Feedback on new Valkyrie quest about xnethack HOT 2 CLOSED

This is a better forum for feedback than posting on Reddit or emailing me, since it guarantees I will actually see it within a reasonable amount of time. The one drawback is that it's eventually going to get closed, which can make the original poster feel like they didn't accomplish anything.

So here's the thing: your feedback indicates that Sol Valtiva is actually working as intended. I bet that, while you didn't wield it much, you still carried it around, right? I was aiming to hit a sweet spot in which some Valkyries would not use the sword and others would -- those who have been unlucky with or can't get other artifacts, or dislike using Mjollnir because of its item destruction (in the upcoming version, Excalibur is not going to be something a Valkyrie can reasonably get pre-Quest) -- but the carry and invoke effects, deliberately similar to the Orb of Fate's most powerful effects, are still very much worth having.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while Sol Valtiva is still technically the quest artifact for Valkyries, because I imagine only bad things would happen if I left a big hole in the quest artifacts array, it's not actually the object of the quest. As I said in the commit notes (46738ee):

One of the two major changes to the story is that Lord Surtur didn't steal
any artifact from the home level. Instead, this is just his sword. You're
under no particular compulsion to do anything with it, other than that it's
a nice artifact to have. The goal of the quest is to kill him.

Which is itself part of the larger project to vary Quest stories from the tired old "the bad guy stole our shiny object, get the shiny object back for us" plot. True, this is one of the smaller departures from that, but more interesting stuff is planned for other roles.

from xnethack.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I did end up carrying Sol Valtiva around and using it on most everything that wasn't fire-resistant. A permanent light source is a very big draw. And I ascended that run, so I suppose I should withdraw my complaints.

Thanks for all your work!

from xnethack.