Treasure maps and caches

[Leewei]

Hi all,

I'm a longtime fan of Angband and other roguelike games. Imagine my delight when I came across an active community! To those selfless individuals keeping up this site and the open source game, you have my thanks!

I'd lurked and read up recently about how Rogues are considered a bit weak. I've wracked my brains a bit about what might changes might make sense that could improve the game for this class and give the playstyle a nice, unique flavor.

I came up with two of them.

First, the idea of a hidden cache of treasure. The cache would reveal as a treasure chest and could only be detected by one of two means -- searching and maps. A percentage of floor items might instead be considered as hidden caches, warded against magical detection. Uncovering a cache should also grant an experience award determined by the dungeon level.

The second idea is a new treasure type; perhaps a type of scroll. The scroll "detects" a random cache anywhere on that dungeon level. The map should activate immediately, in a manner similar to a trap. The player could then explore the way to the newly discovered cache -- or could simply ignore it and play as normal.

The idea is to reward a player for exploring and searching a dungeon level. The Rogue class's stealth and perception capabilities would make it a good beneficiary of this change and would make for more sneak and loot play where the character was avoiding powerful monsters rather than fighting.

[Pete Mack]

Whoever said rogues are "a bit weak?"

I find them very strong indeed.

[Leewei]

I'm searching and scratching my head. I'll link to it if I come across it again.

[Atarlost]

I think "a little weak" probably means "not a ranger"

[tummychow]

I love rogues, are you kidding?!
Rogues are awesome. They lack the initial fighting skill of warriors, or firing skill of rangers, or the magic of mages, but they have a little of all three, which makes for a WAY more fun game. You can snipe your opponents, or duke it out with them, or... oh right, rogues have nearly no offense magic.
Besides, all these weaknesses are balanced out by the critical POINT of a rogue, which is stealth. My rogue's stealth was legendary at level 30. How are you going to match that stealth with a warrior (most of the time, you probably will wake the monster up as you sneak up on them)?
Besides, generally there is only one reason not to explore a level - you're too weak to handle the monsters on them. I've h2hd every single unique I've ever fought as a rogue (although I'm a bit on the conservative side). The closest I ever got to dying was when a small army of air hounds blasted me in a room without poison resist. I still survived.
Unlike other classes, rogues survive by dodging trouble rather than by beating it down. Play that way, and you'll find there is no real issue with a rogue.
It's kind of like starcraft. Every class is different, but they are all inherently equal.

[d_m]

It's kind of like starcraft. Every class is different, but they are all inherently equal.

I agree with the general gist of your argument, but I disagree with the idea that all the classes are inherently equal. Some of the classes are too strong (rangers) or too weak (probably mages); it remains to be seen if any balancing will happen.

A better way to put it might be that every class is winnable, and each class has its own interesting wrinkles and strategy.

[Antoine]

Hi all,

First, the idea of a hidden cache of treasure. The cache would reveal as a treasure chest and could only be detected by one of two means -- searching and maps.

A better way to get the same effect would be to add a Rogue-only spell (could also be found as a dungeon-only scroll or perhaps an artifact activation) which revealed the location of the highest-value object on the level.

A.

[Sirridan]

I'd say weakest to strongest:

Mage - squishy and needs ranged to be really effective it seems
Warrior - Lacks spells, otherwise would be the strongest or nearly so due to high damage
Rogue - Stealth and high damage and detections
Priest - Hard to die to non-instadeath situations, greatest escapes
Paladin - Like a warrior with some detection and healing
Ranger - Look at me do over 1500 single target damage per turn at range while having a set of escape and detection spells!

[Leewei]

Having done my homework on Rogues, I have to say I was pretty off-base regarding class desirability. There's obviously a lot of love for these guys. My inadvertant egg-throwing aside ...

What is the opinion regarding an enhancement such as treasure caches? Obviously I'm not being quite objective here. I like the idea of increasing the span of dungeon that a player would want to navigate. I also like the idea of making bonus items for searching more desirable.

Treasure maps grew out of another idea I had which was the notion of finding scraps of notes left by other adventurers. These could process Magic Mapping, Detect Doors & Stairs, Find Traps, Identify a random item (maybe even one not in inventory), or even snippets of game hints.

[Sirridan]

Having done my homework on Rogues, I have to say I was pretty off-base regarding class desirability. There's obviously a lot of love for these guys. My inadvertant egg-throwing aside ...

What is the opinion regarding an enhancement such as treasure caches? Obviously I'm not being quite objective here. I like the idea of increasing the span of dungeon that a player would want to navigate. I also like the idea of making bonus items for searching more desirable.

Treasure maps grew out of another idea I had which was the notion of finding scraps of notes left by other adventurers. These could process Magic Mapping, Detect Doors & Stairs, Find Traps, Identify a random item (maybe even one not in inventory), or even snippets of game hints.

It's not a bad idea, but it's been somewhat done considering there are scrolls of treasure detection, and vaults which may be somewhat difficult to access. Maybe there could be a similar idea, chests that have unpickable locks, but can be opened by a key, said key would be generated on the level as soon as the chest is. Not able to be picked up, and immune to fire/acid and such (or at least so at higher levels of chests), and these chests would hold only consumables and ammo, since those can be quite difficult to find deeper down, and maybe jewelry?

Edit:

Leaving a level with a key, you would get this kind of a message: "The <key type> key slips off your belt and falls into a crack, lost forever."

[Pete Mack]

And here I thought Angband already has a treasure map: Angband/lib/edit/vault.txt

I don't see much point in adding features that only works for one class, especially when there's already a feature that does almost the same thing: that is Vaults.

Beware of feeping creaturism.

[Leewei]

The idea was to favor stealthy gameply, not to exclude all non-Rogues. Sorry I didn't make that more clear. Thanks for the feedback!

[Hariolor]

The idea was to favor stealthy gameply, not to exclude all non-Rogues. Sorry I didn't make that more clear. Thanks for the feedback!

It would be nice to be able to enter a vault without having to kill/TO all the baddies guarding the goodies inside. After all, Bilbo didn't fight smaug (though he did very nearly get toasted on the way out).

That being said, even rogues need EXP. The point of the game is to kill M, after all, not just to steal all M's cool loot. Eventually even a stealthy character would have to face up to some baddies.

[Leewei]

While this is true, I'd suggest that a game with several play styles is likely to be more fun. Also, please note in the cache's description, "Uncovering a cache should also grant an experience award determined by the dungeon level."

Feature creep is a solid argument against any new game idea, but then we never get new features.

[PowerDiver]

Also, please note in the cache's description, "Uncovering a cache should also grant an experience award determined by the dungeon level."

This is already the case, if you believe in expectations. The experience award of a vault is the chance of finding !exp in it * 100K.