Ziggurat Zagger
Posts: 5382
Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36
Rebalance dragon armors, possibly make hides easier to find
All the dragon armors tend in practice to be pretty bad unless 1.) you have an unusually high number of ?enchant armor; 2.) you find a dragon hide early on; 3.) you find a dragon armor early, or else not so early but it already has some +s on it.
Of those three events, #2 isn't so rare for mottled, steam, swamp, and occasionally FDA and IDA. However FDA and IDA are often annoying since they give an elemental vulnerability, which is sometimes a pain to work around, but if that's not a problem for your character they are good. Assuming you manage to get one early enough. For all the other dragon armors, any of those three events happening is very rare. And in the case of 1.) you could opt to eventually switch to a dragon armor, but it will probably be mid- or late game.
Aside from all the above, GDA has the highest encumbrance and the worst base AC:encumbrance ratio of any armor the game, and by the time you are actually fighting the dragons that can make that hide, you probably (hopefully) already have at least decent resistances. While it is nice to double dip when possible, in general the most important thing your body armor provides is good base defenses (AC+EV) for your character, just as your weapon should mostly be about increasing your damage output. Extra resists on those slots are great and it is pretty easy/common to get a good armor for your character that gives some useful property, but the most important things to look for in a body armor are good base defenses. In the vast majority of games your rings can cover necessary resistances. So having such a bad AC:encumbrance ratio is a big problem, unless you are like a centaur or something and by virtue of that fact almost certainly not going to be getting decent EV, anyway.
So there's a general problem with *some* dragon armors coming too late, some having negative resistances which might preclude you from being able to use them based solely on if the RNG has given you enough of that resist to offset it, and some armors being decidely poor choices for just about everyone - GDA, namely. So what should change?
Dragon armors which are generally considered the best: Steam/Mottled dragon armors. These likely don't need any changes. Swamp dragon armor isn't generally considered "the best" but I would include it in the "does not need any changes" category.
FDA/IDA: These armors offer tricky +2 -1 resists, and should, imho become more like draconian resists: You just get +1 of the positive resist, with no elemental weakness.
Storm dragon armor: This one is a bit tricker just because of where it sits on the encumbrance scale, and that rElec usually isn't that commonly needed, but I can't think of much that would be a good change for it. It's already had some encumbrance knocked off since it used to have -4EVP, so it may be just fine. Possibly drop 1 more encumbrance? I could go either way.
Gold dragon armor: the albatross of dragon armors, this is coveted by newbies and generally dismissed by experts for basically every character. Not wearing it considered a no brainer, yet somehow the inexperienced are drawn like moths to a flame to it's shiny 12 ac and 3 resistances. I'm not sure what we can do to address the issue of needing to have 13 enchant armor scrolls, but I think considerably reducing the encumbrance would be a good first step. GDA and CPA had their encumbrance slightly reduced recently, but I'd advise going even lower on GDA. Most dragon armor is lighter than it's counterpart metal armor, and GDA suddenly reverses this rule. Being between plate and CPA in AC, it somehow has higher encumbrance than even the CPA - I'd make it line up between the two just as it's ac does, with an encumbrance somewhere in the lower 20's - Possibly try 22-24 to start, although this may not be the final value.
To address the enchant armor scroll issue, heavier dragon armors could have a chance to not end up as +0 after enchanting the hide - either always come out at a certain level (+1 for FDA/IDA/PDA and +2 for storm/gold?) or let it roll an enchantment level with something like 1d3 - 1.
And I'd like to see an increased likelihood of hides generating around lair subbranch levels, swamp, spider, etc (or even earlier). This would probably be most important if we wanted to make GDA less rare, but could help for storm dragon armor and fire/ice as well. It may also make pearl dragon armor into something that exists, if pearl hides were included.
TLDR: Recommended changes:
Make fire/ice dragon armors only give one pip of their resist with no negative resist.
Reduce the encumbrance on GDA by up to several points, with a rough suggested encumbrance value of roughly 22-24.
Possible changes:
Possibly reduce storm dragon armor encumbrance by 1.
Make enchant armor on hides give a few bonus levels of enchantment so dragon armors don't always start at 0.
Increase the generation of hides as floor loot at roughly lair rune branch depth, or earlier.
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