Longswords

[Bomanz]

Longswords seem to show up in the dungeon about the same time as scimitars, which is weird because they noticeably worse weapons. Anyone else have a similar experience? Not sure if it's intentional.

[savageorange]

How many hundred games have you observed this in?

(anything less is statistically insignificant)

[Bomanz]

How many hundred games have you observed this in?

(anything less is statistically insignificant)

200-300 hundred. Which is why I'm asking if anyone else has similar experience.

[Amnesiac]

you mean two to three hundreds, right? I, personally haven't noticed anything like that

[Siegurt]

I tend to find longswords earlier, but less frequently than scimitars. That is to say, I'll find an early longsword with some frequency in the "around the temple" levels, but usually only one or rarely two or three, and sometimes none at all, but but by the time I get to finished with the lair, I frequently have a scimitar and have typically seen quite a few, sometimes without finding a longsword first, usually though, I have a greatsword by the time I'm done with orc.

[cerebovssquire]

The same applies to maces and flails though (the actual weapons mace and flail) and to halberds and tridents (halberds are the better weapon, earlier, and much more frequent, so it applies more here). There isn't always a correlation between strength and rarity for other weapons and it really isn't necessary, because the tendency of rare weapons/weapons that appear later in the game to be stronger still exists. It's not like long swords (or maces or tridents) are meaningless because there is still a significant number of games where you don't find a scimitar before a long sword, and then you have to deal with that - even if it isn't the norm.

[Lasty]

You can frequently get a great sword from a wight somewhere before D16. When I'm going for long blades, I'll sometimes go deeper in the dungeon than I normally would to give wights more chances to spawn.

[duvessa]

Scimitars generate on the ground less frequently than long swords. The same applies to most monsters that can generate with them. While there could be a discrepancy from encountering Erica and efreets a lot, a more likely explanation is that you are experiencing clustering illusion.

[johlstei]

I looked at the code and maybe I'm missing something key, but it doesn't seem like scimitars ever generate on the ground. Maybe I'm misreading the code but there is a weapon list in makeitem.cc that is much smaller than the full list of weapons. Scimitars seem to only generate in monster inventories (and maybe vaults? I don't know.)

[Siegurt]

The same applies to maces and flails though (the actual weapons mace and flail) and to halberds and tridents (halberds are the better weapon, earlier, and much more frequent, so it applies more here). There isn't always a correlation between strength and rarity for other weapons and it really isn't necessary, because the tendency of rare weapons/weapons that appear later in the game to be stronger still exists. It's not like long swords (or maces or tridents) are meaningless because there is still a significant number of games where you don't find a scimitar before a long sword, and then you have to deal with that - even if it isn't the norm.

Welll, flails do generate quite frequently (in the inventory of gnolls, and orcs) early, I nearly always have at least a flail in the temple-staircase levels. If we're equating Mace -> Falchion, and Flail -> Longsword and Morningstar -> Scimitar, I would say I upgrade from Mace->Fail about 95% of the time before finding a Morningstar and I upgrade from Falchion->Longsword before finding a Scimitar about 50% of the time.

Halberds and tridents I agree are a much closer comparison (I very often find a halberd before a trident)

Long Swords are kind of weird though, there is no "low end two-handed longsword" It'd have to be like Dam:14 Speed:14 or something weird like that, which doesn't happen to exist.

[duvessa]

I looked at the code and maybe I'm missing something key, but it doesn't seem like scimitars ever generate on the ground. Maybe I'm misreading the code but there is a weapon list in makeitem.cc that is much smaller than the full list of weapons.

You are missing this part near the end of the same function:

  Code:

        while (true)
        {
            const int wpntype = random2(NUM_WEAPONS);

            if (x_chance_in_y(weapon_rarity(wpntype), 10))
            {
                rc = static_cast<weapon_type>(wpntype);
                break;
            }
        }

[johlstei]

Yep there it is, thanks. That makes much more sense.