Small (possible) bug in Vanilla

[Jungle_Boy]

I'm playing r2003 and I was just attempting to sell stuff to the general store. When I hit 's' to sell stuff there was an unID scroll in the list of saleable items allowing me to easily identify it as phase door. Since most people probably buy a phase door scroll before descending maybe this is not much of an issue but though I would mention it.

[Derakon]

I'm not sure I follow. How does an un-ID'd item showing up in the list of salable items make it trivial to ID the item? Or are you saying that you sold it and the shopkeeper ID'd it for you? Because they always ID the items you sell them if they are not already ID'd, and it's common for players to sell un-ID'd potions and scrolls to the shopkeepers in the early game.

[thapper]

I guess Jungle_Boy meant that since the General Store only sells phase door and recall and you always(?) start with a scroll of recall, then if you can sell an unID'd scroll to the General Store, it will be a scroll of phase door, they won't buy anything else.

[Derakon]

Ah, I missed that bit. I guess my suggested fix here is to start the player with a scroll of Phase Door and 20 less AU.

[nullfame]

Isn't there an option to start empty-handed with more gold? That fix wouldn't work. I'm surprised someone descends without phase.

[Jungle_Boy]

Yea, it's not really a big deal for the situation I experienced but maybe it's something that needs to be checked out to make sure this is not just the head of the beast. What about unID (blessed) weapons are those saleable to the temple? Certain subsets of potions and scrolls are sold at the temple so seeing what unID items can be sold there would be one way of possibly narrowing down what an item is.

[Derakon]

Yes there is that option, but IMO this isn't a big enough issue to worry about that. Besides, then they'd only know if the scroll was Phase Door or Word of Recall.

The other option is to prevent selling to the general store altogether.

[Magnate]

Yes there is that option, but IMO this isn't a big enough issue to worry about that. Besides, then they'd only know if the scroll was Phase Door or Word of Recall.

The other option is to prevent selling to the general store altogether.

Takk did that in 3.1.0, and reverted it in 3.1.1 after howls of outrage.

[PowerWyrm]

The fix applied for this problem introduced more inconsistencies. Now you can sell to the General Store any unidentified mushroom or light source (the Phial for example), but you need to identify other staples (missiles, diggers, cloaks... trying to sell an unidentified Cloak of Thorongil, for example, will not work).

I think this behavior should be made more consistent. Either:
- prevent selling unidentified items to the General Store completely
- prevent selling unidentified flavored items to the General Store
- allow selling unidentified items to the General Store, and, as mentioned in an earlier post, give everyone a Scroll of Phase Door at birth

[d_m]

Just to be clear, you can sell any item to identify it as long as you choose the right store, correct? If so, then we're not really arguing about whether IDing unknown items is possible, but more about whether the General Store will force you to walk somewhere else or not. Or am I missing the point?

[jens]

Just to be clear, you can sell any item to identify it as long as you choose the right store, correct? If so, then we're not really arguing about whether IDing unknown items is possible, but more about whether the General Store will force you to walk somewhere else or not. Or am I missing the point?

The point is that you do not need to sell it to GS. You just check that you can sell it, then you can write on your notepad that 'blarg blaha' is actually 'Phase Door' ;-)

[Magnate]

The point is that you do not need to sell it to GS. You just check that you can sell it, then you can write on your notepad that 'blarg blaha' is actually 'Phase Door' ;-)

No, this was fixed - but as PowerWyrm notes, the fix has caused inconsistency. The issue now is that the General Store has inconsistent buying habits - it will buy some unIDd items (that it stocks) but not others. I have reopened ticket #1181 to address this.