Rune-based ID

[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 "?".

[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]

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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[ScaryMonster]

What if the shopkeeper has his own 'body of knowledge' and reliably id's those things that s/he recognizes? The scope of this 'body of knowledge' is either static or accrues. Perhaps making the Black Market more knowledgeable and thus a potential tool.

[AnonymousHero]

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.

I just imagine that the shopkeepers are always trying to talk up their merchandise and/or rip you off, so you can't really trust anything they say until you know the relevant runes. (As for the pricing, well, they have to price things "correctly" so that if the customer knows about the runes on an item they won't report the shopkeeper to the town's merchant's guild -- the latter which does care about the reputation of merchants.)

EDIT: If that's too convoluted then... it's a game. Things don't always have to make sense as long as they're fun/interesting. (If you start digging into it, there's a lot that makes no sense in Angband.)

[spara]

I know it's just a game, but it's a game I have lived with over 20 years. From that perspective this change does not feel as a mechanic change only, the in-game world is getting more in-consistent.

There can be wondorous things and magical things and the shopkeepers can be ripping you off, but otherwise consistency should be expected.

Here's my problem number one. This new id scheme is called RuneID. Which makes you to assume that it has something to do with runes. Even in-game messages endorse that. However it's more like a propertyID. @ learns properties, not runes. Flask of oil is a good example. @ learns it burns, so it has a fire brand property. From now on @ recognizes the same property from all objects that have it. Some properties can be explained with runes. For example poison resist. There has to be magic in work here and that magic has been inscribed to the object with enchanted runes. And @ learns those runes and can recognize them later.

My problem number two are the shops. Potions are sold with name tags on them even if the player has not seen the potion before. Same goes with wands, staves etc. And that feels natural. The shopkeeper knows what she is selling, knows how to price it and tells the customer what she is selling. It's a different thing with "runes". The shopkeeper does not know of is not willing to tell what the object does. And that does not make sense. She is able to put a price tag to the product after all. Also not telling the properties does not really make sense. A magic shop selling unknown magic rings and amulets is just silly. The shopkeeper is some scholar after all. If the shopkeepers are to be bastards, then everything that the player does not recognize should be sold unIDd. For the sake of consistency.

If I'm really the only one finding these points disturbing, then that's fine. I'll live with it and get back to play testing. It's only a game after all .

[Nick]

OK, having just played a character in the latest build from start to (stupid) death in the mid-game, I have a bit of a feel for it. Here are some impressions:

• Some of the runes are a bit annoying to learn, notably slays and high resists
• There certainly isn't message spam about learning stuff - in fact, I think there are too few messages
• Identify scrolls were too rare in the dungeon and too common in the Black Market

So my plan is to make ?Identify occur about like ?TrapDetection, and give messages on IDing a new flavor or ego.

[Nick]

Here's my problem number one. This new id scheme is called RuneID. Which makes you to assume that it has something to do with runes. Even in-game messages endorse that. However it's more like a propertyID. @ learns properties, not runes. Flask of oil is a good example. @ learns it burns, so it has a fire brand property. From now on @ recognizes the same property from all objects that have it. Some properties can be explained with runes. For example poison resist. There has to be magic in work here and that magic has been inscribed to the object with enchanted runes. And @ learns those runes and can recognize them later.

This has a history. It was first proposed as "rune-based" ID (with the quotes), but with the idea that it was up to the player to decide whether the identity was by seeing an actual rune, or just by recognising the property by some other (magical, instinctive, whatever) means. In the many, many years we have been talking about this, everyone has come up with their own internal rationale for what it all means (or external in the case of people who implemented or played with it in v4).

I have been in the "there is no explicit indication of physical runes" camp until recently, when I started to think that maybe that was a bit confusing. So the word "rune" has started to creep into the actual game. And I think that on the whole it is probably best just to keep going down that road, and resolve any uncertainty by being more explicit. For example, maybe the description of flasks of oil should be something like "A bottle of lantern oil engraved with runes", so it is explicitly the rune on the flask that makes it burn.

My problem number two are the shops. Potions are sold with name tags on them even if the player has not seen the potion before. Same goes with wands, staves etc. And that feels natural. The shopkeeper knows what she is selling, knows how to price it and tells the customer what she is selling. It's a different thing with "runes". The shopkeeper does not know of is not willing to tell what the object does. And that does not make sense. She is able to put a price tag to the product after all. Also not telling the properties does not really make sense. A magic shop selling unknown magic rings and amulets is just silly. The shopkeeper is some scholar after all. If the shopkeepers are to be bastards, then everything that the player does not recognize should be sold unIDd. For the sake of consistency.

I'm inclined to agree. I think this leaves us three options:

1. You see the name (Dagger of *Slay Troll*), but don't get any knowledge of any properties you don't know the runes for;
2. Like 1, except you learn the runes on buying;
3. Seeing stuff in the shop gives you the runes.

I'm leaning toward 1, but am prepared to listen to argument for the others, or for something I haven't thought of.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I'm inclined to agree. I think this leaves us three options:

1. You see the name (Dagger of *Slay Troll*), but don't get any knowledge of any properties you don't know the runes for;
2. Like 1, except you learn the runes on buying;
3. Seeing stuff in the shop gives you the runes.

I'm leaning toward 1, but am prepared to listen to argument for the others, or for something I haven't thought of.

I'm more inclined to #2. You see the name and you can pay for learning the runes if you buy. Isn't that similar to the regular system? E.g., in 4.x, you see an amulet of slow digestion in the magic shop, but if you don't buy it you don't learn the flavor.