V 3.5 now in feature freeze

[Raajaton]

Absolutely love 3.5, my favorite version to date. How safe would it be to update to the most recent version and continue on with my current save file? It was created on nightly version back in May. I've got a priest still alive in stat gain that I'd like to continue, and take advantage of some of the more recent bug fixes.

[takkaria]

Absolutely love 3.5, my favorite version to date. How safe would it be to update to the most recent version and continue on with my current save file? It was created on nightly version back in May. I've got a priest still alive in stat gain that I'd like to continue, and take advantage of some of the more recent bug fixes.

I can't really say how safe it is; the savefile should load at least, whether it's bugged out or not is something you'll have to find out yourself. Sorry!

[Raajaton]

No problem. I'll backup my save file and try it tonight. I'll report my findings in case anyone else finds it useful.

[DaviddesJ]

For example: by selling your empty staves/wands to 6 for 0 gold, you can get them recharged at a much more interesting price than buying recharge scrolls... and it never fails!

Why would selling your empty staves recharge them? That seems like a bug, if true. I've never noticed that before. It should preserve the number of charges (or add it to the total in the stack, if there's a stack).

[Raajaton]

Presumably the shop keeper at the magic shop is highly practiced at recharging. To the point where it's worth his time to purchase a charge-less item from an adventurer, recharge it, and then re-sell it for a profit.

[takkaria]

Presumably the shop keeper at the magic shop is highly practiced at recharging. To the point where it's worth his time to purchase a charge-less item from an adventurer, recharge it, and then re-sell it for a profit.

A massive profit, too.

[DaviddesJ]

Presumably the shop keeper at the magic shop is highly practiced at recharging. To the point where it's worth his time to purchase a charge-less item from an adventurer, recharge it, and then re-sell it for a profit.

OK, you can come up with a story to explain it, but why not just take it out of the game entirely? What purpose does it serve? I agree with the design goal of discouraging people from carrying stuff back and forth to town; getting rid of this would be just one more step in that direction. If you want ways for people to recharge items, just give them those ways, e.g., scrolls of recharging.

[Derakon]

Scrolls of recharging can fail, and staves, especially staves of Identify and Teleport, are rather important items that are not available in unlimited quantity. I don't see any problem with the player paying a premium to get a failsafe recharge. It's a bit weird that this is done by buying and selling the item, but oh well.

As for the reason why this is done, it's probably so that selling your empty staves to a store that already has a stock of those staves doesn't "dilute" the pool of charges. For example, if the store has 3 Staves of Detect Evil (27 charges), then there's 9 charges/staff. If you sell two empty staves to them, now it's 5 Staves of Detect Evil (27 charges), or 5-6 charges/staff.

Note that the magic shop can't recharge any staff that it is not itself able to sell -- if you try to get them to fill up a Staff of Destruction or the like, they won't do anything to it.

[DaviddesJ]

Scrolls of recharging can fail, and staves, especially staves of Identify and Teleport, are rather important items that are not available in unlimited quantity. I don't see any problem with the player paying a premium to get a failsafe recharge.

It seems to me inconsistent with the idea of no_selling, which is to reduce incentives to carry items back and forth to town all the time. The cost is also insignificant once you get to any significant point in the game. If you want to give players a guaranteed, automatic recharge, then it would make more sense to just make the scrolls always available and foolproof. You get the result you want and you eliminate (or reduce) the trekking back and forth.

[Derakon]

But then all those high-level, powerful staves can be recharged and used over and over again. You can bet I'd do a lot more Destruction if I could just use a staff and then safely recharge it.

As for cost, while I can generally afford to recharge Identify/Teleport when I'm in town, there's a lengthy period where it takes a significant chunk of my funds to do so. It's only in the late game that the cost becomes insignificant.

And for inconsistency with no_selling, a) note this works in selling games too, and is actually cheaper since the 0-charge staff is worth money, and b) there's a big difference between carrying back a utility item so you can get it topped up (roughly equivalent to buying more !CCW or ?Phase) and carrying back loot with the sole purpose of selling it for money.

[DaviddesJ]

But then all those high-level, powerful staves can be recharged and used over and over again. You can bet I'd do a lot more Destruction if I could just use a staff and then safely recharge it.

If you want automatic guaranteed recharging of weaker items and risky recharging of more powerful items, it's easy enough to make the scrolls do that.

there's a big difference between carrying back a utility item so you can get it topped up (roughly equivalent to buying more !CCW or ?Phase) and carrying back loot with the sole purpose of selling it for money.

Running back to town every time you want to recharge your staff seems a lot different from carrying a large stack of CCW potions or PD scrolls or Recharge scrolls that last almost forever. It just seems like a perfect example of something that you can do but creates a lot of repetitive back-and-forth.

Of course, if it's only for equipment that also can be bought in the store, you can always just camp and wait for the store to replenish, that would be even worse. I would just say it seems like a great example of something where if that's the effect you want, it can be made easier. For that matter, you could just have the stores sell rods instead of staves of these limited items, let them last forever and not bother with recharging at all. If these are abilities that are supposed to be in infinite supply for a modest amount of money.

[takkaria]

OK, you can come up with a story to explain it, but why not just take it out of the game entirely? What purpose does it serve? I agree with the design goal of discouraging people from carrying stuff back and forth to town; getting rid of this would be just one more step in that direction. If you want ways for people to recharge items, just give them those ways, e.g., scrolls of recharging.

I added it to the game because it didn't seem to make any sense that a shop would sell 0 charge items. I retain that impression now and I think the gameplay of it is fine.

[DaviddesJ]

I added it to the game because it didn't seem to make any sense that a shop would sell 0 charge items.

So the infinite recharging in town wasn't a goal, just a side effect? What happens if you sell them the more powerful items (the ones they aren't supposed to recharge)?

[Derakon]

I do agree that in the ideal world you wouldn't have to return to town to recharge your staves. Perhaps the frequencies of those items can be tweaked.

But I also don't see any difference between _Identify/_Teleport/_Mapping and !CCW/?Phase/?WoR in terms of how I treat them. Heck, if the alchemist has a big pile of ?Identify then I'll buy that out and leave the staves at home for one trip -- saves on weight and I'm not as likely to lose the entire supply to a single fire attack.

[Oramin]

You don't *have* to return to town to recharge your items. It is a choice that you make just like no_selling is a choice you make.

I happen to pop back up to town to recharge my Staves of Identify but then I also head back upstairs to sell stuff off. I could just as easily carry Scrolls of Recharging with me to save me the hassle or I could play a character that gets Identify relatively early.

If you want to have a 100% recharging rate, pop back upstairs. If you don't want to pop back upstairs, then carry scrolls.


Oh, and for the record, I *don't* agree with eliminating carrying stuff back and forth to town. If you folks want to play no_selling, up to you. Let me repeat - don't try to force your gameplay preferences down other people's throats.

Sheesh, I'm beginning to think some people here might have been the designers of Windows 8.