The Tavern

Hm...

Yes

That's a randart.

https://loom.shalott.org/learndb.html#artefact

Well, the Sword of Cerebov definitely generates there. So at least one does.

FTFY.

This is another one of the mysterious part of Crawl's code that do not make sense at all, only complicate the code and confuse the players.

I think the idea is that if you had unrandarts randomly spawn in pan, then few people would ever find them, since usually you don't fully explore pan levels. Then once an unrandart is left behind you'll never get it again in the game since you can't revisit a pan level.

That, and if it's needed for a trove, it's a guaranteed unrand, and you don't want it generating in Pan (or Abyss) where it can be lost.

Do unrands randomly generate in Abyss? They probably shouldn't.

I am not sure, but I think if an artefact ends up there it will stay there, much like uniques. Don't know about generation though

Unrandarts don't generate in Abyss unless they were lost there (dropped there, probably banished there, destroyed by item culling).

Given that Pan lords can chase you between Pan levels now, it would make sense to have a "lost in Pan" flag like "lost in Abyss" so that an unrandart can generate again in Pan after being lost there. Then you could allow unrandarts to generate in Pan and Abyss (personally I think they should generate in Pan and Abyss even if they do get permanently destroyed as a result).

Well, particularly since in most cases you've already explored most if not all of the areas where an unrand could possibly generate, "losing" an unrand is a particularly silly reason to not put them there.

I suspect a more rational reason like "we don't want unrands to generate in infinite areas so we don't even further encourage pan scumming" or even just "there is enough chance of one generating in the regular game"

If there is an unlimited number of levels for Un Rands to generate, then ultimately, one can get any and all of them, so a spoiled player can scum for a pre defined "perfect" set of equipment.

I hope I am not alone in thinking that would be bad.

Well, there are already zig to scum artefacts - even with megazig commit don't totally stop this: all you need is to clear one zig until it's "safe", exit before 27 floor and then find another in pan.
But honestly I don't find useful in dcss the effort to find the "perfect" set of equipment - by the time you have assembled it you probably have gathered so much experience that even naked you're a terrific murder machine - getting the plutonium sword or orange cpa in the 60th zig floor cleared isn't like finding on d:8.

Yeah. By the time you can scum Pan, you don't need to scum Pan.

If they didn't generate in zigs, I could see it from a purely aesthetic point of view, but as things stand now, it just makes scumming for unrands (which is a thing you would do why, again?) another level of tedious.

i dont see anything wrong in scumming pan/abyss. you dont need to do it to win. you dont need to do it to get all runes. you dont even need to do it to complete a ziggurat. if someone wants to do it - let them, if they win, the scumming will be reflected by their low final score (because of a high turncount)