Rune-based ID

[Pete Mack]

ToMeE two is balanced for "leveled Orcs" and the like, to the extent it's balanced at all. Making "super-ego" weapons is a good way to unbalance angband: Adding brands is already known to unbalance it (as was discovered with branding rings.) start conservatively by messing with *slay* weapons. Those are weak enough that they can't really be unbalanced. Westernesse and +attacks are already pretty powerful.

[Estie]

Could go all the way and randomize egos completely.
I´d suggest to keep the names and spirit of the egos, but give them a randomly determined set of proprties from a pool of suitable ones.

For example, take of Westernesse:

currently, they give +1-2 str, dex, con; FA, SI, slay orc, troll, giant (did I forget anything?). Thats 8 runes; now add a few more thematic ones; say: slay undead, rconf, +lightradius, and at the start of each game, determine the properties of "westernesse" like a flavour by picking 8 runes at random from that pool.

This is just a rough sketch, if wanted I can go through the egos and do a better job.

And while were at it: group the egos in pre- and suffixes ala Diablo. Its a great system, with a given item getting something like a 70% chance for a suffix and 30% chance for a prefix; ToME2 has done it, and with luck, you can find a fiery longsword of extra attacks or blessed mace (defender).

[Therem Harth]

For the issues with *Slay Animal* weapons, I'm inclined to reduce the time to ID time-based things like Slow Digestion, or give the *Slay*s a random power instead of a fixed one, or both.

Yes please to the latter.

For the record, I'm completely in favor of ego items getting more random perks. Makes the game more interesting IMO.

[Nomad]

For the issues with *Slay Animal* weapons, I'm inclined to reduce the time to ID time-based things like Slow Digestion, or give the *Slay*s a random power instead of a fixed one, or both.

Random powers on all *Slays* sounds like a good idea - it makes the lower end slays like *Slay Orc* more interesting to find and more potentially useful, plus gives you more chances to encounter different runes.

[Nick]

New builds up - Windows and OS X.

Changes are:

• Starting characters have money again
• Slime molds (and related things) don't get a ??
• Rings of Flames, Digging, etc ID properly
• Basic lights and diggers no longer have a magical digging bonus - instead their light and digging abiity is innate. This makes them ID more sensibly, and (for example) a Torch of Brightness will have a +1 to Light, for a total light radius of 2.

I haven't done Nomad's suggested improvements to messages yet, but I plan to; I also haven't changed ID to consumables at all, and I don't plan to for now.

For the issues with *Slay Animal* weapons, I'm inclined to reduce the time to ID time-based things like Slow Digestion, or give the *Slay*s a random power instead of a fixed one, or both.

[TJS]

This discussion is probably going a bit sideways from the purpose of this thread by this point, but once we've got the ID system sorted, I feel like it might be good to create some sort of big "What do YOU class as junk?" thread (or possibly one for each type of consumable?) where everybody lists which items they never pick up/immediately squelch vs. which ones they actually find useful, and see if there's any sort of consensus on what needs to go or be changed.

You've got a point, but the ID system is currently being designed around all the junk being so tedious to sort through eg. Consumables id on use, adding scrolls to learn random runes etc.

[Nomad]

This discussion is probably going a bit sideways from the purpose of this thread by this point, but once we've got the ID system sorted, I feel like it might be good to create some sort of big "What do YOU class as junk?" thread (or possibly one for each type of consumable?) where everybody lists which items they never pick up/immediately squelch vs. which ones they actually find useful, and see if there's any sort of consensus on what needs to go or be changed.

[TJS]

I think the idea is that you replace the weaker version with the greater version. The main goal here would be to introduce more tactical decisions in the early game. (we could also look at expanding from the slot based inventory, but that's a harder change that requires more though.) I also would very strongly argue against stuff like the bless, holy chant, prayer progression.

For example, the fact that there's a progression from CLW to CSW to CCW isn't too bothersome because you won't ever get a CLW drop past level 20 or so. The same would be true for minor speed.

To put it another way, the early game is precisely the only time where you're likely to be carrying around junk because you have the slots for it. So if we could make some of that junk tactically interesting, then we probably should.

Why is speed not tactically interesting in the early game?

I too vote against even more junky items in the game.

[Pete Mack]

Um. I don't care about the first few levels of the game. They exist to learn the mechanics of the game, and to make it expensive to get home from more interesting levels without recall.

Finally: That speed occurs sometimes at DL 1 is the only useful thing about the level. Nerfing it makes it even more useless a level. That other potions occur there is actually strategically valuable, since you know you can test potions at CL 1 safely, while that is not the case at CL 20. Yeah the potion itself has no value at the time. So what? Simply discovering it safely has value.

[TJS]

@TJS: Re speed: Warriors can usually tank stuff early on. I'm not too worried about how nerfing speed will hurt them.

I meant more it would hurt warriors later on when the +10/20 monsters start showing up.

Re Heroism: the buff is actually fairly useful early in the game. Although it's harder to see it compared to something like to-dam which is readily apparent. It's most notable on priest characters where heroism + bless makes you into a reasonable melee fighter.

So a consumable is worth using for a couple of classes in conjunction with a prayer (at a time when mana is very scarce) to give a bit more damage for a few turns. Compared to finding a slightly better weapon that would have a greater effect for every turn, without taking a turn to quaff and another to cast bless it doesn't strike me as a great deal. I want to see !Heroism and think "great I'll save that for the next time I see X monster", whereas at the moment I carry them and sometimes remember to use them in a "may as well use them" sort of way and other times just forget all about them and chuck them when I run out of room.

Re status effects: This has needed rebalancing for a while. Basically what we need is a class of monsters (animals seem like the best candidates) which are more powerful than expected but especially vulnerable to status effects. The way I envision potions working is that it automatically applies the effect upon a hit with a throw. The effect lasts at least one turn. Additional turns are determined by a dice roll plus some function of the monster's level, so that throwing potions drop off in usefulness in later depths. They then get replaced with wands, and then staves for the same thing. I think Derakon has a write-up of what needs to be done to make status effects useful and not overpowered, and I agree with the broad outlines of his post.

Like the ideas of throwing potions and having monsters being more susceptible to them too. I do think that the effect should work in the same way as the spells/magic devices for simplicity rather than having special cases for each type. I'm really not a fan of having lots of similar duplicate systems.

If you want to have a guaranteed effect then simply remove the randomness of applying status effects. If the "power" of the potion/device is greater than monster defence stat then apply the status, the higher the difference the greater the length of time the status lasts.

[fizzix]

I vote hell no on different levels of potions. That is more junk, and since it doesn't stack, there is zero chance I'd keep it in inventory.

I think the idea is that you replace the weaker version with the greater version. The main goal here would be to introduce more tactical decisions in the early game. (we could also look at expanding from the slot based inventory, but that's a harder change that requires more though.) I also would very strongly argue against stuff like the bless, holy chant, prayer progression.

For example, the fact that there's a progression from CLW to CSW to CCW isn't too bothersome because you won't ever get a CLW drop past level 20 or so. The same would be true for minor speed.

To put it another way, the early game is precisely the only time where you're likely to be carrying around junk because you have the slots for it. So if we could make some of that junk tactically interesting, then we probably should.

[Pete Mack]

I vote hell no on different levels of potions. That is more junk, and since it doesn't stack, there is zero chance I'd keep it in inventory.

[Pete Mack]

I use mushrooms of ESP occasionally when cracking vaults and I don't want to use a light spell. Knowing what monsters wake up is useful. Vigor I use. It's good to keep a few bad ones just to keep the explorer on his toes. I even throw the occasional unhealth vs. uniques, if I have room to carry them early in the game.

[fizzix]

@TJS: Re speed: Warriors can usually tank stuff early on. I'm not too worried about how nerfing speed will hurt them.

Re Heroism: the buff is actually fairly useful early in the game. Although it's harder to see it compared to something like to-dam which is readily apparent. It's most notable on priest characters where heroism + bless makes you into a reasonable melee fighter.

Re status effects: This has needed rebalancing for a while. Basically what we need is a class of monsters (animals seem like the best candidates) which are more powerful than expected but especially vulnerable to status effects. The way I envision potions working is that it automatically applies the effect upon a hit with a throw. The effect lasts at least one turn. Additional turns are determined by a dice roll plus some function of the monster's level, so that throwing potions drop off in usefulness in later depths. They then get replaced with wands, and then staves for the same thing. I think Derakon has a write-up of what needs to be done to make status effects useful and not overpowered, and I agree with the broad outlines of his post.

[Carnivean]

In addition we can consider breaking some potions up into different sets.

We do this for wounds/healing now, but I think we could expand it.

Speed (Velocity 9) - +5, +10
Restore Mana - 10, 50, 100, 400
Resist Elemental - resist 1/3, 2/3, immune
Warrior status - boldness(+2, +2, rfear), heroism(+5, +5, rfear), berserk(+10. +10, rfear, rconf), ragemonster?(+15, +15, rfear, rconf, +3 speed)