Rings of stealth are boring.

[Pollen_Golem]

Rings of stealth merely add +50 to your stealth. That is equivalent to 3.3 levels of stealth skill, for most species/forms. That’s really weak, and there’s never any point to wearing a ring of stealth past the early game. Even rings of +stat or +EV/AC/slay remain useful much longer than +stealth. Most other base-type rings give a qualitative or multiplicative bonus, and are often worth keeping to the very end. Rings of stealth could be interesting if they scaled in a way to make them viable late-game choices. Possible solutions:

1. Add +6 to Stealth Factor. This would give +0 stealth at 0 stealth skill and +150 stealth (+++) at 25 stealth skill.
2. Multiply stealth factor by either 1.5 or 1.33, which gives greater total stealth gains to species with a naturally high Stealth Factor, especially if multiple rings are cumulative.
3. Halve armor’s impact on stealth, effectively allowing stealth with heavy armor.
4. Double or triple the impact from +50 (+) to +100 (++) or +150 (+++) or remove rings of stealth entirely.

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Stealth

[duvessa]

Um, ring of stealth is already very good. Certainly more useful than most resistance rings, sustain abilities, or teleportation, and for many characters also more useful than ring of fire/ice, flight, magical power, and some stat rings.

Most other base-type rings give a qualitative or multiplicative bonus,

dexterity, evasion, intelligence, loudness, magical power, protection, protection from magic, slaying, strength
all of the best rings in the game (evasion, protection, slaying) give a flat bonus
i dont know wtf you mean by "qualitative" but i assume it means a resistance or flight or invisibility or something

1. Add +6 to Stealth Factor. This would give +0 stealth at 0 stealth skill and +150 stealth (+++) at 25 stealth skill.

2. Multiply stealth factor by either 1.5 or 1.33, which gives greater total stealth gains to species with a naturally high Stealth Factor, especially if multiple rings are cumulative.

This makes it useless for the majority of characters, but absurdly good for a few characters. That doesn't sound like a good design, we don't need another ring of ice.

3. Halve armor’s impact on stealth, effectively allowing stealth with heavy armor.

This is a strict nerf to the ring until 13 ER armour, at which point no character wearing it is interested that much in stealth in the first place.

4. Double or triple the impact from +50 (+) to +100 (++) or +150 (+++) or remove rings of stealth entirely.

It's already really strong and +100 stealth early game would be insane. Second option sounds good to me though.

[Berder]

Ring of stealth is one of the weakest rings, yes, and after I have a couple decent rings I'm just going to drop any rings of stealth I find. I'd much rather wear an rf+ or ev+4 or ac+4 ring, for example. 50 stealth is not very important outside the early game. I think it would take rather a lot of stealth for this ring not to be an automatic drop. Like, if it was 50 + xl*10 stealth, that would be interesting. Of course, two rings of stealth would have to have no additional effect, in that case.

[chequers]

It's true that the constant +stealth is most useful in early game and stealth users have little benefit from these rings later, but I wouldn't want to ruin their utility in early game.

Perhaps keeping their constant increase but adding a multiplier too would work, so stealth ring is +50 like now but also has an enhancer component (with enhancer stacking penalties like for spells). In early game you'd get 0 + 50 * 1.2 ~ 50, and in late game you'd get 500 + 50 * 1.2 ~ 600.

[Pollen_Golem]

Like, if it was 50 + xl*10 stealth, that would be interesting. Of course, two rings of stealth would have to have no additional effect, in that case.

Amulet of Stealth

[Berder]

Like, if it was 50 + xl*10 stealth, that would be interesting. Of course, two rings of stealth would have to have no additional effect, in that case.

Amulet of Stealth

That's really a good idea. Unlike ring slots, I usually don't have anything good in my amulet slot for most of the game, and if Stealth was an amulet then I would wear it a lot more.

[byrel]

I dunno. Flat stealth is one of those things which is basically always useful. The ability to walk into LOS of an OoF or Pan Lord and decide to walk right back out of LoS without drawing aggro is valuable on any character. You don't need to be stealth dependent to really feel the tactical benefits of a bit of stealth.

I'm not opposed to some sort of scaling on it, but I think it needs to retain a flat component for the benefit to non-stealth-training/early-game heros. Maybe something like 50 + 3*(stealth skill). That would basically bump Trolls up to Minotaurs, Minotaurs up to normal species, normal species up to small/stealthy, and small/stealthy up to bloodless vampire stealth factors. Two of them would make bloodless vampires as stealthy as a tree.

[Sandman25]

You don't need to be stealth dependent to really feel the tactical benefits of a bit of stealth.

You do. The ring does literally nothing for character in heavy armour with low stealth skill.

[byrel]

You do. The ring does literally nothing for character in heavy armour with low stealth skill.

I agree that by itself, the ring does nothing for a heavy armor character. It also does nothing for people wearing the shield of the gong or worshiping Qazlal. It's only useful to augment your stealth.

But what I said is that stealth in general is useful on non-stealth dependent characters, and I stand by that. A ring of stealth can reduce the needed investment, but no, it isn't enough by itself if you are taking anti-stealth choices.

Just to run some numbers, suppose you want to be "Quite Stealthy" while wearing FDA with Dex of 12. FDA cuts your stealth by 80.67, Dex gives you 48, and you need >120. (assume normal species, no Qaz, etc.)
Without ring: stealth = 10, With ring, stealth = 6.8. That's less than half the XP investment. (though generally, by the time you get FDA that skill investment is mostly negligible unless you have REALLY bad aptitudes.)

OK, well FDA is really rather medium armour. Suppose we're looking at plate, with Dex of 12, etc. Same goal.
Without ring: stealth = 19.2, With ring, stealth = 15.9. That's still 50% more XP investment required without the ring. And the XP at that point really does matter.

Next, let's look at a really favorable case: a troll wearing FDA, with Dex of 8.
Without ring: stealth = 19.6, With ring, stealth = 14.0. Again, less than half the XP investment required with a ring. For comparison, that's the same amount of experience required to raise your unarmed combat from level 21 to 27. You save that by wearing a ring. If you don't really NEED a resistance ring/+5 EV ring or what ever, it's a pretty good deal.

Edit: To be clear, all calculations here are done with the current ring, increasing stealth by a flat 50. Obviously the scaling suggestions would save you even more XP.

[Sandman25]

Dex is multiplied by 3, not by 4. I am afraid by the time a plate armour character gets 15+ levels in stealth, there will be much better rings to use.

[byrel]

Dex is multiplied by 3, not by 4.

I did know the dex thing, but I temporarily lost my ability to do math. I blame the ineptitude weaver in the corner of my cube. The troll figures are still correct because I outsourced the math to google, who is ineptitudity immune.

That changes the platemail example to:
Without ring: stealth = 20, With ring, stealth = 16.7.
With nearly identical implications.

I am afraid by the time a plate armour character gets 15+ levels in stealth, there will be much better rings to use.

That depends so much on dropped egos, etc. But I can agree with you in 90% of games.

My point is it's not a useless ring (in my opinion at least) on most characters. It's outclassed by some (particularly flat AC/EV rings, and needed resistances) but it's a non-useless ring by the end of a 3-rune game on most heros. It's not a no-brainer, it's just fairly situational.

[Sandman25]

My point is it's not a useless ring (in my opinion at least) on most characters. It's outclassed by some (particularly flat AC/EV rings, and needed resistances) but it's a non-useless ring by the end of a 3-rune game on most heros. It's not a no-brainer, it's just fairly situational.

I am playing SpAK currently, it has Stealth 15+ after Lair/Orc and it has ring of protection from magic, ring of protection from fire, ring of protection from cold, ring of protection from poison and ring of stealth (I have robe with +2 slaying so I have no resists). Do you think I am wearing ring of stealth in late Dungeon?

[mps]

I like 3 (the ER penalty reduction). Retain the current flat bonus, throw in the ER penalty bit, and rings of stealth would be one of the best ring types throughout the game.

[KittenInMyCerealz]

Supporting the change to amulet and buffing it to 50+(x*stealth skill) x being 3-5
The amulet slot altogether should have some additions to it. All the current ones are quite boring. (rMut, rCorr, Gourmand and Faith being situational, it only leaves you a choice between Clarity, Regen and Spirit)

[byrel]

My point is it's not a useless ring (in my opinion at least) on most characters. It's outclassed by some (particularly flat AC/EV rings, and needed resistances) but it's a non-useless ring by the end of a 3-rune game on most heros. It's not a no-brainer, it's just fairly situational.

I am playing SpAK currently, it has Stealth 15+ after Lair/Orc and it has ring of protection from magic, ring of protection from fire, ring of protection from cold, ring of protection from poison and ring of stealth (I have robe with +2 slaying so I have no resists). Do you think I am wearing ring of stealth in late Dungeon?

Given your opinion about them, probably not. I'd be ring swapping to get more stabs on non-elementally threatening monsters (basically all the vault themed ones, stone giants, shadow dragons, etc. Also most popcorn.)

[Sandman25]

Given your opinion about them, probably not. I'd be ring swapping to get more stabs on non-elementally threatening monsters (basically all the vault themed ones, stone giants, shadow dragons, etc. Also most popcorn.)

Stealth is not reliable. Having no rC+/rF+/MR can kill me during autoexplore without a chance to react. If the ring guaranteed that I have first action vs every monster which I notice, I would happily use it.

[byrel]

Given your opinion about them, probably not. I'd be ring swapping to get more stabs on non-elementally threatening monsters (basically all the vault themed ones, stone giants, shadow dragons, etc. Also most popcorn.)

Stealth is not reliable. Having no rC+/rF+/MR can kill me during autoexplore without a chance to react. If the ring guaranteed that I have first action vs every monster which I notice, I would happily use it.

I might buy the no MR thing because paralyze, except that MR is not reliable either, and some paralyze ignores MR anyhow. So you can theoretically be killed by not wearing the stealth if you walk into sight of a giant eyeball plus kill-machine and are instantly paralyzed.

Having on rC+/rF+ does reduce the danger of being killed suddenly, as it takes way more elemental damage to do it. But it's not like walking into sight of two orbs of fire (not on Zot:5, as you'll obviously be wearing fire resist there on your other hand when autoexploring) and instantly getting spotted by both in spite of your stealth ring and getting a double max-damage fireball to the face is particularly more likely than walking into two draconian scorchers and instantly getting two full damage hellfire's to the face. Or two fiends+ a draconian scorcher and getting double torment+hellfire. Or stone giants, or any other irresistable threat.

I contend that the stealth meaning that I'm less likely to be noticed by the hypothetical instakill-potential combo is a reasonable tradeoff for a defense which completely eliminates certain instakill combos (and you therefore call reliable) while doing nothing for others.

[Sandman25]

I have 69 HP as far as I remember (Fighting 9).
Also consider approaching a fire dragon for stab. What would you prefer: rF+ or minor stealth bonus?

[byrel]

Also consider approaching a fire dragon for stab. What would you prefer: rF+ or minor stealth bonus?

rF+. Fire dragons are dangerous without rF+, and not terribly hard to kill or avoid if I don't get the stab.

I have 69 HP as far as I remember (Fighting 9).

Ah, I forgot where you were in the game. In that case, the resistances are even less generally desirable IMHO. 50 stealth will still be a noticeable upgrade in your not-being-detected-first ability, stealth is still very potent as the HDs are low, and elemental attacks are generally rare. Ettins, hydras, stone giants, hill giants, yaktuar/centaur captains, and anything in shoals are much bigger walk-around-corner-and-die threats than the occasional dragon.

Looking at http://crawl.akrasiac.org/scoring/killers.html, the first ice-fire threat is ice beasts (not a problem anymore) the next is ice dragons, then ice statue (probably people being brave in ice caves), then fire drake. I understand that there's a lot of bad tactics and strategy going into these deaths, and they're spread out over the entire game, not just your portion. But ettin's kill more people than dragons, and I think we can agree that they're similar time threats. Looking through that list, it's pretty clear to me that the average player doesn't die from not wearing fire+cold resistances very often. Poison and electricity seem way more lethal (possibly because the resistances are rarer.) And irresistible stuff is the most common of all by a huge margin.

[Sandman25]

Ok, I got your point but I will continue using rF+ and MR rings, sorry. I mean I am not than interested in making easy monsters easier, I am interested in making extremely dangerous monsters less deadly so I am trying to decrease max damage which I can get even if it increases average (or median) damage which I get.

[byrel]

I mean I am not than interested in making easy monsters easier, I am interested in making extremely dangerous monsters less deadly so I am trying to decrease max damage which I can get even if it increases average (or median) damage which I get.

I completely agree with these priorities. I like stealth because it prevents me from receiving unexpected damage of any amount, not because it reduces it (while I'm sure it does somewhat, I don't care). Stealth means I can control the engagement, and that means I basically never walk around the corner into a previously wakened hydra (cause waking stuff up happens eventually) and get attacked 8 times. It just doesn't see me, and I can plan the engagement. I understand this isn't reliable, but that doesn't stop me from wearing MR or EV rings.

I also enjoy it because it makes it quicker and easier to kill popcorn, but that basically doesn't matter in the final analysis. Either way the popcorns dead, the only real difference is how much noise it made dying.

[Rast]

Not all jewelery is, or should be, equally useful.

[MrPlanck]

Boring, perhaps, but I find them quite useful in most games.

[dowan]

I find them to be a much better ring than no ring at all. They're usually better than sustatt, cursed rings, rings of ice/fire, stat/ev/ac/slaying rings of +2 or less, or magical power for the non-magically inclined, assuming I'm not wearing armor or playing a species that makes them worthless.

I guess I agree that they're somewhat boring, but no more than almost all the other rings.

[johlstei]

What intuition enables you to determine the value of N for which slaying+N becomes better than stealth? I have no intuition at all for that. Do you have a heuristic? Right now mine is "wear stealth on characters that are stealthy on purpose" but that's quite suboptimal I'm sure.

[byrel]

What intuition enables you to determine the value of N for which slaying+N becomes better than stealth? I have no intuition at all for that. Do you have a heuristic? Right now mine is "wear stealth on characters that are stealthy on purpose" but that's quite suboptimal I'm sure.

Well... it's more of a feel thing. What do I need more? a better ability to plan my engagements? (say, if I keep walking into a room and someone instantly summoning/conjuring something) Or the ability to pierce AC better? (maybe I struggle against Shadow dragons.) Or the ability to win mano-a-mano engagements because you just are out of tools/consumables?

If you don't need more damage for the fights you're currently in and soon expect to be in, I would almost always take stealth as it prevents you from getting trapped into unexpectedly bad fights. Assuming it would do some good of course; it's useless in heavy armor with no sources of stealth.

[dowan]

What intuition enables you to determine the value of N for which slaying+N becomes better than stealth? I have no intuition at all for that. Do you have a heuristic? Right now mine is "wear stealth on characters that are stealthy on purpose" but that's quite suboptimal I'm sure.

Intuition? None whatsoever, it's 100% arbitrary until I find some data that I can use to make a more informed choice. +2 just seems like too small to make much difference. I'm quite sure my method is not optimal.

[onget]

Stealth is boring.

If you are lucky, you can boring run away. Most only it.

[and into]

Really as far as boring jewelry goes, ring of sustain abilities has to take the cake.

I quite like stealth rings already, however, more to the point, I don't think increasing their effect would actually make them more appealing to those who do not find them appealing already.

[Pollen_Golem]

Just to run some numbers, suppose you want to be "Quite Stealthy" while wearing FDA with Dex of 12. FDA cuts your stealth by 80.67, Dex gives you 48, and you need >120. (assume normal species, no Qaz, etc.)
Without ring: stealth = 10, With ring, stealth = 6.8. That's less than half the XP investment. (though generally, by the time you get FDA that skill investment is mostly negligible unless you have REALLY bad aptitudes.)

OK, well FDA is really rather medium armour. Suppose we're looking at plate, with Dex of 12, etc. Same goal.
Without ring: stealth = 19.2, With ring, stealth = 15.9. That's still 50% more XP investment required without the ring. And the XP at that point really does matter.

OK that is really overcomplicating the whole matter. And, setting a goal for a particular character to become "quite stealthy"? Who does that?
The easier way to understand stealth rings is as a skill boost.
A ring of stealth is equivalent to having an additional 3.3 stealth skill, on most species. Look above, 10-6.8 = 3.2 and 19.2-15.9 = 3.3
A ring of stealth is equivalent to having an additional 2.8 stealth skill on Sp/Op/Na/Ko/Ha/Fe, whose stealth aptitudes are so good that gaining an additional 2.8 levels in stealth is very cheap, so why would they even care about that tiny bit more stealth?
A ring of stealth is equivalent to having an additional 5.5 stealth skill on Tr/Og/Ce, and an additional 4.2 on Mi, because for every level you get in stealth skill, you get less stealth+ on those specific species.

FDA's stealth penalty of 80 is equivalent to 1.6 rings of stealth, or 5.4 skill levels in stealth for most species.
You're much better off wearing a Shadow Dragon Armor and slipping on a ring of resist fire, than wearing a Fire Dragon Armor and slipping on a ring of stealth.

Next, let's look at a really favorable case: a troll wearing FDA, with Dex of 8.
Without ring: stealth = 19.6, With ring, stealth = 14.0. Again, less than half the XP investment required with a ring. For comparison, that's the same amount of experience required to raise your unarmed combat from level 21 to 27. You save that by wearing a ring. If you don't really NEED a resistance ring/+5 EV ring or what ever, it's a pretty good deal.

What? Why would you aim to make a stealthy troll like that? The worst stealth aptitude in the game, and terrible returns on every skill level reached! At what point in the game would Trolls prioritize stealth over throwing, or magic, or something? Trolls don't even have any positive apts, so it's not like you'll have many skills close to level 20 in any reasonable timeframe. And all for what, 120 stealth?

I suppose some stealth can be an alright investment in a robe/sda/leather-clad Ogre of something like Trog or Dith. Ogre stealth aptitude is -1 which is alright. Minotaurs are likely to wear normal body armor.

[Pollen_Golem]

Really as far as boring jewelry goes, ring of sustain abilities has to take the cake.

Actually ring of sustain abilities is very interesting. I'm surprised you would say that. Its effect on stat-drain is DRAMATIC. When you swap it in to avoid degeneration as an undead, or to absorb death curses, or whatever, it's not boring at all. Especially since you need to choose a ring to take off.

[Slogo]

What if rather than boosting stealth further/more and causing problems the Ring of Stealth would also affect stabbing damage? This could range wildly in how it manifests, but the easiest/most straightforward would be just if it acted like you had a few extra points of stealth skill when stabbing.

The key there would be that for stealthy characters the rings would be roughly the same in value now (they usually 1 hit things anyways): pretty good at getting your character off the ground, but maybe not the best later on. But for characters that aren't necessarily going the stabber route they'd have some interesting flexibility. Right now if you find a ring of stealth as a non-stabber you'd pretty much just use it to avoid fights which isn't particularly interesting (but not terrible). If instead the ring meant you could stab as if you had some actual stealth skill maybe you'd be able to pull off a few stabs here and there for free popcorn kills or (even better) get over confident and try to stab something that you end up waking up and getting into a world of trouble with.

[byrel]

Assuming you are already training a melee weapon (you probably should be) you can get stabs just fine. Stab damage scales off of weapon skill+stealth. You don't need much for good stabs. I routinely get stabs on octopodes not wearing a ring of stealth in the early game (they have an innate +40 stealth). (Not that it keeps them alive that long. Damn that OpWn challenge. )

At this point, ring of stealth is already OP early and minor late. It can easily be equivalent to having triple your stealth xp investment early, even if you train stealth to 5. If you find a ring of stealth d1-5, I think most characters would be silly to not train stealth to 5ish. It's very low investment, and starting a fight with a monster at half HP from your non-shortblades stab makes fighting the monster easy. Plus no unavoidable deaths to sigmund, orc priests, etc.

[Slogo]

In my experience with low stealth score your stabs will often be for like 50-75% hp (great, but not a 1 hit kill). Hence the suggestion since it changes something up in a way that makes it desirable without just making the player harder to detect.

I don't disagree with their early strength... but that's a problem design wise. It's an item that makes the early game great if you luck into it and doesn't really do much otherwise. Yeah there are some randart combos or drops that sort of do the same (or the same for certain builds), but those are less intentional (in the case of randarts) or have late game uses for some characters. Rings of Stealth just feel like early filler. So yeah maybe just adding on to Ring of Stealth is too much and maybe you'd adjust the stealth bonus portion of the item to compensate.

My main drive is that we've sort of been here before. When you look at Dithmenos and Boots of the Assassin both went over many iterations (for Dith the general idea of a stealth god) and both sort of come to the same conclusion: you can't really just have something that hard boosts the ability to be undetected and have it be interesting (the same really applies to invisibility's implementation as well). In Dith's case you get shadow mimic and the active abilities rather than a straight stealth boost (though Dith also provides this). With Boots of the Assassin you get stabbing for other weapon types and detect monsters. Both solutions look outside of stealth directly to find a good niche and purpose.

I feel like Rings of Stealth, if they're ever going to have a place late game without being too strong early, need the same lateral thinking. Maybe just adding stabbing dmg isn't the right solution, but something like that probably is.

[byrel]

I'm pretty OK with having a ring that makes the first half of the game easier. Heck, we have spells and entire backgrounds that do that. (VM for instance). I will wear a ring of stealth till about my first rune a lot of the time (depends on drops.) Yeah, it falls off, but noone complains that holy wrath is nearly useless for the first 2/3 of the game. Same for short swords, which are useless lategame.

[bcadren]

You know there are too many items. We could just combine the ring of stealth and the ring of invisibility. It's usefulness will still decrease in mid to late game, but...it'd be more interesting to have both effects.

[Igxfl]

Proposal:

Rings of Stealth add a large multiplier to current stealth, but only against monsters not in LOS.

They make it a lot easier to escape pursuers and slip through unique-infested levels, but don't help for stabbing or keeping newly discovered monsters unaware.

[Slogo]

I'm pretty OK with having a ring that makes the first half of the game easier. Heck, we have spells and entire backgrounds that do that. (VM for instance). I will wear a ring of stealth till about my first rune a lot of the time (depends on drops.) Yeah, it falls off, but noone complains that holy wrath is nearly useless for the first 2/3 of the game. Same for short swords, which are useless lategame.

I don't think those are really comparable though.

VM does have some late game legs (poison cloud is useful through Vaults at the very least) AND it's something you buy into at the start of the game with your class selection.

On the other end something like Holy Wrath is only really useful late game, but the probability of having access to holy wrath approaches 100% the more turns you take. This means you almost always have an opportunity to switch to it, but you have to make choices (have I already used my enchant weapon scrolls, is the Holy Wrath brand on a good base type, etc.) and you can always use TSO to get one.

I don't think the logic that makes Holy Wrath work applies to the early game. The probability of finding a ring of stealth early on is low (it approaches 0 the fewer turns you have taken). Which makes it just some item to luck into... which crawl doesn't really need more of. There's already plenty of insanely strong early items to luck into (envokable invis, +5 slaying, evasion/AC rings, any rod except maybe inaccuracy, any sort of randart or uncommon base weapon type, etc.).

[byrel]

Probability of a useful HW weapon is significantly less than 50% in a 3-rune game. And a ring of stealth is less game-breaking than invis, or even a dagger of venom (which is a much more common find). I don't have a problem with it's game impact.

The thing about crawl is you always luck into something if you're alert and adaptable enough to use it. More options to luck into is good because it provides you with even more options to adapt to.

[bcadren]

Rings of Stealth add a large multiplier to current stealth, but only against monsters not in LOS.

Stealth doesn't affect things not in your LoS, only noise does.

[byrel]

Stealth affects the probability they lose track of where you are while out of LOS