Rune-based ID

[Ingwe Ingweron]

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.

I'd add my voice also to some class distinctions. Mages have a difficult time in runeid. So many of the runes are learned in melee combat, giving advantage to hack and slash classes, where the fight-at-a-distance classes suffer.

[Nick]

I'd add my voice also to some class distinctions. Mages have a difficult time in runeid. So many of the runes are learned in melee combat, giving advantage to hack and slash classes, where the fight-at-a-distance classes suffer.

Maybe mages do need an Identify spell after all

[PowerWyrm]

That's the problem with rune based ID... If you add an ID spell/scroll/staff/whatever, you make the whole system almost pointless, since you would learn everything in no time. Same goes with shops, which would act as an ID device when you buy items. With the current system, you learn runes too slowly... and some will require precise circumstances to learn them. Would it be possible to keep the rune system, but add ID that uses the old system (ID an item completely without revealing the corresponding runes)?

[Nomad]

• Some of the runes are a bit annoying to learn, notably slays and high resists

To be honest, I feel like a large percentage of the annoyance in identifying slays could be curtailed just by having weapons of Slay Giant and Slay Troll start appearing deeper. Slay Troll drops from levels 1 to 25 and *Slay Troll* 1 to 45, but you won't even meet a troll until level 17. Now that we've got rune-based ID so you only have to do it once, I quite enjoy the "test weapon against different monster types" mini-game, but not when there are slays that have to be carried for fifteen levels before you find the right monster in the mix.

• Identify scrolls were too rare in the dungeon and too common in the Black Market

They're also too cheap - at the moment they're priced like a scroll of Detect Invisible, which means if the Black Market has them at the beginning of a game you can happily buy a stack of five or six with just your starter cash. I'm thinking the cost should be more around the range of Enchant Foo/WoR.

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.

The main issue I see with 1 is that it leads to frustrating situations where you buy a single-rune item like a weapon of Slay Orc, know it's a weapon of Slay Orc, and still have to go and poke an orc with it before you learn to recognise what weapons of Slay Orc look like. (Plus I think it would interact badly with jewellery flavours - how does it work to buy an amulet of Resist Acid and henceforth recognise all amulets of Resist Acid yet still not learn the rune for it?) And 3 is way too much knowledge too easily - you'd learn about 20 runes in one go just by looking at the shops at the start of the game.

I think 2 is the most workable, and fits most intuitively with the mechanics as they already exist. It seems to me it should be fairly self-balancing too: money does become no object over time, but it's still relevant for the period of the game where you're doing the majority of rune-identification. The only things you can afford to buy at the beginning are items that will give you a single, fairly boring rune like Searching/Feather Falling/Slow Digestion or one of the base resists. By the time you can afford to buy something like an armour of Elvenkind, you've probably gone deep enough to have picked up most of the base resists already, so only the random higher resist will likely be new to you. And while some ego weapons like Holy Avenger and Defender would give you tons of runes at once, they're correspondingly expensive and not something you're likely to be able to buy before you've met a lot of the runes in-game already.

Another advantage of 2 is that it provides an ID by selling service for equipment - sell it, learn what it is, and then decide if you want to/can afford to buy it back again to teach yourself the runes.

I'd add my voice also to some class distinctions. Mages have a difficult time in runeid. So many of the runes are learned in melee combat, giving advantage to hack and slash classes, where the fight-at-a-distance classes suffer.

Maybe mages do need an Identify spell after all

Maybe rather than balance up learning of runes, you could make the classes more distinct by giving casters an advantage in consumable ID instead? They could have auto-ID of a category of items, like Hobbits do with mushrooms and Gnomes with wands. How about mages get auto-ID of all scrolls and priests get auto-ID of all potions?

Alternatively, maybe pure casters could 'unlock' knowledge of a specified/random category of runes at set character levels: "Your studies have now taught you to recognise runes of slaying" or whatever. Or the unlock could even come with finding certain dungeon spellbooks - it seems logical that a copy of "Resistances of Scarabtarices" could teach a mage to recognise the runes for the resistances, for example.

[Thraalbee]

I am testing ironman mage and have had to ditch several melee weaps with unknown slays. No easy test at -4 speed without rings of escaping. BUT I find this quite acceptable! The mage is afterall not skilled in melee so reasonable to be bad at id of melee weaps too.

[Carnivean]

Or the unlock could even come with finding certain dungeon spellbooks - it seems logical that a copy of "Resistances of Scarabtarices" could teach a mage to recognise the runes for the resistances, for example.

You learn the spell of See Invisible. You learn the rune for See Invisible.
You learn the spell of Resist Cold. You learn the rune for Resist Cold.
Etc.

You learn the rune for Resist Chaos. You learn the spell of Chaos Strike?

[takkaria]

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.

I'd go the other way and have a bitflag mask for properties which are intrinsic and not magical, so that oil isn't branded with magic runes. Would require storing another set of flags on object kinds but that should be all?

[wobbly]

[*]Some of the runes are a bit annoying to learn, notably slays and high resists

Have you considered making slaying weapons glow aka Sil? Certainly authentic to the lore for Gondolin weapons.

[Carnivean]

Have you considered making slaying weapons glow aka Sil? Certainly authentic to the lore for Gondolin weapons.

Might make for some complicated logic to make it work. If I'm in a room with orcs and trolls and my weapon lights up, then it could be either and I'd have to do some A/B testing to be certain. Other considerations would be LOS or in range, but then do you learn what it means if the weapon lights up but you can't see what for?

I regret that my brain pointed this out, because I like the idea.

[debo]

Might make for some complicated logic to make it work. If I'm in a room with orcs and trolls and my weapon lights up, then it could be either and I'd have to do some A/B testing to be certain. Other considerations would be LOS or in range, but then do you learn what it means if the weapon lights up but you can't see what for?

I regret that my brain pointed this out, because I like the idea.

A shining example of how a simple idea can result in many complications.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

That's the problem with rune based ID... If you add an ID spell/scroll/staff/whatever, you make the whole system almost pointless, since you would learn everything in no time. Same goes with shops, which would act as an ID device when you buy items. With the current system, you learn runes too slowly... and some will require precise circumstances to learn them. Would it be possible to keep the rune system, but add ID that uses the old system (ID an item completely without revealing the corresponding runes)?

I don't think an ID spell for the non-melee types (aka mages and, to a lesser extent, priests) would make the runeid system pointless. As long as the mana costs and spell levels were increased and only one rune is learned, I think it would help level the playing field between the melee and non-melee classes. I would not advocate for staves or rods, though.

I also don't like the idea of Identify spell without a rune ID. I guess it depends on the point of rune ID in the first place. I thought it was to preserve some of the "ID game" for the early to mid-levels, but by the late levels to not have to bother with it. If that is the ostensible goal, then I think the new system is getting close to succeeding, but could use a couple tweaks:

• ID scroll frequency increased and costs inflated.
• ID spell (single rune) with increased mana costs and level for mages and priests.
• possibly, rune learned from use of scroll or potion (e.g., ?See Invisible will also provide knowledge of See Invisible rune).
• possibly, shop label on items and purchase will then provide rune knowledge (this gives another use for gold, which seems to be one of the ongoing complaints about the money aspect of the game).

I think those changes would make it reasonably likely that @'s from any class would have full rune-knowledge before the end-game, but still provide the early challenges and enjoyment provided by the ID game in the early to mid-levels. I also think those changes would make it reasonable for iron-man players to learn the runes without the access to shops.

[Derakon]

Maybe we could keep the "learn a random as-yet-unlearned rune on levelup" concept, with the rate of rune learning depending on class? So mages would automatically learn runes rather quickly, while warriors get no freebies, and a spectrum in-between?

(As a bonus, this would allow me to resurrect a form of my Scroll of Runes pull request that Nick vetoed )

[AnonymousHero]

Maybe we could keep the "learn a random as-yet-unlearned rune on levelup" concept, with the rate of rune learning depending on class? So mages would automatically learn runes rather quickly, while warriors get no freebies, and a spectrum in-between?

(As a bonus, this would allow me to resurrect a form of my Scroll of Runes pull request that Nick vetoed )

+1

... or just, y'know, have everything identified immediately? The contortions are getting pretty ridiculous at this point.

(I've been playing a private branch of T2 with ID-on-walk-over and it actually works really well. Granted, T2 has so much of a TMJ problem that even auto-ID + auto-destroy doesn't quite eliminate the TMJ problem, but I think that's probably a separate matter from the ID bit.)

EDIT: Actually, now that I think about it... should we try a little A/B test in the competion? Maybe try the rune-based ID (as A) and auto-ID-everything-on-walk-over (as B)? I'm guessing the latter should be pretty easy to hack into 4.0 (or 4.1 if rune-based gets merged and released first). I probably won't participate, but I'm sure that the feedback of the people that do would be interesting.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Maybe we could keep the "learn a random as-yet-unlearned rune on levelup" concept, with the rate of rune learning depending on class? So mages would automatically learn runes rather quickly, while warriors get no freebies, and a spectrum in-between?

(As a bonus, this would allow me to resurrect a form of my Scroll of Runes pull request that Nick vetoed )

(- 1) for me, with all due respect to Derakon and AnonymousHero. I didn't like the random rune on level-up concept. It just seemed incongruous to learn some random something without taking any action. The system as it is now, with @ having to take an action with an item before learning a rune makes more sense to me.

As for everything known on walk-over, it makes ID fairly irrelevant. That may be what some people want, but even being a somewhat experienced player, I still find the ID-game relatively enjoyable early on.

[Derakon]

(- 1) for me, with all due respect to Derakon and AnonymousHero. I didn't like the random rune on level-up concept. It just seemed incongruous to learn some random something without taking any action. The system as it is now, with @ having to take an action with an item before learning a rune makes more sense to me.

You can gloss it as the player continuing to do some studies in the background, which reach fruition when they level up. I'd encore Carnivean's suggestion that certain spells teach you runes when you learn them, but it seems the problematic runes aren't ones that would reasonably be revealed by spells.

What if the Scroll of Runes was only legible to certain classes, or if its effects were dependent on class? Warriors might need to read 6 of them to scrape together enough information to learn a single rune, while mages can get everything they need from a single scroll.