No Sell - I am convinced

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1. I never head back to town just to sell stuff.

2. I would never pick up a heavy item to sell if it slowed me, (but I may pick it up to bring it to the home if it could become useful.)

3. I don't think I ever have chosen a "sellable" item before a "fun and useful" item .

Put me down for most of the above (I will pick up heavy items and carry them if I think they are going to be useful, dropping them as needed in order to fight).

In your selling games, would you carry a scroll of Detect Invisible? Would you use a wand of Confuse Monster, rather than hold it to sell? How many inventory slots are full before you go into the dungeon? In no-selling games, all of my inventory is for items that I'd either want to use at some point, or that I'm waiting on pseudo to ID for me. I can carry tons of niche crap that I'd pretty much squelch right off in a selling game, because I'd get a better return on devoting the inventory slot to something salable.

I typically am leaving slots t though w open for new items and carrying two slots of items I can dump if I judge an item is worth having (Scrolls of Phase Door and Identify--the latter of which use themselves up in dungeons thereby freeing up another slot).

In selling games, when my pack fills up with vendor trash, I either recall or start ditching the least valuable items so I can fit in more valuable stuff (or the occasional, rare actually usable item).

I often leave items on the ground of types that just aren't a great fit for the character I'm playing. I'm not seeing how not being able to sell items changes that routine. I still don't understand what is is about the possibility of selling that makes you have to play inventory management games when you claim you don't want to do that. Leave the "valuable" items on the ground.

With no-selling, my pack fills far less quickly, even though I've stuffed so many low-odds items in it, because there are far fewer usable items than there are salable items.

Clearly I'm paranoid because I consider my a-q slots to be mandatory, must carry items. (Well, not actually a-q since items get packed in a certain way, but a-q worth of slots).

[Derakon]

Clearly I'm paranoid because I consider my a-q slots to be mandatory, must carry items. (Well, not actually a-q since items get packed in a certain way, but a-q worth of slots).

I'm not talking so much about the late game as I am about the early- and mid-game, when you haven't necessarily found all the consumables you normally want to carry with you. In the early game, my "must-have" inventory are phase door, word of recall, some form of healing potion(s), and (if I'm playing a pure caster) a couple of spellbooks. Everything else is the random stuff I find in the dungeon, but if I'm playing with selling on, low-value items that still have some utility, like the aforementioned ?DetectInvisible, will get tossed in favor of something that is worth money. Since there's a lot of potentially moneymaking items to be found, my early dives with selling on don't usually make it past 500'; with no-selling, I can get all the way down to 900' pretty reliably before the lack of a stock of midgame consumables makes me antsy.

So yeah, about doubling my dungeon dive length is what really sells me on no-selling.

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I'm not talking so much about the late game as I am about the early- and mid-game, when you haven't necessarily found all the consumables you normally want to carry with you. In the early game, my "must-have" inventory are phase door, word of recall, some form of healing potion(s), and (if I'm playing a pure caster) a couple of spellbooks. Everything else is the random stuff I find in the dungeon, but if I'm playing with selling on, low-value items that still have some utility, like the aforementioned ?DetectInvisible, will get tossed in favor of something that is worth money. Since there's a lot of potentially moneymaking items to be found, my early dives with selling on don't usually make it past 500'; with no-selling, I can get all the way down to 900' pretty reliably before the lack of a stock of midgame consumables makes me antsy.

So yeah, about doubling my dungeon dive length is what really sells me on no-selling.

My priest is carrying books in slots a-d (still low enough level not to have found one of the advanced books), 12 cure criticals, 3 Healing, and 3 Speed potions slots e-g, 5 phase doors, 5 Identifies, 5 Word of Recalls slots h-j, 3 rods of light (which since I just found The Phial of Galadriel I suppose I can get rid of), 4 wands of Lightning Bolts, a wand of Teleport Other slots k-m, a staff of curing, 3 rings of teleportation, a ring of escaping, 2 amulets of teleportation in various other slots but occupying effectively slots n-q, and 14 iron shot in effective slot r.

I don't consider any of that stuff optional. At lower levels some of the wands might be different and the potioins would be one of the lesser cures but the rest of it is pretty much must have.

What gets tossed is what can almost invariably be found at town level--scrolls of phase door and scrolls of word of recall (but only after having read one).

[Derakon]

You have different definitions of non-optional gear than I do. At your level, I'd feel uncomfortable without:

* The four town books
* 15 !CCW
* 15 ?Phase Door
* 2 !Speed (stash any extra in the home)
* 5+ ?WoR
* -TeleportOther if available
* Possibly another attack wand, whatever's handy
* _Teleport
* _Identify

Particularly, I don't like rings of escaping (they strike me as cheesy) and items with random teleportation are way too unreliable. If I need speed I burn a !Speed, or just avoid the fight in the first place. Staves of curing are worse than useless -- CCW potions do everything they do, while having a 0% failure rate, less weight per-charge, and no chance of losing the entire thing to one instance of inventory damage. The only time I'd consider using one is if the fight's already over and I have some lingering status ailment to take care of, but at that point I can rest and/or cast Neutralize Poison as appropriate. Or chug a !CCW, since I carry so many spares.

At some point I do start carrying !Healing, but not this early, especially since as a priest I can cast the spell. Rods of Light are briefly useful for taking out orcs, but very quickly either you can take them out without needing the rods, or they're immune to light. Finally, ammo for a priest isn't generally all that great until rather later in the game; in the meantime, OoD suffices.

All told, that's 12 items, for slots a-l. Tack on -DetectTreasure, and maybe some !Heroism and ?HolyChant, and you're still only up to slot o. There's plenty left for random marginal-utility stuff. So yeah, I do end up carrying rods of Light longer than I should, as well as a couple of miscellaneous attack wands that I keep forgetting about.

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The difference between 12 and 15 CCW is negligible, so we agree on that.

15 Phase Door? I rarely use 2 let alone anywhere near 15.

Speed I try to reserve for unique fights. As goes teleport items, they are absolute, last ditch items because of their questionable reliability. But they have saved characters before so I prefer to carry though most times if I am looking at escaping Portal is likely to be used (preferably at a point where I can portal again if I don't like the arrival spot--happens enough one should be prepared).

I was carrying the rods of light because somewhere, long ago, I lost a character due to insufficient light and a need to read a scroll. As I noted, since I found Phial (this morning even) I can get rid of them.

As for ammo, finishing off low hp stragglers is what I carry it for. OoD is wonderful but also 14% of my mana with each cast. I could use one of the wands but I find just enough things fleeing in situations where I need to keep my mana up that packing ammo seems to make sense.

Heroism and Holy Chant. . .I really don't use them much. Blessing myself seems more reasonable than using the slots that way. Am I missing something?

[Derakon]

Oh right, priests can cast bless, so no need for ?HolyChant. Heroism's handy for the fear immunity if nothing else, though I don't know if I'd carry it on an earlygame priest.

Phase door is useful for avoiding melee, which is how most earlygame uniques will kill you. You can safely take out the Sons of Mim, the orc uniques, Sangahyando, etc. by casting spells / aiming wands / firing ammo (as appropriate to class) and using phase door when they get close. This works even on fast uniques so long as they don't have dangerous spells, but that tends to burn through scrolls quickly since you only get a turn or maybe two before having to phase again.

If you're in the situation where you need to teleport, an item whose sole purpose is teleportation is a lot more reliable than an item that might choose to teleport you if it's feeling nice.

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You see my preference for saving Speed potions for uniques. Most (so far anyway) have met the hit and move back death, with the occasionally phase door and OoD/ammo tossed in.

Back on topic, no_selling doesn't strike me as unreasonable, broken, or cheating the game and I'm all for people who like it using it. I don't mind selling, but no doubt there were people who actually liked haggling too.

[artes]

The economical system in Angband always bothered me because it is not balanced. The shop keepers seem to lose a lot of money since they buy for a lot more than they are selling for. In the real world they would be out of money fast. If Angband was realistic, they would pay less for the things they buy from the player. Maybe 10% of the price they sell things for. Now it seems like it is 50% or more.

[Derakon]

They give a discount to their suppliers (a.k.a. adventurers). You should see the prices people from out of town have to pay!

[ekolis]

The economical system in Angband always bothered me because it is not balanced. The shop keepers seem to lose a lot of money since they buy for a lot more than they are selling for. In the real world they would be out of money fast. If Angband was realistic, they would pay less for the things they buy from the player. Maybe 10% of the price they sell things for. Now it seems like it is 50% or more.

Eh? Since when did THAT happen? Admittedly I haven't played V in a while, but last I checked, if I bought something from a shop, and sold it back (or sold something and bought it back), I'd lose about 50% on the deal... if you really could sell something for some amount of money and buy it back for less, then you could get unlimited money from the shopkeepers by buying and selling repeatedly!

Or do you mean that the volume of selling that a player does at a shop is greater than the volume of buying, so eventually the merchant would theoretically bankrupt himself with a large amount of unsalable stock? I suppose that can be explained by saying that the timed restocks of shops represent NPC transactions... though I do seem to recall years ago there was this one variant with an actual free-market system whereby prices fluctuated over time based on supply and demand...!

[Jazerus]

Shopkeepers buy for less than they sell for, and presumably they sell all the ego items you sell to them "off-camera" for a very large amount of money, making them by far the wealthiest people in Middle-earth.

It's a nice job if you can get it.

[Raggy]

another thing that annoys me; arrows break to much, and forces me trips to surface only to restock ammo.

[Derakon]

Carry more arrows, then. The tradeoffs on ammo basically are:

Arrows: lightweight, break easily, decent damage
Bolts: heavy, don't break easily, decent damage
Shots: midweight, don't break easily, poor damage

So to make up for arrows getting used up more, you carry more of them. When I'm using bows I typically stock up to 40 basic arrows in my quiver when in town, sometimes more.

That said, I do switch to crossbows whenever possible because the weight isn't as much of a concern in the late game and the bolt and arrow stacks you find in the dungeon are the same size -- making ego bolts more usable over the long term. Either arrows should come in larger stacks or bolt stacks should be more rare compared to arrow stacks; I'd go with the former.

[nobody]

count me among one who's tried no-sell and hates it. now i know i'm not a good player, and i accept that. selling is a huge part of why i play the game, and i've played pretty much as long as i can remember, umoria before there was angband, and i was too little to really know what was going on. id by use is ok for weapons, i guess, although its a hassle. for potions? come on! who really enjoys IDing by use for potions and scrolls?!? no, i won't do it, i can't do it, its wrong. i'm about the opposite of the min-maxing players that were talked about in that article that was linked. i play games to relax, some huge effort on trying to play the game effeciently as possible seems like work to me. i hate work. i love to just zone out and explore the dungeon for a little while, come up, sell stuff, buy stuff, rinse and repeat. it's like a zen thing with me, at its best.

[Jazerus]

count me among one who's tried no-sell and hates it. now i know i'm not a good player, and i accept that. selling is a huge part of why i play the game, and i've played pretty much as long as i can remember, umoria before there was angband, and i was too little to really know what was going on. id by use is ok for weapons, i guess, although its a hassle. for potions? come on! who really enjoys IDing by use for potions and scrolls?!? no, i won't do it, i can't do it, its wrong. i'm about the opposite of the min-maxing players that were talked about in that article that was linked. i play games to relax, some huge effort on trying to play the game effeciently as possible seems like work to me. i hate work. i love to just zone out and explore the dungeon for a little while, come up, sell stuff, buy stuff, rinse and repeat. it's like a zen thing with me, at its best.

I'm not sure how some of what you mention applies to no_sell. You don't have to ID-by-use in a no sell game; ID-by-sell still works, you just get no money from it. Besides which, ID by use of potions and scrolls in the early depths before you can afford constant magical identification is essentially riskless as long as you do it in a cleared room with some healing things on hand, and I do as much ID-by-use in a sell game as a no sell game. Angband isn't Nethack (though I like Nethack, too), the focus of the game isn't ID so ID shouldn't be arbitrarily painful like it was in older versions.

I agree with you, playing as absolutely efficiently as possible is usually not very fun. The value of no sell for me is that it aligns efficiency with fun - that is, I can do something (not pick up junk to sell) that I would prefer to do for fun's sake, and not have that be a sub-optimal strategy.

I can respect that you don't like no sell, but most of your post doesn't really say why.