Item generation suggestion

[d_m]

(3) increase the amount of potions of rheat that are dropped in one instance.

Do you mean in the instance that the player is playing a warrior?

I would strongly prefer that the game not change any of its generation algorithms based on the player's race/class/level/status/etc. although I'm not sure there is a strong rhetorical reason for holding this belief.

[fizzix]

Do you mean in the instance that the player is playing a warrior?

I would strongly prefer that the game not change any of its generation algorithms based on the player's race/class/level/status/etc. although I'm not sure there is a strong rhetorical reason for holding this belief.

nah, i just misread what PD was saying.

What I meant was instead of increasing all drops by 1/.95 you could leave that the same and instead reduce the probability of rheat being generated, but instead have the drop sizes be 10-20 potions instead of 1.

[Rizwan]

So what would be dropping instead? The problem is the amount of equipment dropped, to a far greater degree than the quality of the drops.

Well consumables for one. If a drop consists of three items and all two have already been dropped previously then to complete the drop use other items than weapons or armor.

And doing this, you'd almost certainly want to allow enchantment scrolls to give much higher bonuses than they do now.

Not necessarily. Ok let me change my stance a bit. You could generate one item with negative to hit to dam values, one with sub 10 values and one with above 10 values. That way you wont have to wade through tons of the item with every conceivable to ht to dam values.

Now, PART of the problem of TMJ is simply that there's *so many* items. Some of them will always be problematic in any particular game; spellbooks are basically junk for anyone who can't use them, for example. But there's also a ton of stuff that is rarely used by anyone, *especially* in the consumables section. Why don't we find any !Healing? Cuz there's 30 kagillion different potions, so the odds that we'll get a !Healing even when it's possible to do so, aren't good. Junk to borderline-useful potions:

CLW, CSW: make these rare dungeon drops, but leave them in the temple as is.

Neut Poison, Infravision, maybe True Seeing: do we waste slots on these? If so, then again, perhaps put them into the store but don't drop them in the dungeon, because after a while I don't think we use them at all.

all the gain 1/lose 1 potions: Yes, I've used them occasionally, but I completely live without them.

And of course, the 8 explicitly bad ones of the 54...that's a high percentage, IMO.

In some cases, tho, there are level restrictions that should help. But looking at object.txt...Heroism, Berserk, Boldness, rHeat, and rCold are level 1-100 drops (Berserk starts on 3, but still). And they're all common. Sounds like another good candidate for being in the stores with fairly high counts, but maybe NOT being dropped, especially at greater depths, nearly as often.

So increase both drop size and floor items but restrict the armor/weapon generation and makeup the rest of the drop with the consumables that are needed. Tweak the percentages of the needed and wanted consumables so that they are in some way balanced and leave the store items as is.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

Why is it desirable that a player should be dependent on the stores for equipment? What does it add to the game? The only interesting decisions I can see happening are "Well, I want X and Y, but I can only afford one of them; which should I pick?" but in practice past the very early game this only happens with Black Market goods.

Are you suggesting that Ironman-style is the route we want to encourage?

There's probably going to be a trade-off here, as there are conflicting goals. As things are now, we have problems keeping important consumables in stock. That's a given. One solution is to increase the potion drop rate. If we do, without adjusting the available potions and their current distribution, we have the TMJ problem because too many of them are useless, or at least not worth carrying around. Another solution is to sharpen the focus on the more important potions by making them more common than the less important ones. This is from the object.txt:

# 'A' is for allocation - depth and rarity, in pairs. This allows an
# item to have multiple natural depths and rarities.


So isn't this exactly the *plan*?

And note that I didn't necessarily say, remove the rHeat and rCold drops altogether. I said, make them less frequent. Right now, every potion has one A: line entry. How about multiple entries instead?

If players could get all the consumables they need from the dungeon, then the game would be objectively better, because they'd be wasting less time running around in the town and more time actually playing the game. Heck, we could replace Word of Recall with an effect that, after a short delay, heals you fully, grants access to your home, and then generates a new level. Wouldn't need a town at all.

So, I can't Recall back from level 6, say, because I want to try to buy a couple Enchant Weapon scrolls cuz I can afford them now, or maybe a =Prot, or some more CCWs? Or, are you going to make all those goodies that are in the standard stores, drop fairly early? Or, joy oh joy, I've been kinda stupid and I'm almost out of torches...NOW what? What about IDing things...especially with a warrior? What about 2nd-4th spellbooks for casters? No point in buying them too early, especially the 3rd and 4th books; why risk having them destroyed before you can use them? Heck, what about replacing lost spellbooks? A little bad luck and you lose, say, all but one Sorc/Evoc...the dungeon drops are inherently too spread out to replace them.

The town has a purpose: it's a safety net.

[Atarlost]

The town has a purpose: it's a safety net.

It appears that some people want to force everyone else to play without a net. It's as if they feel diminished when other people win.

[Derakon]

I object to the town because it interrupts flow. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have access to the items that the town provides; I'm saying that the mechanism by which those items are provided is flawed, because it interrupts the actual gameplay. Ideally you should be able to pick up everything you need organically, as you play. Such gameplay would technically be "Ironman" because Ironman is defined by its lack of use of the town, but it'd be much easier, because you wouldn't actually need the town.

If you take a look at games like Diablo and Torchlight, you only ever really need to return to town to unload loot and pick up new quests. Usually you can get all of the consumables you need "off the floor"; in the event that you can't, you can do without until more items drop. Now, these games also don't have anywhere near as many "critical consumables" (like burnable spellbooks or stat restoration items) as Angband does, but that doesn't mean that we couldn't make an Angband game that didn't need the town and yet wasn't any harder because of that.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

One issue with Angband, tho, is that the range of items is vastly larger than in most games. That makes it much harder to keep everything important adequately stocked, without either TMJ kicking in, or simply overstocking almost everything. I'm looking at the items from Diablo 1; there are a total of 10 potions because they only do one of two things: boost (4) or recover (3 variants, 2 strengths). Angband's got 50-something potions doing 5 or 6 general things...boost, temp enhance, recover, remove condition, gain information...or, of course, do something bad. There's a total of 7 recovery potions (CxW's, Heal, *Heal*, Life, Restore Mana) most of which also act as condition removers. There's 9 pure condition removers (Neut Poison, Restore X, Restore Life Levels, Boldness). There are offensive temp enhancers (speed, heroism, berserk) and defensive temp enhancers (res heat, cold, poison, true seeing, infravision).

So, some things that could be done:

a) Broaden and narrow. There are too damn many one trick ponies out there. Replace them. No Res Heat/Cold/Poison...just 1 Resist Elements potion. No Neut Poison because the recovery potions do that job fine. The heck with 6 Restore potions, just one that restores all 6 is fine. We broaden potion applicability so we can narrow down the list of potions.

b) Tighter levels. Past CL 60, I probably shouldn't even see that many CCWs; they're just not good enough. OR, their primary role has really become one of condition removal; recovery is definitely secondary. If I need to recover hit points, I need at least 300. So maybe around DL 50, Healing potions start to appear, 1 at a time and perhaps at low-ish frequency. At DL 65, maybe it's 1-2 at frequency 100...as CCWs' frequency starts to drop. By DL 80, it's 1d4 Healing, and CCWs are frequency 20.

c) Subgroups by function, and do a *first* cut by picking the subgroup. The subgroups have their own base distribution, so with 6 major types (counting the temp enhancers as 2 types) maybe 25% are Recover, 20% remove condition, 15% temp enhance (offensive), 15% temp enhance (defensive), 10% boost, 5% gain information, and 10% for the rest that don't necessarily fit, and of course the cursed ones. Once the subgroup's picked, then the individual members within a given group have their own distribution.

[kaypy]

a and b can be combined somewhat as well- for example, you could have individual resist-one-element potions early in the dungeon, but stop generating them once you reach the levels where resist-all-elements turn up.

The objects.txt format (and associated in-game data structures) would need to change somewhat to allow different stack sizes at different levels, but I agree it would help a lot with tweaking item rarities.

Something like
A:<rarity>:<number generated>:<min level> to <max level>

so

N:321:Healing
...blah blah...
A:33:1:15 to 80
A:33:1d2:40 to 100
A:33:1d4:60 to 100
A:33:1d4:80 to 100

[Rizwan]

I object to the town because it interrupts flow.

I am more of an ebb and flow kind of player and the town handily provides me that ebb. After a hard days work whacking of the evil denizens of the dungeon I need to drink a pint of ale in the town just to relax.

[miyazaki]

I think the idea of fixed inventories of the stores needs to be revisited at this point. That "safety net" of town is there, but there is no reward for going back up to town. You know what will be there when you go up: torches, food, etc. This should be coupled with (1) no ego weapons/armor and (2) items that are useful for early/mid game rather than endgame.

The BW, OTOH, could stay the same, but restock more infrequently, like every 100k turns. There could be a notification to the player when it has restocked.

By doing this, the town becomes the baseline and the dungeon drops build off that. (The BM becomes simply a minor anomaly.) The game of "exploring the town for random drops" is eliminated. No more recalling to look for !resSTR then resting on dlvl1 for 10k turns. When you need something, you know it is there or not.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

I would definitely appreciate not having to drop into the dungeon just to get a restock on a stat restorer...which I have had to do.

In addition to fixed inventory, I'd also suggest fixed quantities, that don't change except for:

a) when the player buys/sells

b) at a periodic reset interval, where the store inventory is completely reset to its norm. Thus, no general reduction of inventory in the stores as the 'day' goes along.

Also, if there are items with random bonuses as part of the standard store inventory (rings of protection, for example, in the magic shop), the bonuses could either be fixed, or remain random and change during the store reset, if that's easier. As long as we're not talking anything major, outside the BM, there's not much incentive to check overly much to get a =Prot +9 instead of that +6, and it won't matter for terribly long anyway.

[PowerDiver]

The BW, OTOH, could stay the same, but restock more infrequently, like every 100k turns.

An alternative is to give the market one of each stat ring with pval 3, perhaps each first dungeon spellbook, =FA and =SI and stuff like that at astronomical prices. Then a desperate player with terrible luck in the dungeon would have access to certain basic needs in the midgame but not the early game.

[miyazaki]

I would definitely appreciate not having to drop into the dungeon just to get a restock on a stat restorer...which I have had to do.

In addition to fixed inventory, I'd also suggest fixed quantities, that don't change except for:

a) when the player buys/sells

b) at a periodic reset interval, where the store inventory is completely reset to its norm. Thus, no general reduction of inventory in the stores as the 'day' goes along.

Also, if there are items with random bonuses as part of the standard store inventory (rings of protection, for example, in the magic shop), the bonuses could either be fixed, or remain random and change during the store reset, if that's easier. As long as we're not talking anything major, outside the BM, there's not much incentive to check overly much to get a =Prot +9 instead of that +6, and it won't matter for terribly long anyway.

For the store inventories, I'd rather see:

(a) an infinite supply of all items stocked by the stores.

or

(b) non-random fixed amounts of items that are never restocked. (e.g. 50 !CCW at the start of the game and when they are sold, that's it!)

Neither are realistic to life, which I usually push for, but I think they both work well as a game mechanic to discourage boredom/store-scumming.

[Derakon]

The issue I have with a fixed limited quantity in stores is that it really hits warriors terribly hard, since they're far more reliant on !CCW and scrolls of phase door than any other class is. Consumables are hard enough to find as it is!

There's also the secondary issue of scrolls of Word of Recall, unless you plan to sell the rod in the magic shop.

[Magnate]

The issue I have with a fixed limited quantity in stores is that it really hits warriors terribly hard, since they're far more reliant on !CCW and scrolls of phase door than any other class is. Consumables are hard enough to find as it is!

There's also the secondary issue of scrolls of Word of Recall, unless you plan to sell the rod in the magic shop.

We've been over the store inventories issue so many times, it's just a case of waiting to see what Takk decides. Personally I hope he favours fixed inventories with escalating prices (i.e. supply is infinite but each one costs more than the last), but YMMV ....