inventory management newb question

[Halloween Jack]

hi all,

i'm having trouble managing my iventory. it gets full so quickly picking up scrolls and potions, i wondered what the best tactics for maximising profits are. should i just leave most stuff or always take it to the town. i've got as far as char level 6 and down to level 6.

what's the best thing to do with un indentified stuff, use it to identify future finds or take it to the town and sell it.

also, is it best to aim for a dungeon level that matches your character level on average or what.

any tips for a newb?

cheers

[Daven_26d1]

Firstly, I don't really want to spoil too much, and opening strategies vary from player to player.

For the first dive, I basically take an opportunity to ID as many scrolls and potions as possible. I usually clear lvl 1, drop to lvl 2, clear that as well and then walk to the surface, picking up stuff on the way.

Obviously this fills up my inventory pretty quick, so when I'm full I start reading scrolls. You know pretty much which scrolls too expect after a few games, so based on which ones you haven't had read them from a position that will maximise the chance of ID (ie detect scrolls will be more likely to trigger if you don't clear the surrounding area first) and mitigate any bad effects (ie you don't want a summon monster in the middle of a room).

If I get ID scrolls, I identify potions and discard bad ones. Basically I just want to find out which potions are the speed ones. Once I have found those, I sell all other unknown potions to the shop. The losses from buying back offset the gain from selling poison etc. Remember that certain potions are known, like water, so sell them without identifying them. Its fun to rip off the shopkeepers!

So basically I'm using potions to gain money, and scrolls to gain xp, but you might want to do it differently.

A good tip is to bring home any piles of ammunition you find, you can sell 1 unknown arrow to the shop to ID them all, much cheaper than a scroll. If they're magical this generally nets a good heap of cash for a new character.

As regards to how quickly you should descend, for now - as you are new to the game - just do whatever feels natural. Too easy? Dive a couple of floors. Dying too easily? Slow down. You can maybe ask a bit more about this later when you feel more comfortable with the basics; its a pretty widely debated topic, TBH.

Hope that gives you some ideas to work with. =)

[Halloween Jack]

thanks mate, that's alot of help.

[Mondkalb]

About other stuff like armor and weapons it depends on your class.
Some of them get a more specific and faster pseudo id than others.

I really hate it to sell any item to the shopkeeper only to find out that it was the much wanted boots of free action or whatever.
I try to walk around with all the stuff until the pseudo id kicks in which can last for quite a while. (You will never get a pseudo id for "average" stuff with a ranger for example, which is really annoying.)

Staves, rods and wands can be tested in the dungeon, but some of them might turn out bad like a staff of summoning, so be thoughful!

[Halloween Jack]

thanks. what's pseudo id? i've it mentioned. i'm playing highelf rangers at the mo'. is it an automatic identify like lore in d&d?

i guess it's good to get a identify spell or staff but i suppose that's later in the game, if i ever get that far.

[Seany C]

If you're feeling nervous, try reading scrolls or activating staves while standing on a staircase - that way, if it's for summoning, you've got an escape ready straight away.

I'd read the scrolls rather than quaff the potions - a potion of weakness/sickliness is common enough and no fun. The Summon Monster scroll is the only real nasty.

Also, if you're playing a char with strong pseudo-ID, I'd personally destroy anything <average> (or cursed, obviously) - in general wands and staves are worth more per pound than weapons and armour...

[Seany C]

Pseudo-ID is when you sense an unidentified item is <excellent>, <good>, <average>, <cursed> or <terrible>.

In V if I remember correctly, these labels only apply to weapons and armour - for some other variants like ToME, for example, magic devices and potions/scrolls can also get these labels...

[Big Al]

When I first started playing (and for about a year after that), I would play really cautiously all the time. I'd descend down to the first dungeon level, go around collecting potions and scrolls, go back and sell them to ID, repeat, spending forever IDing stuff, and then dying at 150' to Fang. It was fun for a while, but started getting boring to spend so much time setting up my character, only to have her die right away.

Then one day, I was bored and decided to play a 'reckless' game just for fun - quaffing every potion I find, taking every stairs down, etc. And I found out that the game wasn't really that much harder. Sure, I might die a bit more often, but I can play three games in the time that it used to take me to do one, and each of those games better. For must classes, I try to stay at clvl = dlvl for the first 10 or 20 levels. Most importantly, I can't let myself get somewhere where the monsters are easy to kill - this is my biggest cause of death - thinking that a certain pack of monsters is easy and then not paying attention. Definitely don't feel the need to clear out whole levels, just pick and choose the monsters. Once you get down to ~800' it's often worth it to buy scrolls of detect objects. If there's nothing interesting in a given dungeon area, don't explore it.

General tips: Buy a bow and enchant it to (+9, +9). This can often do a lot more damage than your melee weapon. Use lighter weapons, if possible - you get more attacks per round. Always carry around some potions of cure critical wounds - they cure confusion and a reasonable number of hitpoints. Always try to make sure that you have some means of escape (scrolls/staves of teleportation, etc). Play a variety of classes - there's a lot of techniques that work well for one class and not to much for others - and learning how to deal with situations in many different ways is always useful. I find warriors the easiest class at the start, just because of the ridiculously fast leveling up and many hitpoints.

If you're playing as a warrior, any weapons and armour on the ground should ID themselves pretty quickly - drop anything that's {average} or worse. I'll hold on to {good} things if I have space in the inventory, but drop them if I ever need the space. {excellent} items usually go for >~3000 gold, so they're often worth holding onto. Never carry something around while exploring if it's slowing you down. If you play a mage, you get ID spell at level 11, which is rather useful.

Good luck!

[Mondkalb]

In Vanilla, priests, mages, and rangers only get "weak" pseudo id (only "special" - for artifacts - "good" or "cursed", no "average").
The other classes also get the "excellent", "worthless", "terrible" and "average" feeling. (Only for weapons and armor.)

[Halloween Jack]

thanks for all the great tips guys.

the average, good etc you describe, is that what the different colours represent?

[Bandobras]

Nope. This is written in the inventory screen after the item name. For rangers you rarely get the description, for warriors, always.

[Halloween Jack]

thanks, what do the colours mean then?

[Bandobras]

One more mystery for you to figure out. (Seriously, probably nothing.)

[Mondkalb]

The colors in the inventory just point out different kinds of stuff - cyan for potions, white for scrolls, pink for rods and so on.

The colors of monsters sometimes are related to certain elements - blue for acid or electricity, green and yellow for poison or acid, red for fire and so on.

[Daven_26d1]

General tips: Buy a bow and enchant it to (+9, +9).

That ain't a general tip, its frickin' overkill!

No way is a heavily enchanted bow a necessity for a beginning character - I thought you liked to play "reckless" Al...