ToME WikiA massive pair of adamantine boots studded with gold, the final and greatest product of the petty-dwarven magical forge. Despite the great powers they contain, they are heavy and awkward enough to make quite a racket whenever you move.
The Pair of Metal Shod Boots of the Machine [6, +24] (+3) is the goal of the SpecialLevel Spoilers/Dungeons/Machine. As a fixed artifact, they have immense power, but with an almost crippling side-effect, causing you to think - do I really want them at all? Can you tolerate their unusually high weight?
It increases your intelligence, ability to tunnel and speed by 3.
It provides resistance to confusion, shards and chaos.
It allows you to sense the presence of non-living things.
It aggravates nearby creatures.
It cannot be harmed by acid, cold, lightning or fire.
Note: The original ToME 3.0.0 version of this artifact does not have the aggravate flag and is slightly better. The modified flags were +2 to intelligence, +5 to speed, +3 to tunnel, -4 to stealth.
Comments
LordDimwit: One of the challenges of creating artifacts, especially artifacts that are fixed and meant to be discovered at a certain point in the game, is gauging whether they'll be too powerful (or else completely worthless) for that depth. These boots are meant to alleviate the lack of artifact boots, especially boots that provide both resistances and speed.
They were originally planned to reduce stealth (which has translated into the probably too severe aggravation) in this version, but since nobody seems to be using them anyway, I have to wonder--is this even appropriate at all? Should we just give 'em high weight and have that be their handicap?
ZasVid: I did use it once (with a void diver no less), but the aggravation is an item-killer. Makes 'em useless for most characters - only specific builds can handle/make use of aggravation. For other it is too... aggravating. If it had stealth penalty instead... but T-Engine 2 didn't really allow for mixed blessings artifacts.
LordDimwit: I guess I understand the motivation, but aggravation is a *huge* drawback... it takes a really *awesome* artifact to convince players that waking everything in the dungeon up with every step is worth it (Mormegil comes to mind). Otherwise you just end up with a useless though cool item (Razorback, for example). These boots clearly aren't great enough for most people besides Maiar and corrupted characters to sacrifice all their stealth for. Maybe we should switch their stats a little in the next version and see if mid-level characters start using them.
Otherwise all the pain of slogging through the Machine is for naught 
So, in other words... what you said 
Orvin: I enjoyed the Machine, but had little use for the boots, because I already had the resistances covered, had plenty of speed, and maxed int.
blahpers: I agree. Ditch the aggro and instead make stealth plummet (the loud clanging is likely to wake up just about everything).
BucketMan: In all the years I've been playing I've never had a character find the boots to be worthwhile. I also don't understand the combination. If they're so heavy...why do they grant a speed bonus? Plus, they're only ten pounds, compared to regular metal shod boots at eight pounds. What's the big deal? And then for all this strangeness...they grant confusion resistance and an intelligence bonus? Seems a bit ironic. If we want to make them heavy, why don't we make them *heavy*? Say...fifty pounds or so? Give them teleport resistance. (Since you're so heavily grounded.) Lose FLAG_AGGRAVATE and replace it with a stealth penalty. How about susceptibility to sound and electricity? With all the noise they make, your ears are more sensitive, and wearing electricly conductive boots might not be the greatest thing in the world around lightning storms. There are plenty of ways to make it a "mixed blessing" artifact.