> item_power * x == jeweler level gives 50% chance of success.

  Note that calc_item_power() isn't a great function - certain objects have too 
low or too high item power value from the formula it uses.  It was put in place 
to update items that didn't have anything.

  It could probably be refined, but one issue is that not all resistances are 
equal.  Protection fire +50 is a lot more useful than protection slow +50 as a 
simple example.

  You are likely to get cases wher calc_item_power() may return a value lower 
than that which the ring has right now, or return something way higher, 
depending on the object the player is trying to improve.  While increasing item 
power by 1 for each enchanment may not match up with the formula, it does at 
least mean you start from the proper baseline.


> Also setting a cap is maybe really better... but i want to be able
> to make a ring of halvor with +100 resistancy.
> Makeing a ring with one resistancy +100 with sucess chance of 100%
> should at least take level 12 jeweler skill and really a lot of
> big gems, something around 1000 flawless beauty gems, and at least 100
> potion (or similar).

  Simply put, it should not be possible to make a ring that gives 100% 
protection to damage attacktypes (effect attacktypes like confusion, slow, 
paralyze is OK).  When the resistance code was redone, it was decided that 100% 
protection would no longer be allowed to attacktypes - before, it was possible 
to kill things like big dragons without taking any damage).

  Even the potions, which only give a temporary resitance and IIRC are the best 
way to get resistance from attacktypes, I think at best give you 95%.

  I'd argue it should take at least a level 50 jeweler to make an item with a 
single 90% resistance

> Making a ring with 2 or 3 resistancies +100 would require at least
> something like level 30-50 jewelery. And this should be quite hard to
> become... and even if a char has such a jewelery level: thats completly
> find IMHO he put lots of efford in it and should be rewarded for that.

  As said, 100% resistance should not be allowed.

> 
> Also: I haven't found so many flawless beauty gems while playing yet.
> Propably 1000 is even too much to be reachable anyhow.

  It may depend - if they had more use, other than money, people might also look 
for them more.