ID by use (new ways of learning)

[fizzix]

Currently, I think the way you learn the properties of all consumables is pretty good, although there are some things I don't like. However, it's extremely difficult to ID by use resistances and non-obvious abilities on ego weapons or randarts (or standarts, if you're unfamiliar with them.) Sometimes IDing the abilities are very cumbersome, and sometimes they are very dangerous. Consider the following abilities in order of hardest to least hard to ID. Unless we resolve these issues, Identify scrolls are going to need to be a staple item for every character.

Rdisenchant: Only a few monsters disenchant, and you certainly don't want to be testing equipment for the resistance while one of them hits you repeatedly, wrecking your gear. Currently the only safe way to ID disenchant on an item is to find a "weaponmastery and wield that while testing your equipment. Very rough.

Rnexus: the second hardest to test. Getting hit by nexus without resist gives you a chance at insta-kill with a bad stat-swap. Your only early game source of resistance is boots of stability, which have to be test ID'd on their own by jumping down a pit, noticing that they're not feather falling, and having enough knowledge of ego items to know that they have to be stability. Then there are so few monsters that breathe nexus but not dangerously, namely vortices, hounds and maybe greater basilisks. Even if you do have a safe way of testing, it may be a while until you can test stuff out.

Sustains: Brutal to learn by use. It's often hard to find monsters that drain the stat you want to test (drain chr anyone?). This is really a bear to actively attempt to learn.

Chaos: Very few monsters have chaos attacks that are not dangerous. Will o the wisp and magic mushroom patch are the ones I can come up with. They're both rare and very hard to get next to anyway. Chaos is very hard to test for, even if you have an item with rchaos. AFAIK even mushrooms of emergency don't work.

Most of the other ones aren't that bad, but some are annoying (feather falling, ugh).

I also thought of some alternate ways to ID by use some of these abilities. Let me know what you think.

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Disenchant: An item with rdis should also resist enchantment. You can then test it by reading an enchant scroll!

Rnexus: Since nexus tends to teleport you around, maybe you should learn if equipment has this ability by wearing it when teleporting? This makes it trivially easy to learn, but I don't really think that's a problem. Nexus is too dangerous to learn by exposing yourself to it.

Rchaos: I don't have any good suggestions for how to learn this. But clearly there needs to be an easier way to learn this flag.

Sustains: Learn on level up?

Feather falling: Learn when going down stairs.

Free action: I really think this should be learned on wield.

See Invisible: I don't think this should be learned on wield, but rather the first time you see an invisible monster.

Sounds, shards: A bit of a pain to learn, but not as dangerous as the rest.

pconf, pblind: The current safest way is to kill townspeople until you get !blind or !confusion. (?darkness will also work.)

Nether, Poison, rbase, HL: these are all fine as they are.

[d_m]

I totally agree with you that ID-by-use for some of these flags is hard (and that in fact veterans mostly get by with being able to guess pretty well which ego something is).

That said, I think to eliminate the ID spell/staff/scroll we'll need to do something more radical, like rune-based flags/ID.

That said, I got permission from Takkaria to add instant ID on pickup at level 40, so that will hopefully help cut down on some of the late game annoyances. I also think that average items should be obvious on wield for all classes, rather than needing to wait for pseudo.

Arguably these make the game easier. I just don't think the "difficulty" of having to carry ?ID/_ID is worth preserving.

[d_m]

That said, if you want to introduce ways to make ID-by-use easier, I certainly don't object! I was more saying that I don't want to spend a lot of my own time worrying about it without a bigger pay off than removing ID scrolls/spells/staves.

[buzzkill]

Is there any stomach for shrinking the inventory by 1 slot once ID becomes nearly or totally obsolete, cause let's face it, most players, prior to ID-by-use would normally have at least one slot dedicated to some form of ID.

[d_m]

Is there any stomach for shrinking the inventory by 1 slot once ID becomes nearly or totally obsolete, cause let's face it, most players, prior to ID-by-use would normally have at least one slot dedicated to some form of ID.

I think limiting stacks to 25 (which is now in the nightlies) will more than make up for this change. I personally am already feeling the burn.

I'm certainly willing to consider it if necessary.

[Magnate]

I think limiting stacks to 25 (which is now in the nightlies) will more than make up for this change. I personally am already feeling the burn.

I'm certainly willing to consider it if necessary.

I think we should wait until we see how rune-based ID plays out before doing anything major. Personally I think the fact that it's hard to ID sustains is excellent, ditto non-essential resists like rchaos and rdisen. I'm not really buying the argument that all this needs to be made easier - but rune-based ID and affix-driven item gen are both quite significant paradigm shifts so the whole thing will need re-evaluating if either or both happens.

[Monkey Face]

Is there any stomach for shrinking the inventory by 1 slot once ID becomes nearly or totally obsolete, cause let's face it, most players, prior to ID-by-use would normally have at least one slot dedicated to some form of ID.

I disagree. Arcane casters get the ID spell in book 3 which has several other useful spells (Fire bolt, Acid bolt, Satisfy Hunger). Priests/Paladins get it in book 6 which also has several other useful spells (clairvoiyance, detection). If I'm playing a priest, I usually have to carry ID for awhile, but definitely not as a mage.

[buzzkill]

I disagree. Arcane casters get the ID spell in book 3 which has several other useful spells (Fire bolt, Acid bolt, Satisfy Hunger). Priests/Paladins get it in book 6 which also has several other useful spells (clairvoiyance, detection). If I'm playing a priest, I usually have to carry ID for awhile, but definitely not as a mage.

...most players, prior to ID-by-use would normally have at least one slot dedicated to some form of ID. My point was, that for most players/races/classes, for a majority of the game, not carrying ID equates to an extra inventory slot for something else.

[prh182]

Speaking of ID by use...I miss the old days where ID by use was a much riskier proposition. i.e. you wield the dagger....you start moving slower...<cursed> (-5,-6) (-5 speed). Or you drink the shimmering purple potion....you feel very weak or stupid or ugly. Whatever. What happened to the perils of cursed items or unfriendly objects. have found some but it used to be that they were nearly as common as good items. I just think there needs to be more risk to ID by use, and that you shouldn't really be able to figure out more complex things about items without ID, I mean you can always find scrolls, or staves, or spells or whatever. Why is it a big deal?

[Derakon]

Because risk means that very quickly nobody bothers to use ID by use at all, favoring instead buying ID scrolls / staves and identifying every item before even considering wearing / using it.

The move now is to go towards more mixed-blessing items, which penalize you in some fashion in exchange for benefiting you in other ways. The old Potion of Clumsiness is now spread out across all of the gain-one / lose-one stat potions, which have a chance of permanently decreasing your Dexterity...

[buzzkill]

Because risk means that very quickly nobody bothers to use ID by use at all, favoring instead buying ID scrolls / staves and identifying every item before even considering wearing / using it.

Well if you screw up the ID system badly, sure, but if it's balanced properly the two could certainly co-exist. I'm with prh182, the old ID system wasn't perfect, but neither is the new. At least the old had a legacy, and a certain medieval brutishness.

I'm a fan of the notion of ID by use, just not in V, and certainly not V's current "quick n' easy" version of it.

[Magnate]

I'm a fan of the notion of ID by use, just not in V, and certainly not V's current "quick n' easy" version of it.

JFTR I have some sympathy with this view. I returned to Angband at 3.1.0 after quite a long break, and I was always a bit perplexed about why ID-by-use worked instantly. The first time you hit something, blam, there are the plusses. Ditto with being hit, and learning flags. There were threads during the development of 3.1.0 which indicated that it might take some time to narrow down the range of plusses, but in the end we seem to have decided against that.

[UglySquirrell]

I noticed a cool feature in FK, items you buy from stores don't I'd ones in the dungeon. You need to find the unidentified item yourself and I'd it , use it or sell it to recognize the item in the dungeon.

[fizzix]

There were threads during the development of 3.1.0 which indicated that it might take some time to narrow down the range of plusses, but in the end we seem to have decided against that.

So I don't necessarily think this is such a bad idea to reconsider. Total damage output or AC is not essential knowledge in the same way that RNexus or Free Action is. Also, this seems to be something that should scale with clevel. At clevel 25 or 30 you can know the plusses immediately after first attack. Earlier in the dungeon, when it's ok to be dragging 3-4 weapons around, it's ok to make the player wait longer.