Rune-based ID

[Nick]

What is the thinking of automatically identifying consumables on use?

The fact that you had to see their use in action was the only part of the old id system that actually worked and was fun before in my opinion.

So how about potions, scrolls and mushrooms ID on first use, devices you need to get a successful use? This gets rid of the annoying test cases (quaff potion, fail to identify, find {tried} potion later and have no memory of what you had tested it for), and leaves some testing on devices which you get to carry around and retry.

[Carnivean]

Do we still have potions of Lose Memories that now have to be ID'd by use? If so, why?

[Estie]

Do we still have potions of Lose Memories that now have to be ID'd by use? If so, why?

To force you to carry potions of restore life levels, which you would never do without the threat of lose memory ?

[debo]

Unfortunately, you have to wield your *slay animal* for 3000 turns to identify slow digestion. So equip it, rest 3000 turns, and it should identify.

Alternately, remove *slay* things and just have "slay" things

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I found a turquoise ring(??), when worn, it said +3 to digging. Ok, thats a ring of digging.
When I recalled to town, I went to level 1 and started digging with the ring equipped to get it identified. 10 minutes in, half a screen worth of rock removed and activating it whenever the cd is off, and it still wont tell me. What do I need to do to have it identified ?

Edit: it doesnt say anything about unknown properties remaining, meaning that is is fully identified, just doesnt reveal its name, so its a bug ?

I think it is a little bit of a bug, but this is how all activatable rings work (Digging, Ice, Flames, etc.). To "identify" them, @ must wield them, then activate them (the ?? drops off)...

Then the bug part, you have to drop the item on the floor, then walk over it or pick it up and it should show as identified.

[TJS]

So how about potions, scrolls and mushrooms ID on first use, devices you need to get a successful use? This gets rid of the annoying test cases (quaff potion, fail to identify, find {tried} potion later and have no memory of what you had tested it for), and leaves some testing on devices which you get to carry around and retry.

The thing is that the cases where you have to try unknown items multiple times are essentially what the id minigame actually is. If it is tedious and annoying then I'd say it should be improved or removed.

Most consumables appear in stacks now so I don't think there is all that much difference between devices and consumables with regard to id. I think some UI improvements telling you what you've tested for might help somewhat.

I think part of the problem was touched on earlier in that there is too much rubbish in the game which makes the whole id game boring and time consuming. Identifying is fun when you have to make an effort to identify something and then you can go on and use it immediately which rarely happens.

Take the potions of resist heat and cold. They turn up on the first few levels, they are identified by just quaffing them so there's no gameplay involved there. And then there's absolutely nothing to use them on at all until much much later on in the game. In fact I never use them for any sort of character ever. Casters and priests get resist fire and cold and warriors either avoid big breathers or wait until they get the immunity to take them on. Identifying them early is completely trivial, gives the player no gameplay benefit for ages and you won't even hold on to them for that long even if you plan on using them later anyway.

So to improve these it would be fun to have things which burn early on that you can test the potions with to id them and then some early breathers with low HP/melee or higher HP with fire melee that you can kill once you've identified them giving the player an incentive to go that extra mile to bother to id them. Or maybe add other ways to id stuff like testing objects on each other, a wand of fire bolts on a shield for example or even yourself to id everything you're wielding and any potions you've quaffed.

At the moment whenever I see an unidentified item I assume it's just junk because 90% of the time it is, but of course you have to trudge through identifying it all because eventually something half decent will turn up. I think the id minigame could be great fun, but the game really needs to be designed and balanced with it in mind to avoid it becoming trivial and boring.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

It seems we have lost the special flavors that used to be reserved for certain artifacts. E.g., Narya which used to always be a "Ruby Ring", now is listed merely as a "Ring". Was this intentional?

I don't recall changing this - maybe it's been gone for a while?

(First, a correction to my original question, the item listed merely as a "Ring" was the "Ring of Tulkas", Narya it turned out was listed as a "Ring of Fire".

On further investigation, I can see what has changed. The flavor.txt remains the same, but the runeid.branch is retrieving a different name than previously. E.g.,:

flavor.txt

# The Ring of Fire 'Narya'
fixed:28:Ring of Fire:Red:Ruby

In 4.0.4, this ring would be listed as a "Ruby Ring".

It appears to me that this may also be part of the wider bug of artifacts being listed at a distance.

artifact.txt

# The Ring of Fire 'Narya'

name:10:'Narya'
base-object:ring:Ring of Fire
graphics:=:d

Is the Runeid branch retrieving the artifact.txt "base-object" sval instead of (in the case of fixed flavors) the "fixed" "text" from flavor.txt or (in the case of non-fixed flavor artifacts) the base-object sval rather than the flavor?

[fizzix]

Take the potions of resist heat and cold. They turn up on the first few levels, they are identified by just quaffing them so there's no gameplay involved there. And then there's absolutely nothing to use them on at all until much much later on in the game.

I agree with this point, but I think there's a path forward here to provide useful consumables to early game characters. Mushrooms are a pretty good example, but they're pretty rare, and furthermore most are of questionable use. The cases where you'd want to use a mushroom like stoneskin is so difficult to determine that it's probably better to avoid it altogether. Resist heat and resist cold should probably be turned into a singular potion of resistance and made a late game item to drop around stat gain levels all the way to the late game. Potions of dragons breath, alternatively, should be a much earlier game drop, since that's potentially useful for a tough monster on dl 5 but useless when you first come across them.

Anyway let's look at the early game potions, as in potions that drop before level 15 or should:

CLW - good as is
CSW - good as is
CCW - good as is
Healing - probably could be moved later
Neutralize poison - should be available on level 1, get rid of slow poison, perhaps should be combined with resist poison
Restore mana - probably could be moved later, in addition make a new early game potion that restores *some* mana, like 10-20 points or so.
G1L1 (brawn etc.) - probably should be more early game. These are good "negative" potions to make ID by use somewhat interesting.
Speed - good as is
Heroism - good as is. Probably should have a buffed version to replace it late game
Berserk Strength - Should be changed to increase damage as well, maybe gives a temporary +5 to Str? Right now it's not that interesting.
Boldness: Remove from game
Resist Heat/Cold: Remove from game, replace with "Elemental resistance" which gives resistance to base elements which starts dropping around 20, and perhaps a "Full resistance" which gives timed resistance to higher effects as well and is much later.
Resist Poison: Too niche. Should combine with Neutralize Poison I think.
True Seeing: Fine as is.
Infravision: Worthless, can be made better by giving infravision for max sight, but even then...
Useless potions could be interesting as things you can use to put a status effect on a monster. We've talked about this for a while, but we've never done it. I'm not sure why.
Lose Memories: Should be moved to late game, and should have a stronger effect
Dragon Breath: Move allocation to 5 to 30

In addition we can consider breaking some potions up into different sets. Speed could have a lesser "haste" which gives +5 to speed, allowing for greatly improved combat early game, but in a way that gets outclassed later, so you're encouraged to just use them. I'm sure there are other early game potions that could be interesting as well besides the ones mentioned here.

[TJS]

I agree with this point, but I think there's a path forward here to provide useful consumables to early game characters. Mushrooms are a pretty good example, but they're pretty rare, and furthermore most are of questionable use. The cases where you'd want to use a mushroom like stoneskin is so difficult to determine that it's probably better to avoid it altogether.

Completely agreed on the mushrooms, never use any of them really except possibly the odd mushroom of vigour. Boring. Stoneskin should make you almost impossible to hit early on, say +100 AC at least.

Resist heat and resist cold should probably be turned into a singular potion of resistance and made a late game item to drop around stat gain levels all the way to the late game.

I see where you're coming from with this, but my problem is that with so many items having rBase and with resist fire/cold being one ring and now this idea is that there is essentially no difference between the base elements at all. The only time there is a difference is when you have resistance to some elements but not others whilst there are dangerous breathers about, which is a very limited window as it is (in fact I'd wonder if that window exists at all). It doesn't help that you have dragons of every colour, rather than just say fire with the other elements being breathed by lesser monsters or elemental melee damage.

Potions of dragons breath, alternatively, should be a much earlier game drop, since that's potentially useful for a tough monster on dl 5 but useless when you first come across them.

Completely agree. And making them scale with magic skill might be interesting too.

Neutralize poison - should be available on level 1, get rid of slow poison, perhaps should be combined with resist poison

Yes roll them all into one, but also put some monsters that poison early on as well. It's yet another potion(s) that you id and then don't need for ages if at all. I want to be delighted that I've just found a potion of resist poison because I can now take on say nagas for loads of experience at the current level.

Heroism - good as is. Probably should have a buffed version to replace it late game

Is this that great? I only ever use it for the rFear, the to-hit bonus seems to have almost no effect at all.

Berserk Strength - Should be changed to increase damage as well, maybe gives a temporary +5 to Str? Right now it's not that interesting.
Boldness: Remove from game

Agreed with these.

Infravision: Worthless, can be made better by giving infravision for max sight, but even then...

Could make them last much longer and introduce early invisible, but warm blooded monsters that are dangerous early on. Maybe a slow moving group monsters so you can get away once you can see them. It's possible to make the whole concept of infravision interesting and fun. I want those amulets of infravision to be a great find rather than just yet more junk.

Useless potions could be interesting as things you can use to put a status effect on a monster. We've talked about this for a while, but we've never done it. I'm not sure why.

I've always liked this idea, but as it stands it would have the same problem as other status effect devices/spells in that they only work on monsters you can kill easily anyway.

In addition we can consider breaking some potions up into different sets. Speed could have a lesser "haste" which gives +5 to speed, allowing for greatly improved combat early game, but in a way that gets outclassed later, so you're encouraged to just use them. I'm sure there are other early game potions that could be interesting as well besides the ones mentioned here.

Not sure about speed as warriors rely on them a lot mid game, although they are much rarer than they used to be.

[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)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.