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I've run across three scrolls of vorpalize weapon in my game and yes I used one to awesome-up a bow, but my other items are already branded or artifacts.

So that means that two extremely valuable scrolls go to waste.

It is a shame these scrolls cannot be used on missiles (arrows of penetration, woo!) or on armor (robe of, uhh, magification!, woo!), that all they do is seal a brand applied to a weapon or give that weapon a more damaging effect.

Giving these rare scrolls more versatility would be cool.

minmay wrote:Gripe: scrolls of vorpalise weapon will create explosions of fire/frost when they affix the appropriate brand. While this is good from a flavor perspective or whatever, it means it's optimal to drop all your other scrolls and potions before you affix a brand, which is just silly (and annoying).

Wow. I rather doubt that's intentional, seeing how we've added code to avoid exactly that with the scroll of immolation. Could you please report this on the tracker? I'd fix it myself, but I'm short on time right now. Thanks!

There are a couple vorpal requests at the moment

- Revise the vorpal brand applique : https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=1921
- The one jpeg just requested : https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=3550

Any feedback regarding usage of Vorpalize Weapon on missiles or armor as well?

I've been thinking (and this is totally non-representative of the rest of the devteam as I haven't talked it over with anyone else) that it might be interesting to merge all three enchant weapon scrolls into one. Basically, remove EW I and EW II, make EW III show up earlier but overall rarer than all current EW scrolls taken together. Then allow the player to choose a weapon (or stack of missiles) from the inventory and include the scroll in the identify/recharging/enchant armour handling. [*]

Making the vorpalisation scroll work the same hadn't occured to me before, but I like the idea of extending it to armour, as in give a random, but good resistance. No robes of resistance or boots of running, of course, but a cloak of see invisible, a plate mail of poison resistance or gloves of cold resistance? Sure, why not? Would introduce more choices: when to use the scroll, and on what item? And if you find an artefact item, do you switch?

*) I don't want to include several weapon scrolls because that would mean that burning any "item modification" scroll on weapons would become a no-brainer.

jpeg wrote:I've been thinking (and this is totally non-representative of the rest of the devteam as I haven't talked it over with anyone else) that it might be interesting to merge all three enchant weapon scrolls into one. Basically, remove EW I and EW II, make EW III show up earlier but overall rarer than all current EW scrolls taken together. Then allow the player to choose a weapon (or stack of missiles) from the inventory and include the scroll in the identify/recharging/enchant armour handling. [*]

Definitely!

I'd even support combining enchant I, II, III, and armor into one "scroll of enchantment". It'd make for interesting decisions.

I'd also support combining scrolls of detect and remove curse into a scroll of blessing (which removes curses is there are any and detects curses).

I love for the roles of the scroll of vorpalization to be expanded.

(I'd even combine the to-hit and damage pluses on weapons, just like for missiles. But I might be extreme in my views.)

One of the issues I have with vorpalize weapon scrolls is for non-spellcasters.

What if you find an awesome normal bow and you really want it to be a bow of flaming? Spellcasters can learn the brand spells and use them then vorpalize, but non-spellcasters have to hunt down a bow of flaming instead.

Maybe I'm really not thinking it through though (since I play berserkers and Trog hates spellcasting), since branding is usually a low-level spell.

Is there a list of the branding spells that vorpalize weapon can apply?

smock wrote:
jpeg wrote:I've been thinking (and this is totally non-representative of the rest of the devteam as I haven't talked it over with anyone else) that it might be interesting to merge all three enchant weapon scrolls into one. Basically, remove EW I and EW II, make EW III show up earlier but overall rarer than all current EW scrolls taken together. Then allow the player to choose a weapon (or stack of missiles) from the inventory and include the scroll in the identify/recharging/enchant armour handling. [*]

Definitely!

I'd even support combining enchant I, II, III, and armor into one "scroll of enchantment". It'd make for interesting decisions.

Sounds interesting!

For armour, to throw in some randomisation, the armour plus received would be (2d10 +4 / 10), rounded down. This would mean approx. 15% chance of either +0 or +2, and 70% of +1 as it is now.
If all those scrolls were combined, then for weapons they would act as one EW1 and one EW2 (with current failure chances).
To counterbalance this, the scrolls would be twice as rare to find than all enchant scrolls combined now.

How would this work for the scrolls unification?

jpeg wrote:I've been thinking (and this is totally non-representative of the rest of the devteam as I haven't talked it over with anyone else) that it might be interesting to merge all three enchant weapon scrolls into one. Basically, remove EW I and EW II, make EW III show up earlier but overall rarer than all current EW scrolls taken together. Then allow the player to choose a weapon (or stack of missiles) from the inventory and include the scroll in the identify/recharging/enchant armour handling. [*]

Making the vorpalisation scroll work the same hadn't occured to me before, but I like the idea of extending it to armour, as in give a random, but good resistance. No robes of resistance or boots of running, of course, but a cloak of see invisible, a plate mail of poison resistance or gloves of cold resistance? Sure, why not? Would introduce more choices: when to use the scroll, and on what item? And if you find an artefact item, do you switch?

*) I don't want to include several weapon scrolls because that would mean that burning any "item modification" scroll on weapons would become a no-brainer.

It would also make item identification a tad tricker. I like it.

I agree that vorp scrolls currently tend to be a disappointing find - You find it and think "awesome" but then you realize that you can't really do much with it.

What if the vorp scroll gave a random brand? A lot of the time you'd still get plain vorpal, but sometimes flame/ice/poison, and even rarer, electric or speed. It would also overwrite an existing brand. And it could do the same to armour. Imagine creating a steam dragon armour of rF+ or something? That would be cool.

I like the idea of combining scrolls for armour and weapons.

If they are made rarer though there needs to be a very low or nil failure chance. I currently don't enchant many things above +4 because there are not that many of these scrolls in my games and I don't like wasting them for that reason, esp. when I know that whatever I'm enchanting could be made obsolete by my next god gift.

I would consider failure as getting just +1 to accuracy - that already makes a nearly negligible difference to performance anyway. There should be no result of +0, as there currently isn't for armour anymore.

Also - what if armour had a chance of getting its EV penalty lowered by the "ECW I" aspect of the scroll?

Currently, this to me seems like the no-brainer way to approach use of ECW scrolls:
ECW I - only use these on ammo. They don't do much for melee weapons, but they give +1,+1 for ammo
ECW II - only use these on melee weapons because +Dam enchantment is precious and you can get the same effect on ammo with cheapass ECW I scrolls
ECW III - only use on a weapon you figure you'll have for a long, long time. Best to use on an already highly enchanted item because it has a better chance of actually doing something than the other single-shot scrolls. The result is that I rarely use it because once I have a good enough weapon, I generally also have an artefact weapon.

I know the game is supposed to encourage the use of disposable items, but the high failure rate above +4 really discourages the use of these. Once I have my artefact weapons I tend to save them all for ammo enchanting because there will always be more ammo to enchant (and you get double value on ammo enchanting).

danr wrote:I agree that vorp scrolls currently tend to be a disappointing find - You find it and think "awesome" but then you realize that you can't really do much with it.

What if the vorp scroll gave a random brand? A lot of the time you'd still get plain vorpal, but sometimes flame/ice/poison, and even rarer, electric or speed. It would also overwrite an existing brand. And it could do the same to armour. Imagine creating a steam dragon armour of rF+ or something? That would be cool.

What about applying an additional brand? Is that possible? "Flaming Sword of Speed"?
Or maybe turning the item into an artifact named after the player "SoandSo's [name]" with no more modifications allowed and the whole "unchangeable artifact resistance" thing? Depending on your level, it could be called "SoandSo's [name]" and could possibly be added like a bones file.

There was a pen-and-paper RPG called Earthdawn (it was the "prequel" to the more popular and earlier 'Shadowrun") and one of the concepts explained to me was that if you used the same weapon for long enough and did enough awesome stuff with it, that weapon or item gained a legendary / artifact-like status.

smock wrote:I'd even support combining enchant I, II, III, and armor into one "scroll of enchantment". It'd make for interesting decisions.

Combining the three enchant weapon scrolls is fine, but adding in armor too is going too far. Casters have minimal motivation to upgrade their weapon, so they would basically get twice as many enchant armors with no penalty. Melee characters would be forced to top off their weapon as soon as possible, so they would effectively lose out on the higher enchantment cap of heavy armor.

KoboldLord wrote:
smock wrote:I'd even support combining enchant I, II, III, and armor into one "scroll of enchantment". It'd make for interesting decisions.

Combining the three enchant weapon scrolls is fine, but adding in armor too is going too far. Casters have minimal motivation to upgrade their weapon, so they would basically get twice as many enchant armors with no penalty. Melee characters would be forced to top off their weapon as soon as possible, so they would effectively lose out on the higher enchantment cap of heavy armor.

If the benefits to a unification were great, I think the issue you mention could be overcome. For example, having a fail rate on armour enchantments that is larger for more-enchanted armour, either depending on the current enchantment level or (perhaps better) as the current enchantment level's proportion of the maximum enchantment, would help. It'd make is so that the success rate on enchanting a plate mail to +8 (max enchantment +10) is the same as the success rate of enchanting a mottled dragon to +4 (max enchantment +5).

That said, the benefits of unification may not be all that great.

This thread deserves a resurrection as I still feel Vorpalize Weapon is a gyp.

There are four scrolls
Enchant Weapon 1 - enchants non-artefact accuracy up to +9; chance diminishes after +3
Enchant Weapon 2 - enchants non-artefact damage up to +9; chance diminishes after +3
Enchant Weapon 3 - randomly acts as 1-2 scrolls of EW1 and 1-2 scrolls of EW2.

Odds of success for enchant weapon scroll: <+4: 100%; +4: 56%; +5: 44%; +6: 33%; +7: 22%; +8: 11% .

Vorpalize Weapon - makes permanent a temporary brand of cold, fire, drain or venom ego, or applies vorpal ego.

Vorpalize weapon will not work with the following egos:
holy_wrath, electrocution, pain, distortion, vampiric, orc_slaying, dragon_slaying, speed, antimagic, chaos

current comments
1 - I don't agree with combining the Enchant Weapon / Armor scrolls.
2 - Scrolls of EW are rare enough and artefacts are abundant enough that I believe the odds for an EW scroll to succeed should increase by some factor (maybe odds + (odds / 2)) with each EW scroll spent. Odds reset on the next successful EW scroll used for that value. If this is used, consider that overall base chances of success can be lowered.
Example: if going to +4, I have a 56% chance. If the EW scroll fails, the next attempt has a (56 + 28) 84% chance. If successful, going to +5 starts as normal at 44%.

XuaXua wrote:Or maybe turning the item into an artifact named after the player "SoandSo's [name]"

Quoting this because I love the idea of character named artifact. It would be awesome if you could somehow "bond" the item to your character by enchanting it and making it "yours" (as if it wasn't before, ha!

).

EDIT: To expand upon this idea, it should only get your name on it after you improved the item by enchanting by some fixed amount. Let's say you start with a plain quickblade and enchant it to max and it would become character's quickblade +9 and could even get a one more point of armour or damage or some small bonus (perhaps in connection to your related skill?) to make it really "special". I know I should've probably create a separate topic for this but I feel it's related to the discussion.

How about this?
1. Vorpal should go away.
2. EW III should take the role of Vorpal. If the weapon isn't vorpalized, then vorpal it. If it is, then the EW III scroll works like it does now.

3. Vorpalization should be able to be overwritten by another brand. Perhaps both by the spells (Flame, Freeze, Lethal, Poison, Excruciating, Distort) temporarily, and when using a EW III, permanently ("Do you really want to enchant your Vorpal weapon with Frost?").

I would like Scrolls of Vorpalization to work with more egos (Pain, Holy Wrath, Electrocution).

I know this is a problem with many due to certain gods giving out particular egos for branding; if that is a problem, then make the god still give out the ego, or have his god ego enhance an existing ego. God pain on top of brand pain.

XuaXua wrote:I would like Scrolls of Vorpalization to work with more egos (Pain, Holy Wrath, Electrocution).

I know this is a problem with many due to certain gods giving out particular egos for branding; if that is a problem, then make the god still give out the ego, or have his god ego enhance an existing ego. God pain on top of brand pain.

This sounds nice, but I dunno, it might give the devs a little headache :p

The problem is not only that this would devalue some god gifts, but also that it would be pretty overpowered. Some brands need to be rare and hard to get. If you want to use them, find a weapon that has what you want or spend some mana and spell slots on the buff.

What if vorpalize weapon, instead of making a temporary brand permanent (or in addition to it), allowed you to transfer a brand from one weapon to another (whether the weapon was generated with a brand, or branded by a god)?

Well, I kinda think the special brands are special for a reason. If you could perma-poison weapons or move that Holy Wrath from the ankus to the broadaxe in every game, those brands would be less special. Awesomely good = no-brainer, and practically guaranteeing such an item turns a fun moment of Win into a tedious countdown until you get your requisite Item of High Usefulness. If artefacts were commonplace, then finding a good one would become a chore for everyone, instead of a brightening of your day.

That said, I'm not sure that Draining should be one of the special brands. I've always been just a bit disappointed when a Runed Dwarven Sabre turns out to be 'of Draining'. Perhaps Yred should gift Vampiricism, and Draining should become Vorpalizable (though such a decision might ought to wait until Minmay's Draining idea is sorted out).

edit: facepalm!

Draining and venom can be affixed. Nothing special about them.

And Yred gifts pain, not draining.

Ok, I'm completely lost then. What is it that Kiku gifts?

I meant Kiku, sorry. Kiku gifts the pain brand. Yred doesn't gift anything.

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Revise Vorpalize Weapon Scrolls

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