End the discrimination! Give all dragons their own hide drops.

[G0rg0]

Iron dragon armour: The most extraordinary scale armour in existence, supple and light, yet strong as the best plate armours. No special resists, just high AC and low encumbrance. AC: 12/13/14? Encumbrance 8/9/10? (10 is standard scale).

Bone dragon armour: This unusual (and quite rare) armour is crafted from the bony plates left from the terrible beasts. It is somewhat cumbersome, but adds a Shield bonus in addition to it's excellent AC. SH value: 5? 8? 13? AC: 12/13/14? Encumbrance: 20-25? (crystal plate is 23, GDA is 25).

[jeremygurr]

Thematically, it makes more sense to me to swap those. Armour made out of iron is going to be heavy, having high AC, but high encumbrance as well. It makes sense to me that it would be the "plate armour" version of dragon armour. It should probably be the highest AC and encumbrance in the game. Maybe it should even slow the player down slightly. Not the best armour around, unless you are just a super tank character. AC: 16 Enc: -30 GDA: 20% (crystal plate should be superior in some ways) Movement delay: +0.1

The bone dragon armour is lighter. I like the idea of a SH bonus too. But the AC shouldn't be that much. AC: 8 SH: 5 Enc: -13

[Sandman25DCSS]

GDA (AC 12) has ER 23 like CPA (AC 14) I believe. Iron Dragon (monster) has AC 20, EV 6. Bone AC 20, EV 4 Golden AC 15, EV 7 Pearl AC 10, EV 15 Fire AC 10, EV 8

Probably from the flavor standpoint and also for balance reasons both Iron and Bone Dragon Armour should have very high ER. Something like AC 15, ER 30 and AC 14, ER 32 correspondingly. There is a problem with Bone Dragons, they can be met relatively often in Crypt, Vaults and even Swamp so ER 32 should discourage it for many characters.

Maybe Iron armour can make character immune to throwing by Iron Giant and trample. Bone armour can make character get double damage from LRD and also valid target for Dispel Undead. Bone armour can be an evil item and not allowed by good gods.

[Sandman25DCSS]

I haven't seen Jeremy's reply before posting mine. It's nice that we have somewhat similar opinion about Iron armour ;)

[Sandman25DCSS]

CPA can be better than those new armour for many characters who have EV and spells, there is no need to nerf GDR I think.

[G0rg0]

Not averse to your thinking but to clarify my initial idea:

Iron- Literally scale armour in terms of weight/encumbrance (if not slightly better), just that the scales themselves would be vastly superior to man-made scales.

Bone- heavier, because it's not "natural" bone, more like granite or some other heavy mineral.

[Sandman25DCSS]

Yes, I like SH bonus for Bone armour too.

[Bloaxor]

Drop CPA to 20 encumbrance because it's rare, ironDA 16 AC 23 encumbrance, boner armor 11 AC +6 sh, 12 enc

buff pda to 12 base because it's rare and why should bone armor take its hallowed place

[Sandman25DCSS]

Bone armour should not be that powerful, it is not rare. AC 11 and ER 12 is better than current PDA, and even without +6 SH on top of that will be a no-brainer unless you don't have any source of rF+ in Zot 5.

[G0rg0]

Bone armour should not be that powerful, it is not rare

My thought was the drop rate could be made to be quite low.

[jeremygurr]

We could make some hides drop much less often (maybe 1/4 normal) and make them more "special". Could make things more interesting.

[Sandman25DCSS]

I am not sure it is a good idea to change drop rates. It is like giving goblins a 0.001% chance to drop ring of Robustness on D1: for some lucky characters it can make game too easy, for not so lucky characters it can be frustrating in different ways depending on either players are spoiled or not.

[jeremygurr]

The hide won't be anything that spectacular, but semi-rareness does add some interest.

[jeremygurr]

so along with creating new armour, I will also make the dragon change I've been intending for a while.

Basically I'm going to push dragons deeper into the dungeons. Vaults:5 maybe have 2 of the easier kinds instead of the 20 or so top tier dragons it has now. Drakes will be made a bit stronger and replace some of those instances.

Dragons will become much more dangerous. Even seeing 1 dragon should pierce a player's heart with fear. Those not paralyzed by that fear run away in terror.

The easiest dragons ought to be about as hard as the hardest draconians. Mid level dragons ought to put the lernaen hydra to shame. Top tier dragons should be rare, typically only seen after a player has picked up 10+ runes and is in the most dangerous parts of the game, or in the orb run.

This creates a few problems of course. The real dragon armour ought to be more valuable to compensate for how difficult it is to obtain it. Dragon armour and hides will no longer spawn on the dungeon floor, but must be obtained from killing dragons (which will always / usually drop hides). We can replace those with drake armour and hides, that may be a little less than the current dragon armours in stats, but still strong and usable by large species.

[G0rg0]

I'm not sure I like pushing dragon armour to so late in the game. By that time you've almost always built your end-game kit. I know you're talking about replacing with drake armour, but how equivalent would they be to current dragon armour?

[jeremygurr]

The idea is that current dragons are basically split up into two groups. One group appears earlier in the game, one later. So instead of ogres basically waiting until they can find a dragon armour, and then sticking with that for the rest of the game, they have a 2 stage process. They find a drake armour a little earlier than they would normally find a dragon armour, but it will be a little weaker too. So maybe they play the first third of the game in robes, the second third in drake armour, and the last third in dragon armour (if they are tough enough to take down a dragon). Drake armour will spawn on the ground, so most kinds will be readily available.

[Sandman25DCSS]

I think game does not generate enough scrolls of enchant armour for 3 hides. Isn't it better to add new dragon-like monsters instead of changing lots of vaults with standard dragons? I like dragons, they are not that easy as you claim them to be. 2 dragons in Ice Cave, dragon in Lair, 2 dragons near Depths entrance etc. I am playing at nightmare and even in Depths they are much more dangerous to me than a pack of hasted deep trolls or Yaktaus because of ranged elemental attack (I have low EV). For example, Ice Dragon has Cold Breath (3d24), multiply it by 1.32 (8 runes) and it becomes ranged attack with max 95 which ignores GDR and cannot be stopped by Silence. I got more damage from the dragon than from a Titan (Silence) or Juggernaut (Dispersal arrows), and that's while having rC+.

[Sandman25DCSS]

Also Ogres already can use Swamp Dragon Armour, it is pretty good and is almost guaranteed since we always have Swamp now.

[jeremygurr]

It is true that it would be easier to add new dragon monsters. But thematically it doesn't correct the main issue. So to me it's worth a little more effort to make the theme work. Every game player knows that a dragon is a force to be feared, and in most RPGs a dragon is the most challenging monster, usually a boss of some kind. To do otherwise adds confusion and a little disappointment.

It's an easy thing to generate a few more enchant armour scrolls if that is what is necessary. Or better yet, drake armour doesn't require enchanting at all, but may be immediately used. Since the game is now much longer than before, it makes it more interesting to have more to gain, more to achieve, instead of just getting your dragon armour 1/3 into the game and sticking with that for the remainder.

[Sandman25DCSS]

Are you going to replace Orb of Fire with dragons?

I think current hide balance is fine, I am still using plate armour after clearing all non-extended game except Vaults 4 because no golden dragon hide was dropped. I can't pay shadow dragon armour to trove because it hasn't dropped either. Also I suspended enchanting my body armour and was using +4 plate and +2 plate of rF+ during most runes because I was hoping to get a GDA. So the game is full of meaningful choices even now.

[G0rg0]

I have a thought that would work thematically, but I am unsure of how easy/possible it would be from a coding standpoint.

Leave the dragons in, but give them ages like young/adult/ancient. You can adjust the HD/attacks, how deep or shallow they appear, as well as likelihood of getting a hide based on age.

Young dragons are small, so a hide is unlikely (although possible), but an ancient dragon is huge and therefore has a much better chance.

[Sandman25DCSS]

I think those should be different monsters and have different tiles. Once I almost died to Tiamath because it has tile which is very similar to normal draconians, the same issue with Jorgrun in dwarven fortress. Different monsters must have different tiles/names.

[Sandman25DCSS]

Or do you mean they have similar stats and the only difference is chance to drop hide?

[G0rg0]

Well, the idea is that current dragons would stay in as they are, with lower chance of hide, but there would also be older and ancient dragons which should have new tiles and be much scarier than the current dragons.

There could also just be two tiers rather than three - plain dragons and then ancient dragons. Like ugly things and very ugly things etc.

[Sandman25DCSS]

I like it the most. Current dragons are dangerous when they are met first but not that dangerous in Zot so we need more dragons (or just remove Red/White dragons from Zot so they will be replaced with draconians or gold/bone dragons).