Rune-based ID

[PowerWyrm]

Ignoring a (+4,+7) mace only gives "ignore non-artifact blunt weapons" option. This tells me this mace is an ego, otherwise I would have had "ignore all good blunt weapons" instead. Dunno about this one...

Nevermind, with the ?? inscription you know now that it is not fully known. So same as old behaviour with unID items.

[PowerWyrm]

Looking at the character screen for the comp char which is a kobold, it seems you have no knowledge of the "resist poison" rune, although kobolds intrinsically resist poison. Will it even be possible to learn that rune?

[Nick]

Looking at the character screen for the comp char which is a kobold, it seems you have no knowledge of the "resist poison" rune, although kobolds intrinsically resist poison. Will it even be possible to learn that rune?

Yeah, wielding something with RPois when you have spare runes to learn should do it.

[takkaria]

Looking at the character screen for the comp char which is a kobold, it seems you have no knowledge of the "resist poison" rune, although kobolds intrinsically resist poison. Will it even be possible to learn that rune?

How about races with intrinsic immunities/abilities start with knowledge of the runes that they otherwise couldn't learn?

[PowerWyrm]

I think this has already been reported, but slime molds are not automatically known, although they have no properties or flavor.

[PowerWyrm]

Shop knowledge doesn't update after learning ac/hit/dam runes. I was expecting getting all plusses known as soon as I got the runes, but it's not the case.

[Nomad]

The {??} is definitely a big improvement, thanks! (And I like having it on consumables, too - makes it quicker to spot untested items in the inventory.) A few bugs:

* Items in shops don't get the {??} inscription, even after you've bought them. Plus starting kit and shop-bought items don't reflect updated rune knowledge (i.e. change from "Soft Leather Armour" to "Soft Leather Armour [8, +0]") unless you take them off, put them on the floor and pick them up again.

* Not sure if this should be classified as a bug or not, since it's actually kind of a neat ID trick, but flasks of oil get the {??} inscription until you throw and successfully hit something with them, at which point you learn the rune for "Branded with fire".

[spara]

What others have said, the items in shops don't seem to get descriptors when they should and birth items need to be dropped and collected to get descriptions. Don't know if this is related, but my ranger only sees one arrow instead of two:

These are birth arrows of which some have been shot and collected.

Here's save, if needed: arrow.zip

[PowerWyrm]

If you enter a room that has an item on the floor, then quaff a potion of blindness, then look at the item again, the description of the targeted item will be "an empty floor". This has been the case since forever (tested with 4.0.4).

[PowerWyrm]

Stepping on a square with stairs while blind doesn't detect the stairs. Maybe it should...

[spara]

AC pluses rune can also be discovered by damaging equipment. I can see the reason for that, but it feels a bit quirky.

[Nomad]

Unidentified jewellery in shops is not priced correctly - the magic shop's selling everything for 36 gold regardless of true value.

[Nomad]

On further playing, I think I'm coming round to agreeing that learning runes on level-up feels a bit weird and unnatural (plus I also feel you learn too many too fast in the early game where you're levelling up quickly).

Didn't potions of *Enlightenment* used to ID everything in your pack when you drank them? How about restoring that property, and also having standard Enlightenment ID something like 1-3 random runes/flavours from your pack? That way there's an alternative to ID-by-use once you're beyond the early levels, without having to introduce and balance a new type of identify scroll that would become obsolete after you'd identified everything.

[Derakon]

Didn't potions of *Enlightenment* used to ID everything in your pack when you drank them? How about restoring that property, and also having standard Enlightenment ID something like 1-3 random runes/flavours from your pack? That way there's an alternative to ID-by-use once you're beyond the early levels, without having to introduce and balance a new type of identify scroll that would become obsolete after you'd identified everything.

I prefer the sound of the scroll approach I suggested earlier, where there's one scroll that IDs a random rune on a selected item, and one scroll that IDs a random rune you don't know. I'll see if I can take a look at the codebase in the next few days to try to implement either of these. Assuming I can manage it, it should be straightforward to experiment with attaching similar behaviors to other items.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with an item that is guaranteed to obsolete itself eventually. Plenty of items de-facto do that already -- unenchanted equipment, for example. Plus, marking those items for squelching can be the culmination of the ID game: a nice little checkbox to say "Okay, I'm done with this."

[spara]

That "Identify Rune" scroll sounds good. For testing I suggest implementing the targeting scroll first and if that's not sufficient, then try with the non-targeting one. The targeting one feels much more logical in-game than randomly revealing an unknown rune.