Winning, Randarts and other thoughts

[Egavactip]

Unfortunately, one of the flaws in the game is that there are few good ways to spend money in the late game. I'd like to see some thought put into how to improve this situation. Surely people ought to be able to come up with more things for people to spend money on.

[bio_hazard]

This is more of a early/mid game suggestion, but it might be interesting to have a "hold" option for higher end things in the BM or elsewhere. Kind of like a down payment. Then every time you visit the store on a new town trip, you'd have to pay more to keep it in stock until you have enough cash to buy it. For example, maybe 10% to initiate the hold, and 5% every subsequent visit. I suppose these could count against the price, but I don't think it would have to work that way.

As a corollary, have more interesting things in stores 1-6

For late game, maybe a "Maximize" option that would act like *Enchant*, but just push your armor/weapons to some max level, rather than having to wait/scum for scrolls and deal with failure rates. Maybe have it work on rings and amulets too (really expensive)

To be honest, I don't mind money being more or less worthless later on. It saves one from having to grind for cash.

[Raccoon]

For late game, maybe a "Maximize" option that would act like *Enchant*, but just push your armor/weapons to some max level, rather than having to wait/scum for scrolls and deal with failure rates. Maybe have it work on rings and amulets too (really expensive)

To be honest, I don't mind money being more or less worthless later on. It saves one from having to grind for cash.

PosChengband has shops that enchant your weapons and armor, with the cost being exponentially higher for higher +s. This seems like a good system to me. Maybe the upper cap on the enchantments can be higher than you can get through scrolls, but increase the cost accordingly. That way when you're at late-game with 300k gold and nothing to spend it on, and one of your artifacts gets disenchanted down to -2, you can blow your 300k to get it back to +20.

[Derakon]

This is more of a early/mid game suggestion, but it might be interesting to have a "hold" option for higher end things in the BM or elsewhere. Kind of like a down payment. Then every time you visit the store on a new town trip, you'd have to pay more to keep it in stock until you have enough cash to buy it. For example, maybe 10% to initiate the hold, and 5% every subsequent visit. I suppose these could count against the price, but I don't think it would have to work that way.

As a corollary, have more interesting things in stores 1-6

For late game, maybe a "Maximize" option that would act like *Enchant*, but just push your armor/weapons to some max level, rather than having to wait/scum for scrolls and deal with failure rates. Maybe have it work on rings and amulets too (really expensive)

To be honest, I don't mind money being more or less worthless later on. It saves one from having to grind for cash.

Yeah, this whole thing gets into the "should the stores be an important source of your kit" question. Currently, stores serve to get you equipped at the very start of the game, and they provide a reliable access to important consumables, but otherwise aside from the Black Market there's nothing really interesting for sale. This is fully intentional, as the devs would prefer if players spend most of the game in the dungeon, i.e. where the greater part of gameplay is, rather than in the town. But of course not all players agree with this stance.

The logical extreme of the current system, I guess, would be some kind of ironman approach where you get a free partial resupply and access to your "home" each time you take a new down staircase. The goal would be to provide the important town services without having a town. I doubt very much that such a system would be implemented as a mandatory feature though. I could see it as another ironman option.

[Raccoon]

I don't think the stores should be a primary source of your kit at all, but on the other hand, money does tend to become worthless surprisingly early on. Maybe essential consumables like speed potions should be spawned more reliably in stores, even if it's at a very high price? I mean it's pretty clear that speed potions are almost mandatory, but grinding for them is not fun. May as well just let me buy some.

[Nick]

Unfortunately, one of the flaws in the game is that there are few good ways to spend money in the late game. I'd like to see some thought put into how to improve this situation. Surely people ought to be able to come up with more things for people to spend money on.

As others have said, this need not be regarded as a flaw - in fact I like it.

That said, as mentioned upthread FAangband has a system for ordering consumables which I think might work well in V. The way it works in FA is:

• Only scrolls and potions are orderable, and only known ones (so the character must have found an example this game)
• Ordering is at the Travelling Merchant (who has Black Market-like prices)
• You can order up to eight different items
• Once ordered, items appear as for ordinary (non-permanent) items in other stores

In my opinion this could be transferred pretty much straight across. What do others think?

[PowerWyrm]

As others have said, this need not be regarded as a flaw - in fact I like it.

That said, as mentioned upthread FAangband has a system for ordering consumables which I think might work well in V. The way it works in FA is:

• Only scrolls and potions are orderable, and only known ones (so the character must have found an example this game)
• Ordering is at the Travelling Merchant (who has Black Market-like prices)
• You can order up to eight different items
• Once ordered, items appear as for ordinary (non-permanent) items in other stores

In my opinion this could be transferred pretty much straight across. What do others think?

I've implemented roughly the same thing for PWMAngband:
- added an Expensive Black Market, with items up to level 100 at 10x the base price (5x if playing ironman)
- allow to order up to 6 different items
- anything can be ordered, the command takes a partial string as input
- the ordered item will stay in the XBM once it appears until bought

[Carnivean]

In my opinion this could be transferred pretty much straight across. What do others think?

That's a pretty straightforward way to address it, and would be a good addition.

The only thing that it doesn't address that might be nice is the lay-by (lay-away) option. I think it would be nice to pay down items as you go, though I realise that this might be harder to code up.

[Egavactip]

I think we can be more creative about coming up with things to spend money on.

Just a few things off the top of my head...

1) In Dungeon purchases. It would be cool to find some sort of tiny shop deep in the dungeon somewhere every once in a rare while. They might have random consumables, might sell you a map to the level, etc.

2) Items by Spec. These would be very, very expensive magic items hand crafted to your specifications. There would only be a limited array of magic options among which to choose for your item.

3) Fireproof spell books. I've mentioned this in a previous post.

4) Items that can only be purchased, not found in the dungeon. Perhaps a scroll of resistance to nether, for example? Maybe some of these items cannot even be purchased, but only traded for--like you have to trade an artifact in to get one.

5) Paying to un-disenchant something, like a weapon that got disenchanted. It is weird that stats can come back, experience can come back, but weapons and armor that get damaged or disenchanted can not be brought back if they are over +15.

6) Paying for information. Want to know some intel on Huan? Give that grizzled veteran some bucks and maybe he'll tell you some lore about its fierce abilities.

7) Hospital. If you just can't find that mushroom of vigor, perhaps you can pay a healer loads of dough to bring your strength back up.

8) Luxury Goods shop. Only expensive, higher quality magic items.

9) Bigger home. What if you could pay a million gold pieces to get a bigger home with more slots?

And so forth.

[bio_hazard]

Flavor only:
Buy statues for the town.

Build a Mathom House (a la ToME 2) where you can show off your low tier artifacts.

[Philip]

I think we can be more creative about coming up with things to spend money on.

Just a few things off the top of my head...

1) In Dungeon purchases. It would be cool to find some sort of tiny shop deep in the dungeon somewhere every once in a rare while. They might have random consumables, might sell you a map to the level, etc.

2) Items by Spec. These would be very, very expensive magic items hand crafted to your specifications. There would only be a limited array of magic options among which to choose for your item.

3) Fireproof spell books. I've mentioned this in a previous post.

4) Items that can only be purchased, not found in the dungeon. Perhaps a scroll of resistance to nether, for example? Maybe some of these items cannot even be purchased, but only traded for--like you have to trade an artifact in to get one.

5) Paying to un-disenchant something, like a weapon that got disenchanted. It is weird that stats can come back, experience can come back, but weapons and armor that get damaged or disenchanted can not be brought back if they are over +15.

6) Paying for information. Want to know some intel on Huan? Give that grizzled veteran some bucks and maybe he'll tell you some lore about its fierce abilities.

7) Hospital. If you just can't find that mushroom of vigor, perhaps you can pay a healer loads of dough to bring your strength back up.

8) Luxury Goods shop. Only expensive, higher quality magic items.

9) Bigger home. What if you could pay a million gold pieces to get a bigger home with more slots?

And so forth.

1) 8) A more powerful black market either in the dungeon or in town is a possibility, but it seems like a bit of a cop-out for the current one not doing its job.

2) Please no. This would be a disaster. This is effectively crafting, and sticking it in Angband would destabilize the game. Either they are inferior to the artifacts you can expect to have, in which case it's pointless, or they're superior, which is even worse. Also, being able to just buy ESP, rPois, pConf, pBlnd and pStun would remove an important barrier to power and make the game more predictable.

3) 6) 7) There are variants that do this already, so we have a test case.

4) Not sure how it'd work. If not handled extremely well it would naturally lead to scumming.

5) This converts the cost on stuff quality of not having rDisenchant into a monetary cost. rDisenchant is already very much optional, this risks it being more or less useless.

9) if there's anything else to spend money on, I wouldn't do this, but it could be an option, sure.