Gold and no_selling

[PowerDiver]

I also have money created from treasure veins be 3x the dungeon lvl, so going for veins in early/midgame is quite worth the trouble.

Humph. What a way to reward the wrong thing.

The game is supposed to be about adventurering, not mining.

I'd rather seeing digging a square take a reasonable number of game turns, say 10^6 for a str 15 char with a pick at a first guess, but then checkerboards would be impassible.

Do it if you must, but please don't include it in any measures of play balance. Especially please don't use it as an excuse for lower money drops.

[fizzix]

Humph. What a way to reward the wrong thing.

The game is supposed to be about adventurering, not mining.

I think mining should provide an alternate route for a beginner level player to pick up gold in the early dungeon. It's a crutch for new players and once you learn what you need to buy in town and what you can go without, you won't do it anymore.

[Timo Pietilä]

I think mining should provide an alternate route for a beginner level player to pick up gold in the early dungeon. It's a crutch for new players and once you learn what you need to buy in town and what you can go without, you won't do it anymore.

I still mine sometimes. Not because I have to but because I can. There is no reason to not to mine gameplay or otherwise.

[Sirridan]

Just make sure the game isn't *about* mining in the early game, and we're good.

Anyway, I'm pushing the 50's in dlvl... high end hydras and ancient D's sometimes drop 5-8k each, however this is rather rare. I'm picking up about ~500-1000 gold per dlvl. Still poor though. Maybe we could add 'money vaults' ala Nethack? (No guards to steal it from you though )

[Derakon]

The reason to not mine is that the return on game-time invested is minimal, and in the meantime more (awake) monsters are spawning. Logistically, mining doesn't really make sense, but it doesn't hurt flavor-wise so I have no problem with it. New players will quickly learn that there are more efficient ways to make cash which don't require them to carry diggers.

If you want to add the occasional bonanza payout, import treasure pits (filled with creeping coins). In my experience they tend to pay out 5-30k depending on composition.

[Timo Pietilä]

The reason to not mine is that the return on game-time invested is minimal, and in the meantime more (awake) monsters are spawning.

So? Where's the harm in that? Why should I care with game time?

Logistically, mining doesn't really make sense, but it doesn't hurt flavor-wise so I have no problem with it. New players will quickly learn that there are more efficient ways to make cash which don't require them to carry diggers.

Not much faster though (except maybe selling stuff). Especially with decent digger and enough STR or with stone to mud spell.

If you want to add the occasional bonanza payout, import treasure pits (filled with creeping coins). In my experience they tend to pay out 5-30k depending on composition.

NPP treasure pits are about as dangerous as vanilla graveyards. I didn't like them much, risk/reward ratio was not high enough.

[Sirridan]

So just died because I looked away for a second and got blown up by Ji Indur. Anyway no_selling basically means (imho) that the black market is useless. There was more than one occasion where I had to go to dlvl one and farm for money to buy one or two ?recall just to keep going.

!CCW were not affordable in quantities greater than 5 or so until I was way deeper than usual. It was hard to pick up even a =FA from the BM in more than one game because money was so tight. Stacks of ?Descent and ?Tlvl were hard to buy, and often it was a choice between those, and other consumables.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, except that the BM is next to impossible to utilize except for scrolls. However compared to having selling on, no_selling becomes a challenge game instead of a viable alternative, which is where my problem is.

I'd like to see no_selling to have on average, the same amount of gold per dlvl as selling. The advantage being with no_selling, you don't have to worry about holding onto things, whereas with selling, the advantage is larger gold spikes, which in the end should even out at the point when selling characters don't carry junk to sell anyway.

I just really hate seeing speed boots in the armory when I have a weapon of westerness I could so sell to buy them.

[Derakon]

NPP treasure pits are nasty largely because of the new coin monsters it has added, which have ridiculously high AC, and because it's upped the speed on many coin monsters. If you used the vanilla '$' monster set then they wouldn't be as dangerous.

The reason to care about game time is as I said: more monsters spawn, those monsters are awake. The longer you spend on a dungeon level the more dangerous it gets.

[pampl]

I'd like to see no_selling to have on average, the same amount of gold per dlvl as selling. The advantage being with no_selling, you don't have to worry about holding onto things, whereas with selling, the advantage is larger gold spikes, which in the end should even out at the point when selling characters don't carry junk to sell anyway.

I really don't like this idea. Selling should be a valid strategy instead of a "challenge" mode where you have to go to town constantly just to catch up with the guy who turned selling off and who is therefore already making XP and getting items faster than you. I don't even like the kind of methodical town-centric play that selling encourages, but I don't think it should be made strictly more difficult than no-selling mode.

[Timo Pietilä]

The reason to care about game time is as I said: more monsters spawn, those monsters are awake. The longer you spend on a dungeon level the more dangerous it gets.

Yes, but time used to dig out treasure is very small. It hardly makes much difference in spawning monsters unless you try it with weak char and poor digging ability and try to get to treasure that is not next to you thru granite. If the average time used to digging is less than 50 to get thru it is almost negligible for monster spawning. That's about moving 2.5 times your visual range. Resting one time for full mana takes longer for even very low level chars.

[Magnate]

I really don't like this idea. Selling should be a valid strategy instead of a "challenge" mode where you have to go to town constantly just to catch up with the guy who turned selling off and who is therefore already making XP and getting items faster than you. I don't even like the kind of methodical town-centric play that selling encourages, but I don't think it should be made strictly more difficult than no-selling mode.

It's the other way round. no_selling is the challenge, selling is (currently) the norm. So Sirridan will be disappointed, but you won't.

Sirridan - not sure if you were playing with 3x or 5x drops, but no_selling is not supposed to provide as much gold as selling. I mean, it will if you repeat levels, but nothing can really compare with lugging around high value items, and it would be an error to design no_selling to try to compete with that.

I grant you that your description of barely being able to afford ?WoR sounds a bit too limited (sounds rather like O!), but it isn't about balancing it so ppl can afford BoS from the BM ...

P.S. I'm with Timo on digging - it's for flavour, and it's harmless/benign. I'm with Eddie on not including it in balancing calculations though.

[buzzkill]

I've been playing no selling (DaJ and FA) for a while now. Gold is a bit rarer in the early game, but I've found even with FA's meager 2x drop multiplier, it wasn't that much of a challenge. DaJ's 4x multiplier, seems a bit much by my play style, but I don't care much for the town game to begin with.

I think that no selling should be a bit of a challenge. What we definitely don't want to do is make the game easier. I'd err on the side of drops being to low. Here's a few random observations.

1. Mining in the early game does help, if you need the gold. That means that there is suddenly a reason to hold onto a digger if you find one.
2. As mentioned earlier, you no longer have to burden yourself with useless crap just to sell. his frees up slots for useful inventory, and keeps you from dying to speed (-4) greed. I see these as advantages and don't have a problem if they come at a slight cost.
3. Maybe, just maybe people may have to change their strategy a little rather than change the drops a lot. Staying in the dungeon longer, conserving and acquiring consumables rather than buying them.
4. Hydras, and probably a lot of other stuff were previously things to be avoided, now there is a reason to kill them. A view that as a plus.
4. If the point of no selling was to have more of the game played in the dungeon, then why increase gold drops to encourage the buying game.
5. and last... There's something to be said about not having to sell one (or a bunch) of your "keeper" items in order to buy something even better, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

[will_asher]

I've been playing no selling (DaJ and FA) for a while now. Gold is a bit rarer in the early game, but I've found even with FA's meager 2x drop multiplier, it wasn't that much of a challenge. DaJ's 4x multiplier, seems a bit much by my play style, but I don't care much for the town game to begin with.

Just a note, DAJ's x4 multiplier seems like a lot because it's based on 3.0.9 gold drops which were (as I hear) decreased in newer versions, so I doubt x4 would be too much for V.

[Sirridan]

It's the other way round. no_selling is the challenge, selling is (currently) the norm. So Sirridan will be disappointed, but you won't.

Sirridan - not sure if you were playing with 3x or 5x drops, but no_selling is not supposed to provide as much gold as selling. I mean, it will if you repeat levels, but nothing can really compare with lugging around high value items, and it would be an error to design no_selling to try to compete with that.

I meant it feels like that no_selling *is* the challenge game right now. Obviously still *much* easier than iron man, but it was a bit more irritating in the early game.

Anyway I wasn't aware that it wasn't supposed to be the same amount of gold, so in that sense it worked out fine, and I do think it was x3 drops, I need to re-clone the repo and compile again I think.

As for playing no_selling again, I think I will after I update.

I grant you that your description of barely being able to afford ?WoR sounds a bit too limited (sounds rather like O!), but it isn't about balancing it so ppl can afford BoS from the BM ...

No worries, I'm not under the illusion that it's trying to balance that way, I was just jokingly stating that it seemed the RNG was taunting me

All in all, the feeling of not being bogged down by stuff was kinda nice.

[PowerDiver]

It's the other way round. no_selling is the challenge, selling is (currently) the norm. So Sirridan will be disappointed, but you won't.

IMO no selling should not be a challenge option. It should just be a different way to play.