Gloves and Helmets


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Bim

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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 11:15

Gloves and Helmets

Hey gang,
I was wondering what (if any) the difference was between different types of gloves and helmets. I know the difference between hats and helmets, but I don't really see any difference between the types of helmets and types of gloves. I can't remember but I think spiked ones gives you an additional attack?

Anyway, unless there is a difference that I'm not seeing, I was wondering about implementing some? obviously they wouldn't have to be wildly different (gauntlets giving unarmed bonus whilst impeding spellcasting a little for instance) but at the moment they seem far to similar, at least I haven't noticed anything different.

Sorry if I've just not been paying attention.
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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 12:35

Re: Gloves and Helmets

Gloves and gauntlets are identical, this is just flavour. Some helmets have minor gameplay effect, like providing a headbutt attack or preventing a bite attack. Don't remember all the details.
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Bim

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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 13:01

Re: Gloves and Helmets

Here is what Henzell says: +1 AC. Helmets also add damage to your auxiliary unarmed headbutts, and spiked or horned ones add a little more, but won't let you headbutt without Unarmed skill as horns do. Visored helmets prevent bite attacks. Winged, crested, golden, and plumed descriptions are merely cosmetic. Since 0.5, jewelled is a randart prefix only.

Do you think it's worth spicing them up a bit? I know robes and animal skins are practically identical, but I always think it is quite confusing to have different names for things when they have no game-play difference, especially as crested, golden and plumed all sound as though they should do something extra (mostly golden).Could some small effects be added? Possibly golden could be changed to silver and have a chance to do minor damage to chaotic when the player gets hit by one? Or having crested be only for larger races?
Probably there are better ideas, but I find it abit confusing that they don't have much difference.
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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 15:50

Re: Gloves and Helmets

The really insignificant gameplay effects don't seem worth the effort. Who on earth ever knew that visored helmets prevent bite attacks, without checking that entry (and who cares? It adds nothing worthwhile other than "oh, don't wear a visored helmet if you're a Vampire"). I'd much rather either have them all be just cosmetic variants, or have actually noticeable gameplay differences and names.

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Bim

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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 17:22

Re: Gloves and Helmets

Agreed, it would be nice for them to have more effects, even if it was just a bigger armour boost for some (with EV penalty perhaps) or some auxiliary effects.
However, I think its far too confusing to have them only be cosmetic variants, as nothing else in the game really has that (or at least not in such large quantities). Obviously wizard hat and cap are the same, and so are robes and animal skins (although I still don't think that's great at all) but they are different items, not 'brands'.

I think there could be some interesting variation with them however, and lead to more interesting choices, even if just in ac/ev.
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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 17:49

Re: Gloves and Helmets

Helms and gloves are fine. Egos are (and should be) much stronger than effects from mundane items, so if you find an ego item you will use that. And in most 3 rune games you will find some sort of ego glove and helmet. So I don't think introducing more mechanically different helm/glove variants would create many relevant or interesting choices. Large effects would overshadow ego bonuses, and small ones are simply irrelevant as soon as you find an ego item or artifact. Increasing the ego chance for helms or gloves could be done instead, or more egos could be introduced. Having more egos with drawbacks could be nice, and would actually introduce a choice in some cases.

Equipment in crawl is generally a bit of a nobrainer IMO. Usually one of the items for each slot (among the few you have found) will be strictly the best for your character in almost all situations, and you just wear that. Spawning more ego items and introducing additional egos could help with that.
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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 18:36

Re: Gloves and Helmets

This may be a silly question but is there a way to search for both gloves and gauntlets in one search?

I sometimes miss pieces of equipment so I end up doing a search for cloaks, bucklers, or whatever else I may be missing by the time I find the lair. Recently I've found you can just search for "arm" to list all the gears so far but I was curious if a similar search would turn up just things that go on your hands?

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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 19:31

Re: Gloves and Helmets

Searching for glove||gauntlets works, but it would be nice if there were categories for each slot. A keyword that covered all unidentified egos, whether glowing or runed or embroidered or whatnot, would be nice, too.
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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 19:38

Re: Gloves and Helmets

snow wrote:Recently I've found you can just search for "arm" to list all the gears so far

"arm" matches armour. With the menu_colour_prefix_class option (default on), all items are prefixed with their base class.

jejorda2 wrote:Searching for glove||gauntlets works, but it would be nice if there were categories for each slot.

There isn't and I don't think it's worth it.

jejorda2 wrote:A keyword that covered all unidentified egos, whether glowing or runed or embroidered or whatnot, would be nice, too.

Searching for ego, brand or branded will also return all "potential" ego items (blue in inventory). I added this recently.
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Bim

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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 20:07

Re: Gloves and Helmets

Galefury wrote:Equipment in crawl is generally a bit of a nobrainer IMO.

This is a problem, and I agree completely. This is why I thought that introducing differences in helmets/gloves could help even this out slightly. Also, I mainly meant to make helmets and gloves in line with body armour's ac vs ev status, although more ego's with draw backs would work well. As you said there's problems with just adding minor effects or adding to major ones, but I don't think this is too much of a problem (as it occurs in every part of crawl) same with the egos.

However, the proposal was simply to cut out the confusion of 'do they do anything different from each other' and either get rid of all the superfluous names and just have Gauntlets, helm and spiked helm, or really increase the difference.

I've also had the difficulty of searching, so that's yet another reason to either do away with it or adjust.
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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 20:36

Re: Gloves and Helmets

Searching for hat|cap|helmet is really annoying, too. I'd definitely like keywords for individual slots.
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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 20:50

Re: Gloves and Helmets

I just discovered that searching for Long Blades, Short Blades, Axes, Maces, and Staves will all pull up everything in the dungeon in that class. However, searching for Bows brings up Crossbows too. Throwing only brings up throwing nets. Searching for "arm" pulled up a lot of things, everything from robes to spell books to a randart spear. Checked in a wizard mode save in 0.8.0.
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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 20:59

Re: Gloves and Helmets

"Missile" is a keyword that finds ammo.

After galehar mentioned the "ego" keyword, I figured out that you have to search for "ego&&sheild" to find the ego shields, as "ego shield" doesn't work.

Bim

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Post Wednesday, 20th July 2011, 23:10

Re: Gloves and Helmets

I agree with minmay until there is a better way to handle them, I hate to see a lessening of variation, but I really don't think having these pointless variations is a good and as said, completely confuses unspoiled players.

I think of myself as a pretty spoiled and knowledgeable crawler and I had no idea about any of this till today, and even so, it seems pointless to have extra variations that don't do anything (as in, I think we should keep visors and spiked, but everything else should go).
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Post Thursday, 21st July 2011, 00:02

Re: Gloves and Helmets

MarvinPA wrote:Searching for hat|cap|helmet is really annoying, too. I'd definitely like keywords for individual slots.

There.
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Post Friday, 22nd July 2011, 21:31

Re: Gloves and Helmets

What about searching for ego foo? I really love being able to look for ego by searching ego. But what if I want only ego armor? Later in the game when there is a lot of ego stuff it might be good to be able pare the list down a bit. In particular If I accidentally ruin my cloak by throwing it at a jelly maybe I want to find where all the other ego cloaks are.

Also with the new ego, if you start worshiping ash and search for ego ash will find any cool stuff that you may have looked over as he will identify all the egos for you.

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Post Friday, 22nd July 2011, 21:34

Re: Gloves and Helmets

Is this what you're looking for?
jejorda2 wrote:After galehar mentioned the "ego" keyword, I figured out that you have to search for "ego&&sheild" to find the ego shields, as "ego shield" doesn't work.
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Post Friday, 22nd July 2011, 22:10

Re: Gloves and Helmets

LunarHarp wrote:Also with the new ego, if you start worshiping ash and search for ego ash will find any cool stuff that you may have looked over as he will identify all the egos for you.

  Code:
ego && armour

  Code:
ego && cloak

And even if you don't worship Ash, it will also find all potentially ego items you haven't checked.
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