Rune-based ID

[spara]

One more thing that's driving my in-game reasoning crazy. That's shops selling equipment they don't know about. But they do know how to price it. And frankly, in my game world the shop keepers are experts in their niche, so they do know their stuff.

Assuming that the shop keeper knows what she is selling, the shop list and the inscription should say exactly what the item is. However, assuming that @ does not know the runes, he should not automatically learn the runes when he buys the object. The inscription should be full and C-h should show the correct properties, but the runes would need to be learned the hard way.

[spara]

Elvagil has other abilities, though, and it may not be obvious which runes are the Slay Orc and Slay Troll runes, respectively. You'd have to learn all but one of the runes for the remaining rune to be unambiguously determined. Think of it like the rune glowing when it takes effect.

Sure it could be explained like that. RuneID as a solid game mechanic, but the in-game logic is a bit fuzzy.

Is there any interest in trying to shape some in-game explanation for runes and their workings? So far there have been a few different ideas in this thread, but no definite one.

For example a flask of oil. Branded by fire. Which is a rune. Once thrown, the rune is learned. And the game says that, so rune is an actual in-game element. Does this mean that every flask of oil has a rune carved to the surface? So shops are actually selling Magical Molotov Cocktails. Right? And does that rune glow when the flask is thrown. Kind of a Holy Hand Grenade. Previously this was easy to imagine. @ would just make a Molotov Cocktail out of a bottle of oil.

What I'm trying to say is that for a new player (and some pedantic old player too) trying to grasp the concept of rune and trying to understand it's workings in-game could be a bit challenging.

The previous system with magical items and identify spells was a lot easier to explain and understand in-game.

[Derakon]

The inscription text of "Elvagil" says "...slay Orcs and Trolls...". Great, now to find an orc and a troll to reveal the runes. Which feels a bit silly.

Could some artifacts be so famous that some of their properties are common knowledge and upon finding and wearing, the runes of these commonly known properties are learned?

Take the above "Elvagil" as an example. The inscription could be interpreted so that it's commonly known that it slays orcs and trolls. So upon wearing it, @ would learn the runes.

Elvagil has other abilities, though, and it may not be obvious which runes are the Slay Orc and Slay Troll runes, respectively. You'd have to learn all but one of the runes for the remaining rune to be unambiguously determined. Think of it like the rune glowing when it takes effect.

[spara]

The inscription text of "Elvagil" says "...slay Orcs and Trolls...". Great, now to find an orc and a troll to reveal the runes. Which feels a bit silly.

Could some artifacts be so famous that some of their properties are common knowledge and upon finding and wearing, the runes of these commonly known properties are learned?

Take the above "Elvagil" as an example. The inscription could be interpreted so that it's commonly known that it slays orcs and trolls. So upon wearing it, @ would learn the runes.

[spara]

Activating unknown staves now IDs them, but produces no message about the results, if there's nothing to witness. Some constant message like "You have a staff of Confuse Monsters" or something would feel appropriate.

Consequently there are traces of the old system when an unknown staff is activated and @ actually witnesses the results. For example activating an unIDd staff of Confuse Monsters close to monsters triggers messages saying: "...appears confused." With the new system, message saying "You have a staff of Confuse Monsters" followed with "...is confused" and "...is not affected" might be an idea.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

It certainly fixes the issue with pref file inscriptions leaking information, and unaware inscriptions seem to be replaced properly with aware ones. Let me know what is still not working.

Whatever you changed, Nick, it's ready for prime-time. Autoinscriptions seem to be working perfectly now.

[Nick]

OK, here's a build which should fix at least some of the issues - Windows and OS X.

It certainly fixes the issue with pref file inscriptions leaking information, and unaware inscriptions seem to be replaced properly with aware ones. Let me know what is still not working.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

If autoinscriptions aren't appearing on ID, or are appearing before ID, or keep being redone, those are bugs.

Yeah, I'm finding the changes made to autoinscriptions just a pain in the butt. Every time @ activates the Phial, or any other activation, learns a new rune, etc., everything autoinscribed in the pack gets autoinscribed again. (That's just a minor annoyance of message spam.) But when picking up a flavored item and using it. If it was supposed to be autoinscribed, instead I have to reload my pref file, drop the item, and pick it back up for the inscription to take effect. Ugh! I vote for reverting this change until the bugs are worked out of it a little bit.

[Nick]

Flavored items.

Does this mean I could inscribe, say "Blue" mushroom, with a manual guess "Vigor???" and if it turns out to be say, a mushroom of Clear Mind and I have an autoinscription of "!E" (to prevent accidental eating), that the manual inscription will disappear and the autoinscription will take its place?

Not sure how useful that really is. It doesn't solve the problem that I'm having. Say @ picks up a stack of "Yellow" potions. Quaffs one and it turns out to be !Speed. I have an autoinscription for speed potions, but in order for that autoinscription to attach, I have to drop the potions and pick them back up. It used to be that they would just get the inscription immediately upon identification without having to drop them.

This is only really useful for rings and amulets - so, for example, if you get an amulet with +WIS and it doesn't ID, you can inscribe the flavor "devotion".

If autoinscriptions aren't appearing on ID, or are appearing before ID, or keep being redone, those are bugs.

Items with a given Rune.

Where would I do this? I don't see an interface to accomplish this anywhere. But maybe I don't know what you really mean. Here's what I thought it meant: For example - @ has an artifact weapon that is very good, so I decide to ignore all non-artifact sharp-edged and blunt weapons. But, @ doesn't yet have ESP covered, so if I come across some rinky-dink weapon that has ESP, I want to keep it as a swap. I could set up an inscription of "!k" for the ESP rune. A weapon that would otherwise be ignored would not disappear and I could keep it to use for ESP. Although, possibly this could be subject to abuse at the margins to identify a single specific rune without actually "identifying" it. In any event, whatever it means, I don't see where runes are "inscribable".

That is precisely what it meant. You can put your "!k" inscription on any rune from the rune knowledge screen, and they're not saveable to a pref file, which means you can only use it for runes you have learnt.

The fact that an item shown not to have a flag or resist shown on the C screen.

What does this mean? On the C screen, I see the "?" for a newly worn flavored item on all the unknown runes, but not that it is "shown not to have". I'm confused.

If an item has a "?" against RAcid and you get hit by an acid attack, then it either IDs as having RAcid (and you learn the rune) or it loses the "?".

[Nomad]

Auto-inscriptions added to unknown flavours don't show up in the 'inscribed' column on the object knowledge page.

[Nomad]

The new C-h page behavior is really good . I like the way it rules out tried runes. A question though. When there are question marks in stats, what are the possibilities? I mean if an item gives pluses to stats, the rune is instantly identified when wielded. And isn't it the same with sustains? So if a worn item has question marks in stats what can they be?

I think learning sustains is only automatic on wielding for items that have both the stat boost and the matching sustain together as a pair (e.g. stat rings, Helms of INT/WIS, etc.). If it's an item that just has sustains without any corresponding stat boosts (e.g. Rings of Bodykeeping/Soulkeeping) then you don't learn them on wielding.

[spara]

The new C-h page behavior is really good . I like the way it rules out tried runes. A question though. When there are question marks in stats, what are the possibilities? I mean if an item gives pluses to stats, the rune is instantly identified when wielded. And isn't it the same with sustains? So if a worn item has question marks in stats what can they be?

A side note about id scrolls. I just spotted 40 of them in Black Market. For a moment I thought that BM had been changed to have them always on stock.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

[*]Flavored items can be autoinscribed unaware. If the item has an autoinscription when aware, this will replace the unaware inscription when the player learns the flavor.

Yep, this is the change that is causing problems. @ just came across an unknown rod, picked it up and it was immediately inscribed with "!*". Well, the only rod that I have with that inscription is a Rod of Recall. Sure enough, zap the rod, say "Yes" to the query caused by the inscription, and it is identified as a Rod of Recall. So, the problems with this: (a) it is subject to abuse, you can just set up autoinscriptions to circumvent ID, eg. auto-inscribe all invisibility things with "invis". Any time you pick one up, it gets your own special identifier. (b) whatever the change in code was, it is wreaking havoc with autoinscriptions happening repeatedly, some items not inscribing when known, having to reload autoinscriptions because something apparently sometimes overrides and erases them on newly found objects, etc. All in all, in my opinion the implementation of this little change is either just wrong in concept, wrong in implementation, or wrong in both.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Whatever the latest change to autoinscriptions was, at least one change is causing undesired behavior. @ has several autoinscribed items in his pack. Every time he activates Narthanc (manually inscribed with "@0"), every autoinscribed items gets autoinscribed again. And, every time he picks up an autoinsribable item, every item gets autoinscribed again. Every time he identifies a new rune, every item gets autoinscribed again. Etc.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

...Changes are:

• ...
• Flavored items can be autoinscribed unaware. If the item has an autoinscription when aware, this will replace the unaware inscription when the player learns the flavor.
• Items with a given rune can be autoinscribed. At this point this overrides object autoinscriptions, but plays nicely with manual inscriptions.
  ...
• The fact that an object has been shown not to have a flag or resist now appears on the property grid in the 'C' screens.

Not sure what any of the three items above mean.

Flavored items.

Does this mean I could inscribe, say "Blue" mushroom, with a manual guess "Vigor???" and if it turns out to be say, a mushroom of Clear Mind and I have an autoinscription of "!E" (to prevent accidental eating), that the manual inscription will disappear and the autoinscription will take its place?

Not sure how useful that really is. It doesn't solve the problem that I'm having. Say @ picks up a stack of "Yellow" potions. Quaffs one and it turns out to be !Speed. I have an autoinscription for speed potions, but in order for that autoinscription to attach, I have to drop the potions and pick them back up. It used to be that they would just get the inscription immediately upon identification without having to drop them.

Items with a given Rune.

Where would I do this? I don't see an interface to accomplish this anywhere. But maybe I don't know what you really mean. Here's what I thought it meant: For example - @ has an artifact weapon that is very good, so I decide to ignore all non-artifact sharp-edged and blunt weapons. But, @ doesn't yet have ESP covered, so if I come across some rinky-dink weapon that has ESP, I want to keep it as a swap. I could set up an inscription of "!k" for the ESP rune. A weapon that would otherwise be ignored would not disappear and I could keep it to use for ESP. Although, possibly this could be subject to abuse at the margins to identify a single specific rune without actually "identifying" it. In any event, whatever it means, I don't see where runes are "inscribable".

The fact that an item shown not to have a flag or resist shown on the C screen.

What does this mean? On the C screen, I see the "?" for a newly worn flavored item on all the unknown runes, but not that it is "shown not to have". I'm confused.