Rune-based ID

[Pete Mack]

Still not worth it. Red worms already exist and they are no real threat. Make Giant Salamander have more HP, but keep AC low. That would do it.
Edit:
Quickband has a lot of other good ideas for beefing up the early levels, not just compressing levels 1-20. There are more dangerous monsters fairly early too, like gnomes with a powerful lighting attack, and much smarter behavior of breathers and casters. Unfortunately, the only way to do this well is with monster mana, which is a big change.

Not breathers. But instead a slow moving monster with a fire based melee attack. Or something like an optional room with ambient heat where you need !rfire to get through it without taking fatal damage. The goal is to provide a use not a necessity. And I'd much rather not have the "it breathes, you die" on level 1-5.

[Pete Mack]

In fact, how about a Quickband competition? It's a really good way to see what you can do with the early levels.
Known bugs:
(Windows) Does not exit cleanly after ctl-x exit. (Leaves zombie process.)
Superb stealth shows as red
Rare crash when shooting ammo out of the pack rather than the quiver
Nuisance:
No ID on use, and no inscriptions on flavors
No starting ?Recall
No starting sling for Rogue/Brigand

[Nivra]

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.

That still wouldn't change the fact that they never get used. How about having them change the %chance of inventory/equipment damage? Perhaps similar to damage reduction, make it 1/3rd of the base chance. So immunity prevents all damage, but temporary resistance is a great way for a warrior to decide to take on a family of white dragons without worrying that he'll lose his whole stack of !ccw.

[PowerWyrm]

The interaction between the knowledge branch, destruction, and map area is slightly flawed.

When @ destructs an area and then uses map area to see the new configuration, the new map shown is in error. There are many places that show as rock but are actually open, and vice-versa. This causes problems when fighting Morgoth. For example: @ destructs area, casts or uses a scroll, staff, rod, Star, Arkenstone, or !Enlightenment to map the "new" area, and sets up as Morgoth approaches to be out of LOS. BUT, it turns out @ isn't out of LOS because the map shown isn't accurate!

I've already reported this here with all the explanations to fix the problem: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...?t=7720&page=2

[Nick]

The interaction between the knowledge branch, destruction, and map area is slightly flawed.

When @ destructs an area and then uses map area to see the new configuration, the new map shown is in error. There are many places that show as rock but are actually open, and vice-versa. This causes problems when fighting Morgoth. For example: @ destructs area, casts or uses a scroll, staff, rod, Star, Arkenstone, or !Enlightenment to map the "new" area, and sets up as Morgoth approaches to be out of LOS. BUT, it turns out @ isn't out of LOS because the map shown isn't accurate!

I've already reported this here with all the explanations to fix the problem: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...?t=7720&page=2

Thank god for both of you

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I've already reported this here with all the explanations to fix the problem: http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthr...?t=7720&page=2

Don't you just hate it when a person brings up problems, but never offers solutions? I hate being that guy, but I don't know programming (apart from all the Basic, Fortran and Pascal from over **years ago that I've completely forgotten). Sadly, play testing and problems is the best I can offer. Thank goodness for PowerWyrm and Nick!

[Ingwe Ingweron]

It seems we have lost the special flavors that used to be reserved for certain artifacts....

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

Well, it's definite. This change was introduced with the RuneId branch. @ just used enlightenment and has become aware of a "Ring of Power". It's ring symbol "=" is nicely gold and ripe for the taking. But, we've lost that special flavor and jolt of excitement we used to have when we would see a "Plain Gold Ring".

[Nomad]

I think there might be an information leak when it comes to items with multiple stat boosts. I inspected a pair of randart gauntlets <+3> before wearing them, and the inspect screen showed both a +3 to speed (which I already knew the rune for) but also that they gave +3 to strength, which was a rune I hadn't encountered yet.

[sandtrap]

After a few goes at contest 186

I definitely think rune based ID is the right change. Now the fun is getting it as good as possible.

Thanks for all the hard work!

[Nomad]

Just encountered a chest mimic pretending to be a ruined chest. (Which was easily spotted in tile mode, since there's no tile for that.) That shouldn't be able to happen, should it?

[Nick]

New builds for Windows and OS X.

Changes:

• *Slay* weapons now have a random power or low resist instead of fixed ones
• Putting on an item with a stat boost and the same sustain IDs the sustain as well as the boost
• Magic devices don't ID on a failed use
• Things that are learned after time (like Slow Digestion) are now learned after less time

Outstanding bugs include the special flavor thing, the mapping/enlightenment thing (which needs fixing on master as well), ruined chest mimics, the multiple stat boost information leak, and anything else I've missed.

As Nomad points out, messages probably need some work - in particular, learning an ego or jewellery type probably should get a message. It's not completely obvious to me what other situations warrant it, though, and I don't want to create message spam.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Outstanding bugs include the special flavor thing, the mapping/enlightenment thing (which needs fixing on master as well), ruined chest mimics, the multiple stat boost information leak, and anything else I've missed.

One other minor bug introduced in the RuneID branch. It used to be that if @ had autoinscriptions set up for items and picked up an unknown item, identified such item, and the item was one for which autoinscriptions were set up, the autoinscription would attach to the item in @'s pack. In the RuneID branch, if the runes for the item in @'s pack are learned, thus "identifying" the item, @ must drop the item and pick it back up for the autoinscription to attach.

Also outstanding, the light radius error that was recently introduced. Torches now have a 2 radius and lanterns a 3 radius. They used to be 1 and 2, respectively.
Correction: Regular lanterns are now radius 4 light. That's even better than the Phial used to be.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

...Magic devices don't ID on a failed use...

Nick, I think this correction went slightly too far. Fine for magic devices, but now unidentified scrolls such as ?Identify, ?Banishment, ?Mass Banishment are identified by their message, such as, "You have nothing to Identify", or, "Choose a monster race (by symbol) to banish.", BUT, remain unidentified flavors in @'s pack. I would think these should identify. I also imagine the same problem will occur for !Dragon breath because it will ask for a direction, but if @ escapes out and doesn't breath, the potion will remain unidentified.

[Nomad]

Fun times cracking vaults at 2650'...

The Great Wyrm of Balance breathes chaos.
Your Flail of Taramaith glows.
You have learned the rune of resist chaos.
[color=orange]Low hitpoint warning!
*** LOW HITPOINT WARNING! ***[/color]
You resist the effect!

And now, some general thoughts after playtesting for a while:

Adventures with OOD Great Wyrms aside, I'm actually really liking how the rune-learning curve shakes out now I've got to the mid stages. By the time I started regularly coming across vaults, I'd learned pretty much all the runes to ID ego items on walkover, and it's only really a few higher resists and protections I'm still filling in now. (Having just learned rChaos in slightly hairy circumstances, according to the C screen I now only need to learn rDark, rNether, rDisen, pConf and Hold Life.) It's also amazing how much of a difference it makes to vault clearance when you don't have to constantly juggle your inventory and decide what to temporarily drop just to pick something up for the a pseudo ID.

That said, assuming the RNG isn't messing with me, I feel like scrolls of identity could maybe stand to be a little more common in the earlier levels - it seems like in the region around 1000' to 1500' I'm too often schlepping around half a dozen rings and weapons in the pack because they've got some kind of unknown rune on. (Though I haven't played with the changes to ID of sustains yet, so that may be a help with that.) OTOH, I guess there is merit in the fact that scrolls of identity are now rare and needed enough to be pretty exciting to find.

I've also changed my mind on unidentified items in shops, which I wasn't too sure about before - the {??} tag has helped a lot, but also, while it feels a bit weird in the early game not to recognise anything, it does serve to make shopping decisions more interesting at that mid-game stage where you've already got tons of money and most of the basic runes ID'd: is it worth blowing tons of cash on the armour of Elvenkind with a mystery resist? Is that unknown ring in the black market junk or something worth getting? So I think it actually adds an element of interest and a bit of gambling to proceedings in place of a simple process of "hoard money, buy only the most useful stuff".

I would definitely like to have a list of discovered runes shown on the knowledge menu, though, ideally split into subcategories. The C screen display is a bit difficult to read, and I find it's actually the slays that I most want to be able to call up a list of to see which ones I need to test for.

But all in all, I'm definitely enjoying rune-based ID a lot, and I feel like it's a major improvement to the mid- and later game. Great stuff, Nick! (And as always, I'm impressed with the speed of the bug-swatting in threads like these.)

[Nomad]

It seems you have to wear and test the breath activation of every individual DSM you find to fully ID them, which is not ideal. (And also means they can't be easily auto-squelched.) Maybe DSM activations should be immediately apparent, since they're a basic item property rather than a special enchantment anyway?