Two handed copper swords

This is probably just my subjective preference, but it feels like goblins and kobolds got a LOT more dangerous with their new two handed copper swords. I picked up an arcanite chain mail in UT 3 right after killing Genetrix, and suddenly two goblins with +5 enchanted two handed copper swords spawned and decimated me with two hits. This happens often even with unenchanted ones. It feels a bit unbalanced, but it might be intended to just be harder?

How are they strong enough to wield 2-h copper swords??

They usually wield short swords don't they?

I'm probably wrong about the kobolds, I've died so many times I'm getting exhausted
This time i put on a bronze plate mail because i knew there was a goblin berserker on the level. Tried to take him on and this was the result.

I'm seeing a lot of this too. This was a pretty lucky character, he found the Gorovits family scimitar and then came across some bones. But two handed sword +5 seems a little disproportionate to my danger level.

I've also noticed this. Goblin Berserkers in UT with two-handed swords - copper or no - are extremely dangerous.

Goblins shouldn't spawn in UT in the first place!

Yeah, that sounds more like a fluke in spawning. We already had kobolds with -8 spears, now we have goblins with +5 swords.

Humanoids are a lot more deadly much earlier now. also undead are significantly more dangerous now as well.

I suggest that after a goblin, or other small humanoid attacks using a large weapon(two-handed sword, two-handed scimitar), they would need a turn to raise the weapon back up, to them attack again, since they need to use all their strength to fight with such heavy weapons.

I found where the change was caused all this: https://github.com/Attnam/ivan/commit/586ecc0322967034c63844...

It seems like a bit of exuberance on red's part

Yup, that was me.

However, this change was done in good faith - goblins are usually found in GC, where they are unremarkable and rather weak monsters. I wanted to make goblin berserkers a bit more interesting. With their sub par Dex, they still cannot hit that often, but can at least occasionally damage the player now (in GC, that is). They also have rather low HP, so they die easily if you can hit them.

What I didn't know was that goblin berserkers will suddenly start to spawn in UT. I have hardly ever seen a normal goblin there before! There, they are a bit hardcore, yes. (Why are they spawning there? The weaker goblins are not!)

I still think berserkers work better now than before, because they are now a monster you have to take into account when playing instead of just squashing them. They are OK for GC, and even though they should not spawn in UT, they are still rather survivable there, with some planning, luck or use of resources (zap a wand, pray or throw items at them and they are not that bad).

Granted, I like my IVAN hardcore.

When they have +5 2H swords, that's just unfair, but I don't think that's on me.

This one I'm sure i didn't deserve! Haven't anything of notability except for maybe the gauntlets of strength +2. Still a berserker with a +5 copper sword...

The reason goblin berzerkers are appearing early is because IgnoreDanger is set to true. Everywhere IgnoreDanger is used, an HP and Day requirement for generation needs to be specified. You'll notice that low hp creatures like floating eyes etc, use this feature because they wouldn't have enough stats to generate normally by the danger system. Check out proto.cpp for more details.

Oh. I'm sorry, I broke our release.

It's cool, I didn't pick it up before, and I didn't properly realise the significance of the IgnoreDanger flag till now. We can always switch it back, ready for next release.

Ah nice, I bet setting IgnoreDanger to true for skeleton puppies would help them spawn more often too

You could try going into wizmode and press * and print the character danger values. If its danger value is similar to other characters in the catacombs then it will spawn when expected.
When I did this I noticed the danger values for various undead configurations were all over the place, probably the reason those powerful zombies keep appearing...