Scrolls of acquirement

[bio_hazard]

How much detail does DCSS give you about what you can get? Is it like "weapon/armor/other" or do you get to say "I want a Dragon Scale Mail"?

According to the crawl wiki:

Weapons
Armour
Jewellery
Book
Staff
Wand
Miscellaneous
Food
Gold
Ammo

[wobbly]

I guess where you want to take care is in making sure it's not too easy to get the last dungeon book - either by making acquirement a bit rarer or by playing with the odds. I'd join scrolls & books - so maybe you get a late game dungeon book, maybe you get a ?*destruct for instance. I'd outright remove the chance of the wrong class's book. Getting a good priest book on a mage from a ?acquirement is just scummy & going to annoy people.

Edit: Clarification in response to Derakon's post below. Keep in mind that if you guarantee a mage book for a mage & a priest book for a priest, you've got a fairly small subset of items, it becomes very easy to grab the last book by hoarding scrolls of acquirement. A part of the game, raiding vaults for the last book is lost. Keep in mind that if you give a priest a mage book or a mage a priest book the player feels jiped. A couple of ?tele level or ?mass banishment or ?destruction may or may not be useful, but it's potentially useful. A player might take a punt on a useful set of ?s or an endgame book.

It may or may not be a good idea, but it certainly didn't deserve a sarcastic answer.

Edit 2: Apologises in advance if I'm being a bit bitey there.

[Derakon]

I guess where you want to take care in making sure it's not too easy to get the last dungeon book - either by making acquirement a bit rarer or by playing with the odds. I'd join scrolls & books - so maybe you get a late game dungeon book, maybe you get a ?*destruct for instance. I'd outright remove the chance of the wrong book. Getting a good priest book on a mage from a ?acquirement is just scummy & going to annoy people.

So wait...you want to make certain that they can't reliably get the book they want, but you also want to exclude items that aren't the book they want?

I don't think that Acquirement scrolls should give any kind of guarantee that they'll be useful, regardless of the type of item you request.

[wobbly]

So wait...you want to make certain that they can't reliably get the book they want, but you also want to exclude items that aren't the book they want?

Yep, pretty much, not quite sure why that got such a reaction from you?

[fizzix]

I don't think that Acquirement scrolls should give any kind of guarantee that they'll be useful, regardless of the type of item you request.

I think crawl actually has a guarantee thing. For example, if you ask for a wand, it only gives you a wand type that you haven't seen yet. So if the only wand you haven't seen is healing (a common situation) then you can guarantee get that with acquirement. I wouldn't recommend this approach.

However, it also has, I think, a guarantee that you can actually use the island. So a minotaur will never get an unwearable helmet. And if you ask for a weapon, it will likely give you one that you are proficient in. This is a better for Angband, although there aren't really any restrictions like in crawl, so it's sort of irrelevant.

I would be ok with acquirement giving you the option of each armor (separate tracks for chest armor, headgear, armgear, leg-gear, cloak), a "jewelry" option, a scroll option (which gives 1-4 endgame scrolls destruction/banishment/mass banishment.) a staff option (One of holiness, power, healing, magi, banishmnet, destruction), a rod option (TO, healing, speed, restoration, detection), a potion option (1-4 of *healing/life/experience/augmentation/*enlight) a weapon option, a launcher option, a shield option and an ammo option (which gives ammo for the launcher you are currently wielding).

Even though you can choose roughly what you need, you still might not get something great. But at least this makes acquirement a more interesting decision.

[NotMorgoth]

Not quite true - Acquirement in DCSS is biased towards items you haven't seen and weapons you are proficient in, but not guaranteed. So even if there is only 1 type of wand you haven't seen, you aren't guaranteed to get that one. It's also biased towards rarer item types, so the more powerful wands and weapons are more likely

But yes, the item is guaranteed to be usable (though not necessarily useful) to your character (and also not something that your god hates, so you won't get a spellbook if you follow Trog or an "evil" item if you follow a good god.)

[Nick]

Speaking of modifications. DCSS allows you to specify what category want from a scroll of acquirement. We might consider doing something like that, since it does add something to the game.

This feels a bit transparently gamey to me. I already feel that way a bit about ?Acquirement (and !Experience), and this seems to be going further in the same direction.

If it allowed you a pick of any shop item free of charge, that might be interesting.

[Carnivean]

If it allowed you a pick of any shop item free of charge, that might be interesting.

?Gift Card

[fizzix]

This feels a bit transparently gamey to me. I already feel that way a bit about ?Acquirement (and !Experience), and this seems to be going further in the same direction.

If it allowed you a pick of any shop item free of charge, that might be interesting.

Only if you gave it an expiration turn-count...but that's a pain. I don't want to give any more encouragement to shop scum.

In DCSS Acquirement (sort of) works as a way to smooth out the fluctuations in gear that you're guaranteed to get. I don't know whether Angband needs that or not. After all, you can always just replay those levels until you find the needed gear.

Right now, Acquirement is kind of lackluster though. You are much more likely to get junk than something useful. And then why not just generate the junk?

[bio_hazard]

While we are talking about tinkering with high end consumables, I had a thought for a new scroll

?Treasury (or ?Treasure Map)

read on your current level (or in town), it has the following effects:

a) on your current level, detects all stairs (or alternatively, create stairs)
b) when you next change level, dungeon level is regenerated until you get a nice vault- level dependent on what this would be.
c) This level is fully mapped, and objects either detected or known a la enlightenment.

[wv_wxman]

How about if ?Acquirement guaranteed you an item of an equal or higher numerical power level than anything in your current inventory/equipment? That would certainly make them a little more special. You could even give it diminishing returns for increasing clevel and/or dlevel in order to encourage people to crack open those deep vaults. Might make sense to make the scroll more rare in this case, too.

[Carnivean]

How about if ?Acquirement guaranteed you an item of an equal or higher numerical power level than anything in your current inventory/equipment?

Can't wait to pick up Deathwreaker, read a ?acquirement and see what happens.

If you change how they work, then you need to rebalance them, as they'll be too common to get something great with each time you find one. I think I'd prefer them to get the same drop treatment that uniques do, a combination of the level they were found on and the current depth, but bump the minimum power level of the item compared to currently.

[wv_wxman]

Can't wait to pick up Deathwreaker, read a ?acquirement and see what happens.

If you change how they work, then you need to rebalance them, as they'll be too common to get something great with each time you find one. I think I'd prefer them to get the same drop treatment that uniques do, a combination of the level they were found on and the current depth, but bump the minimum power level of the item compared to currently.

Okay, yeah, point noted. Your mechanic may work better.

Another thought: have it guarantee you something better than the scroll does now...but you MUST use it on the level you find it. Leaving the level makes the scroll go *poof*.

[Derakon]

I think it'd be enough with the current frequency to just let you pick between weapon/armor/other, where "other" means jewelry or books.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I'd be fine just leaving them as they are. Reading them is like playing the slots. Once in awhile, they pay out, but not often.