[slashem] Do all existing artifact types count when sacrificing?

[Janis Papanagnou]

Slashem has a lot more artifacts than Nethack. And the success
rate of getting an artifact from sacrifices to your god depends
on the number of already generated artifacts in the game.

There are three aligned quests in every game, each one has an
aligned key and another artifact as prize. Whenever you stumble
into a portal to such a quest these two unique items will be
generated. - Do they count in the probability calculation for a
successful sacrifice?

I suppose so, but would like a confirmation. - The results are
quite drastic; you'd need a convertible altar before entering
the dungeons below level 14 to keep the artifact generation
probability at a sensible value. The first guaranteed co-aligned
altar, though, is in one of the aligned quests. You need luck to
find one before, or luck to find the mine-town altar co-aligned.

In addition, Slashem seems to often generate armor/weapon shops
on the shallow dungeon levels, sometimes containing artifacts
(usually wimpy ones or one of those that you can't touch without
getting killed by their huge blast) that further reduce chance
to get one from sacrifices. It's often difficult and requires a
lot time altar-camping until you get an appropriate weapon from
your god. (And Neutrals, in addition, have a lot non-weapons in
the list of possible artifacts.)

Janis

[Michael Meyer]

Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> There are three aligned quests in every game, each one has an aligned

> key and another artifact as prize.... - Do they count in the

> probability calculation for a successful sacrifice?
>
> I suppose so, but would like a confirmation.

I'm pretty sure they do. Looking at the code (0.0.8E0F1), the artifacts
that count against prayer and artifact wishing are the ones marked true
in the array artiexist, counted by nartifact_exist(artifact.c).

The Key of Chaos, for example, is created in makemon by calling oname on
a skeleton key when creating Vecna. oname in turn calls artifact_exists
which sets the artiexist element for the artifact with that name.

The Hand of Vecna is created in a very similar way, by calling oname on
a severed hand.

I didn't check individually for anything else, but it seems like they
all would count.

> Whenever you stumble into a portal to such a quest these two unique
> items will be generated.

Actually, although the alignment key is generated when creating the
monster who carries it, it looks like the other artifact (Eye of the
Beholder, Hand of Vecna) is only generated upon killing the monster (it
happens in make_corpse(mon.c)), so maybe that helps at least a little
bit!

- Michael

[Pat Rankin]

On Saturday, January 16, 2021 at 11:58:49 AM UTC-8, Michael Meyer wrote:
> Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> There are three aligned quests in every game, each one has an aligned
>> key and another artifact as prize.... - Do they count in the
>> probability calculation for a successful sacrifice?
>>
>> I suppose so, but would like a confirmation.
>

> I'm pretty sure they do. [...]

Yes. Unlike the invocation items, the aligned quest artifacts are
just like the weapon and armor artifacts.

However, existing artifacts only matter after you've received the
first gift from offering or being crowned. The formula for giving
an artifact gift uses the expression
!rn2(10 + 2 * u.ugifts * nartifacts)
so 'nartifacts' has no effect while 'u.ugifts' is still zero. (nartifacts
is number of artifacts that have been created and is recalculated
from other information when needed, u.ugifts is the number of
artifact gifts bestowed on the hero and gets preserved across
save and restore.)