Randart
Randarts, or random artefacts, are randomly or purposefully generated weapons, jewellery, armour, or spellbooks that can have any number of enchantments, egos, and brands, which are randomly selected from a pool of each of those attributes. They are also given names.
How Randarts Occur
In the Dungeon, randarts appear randomly starting on D:4. While a randart of any individual type is difficult to find (i.e., you cannot rely on finding a randart plate mail), randarts themselves are not particularly rare: a typical 3-rune game will produce around 10 to 20 without divine intervention.
Three gods can also gift their followers randarts: Okawaru, Trog, and Xom. Okawaru gifts weapons and armour to high-piety followers; Trog gifts weapons (although usually of a higher quality than Oka's), while Xom can gift anything to any worshiper at any time, though with absolutely no degree of reliability.
Identifying A Randart
Discovering a randart is quite simple. they will look like any other item of the same type, most of the time, but the thing to look for is in the text description. Randarts will have a strange title in white text, like
- a smoking dagger
Note that randart spellbooks do not have their names in white text. However, they do bear descriptions different from those of mundane books, and their spells are automatically identified.
Properties
Randart weapons always have a brand, while randart jewellery always have a base type which gives the first in the list of auto inscription properties. Conversely, randart armour won't always have an ego. Randart weapons/armour tend to be enchanted, and may go above the usual limits for the item in question.
In addition, randarts can have any of the following properties:
Positive or negative properties:
- ±Str, Dex, or Int. Self-explanatory. The range is -5 to +12 inclusive.
- ±Slay. Works identically to a ring of slaying. The range is -9 to +8 inclusive. Never found on weapons.
- Fire resistance: ranges from rF- to rF+++.
- Cold resistance: ranges from rC- to rC+++.
- Willpower: ranges from Will- to Will+++. Note that if the base type of a ring is a ring of willpower, it always gives +40. This means that the randart property generally gives more MR than the base property.
- Stlth±: Increases or decreases your intrinsic stealth.
- MP±9: Increases or decreases your maximum MP by 9. Never found on antimagic weapons.
Positive properties:
- Negative energy resistance: ranges from rN+ to rN+++.
- Poison resistance: only exists as one nonstacking level, rPois.
- Electricity resistance: only exists as one nonstacking level, rElec.
- Corrosion resistance: only exists as one nonstacking level, rCorr.
- SInv: Lets you see invisible. Never found on barding.
- +Blink: Can evoke a blink for a small cost in MP. Never found on randarts with -Tele.
- +Fly: Grants the user flight.
- +Inv: Allows the wearer to Evoke Invisibility. Evocation is not particularly easy, with a cost in max HP drain.
- Regen: Improves regeneration, as an amulet of regeneration. Only appears on armour.
Negative properties:
- Fragile: The artefact can only be equipped once. After unequipping it, it is destroyed.
- *Noise: Makes noise when attacking, waking and alerting nearby monsters. The noise is somewhat louder than simply shouting. Only found on melee weapons.
- *Rage: Causes the wearer to randomly go berserk, similar to the berserkitis mutation, but much higher (20%). Only found on melee weapons.
- *Contam: Causes a large amount of magical contamination when unwielded/unworn, likely to cause bad mutations that may bypass mutation resistance.
- *Corrode: Causes the wearer to randomly corrode when taking damage. Each worn randart with this property increases the chance. Never appears with rCorr.
- *Drain: Causes the player to be drained when this randart is unwielded/unworn.
- -Cast: Inhibits all spellcasting. Only found on armour.
- -Tele: Blocks all forms of teleportation and blinking. Does not prevent banishment or space-warping effects (Passage of Golubria, Lugonu's Bend Space). Never appears with +Blink or +Tele.
- *Slow: Causes the wearer to randomly become slowed when taking damage. Each worn randart with this property increases the chance by 1%.
These describe the properties that can appear above and beyond the artefact's base type; if you see properties on your randart not listed below, they are a result of that base type, most often in the case of randart jewellery. Note that a randart cannot receive properties that modify the intrinsic properties of its base item. For example, randart fire dragon armour always has rF++ and rC-; it can never have, say, rF+ or rC+.
Randart spellbooks are different from other randarts in that they do not have any sort of special properties; they just have a random assortment of spell, grouped around one or more themes. Themes can include specific magical schools, general spell types such as "offensive spell", "defensive spell", "disabling spell", and specific levels of spells. The randbook's name will usually be a description of its theme (for example, the "Tome of Earthen Intoxication" will contain various Earth and Poison Magic spells).
Names
Randarts have randomly generated names - either a name generated from Crawl's database files, or from the name generator (which also names Pan lords, shopkeepers, and a few other things). They are always unusual and sometimes entertaining. The name of a randart is mostly irrelevant; however, randarts that are named for gods (like the +6 broad axe of Okawaru's Hope) are forbidden from having properties that contradict the god's flavour. Thus, Cheibriados will not have weapons of speed named after him, nor will one find a ring dedicated to Sif Muna that prevents spellcasting. This does not result in any information leak, however, since it is impossible to know the name of an artefact without already knowing all of its properties.
Randarts can occasionally be named after the player. While rare, this is not an amazing coincidence or anything: artefacts simply have a small chance of being named after the player. While amusing, these names are just as irrelevant as any others.
Strategy
While randarts can be very powerful, they vary in quality. One can very broadly divide them into six categories; these definitions, of course, change from character to character:
- Nice to Uber: These include the so-called "uber-randarts", but also some that don't quite qualify for that distinction but are still things you'd always want to use. Things like the amulet of Amarra {Regen rF++ rPois Slay+3} or the +7 tower shield of Okawaru's Hope {rC+++ rN+ SInv} would fall into this category.
- Good for a while: Most of the time, these are weapons with high enchantments and neutral to useful properties, but poor base types. Such an example might be the +6 scimitar of Fun {vorpal, rC+ SInv}. A nice weapon, but outclassed by an enchanted demon blade or double sword, or even a +9 branded scimitar when it comes to the end game.
- Swaps: These are the mixed randarts that give a tactically useful property, but things you would not want to wear all the time. The ring of Plog {rElec rN+ Will-- Str-5} might be useful to swap to for rElec or rN+, but the willpower and strength malus make it highly undesirable to wear constantly.
- Not useful to you: Randarts you can't wear or wield fall into this category, as do those that you could in theory but can't really use in practice: an executioner's axe of speed is an awesome weapon, but outside of doing ziggurats, a Deep Elf Conjurer is unlikely to be able to use it. However, weapons with useful resistances can be useful to casters who don't plan on using melee that much.
- Dross: These are randarts that are just boring; usually, branded mundane items will fill the slot better. The ring of the Moon {rF+ Str+2} provides minimal benefit over a plain ring, while the +0 helmet of Xizic {Slay-1 Dex+2 Int-1} isn't exactly good for anyone. Unfortunately, far too many randarts fall into this category. This is where it is most important to keep a sense of perspective: it would be a bad idea to wear the randart helmet given above in place of a hat of magic resistance, or even a +2 helmet. Wear this type of randart if you have nothing better to put in that slot.
- Bad: These are generally quite obvious. They range from "mixed but mostly bad" things like the amulet of Torgh {Acro Dex+5 rC-} to truly spectacular failures like the -2 hat of a Thousand Suns {Dex-2 Slay-2} or the ring of the Sun {Fly Slay-5 *Slow *Rage}. Usually there is absolutely no reason to prefer randarts like these to a unbranded mundane item of the same type.
A factor that goes into what category a randart falls into, one that is often overlooked, is the slot and base type the randart itself is. The +6 plate armour of Wixzils {Dex+3 Slay+1 rN+} is probably inferior to a +10 plate armour of fire resistance. But the the +3 pair of gloves of Wizzils {Dex+3 Slay+1 rN+} is actually quite good, since it's superior to any mundane gloves you can get. Basically, be sure to consider what normal items you could substitute for your randart when considering how good it is.
Most randarts are not actually that useful, due to the sheer randomness of their properties. Pick out the best of them, and discard the rest. Don't carry or stash randarts because they're rare or because you might use them "at some point." Chances are, if you're not using it now and can't think of any specific situation in which it'll be useful, it's probably junk (i.e., in the last three categories given above).
History
- Prior to 0.28, (rand)arts could not appear on D:2 and D:3. Evocable and random rage were merged, with *Rage giving a high chance to berserk.
- Prior to 0.27, randarts would not identify when you stepped on their tile; making some randart properties dangerous to wear-identify.
- Prior to 0.19, randarts could have the *Confuse ego, randomly causing the wielder to become confused when taking damage. Each equipped randart with *Confuse would increase the chance of confusion by 1%. 0.19 replaced it with the *Slow ego
- Fragile randarts were added in 0.18.
- In 0.14, noisy randarts only generate additional noise when being used to attack.
