on heavy curses

[Psi]

In effect what I am trying to say is I guess that I like id-by-use but if I get stuck with some heavy duty cursed item, it will lower my enjoyment value. It might be blasphemy but then again i am not racing to kill M.

I think that is actually the view of the divers too or am I missing something?

[Rizwan]

I see this allegation and it concerns me. I don't understand it: in what way would any changes to heavy curses make the game less enjoyable for players who like to play slowly and/or clear whole levels?

Its not heavy curses per se. You can curse half the artifacts if you want to. Its coupling these curses with making sources of id scarce. If I want to play with only "good" equipment then its my problem but i have to be able to id the equipment before I wield it. In effect what I am trying to say is I guess that I like id-by-use but if I get stuck with some heavy duty cursed item, it will lower my enjoyment value. It might be blasphemy but then again i am not racing to kill M.

[Nick]

The old system of two-level sticky curses and (more or less) needing to ID everything before wielding certainly works - it has worked fine for a long time. It doesn't continue to work with ID-by-use, however. This is something which has been discussed a lot and over a long time, and essentially the community as a whole has come to a reasonable consensus that ID-by-use is worth doing. So heavy curses have to go.

IMHO this makes the game different, but not clearly either easier/harder or optimised to any particular playing style. I certainly think the ID-by-use mechanic leads to more interesting play than the sticky curses. I also think it's a more natural means of identifying objects.

[Magnate]

I think this game is being optimized only for people who like to dive. I like to explore the dungeon, kill most of the monsters, use only the best stuff etc. That is what I enjoy. If the game changes keep going in the current direction, like curse items reduce ?id, then for me the game will cease to be enjoyable. I don't know how many people feel this way but I think that there should be a balance in the game mechanics between people who just want to go right down and kill M and those that want to exterminate the evil in the pits of Angband. Maybe all these changes could be birth options, or ironman options or another variant or some such?

I see this allegation and it concerns me. I don't understand it: in what way would any changes to heavy curses make the game less enjoyable for players who like to play slowly and/or clear whole levels?

[Rizwan]

I think this game is being optimized only for people who like to dive. I like to explore the dungeon, kill most of the monsters, use only the best stuff etc. That is what I enjoy. If the game changes keep going in the current direction, like curse items reduce ?id, then for me the game will cease to be enjoyable. I don't know how many people feel this way but I think that there should be a balance in the game mechanics between people who just want to go right down and kill M and those that want to exterminate the evil in the pits of Angband. Maybe all these changes could be birth options, or ironman options or another variant or some such?

[buzzkill]

Which I do, but whether destroying items to test for artifacts is a proper game mechanic is another debate.

I'll bite. Attempting to destroy an un-ID'd artifact either intentionally (via destroy), or unintentionally (via attacks with item destroying effects) could damage the item, reducing damage dice and/or special enchantments. That should give most players second thoughts, since such things cannot be restored. OTOH, artifacts native to an easier DL than the players CL should be known to the player upon possession.

[TJS]

A solution could be my favourite idea which is to make scrolls of enchant a lot rarer and more powerful (and not available in shops except perhaps occasionally in the black market). So a scroll can enchant things several times both to-hit and to-damage (and have a decent chance of going above +9, +9 and working on artifacts).

Then make all heavily cursed items have negative to-hit and to-damage values and make the curse broken when both are greater or equal to zero.

This means that you might choose to use an enchant scroll immediately or to save it up in case of a heavily cursed weapon, which creates an interesting game choice.

[Psi]

> 'slowing down' is the very thing we want to avoid

Perhaps. But "avoiding slowing down" is synonymous with "removing some
obstacle or difficulty". It's a (potentially) slippery slope. I do not
want to see too many concessions made to enabling and encouraging the one
style of play (diving), by removing (too many) things that make it hard.

Agreed.

> If you are playing ironman or diving for example, slots and time are precious

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, my response to this is: "and your point
is?". Slots are always precious, and doubly so in an Ironman game. If you
are trying for a minimum turn win, then time is precious too. But that just
means you are forced to make difficult decisions: Is it worth the cost of
keeping a slot open to carry around a weapon until I get a pseudo? Can I take
the time needed to safely id these weapons? Should I just ignore that stack
of weapons and keep my current one, or should I be unsafe and just wield
everything? Is my current weapon good enough for now or do I really need
to look for a better one? All hard questions. All good gameplay.

I disagree that it makes for good gameplay. Infact it just removes an element as most of the time you cannot take the risk or waste the slot, so you destroy. However worse still are the ?Curse scrolls which of course don't even pseudo.

> you do not want to/cannot lug around these items waiting for pseudo

I'll agree with "do not want to", but balk at "cannot". Of course you can.
I do it; you can too. You may not *want* to; agreed. It is a colossal
pain to do so; agreed. It can take time; agreed. But in some sense, that
is the whole point: being safe has costs and drawbacks. But not being safe
has costs and drawbacks too. You need to decide.

Ok, I'll concede that 'cannot' was me exaggerating to get the point across. The truth is you often have all your slots filled with stuff you know is useful and to maintain your turncount there is little point waiting for something that might be useful or worse still wield testing something which will destroy your game.

In a totally-different-yet-related way, I find it to be a boring pain to
hang out around level 40 until I get a ring of Resist Poison. A diver
might respond to that by saying "well then, don't wait! Just keep going,
and if a Drolem gets you, you die; try again." I sorta feel this way about
Morgul weapons: if you don't like taking the time to be safe, well then,
don't wait! Just go ahead and wield it, and if it's Morgul, you lose; try
again.

Except I'll destroy it and find another way to die :-)

And in any event, there is another option for players that don't want to
spend the time and effort to do this: stick to artifacts and just (attempt
to) destroy all the weapons you find and only wield the indestructible ones.
Only Moremegil presents any problems if you do that.

Which I do, but whether destroying items to test for artifacts is a proper game mechanic is another debate.

> the game is currently heading is towards id by use

Right now, this is pretty easy. Weapons with an obvious effect can typically
only be of one or two types, e.g. if you wield a weapon and it increases
your stealth, then it is a Defender. Weapons without an obvious effect are
either "magic" or ordinary Slay weapons, and can be tossed. If there is no
penalty for indiscriminately wielding weapons, then Identifying them is too
easy.

There is no reason why the penalties have to be easy to spot though. For example there are curses in FA whereby demons are randomly summoned or you suddenly suffer from a bad cut etc. Not obvious on wield but kick in like teleportation does at the moment.

All this said, I am willing to concede the point that perhaps the existing
penalty for a heavy curse is too great. Options might include making
ordinary cursed items much more common, and allowing heavily cursed items
to have a percentage chance (like 10%) of being removed with an ordinary
Remove Curse. And I would make the priest spell only work on ordinary
curses; you'd need to find a scroll/staff to have a chance at a heavy
curse. Basically I'm saying there needs to be some penalty, even a
substantial penalty, for indiscriminately wielding things. But perhaps
"losing the game" is a bit too steep a penalty.

I agree wholeheartedly - see above.

I like the "id by use" idea, but think it should be harder to figure
things out. I also think the different classes should have different
abilities in this regard: Warriors should id all weapons and armor,
Rangers id bows, but get only vague feelings about other things, etc.

I must admit, I didn't expect to like id by use, but I really miss it when playing other variants now. I think it is one of the best developments to make it into vanilla.

[bron]

> 'slowing down' is the very thing we want to avoid

Perhaps. But "avoiding slowing down" is synonymous with "removing some
obstacle or difficulty". It's a (potentially) slippery slope. I do not
want to see too many concessions made to enabling and encouraging the one
style of play (diving), by removing (too many) things that make it hard.

I will concede that perhaps Morgul weapons should not ever be generated
within, say, the first 5 levels. That would allow an Ironman player to
safely pickup something usable.



> If you are playing ironman or diving for example, slots and time are precious

At the risk of sounding like a jerk, my response to this is: "and your point
is?". Slots are always precious, and doubly so in an Ironman game. If you
are trying for a minimum turn win, then time is precious too. But that just
means you are forced to make difficult decisions: Is it worth the cost of
keeping a slot open to carry around a weapon until I get a pseudo? Can I take
the time needed to safely id these weapons? Should I just ignore that stack
of weapons and keep my current one, or should I be unsafe and just wield
everything? Is my current weapon good enough for now or do I really need
to look for a better one? All hard questions. All good gameplay.



> you do not want to/cannot lug around these items waiting for pseudo

I'll agree with "do not want to", but balk at "cannot". Of course you can.
I do it; you can too. You may not *want* to; agreed. It is a colossal
pain to do so; agreed. It can take time; agreed. But in some sense, that
is the whole point: being safe has costs and drawbacks. But not being safe
has costs and drawbacks too. You need to decide.

In a totally-different-yet-related way, I find it to be a boring pain to
hang out around level 40 until I get a ring of Resist Poison. A diver
might respond to that by saying "well then, don't wait! Just keep going,
and if a Drolem gets you, you die; try again." I sorta feel this way about
Morgul weapons: if you don't like taking the time to be safe, well then,
don't wait! Just go ahead and wield it, and if it's Morgul, you lose; try
again.

And in any event, there is another option for players that don't want to
spend the time and effort to do this: stick to artifacts and just (attempt
to) destroy all the weapons you find and only wield the indestructible ones.
Only Moremegil presents any problems if you do that.



> the game is currently heading is towards id by use

Right now, this is pretty easy. Weapons with an obvious effect can typically
only be of one or two types, e.g. if you wield a weapon and it increases
your stealth, then it is a Defender. Weapons without an obvious effect are
either "magic" or ordinary Slay weapons, and can be tossed. If there is no
penalty for indiscriminately wielding weapons, then Identifying them is too
easy.



All this said, I am willing to concede the point that perhaps the existing
penalty for a heavy curse is too great. Options might include making
ordinary cursed items much more common, and allowing heavily cursed items
to have a percentage chance (like 10%) of being removed with an ordinary
Remove Curse. And I would make the priest spell only work on ordinary
curses; you'd need to find a scroll/staff to have a chance at a heavy
curse. Basically I'm saying there needs to be some penalty, even a
substantial penalty, for indiscriminately wielding things. But perhaps
"losing the game" is a bit too steep a penalty.

I like the "id by use" idea, but think it should be harder to figure
things out. I also think the different classes should have different
abilities in this regard: Warriors should id all weapons and armor,
Rangers id bows, but get only vague feelings about other things, etc.

[d_m]

In the short term I'm proposing to decouple the chance to break a curse from the chance to enchant weapons (as you propose) to see how it plays. I'm not sure Takkaria will go for this but it seems like an easy thing to try which would scratch several itches the community seems to have.

[PowerDiver]

I'm curious how you'd feel if Heavy Curses went from making the item unremovable to something like a Time attack, e.g. unrecoverable stat/XP/whatever loss (but the item can be removed as normal). I feel like that is equally hard on ironman and non-ironman players, and doesn't require scumming for a rare scroll.

What are your thoughts? Does being hit with permanent stat/XP loss sound game ending to you? I imagine non-ironman players might prefer the old behavior (since they can hoard ?identify and ?*remove curse* if seen) but I think the alternate behavior might be more interesting.

My opposition to cannot-unwield may be based in the literature. Even the most strongly cursed items, like Stormbringer or a Coin of Bad Luck, can be unwielded and even dropped. It's just if you drop them later they end up in your pack anyway. Also, the heavy curse stops you from testing any new item you find for the slot.

I also do not believe you should be able to id without testing. In the original D&D, you had to wield an item or quaff a potion as part of the identify process. I think that was right. Then the curses inflated to instakill and that was impossible and the rules were changed, but IMO the problem is the inflated curses. Also, pseudo on something you are not wielding makes no sense at all.

I have no particular opposition to any of a myriad of other curses. Permanent stat loss is problematic because of the scarcity of stat potions [my last char only found 2 !str and only 2 !wis before defeating M], but that is more of a stat potion problem than a problem with the curse. If you are talking about temp stat drops, change "stat potion" to "restore potion" for a similar argument. I did not learn awareness of a single restore potion all game, and had only 2 tried but unknown potion flavors at the end, and one of those was probably blindness.

I think it is fair to say that I am opposed to a curse which basically means "you cannot continue as is, but you can return to town to remove the curse trivially with scumming". Every so often there is a discussion of curses, and the conclusion always seems to be that curses are only interesting if you would wield the item after you learned the curse, but nothing is done and the discussion is repeated a year later.

If there was no identify spell, and the only way to learn was to wield-test, then your "hit the player with an attack" curse on a useless item could be interesting. But that is only if there is no other way to identify, because people will avoid it if there is a game mechanic to do so.

This thread is because Tak wrote something in favor of the ?curse scrolls in one recent thread, and several people wrote in favor of morgul weapons in another. If heavy curses are here for the indeterminate future, I don't think it is right to require something as obscure and depressing as requiring one to find a disenchanter eye to disenchant the item before you read your enchant scrolls. That's equally true for non-ironman chars.

[d_m]

Personally, I abhor the idea of the cannot-unwield curse, so I'm sure I am biased, but I think I would still propose this change without my bias.

I'm curious how you'd feel if Heavy Curses went from making the item unremovable to something like a Time attack, e.g. unrecoverable stat/XP/whatever loss (but the item can be removed as normal). I feel like that is equally hard on ironman and non-ironman players, and doesn't require scumming for a rare scroll.

What are your thoughts? Does being hit with permanent stat/XP loss sound game ending to you? I imagine non-ironman players might prefer the old behavior (since they can hoard ?identify and ?*remove curse* if seen) but I think the alternate behavior might be more interesting.

[fizzix]

To quote you out of context, 'slowing down' is the very thing we want to avoid. If you are playing ironman or diving for example, slots and time are precious, so you do not want to/cannot lug around these items waiting for pseudo. The way the game is currently heading is towards id by use - heavy curses just do not sit in that mechanic.

I have a couple ideas. Most of my ideas are on the premise that adept players play for low turncount while relaxed/new players go much slower. Therefore, timed mechanics that wear off after a set number of game turns add difficulty to the expert, but do not penalize the new player. This is a good thing, IMO.

A while ago I suggested that certain effects become timed with estimates of a reasonable number of game turns. I'll repeat that here.

Stat-drain: regenerates (one point) after 20k turns
Nexus swap: Swaps back after 50k turns
Sticky curses: unwieldable after 20k turns
Heavy curses: unwieldable after 50k turns

Counters for all these should be available, so you can see how many turns you still have to wait.

Now, if you're an elite player, these times are going to be an unacceptable sacrifice. 50k game turns is a good chunk of the game.

Alternatively, you can stop distinguishing between heavy curses and light curses and make everything removable under a simple remove curse. That spell is available from scrolls fairly commonly and also fairly early for priests/paladins.

[Psi]

Actions whose consequences are unacceptable force you to
slow down and think about what you're doing. All good things IMHO.

To quote you out of context, 'slowing down' is the very thing we want to avoid. If you are playing ironman or diving for example, slots and time are precious, so you do not want to/cannot lug around these items waiting for pseudo. The way the game is currently heading is towards id by use - heavy curses just do not sit in that mechanic.

[bron]

I for one strongly disagree with the idea of removing heavily cursed items.
It is true that wielding one can be a game ender. But the right way to
deal with that is .. to not wield such a weapon.

Sure it can be a colossal pain to carry around a bunch of weapons until
you get a pseudo-id, or to lug them up to the town to sell, or to wait
until you have an identify spell. If you don't like that, you can always
wield them.

In a totally-different-yet-related way, it can be a colossal pain to get
the message "it breaths, you die." But the right way to deal with that
is .. to be very careful and not let it happen. And at least in this
case it is sometimes nearly unavoidable even if you are being careful:
but wielding an unidentified weapon or reading an unidentified scroll is
always a voluntary act.

And to answer the next question, no, I do not find that this interferes
with or reduces my enjoyment of the game. Heavy curses are an obstacle
to overcome. Prematurely wielding a weapon it is a temptation that must
be resisted. Actions whose consequences are unacceptable force you to
slow down and think about what you're doing. All good things IMHO.